It was going to be a tight run for him. He’d have to be as aware as I was of the ramp. If he was too close when I did the 360, I’d slam him into the wall.
I began to picture it one more time, now focusing on the end of the run. But when I closed my eyes, the picture in my mind was not the street in front but the road leading up to Coit Tower. And Karen Johnson. How could she have done something as stupid as stealing a cop car? Was it a publicity stunt? She sure handled the car like a getaway driver. Could John possibly be right about Gary setting the whole thing up? Giving her directions to Madame Velvet’s house where John was so unaccountably thrown off his stride, and anxious for me to be gone.
But if Gary didn’t set it up, if she had stolen the car on her own, could she have known John would be waiting at Coit Tower? Not impossible. Webb Moratt knew. And just what was John expecting, all dolled up in his suit like that?
John! I kept coming back to his expression—more like anguish than simple anger.
“You okay?” Jed Elliot leaned toward the window. He looked barely warm enough in a heavy fleece jacket and watch cap.
“Fine.” I willed myself not to shiver in the fifty degree night, sitting there in a spaghetti string halter. Be tough, shoulders! “I’ve done plenty of car work.”
“Sure.” He meant that he didn’t know me, yet.
“I was fine driving this baby yesterday, right?”
“Three minutes. Fog’s good, but the light’s going faster than we figured, so we need to do it in one.”
Keeping my hand relaxed on the wheel, I smiled up at him. “Right.”
As he walked away I eyed the road ahead. The cameraman stubbed out a cigarette and slid into his cart. In the thickening fog his little open vehicle looked like a refugee from a soapbox derby.
Even if I’d just been driving here to dinner—meeting Karen Johnson for a shared meal “above our element”—I’d be slowing down and paying attention to headlights as the first bit of fog blurred the air. Had this been real life, here on California Street, cars would have been bumper to bumper, taillights glowing like Christmas balls. Jed had done a good job simulating it. He’d set up dummies, cardboard mock-ups of a BMW, Mercedes, two Hondas and a Ford, with the two breakaway cars I’d hit. Beyond the cardboard set-up was the spew cart, the obligatory display of fruit or vegetables, or in this case fish, that would be hit, depositing its contents all over the road. However, the fog was Jed’s friend: even the oldest dummy would look fine tonight.
John! Where was he—
Focus! Focus or die! I exhaled oh-so-slowly and tried to clear my mind.
“Thirty seconds!”
“Engine!”
I turned the ignition. It seemed an eternity before it caught. Outside I heard the grunt of the camera cart starting up.
“Clear the set! Get off!” someone yelled. I shot a glance across the street. Was there someone in eggshell blue over on the sidewalk? Could Karen really be here? “Action!”
I punched the gas. Continuity would pick up ten feet before the corner, where I left off yesterday. I needed to hit 30 there. Fog smeared the windshield. The car burst through it, like stepping off the hundred-foot pole. Focus! 25, 30. I eased the wheel left, as if falling for the illusory road next to the wedge of 101 California.
The first cable car loomed, and I jimmied the wheel in “panic.” The camera cart cut in close. I hit the slip pad, yanked the wheel hard right. Then the skid, and I was slamming the rear fender into the front corner of the cable car. Fog blurred the street. I cut left, down California, shimmied onto the cable car tracks, overcorrected full out, smacked the first junker, bounced left, hard-righted into the second. The dummy pedestrian popped out. I skimmed it, slammed the brake.
The car lurched—hard-right, hard-left—as I hit the ramp and clung to the wheel. It bounced, spun, going wide toward a lamppost on the far sidewalk. The front bumper missed but the rear smacked it. Metal crunched. Drifting out of the circle, I yanked the wheel back into the spin. The second cable car was two yards to my left. I went up over the sidewalk, slammed into the fish wagon from the back. Big, sloppy, silvery fish flew against the windshield. Slime turned the glass gray. I couldn’t see anything.
The cable car was dead ahead, the passengers’ bare legs dangling from the outside benches. I stood on the brakes. The shrill squeal cut the air.
A fish flew over the windshield into my face.
“Sheesh!” I said as I pulled to a stop and someone opened the door. “Did you have to get day-old fish?”
He didn’t react.
I snapped the belt free and was out of the car. “The cameraman okay?”
Another fish hit me. “Jes’ fine, thank you.”
Shoes hitting pavement, disembodied cheers came through the fog. “Good work!” Jed was calling. “You get it all?” he was asking. In reply, the cameraman was flinging another fish. Duffy was barking, then he leapt into my arms, making everyone laugh.
I’d lucked out. This time. What a day it had been since that call from Gary. It scared me how closed I’d come to losing focus. I had a fire gag coming up in a couple days. Fire’s fire. If I couldn’t focus then, I’d die.
It was night now. The streetlights blurred the road surface under the fog and I was glad I wasn’t the one making sure every dead fish was swept away. Duffy jumped down. I headed west toward the corner where I’d started. It was just the second unit—the stunt crew—here tonight. They’d be a few minutes packing up before we met at Harrington’s, the site of the per diem. It was the few minutes I needed. Common sense told me this was the last place Karen Johnson would come. Common sense said I’d imagined that flutter of blue cloth.
But, still, I wasn’t ready to rule it out.
7
THERE WERE A LOT of places Karen Johnson could have been in the vicinity of California and Davis. None panned out. I called John’s cell. No answer. Ditto Gary. By the time I walked back down the hill toward Harrington’s the euphoria from the gag had evaporated and I was tired, worried, and frustrated. Duffy, on the other hand, was annoyed and hungry.
“Come on!” Jed was just leading the crew inside. “We’ve got a section at the far end of the bar.”
“Reserved?”
“Commandeered.”
“Yeah, we weren’t very restrained last night,” a tech chuckled. “Hey Darcy, your drive was great. You got a lot of distance with those fish. Brad’s still out with the broom and searchlight. Poor guy.”
“Thanks. But, listen, I’d better eat out here with Duffy.”
“Bring ’im!”
“Yeah, he’s one of us!” The crowd, about a dozen strong, surrounded us and we moved inside as one. If the bartender noticed the small black shape, he didn’t let on. We pushed tables together and ate in a single very loud group, with shrimp on the
