Byblos Restaurant on Magazine was one of Tobie’s favorite cafés, a quirky Lebanese place with a tin ceiling and wooden floors that looked as if it might once have been a dime store. She ate an eggplant and crab cake, then ordered baklava to go, since City Park was on the other side of New Orleans near the lake and she was running out of time. Leaving Byblos, she drove up Magazine to Louisiana Avenue, planning to take Claiborne over to Carrollton. She didn’t notice the black Suburban until she was halfway between Camp and Chestnut.
She wasn’t sure how long the Suburban had been behind her. She only spotted it because she was nervous enough about her stolen plates that she kept glancing in her rearview mirror, looking for cops. At first she thought she was just being paranoid. The Suburban wasn’t exactly on her tail; it was just there, holding steady some two or three cars back.
She eased up on the gas. The red pickup that had been right behind her moved over into the left hand lane and passed her, followed by a white Toyota.
The Suburban hung back.
Tobie pressed on the accelerator and wove in and out of traffic for one block, two. The Suburban kept pace with her, never edging up too close, but not falling behind either.
“Shit,” she whispered, her hands tightening on the wheel.
At the corner of Washington and Magnolia she hung a quick right, drove a block, then darted left. She zigzagged across Broad and under the Pontchartrain Expressway, hoping to lose her shadow at a light. But the guys in the Suburban were good.
She fought back the urge to floor the accelerator and try to outrun them. The last thing she needed was to bring the police down on her. If you let these people get you boxed in, the Colonel had told her, you’re dead.
So what the hell was she supposed to do?
Her throat dry, her breath coming in quick little pants, Tobie forced herself to hold to the speed limit. She wound through streets of ghostly abandoned houses that still bore faint, ugly brown waterlines and the orange spray-painted markings of the rescue teams. By now she was hopelessly lost. Most of the city’s street signs had been lost in the storm and many of them were still down.
She turned left and right and then right again, suddenly emerging onto a broad, tree-lined avenue she didn’t even recognize. It wasn’t until she heard a clang and looked up to see a red streetcar rolling down the center of the street that she realized she was on Canal. Inadvertently, she was leading her shadow dangerously close to City Park.
Throwing a glance in her rearview mirror, she hit the gas, edging up until she was just past the streetcar. She swung a quick left, bumped over the tracks onto Cortez, and heard the shriek of metal brakes as the Suburban tried to follow her.
The streetcar slammed into him broadside, pushing him some twenty feet up the neutral ground before they came to a shuddering, screeching halt.
“Ha! Take that, you bastard,” she cried, her pulse thrumming with elation. Then another black Suburban darted from around the wreckage and she went, “Holy shit.”
She hit the gas, her rear tires jackknifing as she tore up the street. The guy in the second Suburban was on her ass in an instant. She tried to pull away but this dude wasn’t in the mood to play nice and follow along behind her at a cozy distance. He was obviously pissed. He edged right up behind her, close enough to tap her rear bumper once, twice.
By now she was on Moss, winding along Bayou St. John. She managed to put about five or six feet between her VW and the guy behind her, but the road here was treacherous. There was one spot opposite Cabrini High School where both the bayou and the road beside it took a sharp curve to the right. Someone had put up a row of crosses, one for each of the speeding motorists who had drowned here in the last ten years. Seeing the crosses, Tobie hit the brakes and spun her wheel. Behind her, the Suburban accelerated.
She heard the squeal of tires and glanced back to see the Suburban soar off the road. For one glorious moment the sonofabitch was airborne. He hit the water with a teeth-jarring splash.
She floored her accelerator and didn’t look back.