I veered slightly to the right, to see ahead and to make my move to overtake—when I noticed one of the cars we thundered past had lights on top and “Policia” written down the flank.

A moment later the cop swung into the left lane behind me, siren wailing.

“Jack, you have to pull over! You’re going to get us arrested! Pull over! Jack!”

Jesus overtook a red sedan in front of him, swinging back into the left lane. I stuck with him for the next five hundred yards, whipping around several more vehicles.

“Jack!” Pita all but wailed. “Please!”

And I conceded.

Speeding down the far side of an overpass, I glanced in the side mirror, didn’t see the police car, and locked up the brakes, squeezing in between two freight semis in the right lane to the tune of bovine air horns and flashing high beams.

Several long seconds later the cop blasted past me none the wiser.

Jesus’s problem now.

4

When we reached Xochimilco an hour later, I followed signs that read “los embarcaderos”—the piers—to Cuemanco, one of nine locations that offered access to the ancient Aztec canal system. It was where we had agreed to meet the others. I parked in a busy parking lot, retrieved our daypacks from the trunk of the Porsche, and handed Pita hers. She took it silently and started toward the strip of ramshackle buildings that separated the parking lot and the waterfront. I fussed through my bag for a minute, checking the sparse contents. It wasn’t necessary. I knew what I’d packed. But Pita and I needed a bit of space.

After we had evaded the cop, Pita had spent the next ten minutes yelling at me in a mix of English and Spanish, saying I was crazy, I could have killed them, all because of my ego. I didn’t argue with her. She was right. Street racing was stupid and reckless. So I listened stoically to her tirade, which seemed to incense her all the more. Eventually, however, she ran out of fury and called Jesus on her cell phone. As it turned out, he ended up pulling over and paying off the cop. I didn’t pick up any more details than that, and Pita refused to speak to me, let alone elaborate, after she hung up.