True-Life Adventure

she hadn’t wanted children in the first place, and she’d apparently given up custody without a peep. But maybe it hadn’t been exactly that way. Maybe Lindsay had tried to get custody but couldn’t. Maybe she was an abusive parent and Jacob could prove it. Yet at one time they’d had joint custody.
    I decided that meant nothing— Lindsay could have become abusive during that period. On the other hand, abusive parents, as I understood it, were usually ornery only when their kids got on their nerves. Lindsay was an intelligent woman, however crazy. If Terry was getting on her nerves and she was knocking her around, she’d have enough sense to minimize her time with the kid. Especially if Terry were sick. She especially wouldn’t want to lose control now.
    On yet another hand, she wouldn’t want Jacob giving her a worthless cancer cure with side effects. Maybe she felt she had no choice except to get Terry away and hope she stayed on her own good behavior.
    But if she were as unstable as Marilyn said she was, the chances of that were minuscule. So that might be what Jacob would have to worry about if he knew, in Marilyn’s words, “how bad Lindsay’s condition actually was.”
    It was a thought, anyway. Did it help in figuring out where the two of them were?
    I was mulling that when I noticed a car behind me. I was going about forty-five, and as I may have mentioned, there was hardly anybody else on the bridge. There were several lanes open and anybody could whiz along as fast as he wanted.
    So there shouldn’t have been a car behind me. But there was; and the odd thing was, it wasn’t a small, light-colored car.
    Paul, my boy, I told myself, you’re the one in bad condition. You’re so used to being followed and threatened, you think every time a medium-sized dark car is out for a leisurely drive across the bridge, it must be up to something. A particularly dumb idea when the car that tried to hit you is known to be small and light.
    I’ll speed up, I thought, and when the other car doesn’t, I’ll know it isn’t tailing me. Up I sped.
    For a while the other car continued its snail’s pace, but when I really started to move out and put some distance between us, it started speeding up too. Gradually, fairly unobtrusively, but unmistakably.
    The Broadway exit was the fastest way to Sardis’s and far the most direct, but I whizzed past it and got off at Fifth. I was hoping to maneuver fast enough to confuse the medium-sized dark car and make it miss the exit. But I failed. When I stopped for the light, I saw that it was four or five cars behind me. I couldn’t tell if the driver was male or female and I couldn’t tell any more about the make, model, and color of the car than I already knew.
    I turned right onto Fifth Street and then right onto Mission. The car was still on my tail. I figured I’d better come up with a strategy pretty quick. I passed Fourth Street and then Third. I could always go to First and get back on the bridge, going in the opposite direction. But that would be dumb.
    Okay, then, Bozo, said I to myself, what would be smart? I was glad I asked. It came to me in a blinding flash.
    The Hall of Justice, which housed Southern Police Station, was only blocks away, at Eighth and Bryant. I had this assassin on my tail who expected me to lead him to the fair Sardis, or merely perhaps to a dark alley where he could garrotte me. Wouldn’t he be amazed to wind up at the Hall instead? Even in my pursued state I got a chuckle out of it.
    I turned right on Second and then right on Howard, just to make it interesting. After all, this was a chase, right? It might as well be fun. I flew down Howard to Fourth, down Fourth to Folsom, past Folsom because it was one-way, and turned right onto Harrison.
    To my delight, the dark car took the bait. It careened after me, not even bothering to disguise its purpose. I sped down Harrison toward Eighth, turned left and then left again on Bryant. The other car was right behind me.
    I considered just slamming on the brakes in front of the Hall and getting out and standing there, looking menacing. The idea had a lot of merit. No one would shoot you or run you down in front of a police station, for one thing. For another, there’d be a real macho satisfaction in it. And for a third, I’d almost certainly find out who was trying to kill me.
    But it seemed anticlimactic, somehow. This was my first high-speed chase and I wasn’t yet ready for it to be