Civil Twilight Read Free Page B

suddenly gone irresponsible, and . . . Karen . . . What the hell was going on here? I needed time to think. But time was the one thing I didn’t have.
    A couple speaking German ambled down the steps. I veered around them and headed up. I wanted to beat the reinforcements John would have called, but not by too much.
    What could have made Karen pull a crazy stunt like stealing a police car? I asked again, as if it was the koan. I was walking slowly now.
    How do you proceed off a hundred-foot pole?
    You step forward.
    But something triggers that decision. According to John, chance is a bigger cause of crime than the law-abiding would like to believe. But he sure wasn’t going to make that argument in this case. Not and have the fault be all his own.
    I rounded the top of the stairs onto the observation circle. No patrol cars. Good.
    “John!”

    His eyes were jammed to a telescope pointing far right and down into the bushes. “See anything?”
    “What do you think? No! She . . . took . . . my . . . car!” He was almost yelling. Behind him people moved away fast. “What the hell got into her?”
    “I don’t know, John!”
    “You brought her here!”
    “It was a fluke.”
    “Fluke? Yeah, right!” He turned and strode back from the parapet, got a car-length away, charged back, planted himself inches from my face. “You brought her. How come?”
    “I didn’t bring her. I’d just met her. She wanted to go for a run; I only had an hour. We were in Washington Square. This was just the logical place—”
    “Washington Square, a minute from Gary’s office. Gary! He’s behind this,” he shouted at me, light dawning, “isn’t he?”
    “Stealing a police car? Are you nuts? I’ve kept away from our family all of my adult life. I hardly know either one of you. But that’s just crazy.”
    He was pulling in breath through clenched teeth, eyeing me like I was a suspect. “It’s Gary, isn’t it? What did he tell you?”
    He told me to rabbits. Why had Gary insisted I not tell him? Gary was my buddy, but he was what I loved in guys—a brat. Could John possibly be right?
    His face was growing purple. I’d never seen him this out of control. He dug his fingers into my arm. “Don’t you clam up to protect him.”
    “Let go of me!”
    His grip loosened. I jumped back.
    “Not Gary, huh? You saying she set us all up? What do you know about her? You tell me! Why did Gary say to bring her here?”

    Ah. “Gary didn’t. He only told her I’d take her running. He didn’t say where.”
    “So you chose Coit Tower?”
    “No, she wanted a high spot with a view and trees . . . oh.”
    “Exactly. What did she say to you?”
    “She’s getting a divorce. But she didn’t go into that. She just about got killed shoving a girl out of the way of a car. Driver was furious.”
    “Really?” For an instant he seemed taken aback.
    “Yeah, just as suddenly as she decided to take your car. People do lose it in divorces, you know.”
    “What else?”
    “A Zen koan; she talked about that, and about Mike.”
    John barked out a laugh. “Your two favorite subjects!”
    “Hey, I don’t—”
    “What else did she say?”
    “Nothing! No, wait. There was one last thing, but it’s not going to help you. She was trying to be kind. She said, don’t beat yourself up—meaning me—about Mike.”
    He nodded, his lips tensed into a slight sneer I knew all too well. “So you liked her, right?”
    “What’s wrong with that!”
    He took a step back and shook his head. His expression said I was an idiot. “If someone’s your friend, they’re okey-dokey and the rest of the world just doesn’t understand. You’re sure you see something the rest of us’re too thick to get. Your friends, you’ll move heaven and earth to justify them. You’ve always been that way. Used to be Mike, now it’s Gary. So Gary couldn’t have set this up ...” His voice trailed off and I had the feeling he found it hard to believe Gary had purposely