Colleen quickly changed into a new pair of long flared black slacks, ankle boots with a mild platform, and a crisp white cotton blouse with long pointed collar. She topped the ensemble off with a new slim-fitting black leather bolero jacket with long, fashionable lapels. Not bad. After making off with the eleven-year-old rush order for Kieran Skinner’s glasses this afternoon, she’d hit Macy’s on her way through Union Square, grabbing clothes off the rack and buying them outright, not even trying them on. Her old business suit was beginning to take her shape.
Outside, thankfully, it wasn’t raining, although she carried her new umbrella along with her trusty flashlight down the metal stairwell. The gun was stashed in the ceiling. Too risky for an ex-con to lug that around in public. Her precious file folder and the fragment of Kieran Skinner’s glasses were tucked away in the ceiling tiles, along with the gun.
She went through the rigmarole of getting the Torino out from behind the gates. She was eager to tell Alex what she knew. Alex could tell her father and, hopefully, they could both come to terms with Margaret’s death. It felt cathartic to be able to help Alex move past a tragedy that had been hanging over the family for more than a decade. She locked the gates back up, the Torino rumbling in the driveway, and headed off.
There was little traffic this time of night. She headed toward Third Street, to get onto 101 and into town. Lighting up a cigarette and rolling down her window to enjoy the momentary lapse in the rain, Colleen stretched back in the bucket seat and cracked out her spine, feeling a real release. There was still a lot of work ahead but she had hit a milestone. She flipped on KFRC. Wild Cherry was urging some white boy to play that funky music. She turned it up.
Then, in the darkness behind her on Yosemite Avenue, she caught a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror, half a block behind. She had not seen anything when she left H&M.
She turned a tight left on Third, an industrial thoroughfare, bouncing over streetcar tracks, heading toward the freeway, keeping her speed at thirty-five.
The headlights made the same turn behind her. Apprehension flared up her back.
She squinted to make out the vehicle in the rearview, but it was far enough behind to make it tough. But she saw two square headlights, higher than a passenger car. A pickup truck.
A Chevy C10?
Six blocks later, she turned sharp right on Paul, off course, and watched the pickup behind her make the very same turn. Any normal traffic should be heading for the freeway, not some desolate warehouse district at night.
Without signaling, she cranked a hard left, down a street lined with darkened warehouses. In the rearview mirror she saw the pickup truck continue straight down Paul, no longer following her. She couldn’t tell the model of the truck but it was dark.
Getting paranoid in her old age? She breathed a sigh of relief.
At the end of the street of warehouses, she turned again, waited at the light on Third, back on course for the 101 on-ramp and then into town. A few cars filtered through the intersection, freeway bound.
And, lo and behold, in the rearview mirror, a pair of high square headlights emerged from the street adjacent to the one she had just snaked off a few moments ago.
The pickup had taken a parallel street to her and was now back.
In the rearview she saw the pickup pull over to the curb half a block behind her. Didn’t want her to see they were following.
A lone figure sat in the pickup. Frank Madrid or she’d eat her hat. She saw him put something up to his face and the coil of a wire. CB Radio? Calling someone?
Colleen’s heartbeats throbbed between her ears.
The traffic light before her was still red. She needed to turn right to catch the freeway.
To her left, rumbling down Third Street toward the wide intersection, a semi approached, groaning in low gear. Colleen sucked in a breath, stomped the gas, unleashed the Torino’s big block V8. Her tires squealed as she cut the steering wheel hard right, fishtailing into the intersection where she finally caught asphalt, shooting onto Third favoring two wheels.
The 101 on-ramp came quickly.
And there it was again in the rearview, the pickup, doing its best to keep up. A clump of vehicles ahead of Colleen was moving at the legal limit. She shot around a Volvo on the right, up on the shoulder, then back out into traffic, earning generous honks all around.
The pickup truck did the same but careened from side to side. It didn’t have her center of gravity.
She mashed the pedal and the traffic became a blur. The Torino squealed past cars and trucks, darting in and out. The V8 roared as she shot onto 101 South, headed for San Jose now. The opposite direction of where she wanted to go, but now she had to shake her tail.
Down by the airport, she veered off the freeway, tires screeching, and maneuvered back toward H&M, taking surface streets, heading back into town from a different direction. Her fuel indicator was down a good notch after all the wild driving.
She needed to get her evidence together now. Hand it over to someone she could trust. Moran. She wouldn’t risk going to see Alex tonight. Frank Madrid might follow somehow. Colleen had a hidey-hole, the welfare hotel she had prepaid to justify proper lodgings for parole. She’d stay there tonight.
Turning on Yosemite, she flipped her headlights off. She trawled down the desolate street in relative darkness. She pulled into the driveway of a wire and cable warehouse just before H&M, where she parked behind a delivery truck, out of sight. She killed the engine, got out of the car with her flashlight, moved quickly to the front of the property by a ramshackle, collapsing gate. Peering out, she breathed deeply, in an attempt to ease the agitation.
Just one lonely streetlight, casting a grainy oval of dim light onto the middle of the forsaken street.
She got her keys out, ready, and was about to make a dash for H&M when she heard the growl of an engine from the other end of Yosemite.
She ducked back into the shadows behind the fence.
A boxy white Ford sedan trolled by this time, a chrome light sticking out of the driver’s door. An unmarked police car. Tinted windows. The same one that followed her the other night from Pacifica?
How many cops were involved? She knew Frank Madrid, and the two who tried to torch the warehouse, and possibly that Don character she’d run into with Steve Davis.
She raked her head around the fence, saw the car head down to H&M.
It stopped at the gates.
A man in a mid-length coat got out of the car, went over to the gate, leaned on the buzzer. She could hear it from where she stood, distant but clear in the night air. When there was no answer, the man looked around, went back to his car.
The searchlight on the car lit up, moved about, scanning the front of the plant. Then it shut off, leaving a flickering imprint where the light had been. She saw the car go to the end of the street where it made a wide U-turn, came back, then park in darkness on the other side of the street.
Staking her out.
Her heart rate ratcheted up.
She turned, hoofed it back behind the wire warehouse, up to the shore where scummy water lapped onto trash and discarded lumber and bricks. She followed the shoreline down to the fence that reached out into the bay next to H&M. Where Ramon had found a hole a few feet out where one could get through.
She stripped down to her new blouse and jacket, left her new slacks, socks, and boots with the little metal studs on the ankles folded up on top of a crate and flicked on the flashlight, keeping the beam low.
At the shore she scanned the cyclone fence reaching into the water.
There it was.
A gap in the fence, carefully pulled open either side. Thank you, Ramon.
She waded out, testing each step cautiously, to ensure nothing sharp lay underfoot. The water was good and cold, and she fought the shivers. Up to her knees now. It smelled like oil and waste.