Shooting Gallery (38 page)

I was getting a major case of the willies in this cold white house with the bloody finger and the mysterious statues, and longed to be cradled in the bosom of the SFPD. This last was such an unusual impulse that I thought I should honor it.

“Okay, here's the plan,” I said, improvising. I tossed Mary the truck keys, glad I'd taught her how to drive a stick shift last summer. “Mary, go get the truck and pull it into the driveway. We'll take this statue with us before Jose and his boys can get rid of everything. We'll take it to the police and let them deal with it.”

Mary nodded and ran up the stairs.

“Policía?”
Consuelo asked.

“Don't worry,” I assured her. “I have a very good friend in the SFPD.”

“No! No, I cannot. I cannot!” Consuelo cried, and began speaking rapidly in Spanish.

“Tol' you she was an illegal,” Evangeline said.

“We don't have a choice. Those guys are killers. Consuelo, is there an exit at this level? We'll never get this statue up those stairs.”

She pulled aside the curtains, revealing a sliding glass door that opened onto the driveway.

“Evangeline, put the statue in the back of the truck when Mary gets here,” I ordered. As she carried the statue outside, I turned to Consuelo. “Are you undocumented?” I asked in a voice as gentle as I could muster.

Consuelo nodded. “Come with us,” I said, holding her by the upper arms and speaking slowly. “We won't take you to the police, okay? You will be safe.”

She looked blank. I racked my brain for the Spanish equivalent, and recalled the bilingual emergency instructions that were stenciled in BART cars in the event of an earthquake. “
Seguro!
You will be
seguro
.”

Now she looked confused, so I tried again.
“Vámanos por seguridad—”

“Youse guys better get your heinies out here,” Evangeline interrupted. “Somebody's comin', and they look an awful lot like those wise guys who were lookin' for the money.”

Q: Do you have a personal hero?
A:
Absolument!
Han Van Megeeren, without a
doubt. Facing a possible death sentence for selling
a Vermeer to Nazi official Hermann Göring,
Van Megeeren admitted he had forged the painting,
and demonstrated his talent by producing a
brilliant new forgery,
The Young Christ Teaching in the Temple,
while in police custody. The
charges against him were commuted to forgery,
and a poll showed he was one of the most popular
men in the Netherlands, right behind the prime
minister.

—Georges LeFleur, in an interview with
Paris Match

 

I hustled Consuelo outside as Mary pulled the truck into the narrow driveway. Evangeline dumped the statue in the bed of the truck and climbed into the cab. I thrust my weeping undocumented alien onto Evangeline's lap, where she was encircled by a pair of muscular arms, and hurried around to the driver's side. A glance through the trees bordering the drive revealed a man behind the wheel of a shiny black SUV pointed uphill. Don Quixote, whom I presumed was really Jose, and his evil assistant Ape Man were pounding on the front door. Because of the way Pascal's house was situated on the hillside, we were below them and around a slight bend. But it wouldn't be long before they spotted us.

Panic spurring me on, I tried to squeeze behind the wheel as Mary scooted over, but there wasn't enough room on the truck's narrow bench seat for all those womanly hips. Mary twisted sideways, facing me, and I managed to shove my way in and lock the door. I stomped on the gas and we took off with a lurch.

I checked the rearview mirror. The driver of the black SUV was executing a many-pointed turn on the narrow, car-lined alley while Don Quixote and Ape Man ran down the street towards us, guns waving.

“Yikes!” Mary yelled and I turned my attention to driving just in time to avoid a UPS truck laboring up the hill. I heard some popping sounds I feared were gunshots and stepped on the gas. Consuelo began reciting what sounded like the Lord's Prayer in Spanish while Mary watched out the rear window and provided a running commentary on the progress of Jose and the goons. Only Evangeline remained silent. A quick glance revealed her broad face to be unusually pale.

“They're jumping into the SUV,” Mary warned. “Look out, they're coming.”

