twenty-five

“Speed up, Samuel,” Mike the taxicab driver suggested.

I had thought I was driving the Kia Soul at the posted speed limit for the area, and checked very briefly the dashboard display. “I am driving at the limit,” I informed Mike.

I did notice that other vehicles were passing the rental as I drove, which was not surprising but difficult to understand. This was the absolute fastest a motor vehicle could legally travel, but so many were choosing to break the law and exceed the limit.

Mike had programmed into the Global Positioning System device the address George Kaplan gave me for his office on Magnolia Avenue in Burbank near where Ms. Washburn had been touring the Warner Brothers studios. Mike held the device with both his hands and secured it in his lap. I could not see the screen and Mike had deactivated the vocal instructions to direct me himself. He had, as soon as I had engaged the drive gear, fastened his safety harness. I had done so immediately upon occupying the vehicle.

We were now on White Oak Avenue and Mike had instructed me to stay on this road for two miles. I was perspiring at my hairline and upper lip despite the strong flow from the Kia Soul’s air conditioner.

“The police don’t expect you to strictly stick with the limit,” Mike informed me. “They know you are going to go above it. Just don’t go too fast. Stay at the same speed as other drivers and you’ll be fine.”

My desire to reach Ms. Washburn and extract her from the situation in which she had found herself had temporarily overcome my serious misgivings about driving, particularly in unfamiliar territory. But now that we were en route I found the process of getting to Magnolia Boulevard was making me perspire with anxiety. My hands on the steering wheel at the designated positions of ten and two in correspondence to a clock’s face were damp. My eyes were not diverting from the road. I felt like I could not move my head from that position. I could not see Mike except in the limits of my peripheral vision.

“In about a half a mile you’re going to make a left,” he told me. “Go ahead. Speed up.”

Left turns were not comforting. I felt my jaw clench. If my hands had not been gripping the steering wheel tightly they might have been flapping at my sides. I found it difficult not to vocalize with sounds Mike no doubt would have considered incomprehensible.

Against my instincts I pressed on the accelerator and felt the engine respond. The number on the display exceeded the posted limit and I was not pleased with that reminder. I focused my mind on Ms. Washburn and thought of her being detained by George Kaplan.

“Watch it, Samuel!” Mike said emphatically.

My eyes immediately refocused on the vehicle in front of me, a Toyota Prius like Mike’s taxicab, but not painted yellow. This one was blue. And if Mike had not engaged my attention, I probably would have struck it in the rear with the Kia Soul. Traffic had stopped at a red traffic signal.

“Easy,” Mike said, exhaling. “I’m worried about Janet, too. But Kaplan isn’t going to do anything to her because he wants his money. As long as he doesn’t have it, Janet is safe.”

“Yes.” I let my head drop forward, keeping my foot firmly on the brake. “You are right. Perhaps I should have let you drive, Mike. I am useless at the task.”

“You’re doing fine. Just keep your focus and get into the left lane when you can. I’ll watch for the right time to make the change.” I do not trust a vehicle’s side mirrors because objects one sees in them might be larger than they appear. They are not accurate reflectors. “Look up, Samuel. The light turned green.”

Indeed, when I adjusted my view I saw the open space before me and moved my foot to the accelerator. “How do you think Kaplan got to Janet?” Mike asked me. He knew I preferred not to converse while anyone is driving, but this was a new experience for both of us. Perhaps he was attempting to keep me engaged and lower my level of tension. If so, it was not helping a great deal.

“My best guess is that somehow Kaplan or one of his associates discovered Ms. Washburn was taking the studio tour,” I said. “They would know, therefore, when the tour was completed and wait by the gate to intercept her. It is much more important now to determine what they intend to do with her and, when we arrive, with us. It is clear that Reuben Hoenig is important enough to his interests that Kaplan is absolutely unwilling to release him to our custody.”

“Why?” Mike asked. “What could he be doing that’s so important to a guy making fake money?”

“That is an excellent question.”

“Here’s the left turn,” Mike pointed out. “There’s a left turn only lane so you don’t have to worry about waiting for an opening in traffic.”

I looked up toward the intersection and my stomach clenched more tightly. “This is a freeway entrance,” I told Mike, who undoubtedly had that information already.

“Yes. You’re getting on the One-Oh-One.”

“I don’t think I am,” I said even as I made the left turn in accordance with the arrow shining green on the traffic signal.

“We don’t have time to think about that,” Mike said. “We have to be thinking about Janet and your dad.”

