Free The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake Page B

leave the protective cover of heavy traffic to search the side streets for a car, but they’re almost to the city limits and the last of the traffic lights, where he will have to double back.
    But now they come abreast of a shopping mall with the sort of lot he’s been searching for. It goes all the way around the big mall building, and its parking rows are lined with shade trees. He checks the rearview mirror and sees a station wagon crammed with three adults and a pack of kids, and behind it a bus. In the adjoining lane, a taxi, and a smoking Chrysler of 1960s vintage. Nothing to alarm.
    He turns into the lot and goes around to the side of the mall where the trees are heaviest and their trunks present the most obstruction to the view of passersby. He drives slowly between two rows of cars, studying the array of vehicles, and fixes on a late-model Dodge van that has tinted windows and whose locks and ignition system he knows how to deal with.
    That one, he says. It’ll do fine.
    I like it, she says. We can sleep in it.
    He stops short of the van, leaving himself room to back it out of the parking space. He rummages in the bag for a screwdriver and a set of clamp wires and then waits while a man and woman and two small children get into a gray sedan parked farther down the row. A minute later the car drives off, and he takes another look in the rearview before getting out. And sees a large red pickup truck with smoked windows come around the far end of the row.
    It advances slowly and halts about ten yards behind them.
    Miranda turns around to see what’s caught his attention. Oh shit.
    The idling truck remains motionless.
    If it’s them, she says, what are they waiting for?
    Eddie is wondering the same thing. Then understands there’s another one coming around to cut them off.
    He guns the Escalade forward and the red truck leaps after them—and up ahead a white sedan comes wheeling around from the far end of the row.
    Eddie floors the accelerator and rams the left front of the sedan in a smash of metal and glass and knocks the car completely around and into a row of parked cars. The Escalade caroms to the right and scrapes against two or three cars before Eddie makes a tight left turn with tires shrieking.
    The red truck swerves into view behind them.
    A coming car veers out of his way and Eddie speeds past the next five rows and makes a squealing turn into a wide lane leading to an exit.
    A woman pushing a shopping cart across the lane freezes at the sight of the Escalade barreling toward her and Eddie veers and misses her but smacks the steel cart flying. It ricochets off a parked car and twirls into the air with its contents strewing and it drops behind the Escalade and hits the red truck’s windshield and glances off.
    Eddie touches the brakes and exits onto a side street and speeds up again. The truck staying in his rearview, its windshield cobwebbed on the driver’s side, the driver hunched down to see out through a small clear segment.
    They’re on a residential street running parallel to the highway and four or five blocks east of it. As he speeds down the street Eddie leans on the horn to warn away a group of girls playing jump rope and they dart off into a yard. A few blocks ahead is a yield sign where the street merges into a divided four-lane road.
    He has a clear view of that road’s eastbound traffic coming from his left and tries to gauge its speed as he begins to slow down. There is a muted clatter from behind them and a hard rapping against the back of the Escalade and Miranda cries “Chingados!” and hunches down in her seat. Eddie cuts his eyes to the mirror and sees pale starbursts with dark centers on the back window.
    They are almost to the cross avenue now and he can see the merging lane curving off to the right past the yield sign, but he’s going too fast to hold in that merging lane without slewing out into traffic. Then he sees a gap in the