We careened down Telegraph Hill and I took a right on Grant, then a left on Chestnut. The normally packed streets were quiet this holiday eve, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

“Should I go somewhere crowded?” I asked of no one in particular.

“Crowded's good,” Mary replied.

I turned left on Mason and left again on Columbus, which put us right back in the center of North Beach. If anywhere in the City would be crowded the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it would be North Beach.

“Okay, they're caught in traffic,” Mary reported with relief.

“Yeah, but so are we.”

“Uh-oh,” Mary said.

“What?
What
?”

“They're driving on the wrong side of the road and are no longer blocked by traffic.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Jose and his boys were two blocks behind us, which was not far enough to lose them, but not close enough for them to shoot at us. They were gaining ground, fast.

Mary's arms didn't fit in the meager space allotted her, so she had one arm around the back of my shoulders, and the other hugging my waist. I wasn't wearing a seat belt, and I hoped she could hang on tight enough to prevent me from sailing through the windshield if we crashed. Then again, since she wasn't wearing a seat belt either, I supposed we would fly through together.

“What do I do? Where should I go?” I pleaded as I swerved around a double-parked delivery truck, and sped down an alley, tires squealing. The statue rolled around and hit the side of the truck with a thud.

“Go to Lombard!” Mary cried.

I jerked the truck around a startled pedestrian in a pilgrim's hat. “What?”

“Lombard!”

I hung a sharp right and we raced through Chinatown, at one point veering onto the sidewalk to avoid several little old ladies wearing hand-knit caps and carrying bright pink plastic grocery bags, then swinging around a truck unloading squawking chickens. Curses and shaken fists followed in our wake, and I wondered if anyone could possibly think we were joyriding.

“Why Lombard?” I yelled, as we skidded onto Chestnut. “Is a police station there?”

“That's where everybody goes for a car chase in San Francisco!” Mary replied. “There must be a reason!”

Lombard was a normal street except for a one-block stretch dubbed
the crookedest street in the world
because it zigzagged to compensate for the forty-degree slope of the hill. Vermont Street at Twentieth was actually more crooked, but who was I to quibble with the tourist brochures?

“Yeah, well, they also always have a Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco chase scenes, even though that happens only once a year. We need a police station! Where's a police station?” I demanded, my fear making me jumpy. “C'mon, you guys. You mean to tell me that none of you has ever been arrested? Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“There's a substation near my apartment,” Mary offered. “That's off Valencia. You think we can make it that far?”

Consuelo sniffed and offered the address of the passport office, but unless we were going to demand an emergency deportation this was not helpful. She seemed to be working her way through the Catholic prayer book, while Evangeline maintained a stoic silence.

We were now racing past the Cannery, heading toward the Marina and the Presidio. There was much less traffic around here, and I heard the popping of gunshots again. Shit! I was fresh out of ideas. I hazarded another glance in the rearview mirror and saw the black SUV only half a block behind us.

“Look out!” Mary yelled, and I swerved to avoid a brightly colored Kreamy Do-Nut delivery van, complete with a giant smiling Kreamy Do-Nut on its roof, pulling out at a stop sign. The SUV was not as quick and smashed into the van with a squealing of brakes, the smashing of glass, and the groaning of steel.

“Yes!” Mary said. “They crashed!”

We cheered and hooted. I should have been driving, not celebrating, because the truck ran over a curb, taking out a big blue mailbox. The statue slammed into the truck's cab as we screeched to a halt.

Luckily I had slowed before the impact and after a moment of shock, I backed onto the road and looked behind us. Our pursuers leaped from their disabled vehicle and yanked the stunned driver out of his delivery van. Ape Man jumped behind the wheel, with Jose and Barrel Chest riding shotgun.

“They're coming after us!” Mary cried. “They've hijacked the doughnut mobile and they're coming after us!”

I stomped on the gas, taken aback at being pursued by a giant doughnut. Sure, I thought, the bad guys got a van full of Kreamy Do-Nuts while I was stuck with a penitent Catholic, a speechless giant, and a petty criminal who didn't even know where the nearest police station was.

