Pike said, “We get the chance, we take them in traffic.” He took out his Python and held it in his lap.

I let the Sentra make its first corner, then I jerked the Taurus around and caught up to them going east on Canal to climb the Manhattan Bridge across the East River to Brooklyn.

The bridge was electric with late-afternoon congestion as thousands of cars raced for home before the bridge gridlocked. If the bridge was locked now, what we were trying to do would be easy, but the bridge wasn’t locked. Traffic coursed and bumper-to-bumper cars weaved from lane to lane, cutting each other off, hitting their brakes and making it hard to keep the Sentra in sight. Pike rolled down the passenger window and climbed out to sit on the door, but it didn’t help. Eight cars ahead of us and two lanes over, the Sentra took the second exit ramp over the Brooklyn shore and that’s where we lost it.

Pike said, “Off-ramp.”

I blew the horn and cut in and out between three cars and knocked the bumper off a green Dodge station wagon, but I kept going.

We jumped across the two right lanes and hit the off-ramp in a skid and followed it down in a great looping arc over factories and waterfront and chain-link fences and bridge supports, Pike standing as tall as he could in the window, trying to spot the Sentra, finally yelling, “Got it.”

The Sentra was below us in a U-Stor-It yard under one of the on-ramps leading back to Manhattan. The two guys were out of the Sentra’s front seat and Ric and Peter and Dani were getting out of the back. One of the guys from the front was wearing a red leather jacket with very wide shoulders. The other had a gun out. Revolver.

We came off the ramp at the rear of the storage yard on the wrong side of a ten-foot chain-link fence. I said, “Faster to go over it.”