Oh, Deborah? I said. I don’t want to distract you from your driving chores, but if you have a moment, could you look in your rearview mirror?

What the fuck is that supposed to mean, she snarled, but she flicked her eyes to the mirror. It was a piece of good luck that we were on a straight stretch of road, because for just a second she almost forgot to steer. Oh, shit, she whispered.

Yes, that’s what I thought, I said.

The I-95 overpass stretched across the road directly ahead, and just before he passed under it Oscar swerved violently to the right across three lanes and turned down a side street that ran parallel to the freeway. Deborah swore and wrenched her car around to follow. Tell Doakes! she said, and I obediently picked up the radio.

Sergeant Doakes, I said. We are not alone.

The radio hissed once. The fuck does that mean? Doakes said, almost as if he had heard Deborah’s response and admired it so much he had to repeat it.

We have just turned right on 6th Avenue, and we are being followed by a white van. There was no answer, so I said again, Did I mention that the van is white? and this time I had the great satisfaction of hearing Doakes grunt, Motherfucker.

That’s exactly what we thought, I said.

Let the van in front and stay with him, he said.

No shit, Deborah muttered through clenched teeth, and then she said something much worse. I was tempted to say something similar, because as Doakes clicked off his radio, Oscar headed up the on-ramp onto I-95 with us following, and at the very last second he yanked his car back down the paved slope and onto 6th Avenue. His 4Runner bounced as it hit the road and teetered drunkenly to the right for a moment, then accelerated and straightened up. Deborah hit the brakes and we spun through half a turn; the white van slid ahead of us, bounced down the slope, and closed the gap with the 4Runner. After half a second, Debs straightened us out of our slide and followed them down onto the street.

The side road here was narrow, with a row of houses on the right and a high yellow-cement embankment on the left with I-95 on top. We ran along for several blocks, picking up speed. A tiny old couple holding hands paused on the sidewalk to watch our strange parade rocket past. It may have been my imagination, but they seemed to flutter in the wind from Oscar’s car and the van going by.