“I recognize you,” she said.
“The club,” Mason said. He flashed back to that moment when Harris got up from the table and this woman held back the bodyguard who was about to accompany him to the bathroom.
“Yeah,” she said, looking away. “I was there. Now you want to buy something from me.”
She went back to her hiding place, bent down in the darkness, and picked something up. When she stood up again, she handed it to Mason. It was the size of a hardcover book. But it was made of shiny black plastic.
“You wouldn’t be giving me anything,” she said, “if I didn’t have this. And you wouldn’t give a shit about me getting out of here.”
If I didn’t give a shit, Mason thought, I’d shoot you and take it off your dead body.
“What is this?” he said, turning the black box over in his hand.
“It’s what those cops were after.”
“Come on,” Mason said, grabbing her arm.
He led her downstairs, but she stopped in the kitchen and demanded to know where Jordan was. He pushed her past the stairs to the basement and out the back door, not forgetting to wipe off the doorknob on his way out.
As they stepped outside, he felt more vulnerable than ever, leading this woman across the backyard and over the fallen-down fence to the street.
“Where the hell is your car?” she said.
“Right down here,” he said, fighting off a sudden urge to put her back inside the house. Headlights blinded him as he opened the passenger’s-side door and put her inside. By the time he got to his own door, the car was coming up behind them, moving fast. The flashers came on, red and blue lights bouncing back and forth between the headlights. An unmarked police car.
He found the keys and fired up the Camaro. The tires squealed on the pavement as he hit the gas and started running.
30
The cop caught up to Mason by the first corner. The car edged its nose in front of his Camaro and tried to ride him right off the street.
This wasn’t the usual unmarked police sedan, either. It was a Dodge Hellcat. Mason couldn’t see the face of the driver. He didn’t need to.
Swinging his car to his left, he felt the scrape on his driver’s-side door as he edged back in front of the other car. The Dan Ryan Expressway was just ahead of them, but Mason wasn’t going to head that way. If this guy didn’t have help, he’d have it pretty fucking soon and they’d be able to run Mason down if he was stupid enough to get on the open road. They’d put him into the guardrail and then shoot them both. They wouldn’t even let him get out of the car.
Mason cut the wheel, made a hard right, and then another right. Angela screamed as she was thrown against the passenger’s-side door.
“Hold on,” he said.
The two turns had Mason doubled back and heading west. He couldn’t see the car behind him, but he knew it wasn’t far away. Angela snapped her seat belt on and slid down in the seat, her eyes closed, as Mason gunned the accelerator.
I’ve got one good chance here, Mason thought as he headed toward Forty-fifth Street. The embankment came up fast and he barely slowed down as he went under the bridge. The Berlin Wall, this same boundary he’d known since he was a kid. The girders flew by, just inches from either side of the car. When he came out on the other side, he was in Canaryville. He was home. Now he had both the fastest car on the road and home-field advantage.
Mason cut down to Forty-seventh, where he’d have some room to run. He passed every car in his lane, swerving into oncoming traffic and then back, hearing a dozen different horns blaring behind him. It was late enough at night, he figured he could just barely make this work.
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Hellcat two blocks behind him. Its flashers were still on and some of the other cars on the road pulled over to let it pass.
I need some space, he thought, before I can start using the side streets. He went around the cars waiting at the next red light, coming so close to an oncoming truck that he felt it tick against the corner of his rear bumper. He swung back hard to the right and gunned it up Halsted. It was a good open stretch where he could really fly and he ran through two more red lights. When he looked in his mirror, he could barely see the flashing lights a few blocks behind him.
Time to show you Canaryville, he thought as he took a hard right on Pershing. He looked back to make sure he was clear, threw the car onto the first side street, then took another turn and headed down through the heart of the neighborhood. He knew the streets were narrow here. He had to be careful where he was going. One car backing out of a driveway and he’d be fucked.