The van sped along faster than I would have thought a doughnut mobile could go. I raced through the flat residential streets of the Marina, leaning on the horn in the hope that some public-spirited citizen would call the cops. I decided Mary was onto something with the Lombard suggestion and was willing to bet my trusty old truck could climb hills better than the doughnut mobile.

I headed straight up Divisadero, a very steep hill. At the summit was an intersection controlled by a stop sign, but I didn't hesitate. The hilltop flattened out and we sailed up in the air, across the intersection, and slammed to earth on the other side, jolting the truck and its contents. The statue rocketed around the bed of the truck, banging into the tailgate as we headed uphill, jumping toward the cab when we went airborne. I heard a horrible groaning noise and scanned the dashboard for a red
Check Engine Because You're About to Die
light until I realized the noise was coming from Mary.

“What's wrong?” I demanded. “Mary, what's wrong?”

“Eye it eye ung,” she mumbled.

“She say she bit her tongue,” Consuelo replied, momentarily interrupting a volley of
Ave Maria
s.

“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded, craning her neck to see out the back window. “Ere opping o-uhts.”

“What?”

“She say, they are dropping doughnuts.” Consuelo appeared to have found her calling as a translator for the lingually impaired.

I was too busy gripping the wheel to look for myself. Consuelo pulled a tissue from her pocket, which Mary pressed tightly against her tongue. After a moment, speech restored, Mary resumed her blow-by-blow description of the drama unfolding behind us.

“The back doors of the van are swinging open! They're dropping Kreamy Do-Nuts everywhere! It's a fried-dough massacre!”

I concentrated on avoiding driving into the knots of people gathering on the sidewalk to watch the chase.
Surely someone would have the presence of mind to call the cops,
I thought. At the moment, though, they seemed mesmerized by the carnage created as the Kreamy Do-Nut van sped along, spewing its cargo.

“Glazed doughnuts are rolling down the street! A whole bunch of jelly-filled hit the pavement! An Alfa Romeo is skidding in the jelly! Ew! It looks like blood!”

For every steep upside to a hill there is an equally steep downside, and since we had just crested the hill there was only one way for us to go. To buy time until the cops arrived, I took a left off Divisadero, doubled back onto Scott, and swung right on Green. The street nosedived towards the Bay, and I was hoping the doughnut mobile would lose control on the steep downgrade.

“They're gaining on us!” Mary cried.

I heard another round of popping, and the doughnut van banged into us from behind. My heavy steel bumper absorbed much of the blow, but I feared we were about to join the jelly-filled Kreamy Do-Nuts in the Roadkill Hall of Fame. I laid on my horn to warn anyone entering the intersection at the bottom of the hill that we were barreling towards them. At last I heard sirens approaching, but before I could feel relieved the doughnut mobile rammed us again, this time with more force, and we careened onto the curb, bounced off a light pole, and landed back on the road. I was fighting to control the truck when the larger, heavier doughnut mobile, unable to slow its momentum, streaked past us and skidded into the intersection, where it T-boned a police cruiser. There were terrible sounds of metal crunching, glass shattering, and tires exploding before both the doughnut mobile and the cruiser came to a rest in the middle of the intersection.

We cheered again, savoring our rescue, until I realized I couldn't stop the truck in time, and we slammed into the back of the doughnut mobile, the nose of my truck coming to rest just inside the open rear doors of the van. Doughnuts rained down upon the windshield and a chocolate cake doughnut with rainbow sprinkles lassoed the radio antennae. The statue in the bed of the truck launched into the air and smashed onto the asphalt. In one last act of defiance, the giant Kreamy Do-Nut emblem creaked, trembled, and rolled off the roof of the van, impaling itself in the police cruiser's windshield.

There were several long seconds of eerie, unnatural calm.

Then Consuelo started wailing, police sirens shrieked, and car alarms screamed. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk, speculating noisily. There were assorted shouts, more popping sounds, and general bedlam as the watching crowd shifted and surged around us.