THIRTY-FOUR

I headed west along the Belt Parkway, toward Manhattan, and into the setting sun. I had made this drive so many times in my life that but for the other cars on the road, I could do it blindfolded. I knew every bump, rut, and pothole, every twist and turn. Sometimes I liked to think this was all so familiar to me that I could name the individual blades of grass at the roadside and knew which rivets were the rusty ones on the east-facing façade of the Verrazano Bridge. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? You never know anything or anyone as well as you think you do, least of all yourself. It is the great folly of humanity, the search for self-knowledge and significance. It’s why we’re all so fucking miserable. Oh, I thought, to be an ant or a cat or almost anything else that doesn’t lose sleep over dying. Does an ant ever ask itself where do I come from, where am I going, or what does it mean?

I knew some stuff about myself. I knew I’d never been very good at just letting go, even for a little while. That’s why I decided to stop at Kid Charlemagne’s on my way up to Vermont. Although the East Village wasn’t necessarily on the way to Vermont, it wasn’t exactly not on the way either. Let’s just say there’s no direct route from Sheepshead Bay to Brattleboro, so it was going to take me five or six hours no matter how I chose to go. I’d thrown my duffel bag in the trunk, conveniently neglecting to pack the bottles of red wine I usually brought up to Pam’s with me. I’d have to tell her about my condition soon enough, but I wanted to do it on my terms. Pam was a damn good PI and I think she was already a little suspicious of my health. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to me the other night at Carmella’s.

Rush hour was at an end and the traffic was pretty thin as I headed around the bend from Bath Beach to Bay Ridge, the Verrazano Bridge looming up before me. It was hard for me to remember when I was a kid and the bridge wasn’t there, when you used to have to ferry across from Brooklyn to Staten Island and the lost world of New Jersey beyond. The bridge opened to traffic in ’64, like Shea Stadium and the World’s Fair. Now, with the fair long closed and Shea turned into a parking lot for Citi Field, only the bridge remained.

I don’t know what it was that drew my attention to the old ’75 Buick Electra in the right-hand lane. Maybe it was its darkly tinted windows or the fact that the sun’s glare off its windshield made it impossible for me to see the driver’s face. Maybe it was the sparseness of the traffic and the fact that the Buick seemed to be hanging back and to my right, but keeping its distance constant. I shook my head at my paranoia. I think if Brian Doyle hadn’t shown up on my doorstep with that black eye and sounding the retreat, I would never have noticed the Buick at all. So to test out my paranoia, I floored the gas pedal and shot under the bridge. When I looked in my passenger side mirror, the Buick was gone. Problem was, I looked in the wrong mirror.

Bang! The tail of my car jerked and fishtailed, but I held it steady. There was the Electra again, this time in my sideview and only a foot or two off my left fender. Before I could react, it closed in, ramming the left side of my back bumper. This time the hit was much harder, but he’d lost the element of surprise. Surprise or no surprise, it took all my police training and years of driving savvy to keep my car steady. I couldn’t be sure whether the guy driving the Buick was a pro just trying to scare me—mission accomplished—or if he was an amateur trying to kill me who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. I’d have to worry about that later, because amateur or not, a few more hits like the last one and I wouldn’t be able to keep my car on the road. It was time to play offense.

I put my foot to the floor again and my car zoomed forward. I knew the Buick probably had a huge old V8 under its hood and that it would quickly catch up. I was counting on it. While the Electra was built for straight line speed, weighed as much as an Abrams tank, and was great for ramming smaller cars off the road, it maneuvered like an ocean liner. I saw the Buick coming up fast as we both approached the point where the Belt Parkway curves right and up onto the Gowanus Expressway. I had one chance and it was now. Just when the Electra got within a car’s length of me, I stepped hard on my brakes and yanked my steering wheel hard left.

Bang! I caught him pretty close to where I was aiming, the rear passenger tire. I’m not sure how close exactly, but close enough. The old Buick spun out in front of me and flipped over as I passed. I counted it flipping over twice more in my rearview mirror before it came to rest against a guardrail. It didn’t burst into flames. Cars don’t do that as frequently as in the movies, but I couldn’t imagine the driver would walk out of that wreck unscathed. I exhaled for the first time in minutes. I shouldn’t have.

My left front tire exploded. That much, I remember.

When I came to, a cop was gently shaking my shoulder and I noticed my car, which had been in the left lane and facing Manhattan when my tire blew, was now up against the opposite guardrail and facing traffic. My side airbags had deployed. I also noticed that I had a hell of a headache and that my neck hurt like a son of a bitch. There were flashing lights everywhere I looked and the wailing sound of a siren in the distance.

“Did I hit anybody else?” I mumbled, trying to work the pain out of my neck.

“Nah. You slid across all the lanes, but everyone avoided you. You all right? There’s some EMTs on the way.”

“I’m okay. A little sore.”

He asked for my name, asked me the day and date, asked if I’d been drinking, held some fingers up in front of my eyes, and did some eye tracking thing with a pen. When he was done, I made to get out of the car.

“Wow, pal, you better wait there till the paramedics clear you.”

I stayed put. “I used to be on the job,” I said to the cop. “Used to work the Six-O.”

“Long time ago, huh?”

“Long time, yeah.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Front left tire blew and I lost it. Busy night?”

“You know it. Must be a full moon coming tonight. There’s a car flipped over on the Belt about a mile back.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“If there was, they didn’t hang around. It was a stolen car. Amazing.”

“How’s that?”

“It was an old beat-up piece of shit. Who the fuck’s gonna steal something like that?”

Somebody who wants to run another car off the road. “Listen, Rafferty,” I said, reading his name badge. “Do me a favor and take some pictures of my car. I was supposed to go up to Vermont and visit my girlfriend tonight. I need some proof.” I handed him my cell phone. “She’s the jealous type.”

“Sure, for a brother, no problem.” He took the pictures and handed the phone back to me. “Okay, the EMTs are here.”