Easy Prey

“Old goat,” Del said.
    “Yeah . . .” Lucas crossed the street, going straight ahead, then said, “Wait a minute.” He swerved, did a quick U-turn, and said, urgently, “We’re going after the goat. Get your goddamn pen out, write down the tag number, call it in.” They were back at the intersection, the old slow-moving GTO already at the end of the block. Lucas went after him.
    The GTO paused at a stop sign; the driver seemed unsure of his destination, looked both ways. Lucas closed up behind, putting his headlights on the license plate of the other car. Del said, “Got it.”
    “Call it in, tell them we want an answer right fuckin’ now.”
    “What . . . ?”
    “Remember back in the motel, when we called in Lynn Olson’s driver’s license and asked them to run down his vehicle registrations? He had a Volvo, an Explorer, and an old collector GTO. I bet that fuckin’ Scott parked his truck with the Coke truck and walked over to the Olsons’ place and took the GTO. How many GTOs do you see around anymore—at six o’clock in the morning?”
    Del was already talking on his cell phone, getting switched. Reading the number he’d written on his arm. The GTO went straight ahead. Lucas turned left, did another U-turn and switched off his lights, crept to the end of the block. The GTO took a left at the next corner. Lucas accelerated around the corner, lights off, ran as hard as he could almost to the end of the block, jammed on the brakes, and crept forward again.
    The GTO was halfway down the block. At the end of the block, it stopped, then turned right. “He’s just weaving around,” Lucas said as he accelerated at the corner. “That’s gotta be him.”
    Del was listening. “All right.” He looked at Lucas. “It’s him.”
    “Get everybody here. . . . Get everybody on the street.”
     
 
THEY BEGAN VECTORING squad cars toward the GTO, trying to stay out of sight. But four or five minutes after the cat-and-mouse game began, the driver of the GTO realized he was being tracked. Lucas again crept to the end of the block, and saw the GTO already turning the next corner. And when he got to that corner, and crept forward, the GTO was two blocks away and accelerating.
    “Goddamnit, he must’ve seen us,” Lucas said.
    He jumped on the accelerator, and the Porsche whipped around the corner and they were flying along the narrow street; too fast to do it without lights, if anybody was out walking, and Lucas switched the lights on and up ahead, the GTO busted a stop sign and was out of sight and Del was screaming street names into the telephone; they made the corner and the GTO was already turning at a streetlight.
    “West on Lake,” Del shouted. “He’s headed west on Lake Street.” He stopped talking to brace himself as Lucas downshifted and the engine screamed, they drifted through the intersection, and Lucas began running up through the gears and Del started with the phone again. “He’s at fifteenth . . . fourteenth . . . thirteenth . . . twelfth . . . Where is everybody?”
    “Behind us,” Lucas said. He could see flashing lights in the rearview mirror. No time for his flashers; he didn’t even think about them. Then Del shouted, “He’s making a turn under the interstate!”
    “He goes on the interstate, we got him,” Lucas said. “It’s a concrete trough.”
    Del braced himself again as Lucas drifted the turn; they’d closed some distance on the GTO, which was now only a few hundred yards ahead. The GTO driver busted another traffic light, but Lucas was forced to slow and lost ground; and then the GTO was on the on-ramp and out of sight. Lucas accelerated after him, spotted him as they came off the ramp and started eating up the ground between them. Del stopped shouting into his phone long enough to ask, “What’re we gonna do when we catch up with him?”
    “I haven’t figured that out yet,” Lucas said. “Maybe . . . not pull up beside him.”
    “That would be a bad idea,” Del said. “Unless you got your own shotgun hidden in this car somewhere.”
    “We’ll just get on his ass and push him,” Lucas said. “He’ll either lose it, or we’ll pen him.”
    There were four or five other cars on the roadway; there was still an hour before the morning traffic would start. After fifteen seconds, with the Porsche trailing by two hundred yards, the GTO crossed in front of a slower-moving Ford and swerved onto the shoulder lane. Immediately, the air was full of