“I need to be thinking about the drive.” A glance at the freeway before me was disheartening. There was a traffic signal indicating when a vehicle on the ramp should accelerate. I stopped before it and watched the oncoming traffic.

It was virtually at a standstill.

“We are not going to get there quickly,” I told Mike.

“The light’s green, Samuel,” he said. “You have to go onto the freeway.” He pointed at the signal, perhaps not understanding I could see it was showing my lane was clear to proceed.

“I know,” I said. But I did not move my foot to the accelerator. The vehicle behind the Kia Soul, which was a Nissan Sentra, sounded its horn.

My mind raced; there had to be a faster way to reach Ms. Washburn, who was undoubtedly in some kind of distress even if she was not in immediate danger. I became angry at myself for placing her in this position. I should have argued more vehemently against her touring the studio when we were dealing with unsavory characters.

The Nissan Sentra’s horn sounded again. Mike looked at me. “Samuel,” he said.

“Program the Global Positioning System to find an alternate route,” I told him. “I am not willing to enter this freeway. I am not confident in my skill as a driver and I cannot allow this traffic to slow us down. Find another way.”

In my side mirror I saw the driver of the Nissan shake her fist at me.

“You’re on the onramp, Samuel,” Mike reminded me. “You can’t back up. You have to get on the freeway.”

“I will not. There must be a faster route.”

The Nissan’s horn was joined by those of three other vehicles. I felt my neck begin to dampen with perspiration.

“I’ll look for it, but you have to get on the highway now,” Mike said. “Even sitting in traffic is faster than not moving at all.”

His point was reasonable and was amplified by the view in my side mirror, where one of the drivers behind the Kia Soul was exiting his car and walking toward me purposefully. I took my foot off the brake and placed it lightly on the acceleration pedal.

We moved forward to the point that other vehicles had filled the lanes and then I stopped the Kia Soul. “Just merge into the right lane,” Mike said. “I’m finding us another route.”

“I need you to look to my left,” I told him.

Mike looked up, remembering his navigation role. “Okay. Wait. Now, go!” I moved the vehicle into the lane and was almost immediately forced to brake to a stop. We were hopelessly caught in mid-afternoon Los Angeles traffic.

“Okay. Now just move when you can and don’t change lanes,” Mike said. “I’m working with the GPS.”

Progress was painfully slow. I had to consciously focus my mind on the traffic and not the plight of Ms. Washburn, who had not answered her cellular phone when Mike had tried to reach her. There had been no further communication from George Kaplan.

“This is the fastest route,” Mike said after my seventh instance of stopping behind a Honda Civic after having inched forward a few yards. “There is no better way that wouldn’t be bumper-to-bumper this time of day, Samuel. I’m sorry.”

“We can’t just do this, Mike,” I managed to squeeze out between clenched jaws. “I don’t think I can stay calm that long.” Already my neck was in spasm. It was a struggle to maintain focus and control over my head.

“I don’t have an answer for you.” Mike sounded as frustrated as I was.

“You are a taxicab driver. Under these circumstances, what would you do?”

Mike was silent for eleven seconds, which is a very long lull in a conversation. He did make a sound deep in his throat that seemed to indicate he was thinking very deeply. Finally he said, “I’d do something you would never do.”

He did not appear to understand that was why I had asked for his perspective. If the solution was to do something that would occur to me, I would have put that plan into action by now. “What would that be?” I asked.

“I’d drive on the shoulder of the road past everybody until I got stopped by a cop,” Mike said. “But I know you’d never—”

I had already moved onto the right shoulder of the freeway and was accelerating past the dormant traffic. “Samuel!” Mike shouted. I could not tell if his tone betrayed alarm or admiration.

Horns on other vehicles sounded and there were a number of obscene gestures from drivers in the lane I had vacated. But no other vehicles followed my lead. I was torn between staring straight ahead and watching carefully in the rearview mirror for the first sign of a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser or a California Highway Patrol vehicle. None appeared immediately.

I maintained the speed posted on traffic signs as we proceeded so I would not be cited for speeding if a police officer were to stop our progress. We had gone 3.2 miles on the shoulder when Mike emitted an ominous, “Uh-oh …”

There was no law enforcement vehicle visible in the rearview mirror, so it took a moment before I understood the cause of Mike’s dismay. Looking farther ahead than before, I saw what had made him groan.

“There’s no shoulder ahead, Samuel,” Mike said.