Someone’s stealing your car!”
A woman screamed and grabbed a toddler, as the car shot past. Karen Johnson was at the wheel.
3
“SHE STOLE MY CAR!” John yelled at me as the unmarked shot across the parking circle onto the exit road.
I ran after. Skidded to a stop. No way I’d catch her. The exit road had no traffic, and only one stop sign. You don’t boost a police car, then brake for stop signs.
I raced for the sidewalk, jumped the parapet into the trees and underbrush. It wasn’t a dead drop but close. I skidded tree to tree. Below was the Lombard curve where the road ended. I had to catch her there. If she beat me, she’d be out into the warren of North Beach streets, in an unmarked black car made to draw no attention.
I slammed into exposed roots, grabbed for a tree trunk, swung around it. The hill was steeper, rockier, the drop to the curve almost straight down. I shot a glance at the road. Car barreling down. A family started across, jaywalking. Car kept coming.
“Karen!” I yelled. “Karen! Stop!”
She wasn’t braking. Wasn’t slowing. She was going to hit them.
“Get back! Get your kids on the sidewalk!”
A siren shrieked. I stumbled, leapt, landed hard ten feet down on the cement.
The car shot by, siren suddenly keening. The family huddled at the edge of the macadam; the woman flat out on the cement.
I ran into the road, after the car. Karen turned left onto a side street—out of the park, into North Beach—and when I reached the street she was gone. There was only one way she could have turned, but at the next corner there were more options and more at the next after that. She was out of sight, but in the distance, the siren screamed. The siren was still on!
No problem. I stopped, gasping for breath. John would have called in the theft. By now every patrol car in North Beach would be closing in. The woman had been an idiot to steal the car, and a lucky idiot not to have killed anyone, but now, pinpointing herself with the siren, she was just a run-of-the-mill dolt.
I stood, catching my breath, listening for new sirens, for sirens converging. Instead, silence. I tried to gauge where the sound last came from. No luck. I dug out my phone and called Gary. Gary’s machine. “Gar, get ready for a call from Karen. Whatever trouble she had an hour ago, it’s nothing to what she’s in now. She stole John’s car, his unmarked police car! Hey, what the hell’s going on? Call me!”
I hurried up the path. I needed to get to my brother before backup arrived. Before a uniform scooped him up and spit him out at the scene of Karen’s arrest, wherever that would be. How was I going to explain this to John? I slowed my pace. I couldn’t explain it to myself! I liked Karen. Liked that despite whatever was going on with her, she was interested in Mike. And me. Don’t beat yourself up! She’d paused to say that on her way to steal the car!
I was impressed by her immediate, certain response to the hundred-foot pole koan. You are atop a hundred-foot pole. How do you proceed? Letting go, I knew from reading rather than experience, meant not releasing your grasp and falling in terror, but rather stepping out of the past,
out of who you are, into the next moment, whatever that moment brings. It was about walking though a door to the unknown. But was it stepping out of your life as a soon-to-be-divorced woman to drive away in a stolen police car?
What could possibly have spurred her to do such a crazy thing? Chance? The keys, obviously, had been in the ignition. That was going to make John look great. “Just-so John,” as he was called behind his back in the department, was now going to be just a laughingstock. Cops don’t leave the keys in the car. Civilians in San Francisco don’t leave their keys, not unless they’re hot to be pedestrians. The one small saving grace for him would be the muzzling of his biggest fun-poker—Gary would be silent, indeed.
Gary with his hush-hush client, John
A woman screamed and grabbed a toddler, as the car shot past. Karen Johnson was at the wheel.
3
“SHE STOLE MY CAR!” John yelled at me as the unmarked shot across the parking circle onto the exit road.
I ran after. Skidded to a stop. No way I’d catch her. The exit road had no traffic, and only one stop sign. You don’t boost a police car, then brake for stop signs.
I raced for the sidewalk, jumped the parapet into the trees and underbrush. It wasn’t a dead drop but close. I skidded tree to tree. Below was the Lombard curve where the road ended. I had to catch her there. If she beat me, she’d be out into the warren of North Beach streets, in an unmarked black car made to draw no attention.
I slammed into exposed roots, grabbed for a tree trunk, swung around it. The hill was steeper, rockier, the drop to the curve almost straight down. I shot a glance at the road. Car barreling down. A family started across, jaywalking. Car kept coming.
“Karen!” I yelled. “Karen! Stop!”
She wasn’t braking. Wasn’t slowing. She was going to hit them.
“Get back! Get your kids on the sidewalk!”
A siren shrieked. I stumbled, leapt, landed hard ten feet down on the cement.
The car shot by, siren suddenly keening. The family huddled at the edge of the macadam; the woman flat out on the cement.
I ran into the road, after the car. Karen turned left onto a side street—out of the park, into North Beach—and when I reached the street she was gone. There was only one way she could have turned, but at the next corner there were more options and more at the next after that. She was out of sight, but in the distance, the siren screamed. The siren was still on!
No problem. I stopped, gasping for breath. John would have called in the theft. By now every patrol car in North Beach would be closing in. The woman had been an idiot to steal the car, and a lucky idiot not to have killed anyone, but now, pinpointing herself with the siren, she was just a run-of-the-mill dolt.
I stood, catching my breath, listening for new sirens, for sirens converging. Instead, silence. I tried to gauge where the sound last came from. No luck. I dug out my phone and called Gary. Gary’s machine. “Gar, get ready for a call from Karen. Whatever trouble she had an hour ago, it’s nothing to what she’s in now. She stole John’s car, his unmarked police car! Hey, what the hell’s going on? Call me!”
I hurried up the path. I needed to get to my brother before backup arrived. Before a uniform scooped him up and spit him out at the scene of Karen’s arrest, wherever that would be. How was I going to explain this to John? I slowed my pace. I couldn’t explain it to myself! I liked Karen. Liked that despite whatever was going on with her, she was interested in Mike. And me. Don’t beat yourself up! She’d paused to say that on her way to steal the car!
I was impressed by her immediate, certain response to the hundred-foot pole koan. You are atop a hundred-foot pole. How do you proceed? Letting go, I knew from reading rather than experience, meant not releasing your grasp and falling in terror, but rather stepping out of the past,
out of who you are, into the next moment, whatever that moment brings. It was about walking though a door to the unknown. But was it stepping out of your life as a soon-to-be-divorced woman to drive away in a stolen police car?
What could possibly have spurred her to do such a crazy thing? Chance? The keys, obviously, had been in the ignition. That was going to make John look great. “Just-so John,” as he was called behind his back in the department, was now going to be just a laughingstock. Cops don’t leave the keys in the car. Civilians in San Francisco don’t leave their keys, not unless they’re hot to be pedestrians. The one small saving grace for him would be the muzzling of his biggest fun-poker—Gary would be silent, indeed.
Gary with his hush-hush client, John
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