Decaffeinated Corpse

“Clare!” Madame suddenly cried.

I jumped in my seat. “What?”

“The light’s changed! Look, the cars are turning onto Court.”

I didn’t have to ask what direction. It would have to be south, because down here Court was one way. I was about to make the turn when the tightly timed stoplight changed again. The woman in the cherry SUV in front of me hesitated on the yellow. She stopped, as if considering whether to go through it, then started up again, making the turn.

“Damn!”

The woman had left me stuck on a full blown red light, and traffic was starting to come through the intersection.

“Go through it,” Madame demanded.

“I can’t! There’s no ‘left on red’ allowed in New York State. I don’t think ‘left on red’ is allowed in any state!”

“Go through it anyway,” Madame demanded. “This is an emergency.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We’ll lose both Ellie and the man in the black SUV following her—and you said someone is after Ric. You said they could have killed him the night he was mugged, and he looks so much like Matt that you’re afraid someone might make a mistake. Am I wrong, dear?”

“No.”

“Then do as I say. Put your foot on the gas, sneak out carefully into the intersection, and go through that red light, tout de suite!”

I did. Pretending I was simply entering another traffic circle, I waited for the oncoming flow of cars to lighten up just enough for me to nose out there, then I burned rubber, made a screeching turn and headed down the street. Within three blocks, I spotted that cherry red SUV.

“Where’s the black SUV?!” I cried. “It should be in front of her!”

“It’s up ahead. Look!” Madame replied.

“But there are two of them now!”

A pair of the same model black SUVs were rolling side by side down Court. Each of the large, boxy vehicles had a dark-haired man driving, and I couldn’t tell which of them was the Asian man who’d been following Ellie.

“Oh, damn,” I murmured. “Why didn’t we get the license plate?!”

“Where’s the Town Car?” Madame asked.

“I don’t see it!” I cried.

Just then, the black SUV on the left, put on his left-turn signal. He was planning to turn soon, while the one on the right was obviously going to continue driving straight.

“Which way should I go?” I asked. “Should I turn with the guy on the left, or go straight with the guy on the right?!”

“I don’t know, dear!”

The burst of siren nearly sent me through the car roof. I checked my rear view mirror. A half a block back, a police cruiser was threading through the heavy traffic. “You in the red vehicle,” a loud voice suddenly boomed over a loudspeaker, “pull over.”

Crap!

An NYPD traffic cop had obviously witnessed my little lapse in judgment back at the intersection of Union and Court.

“But officer,” (I could say) “right on red is legal on Long Island.”

“You’re not on Long Island!” (The cop would probably bark.) “And you made a left. License and registration, and get out of the car, we’ll want to search the vehicle and give you a sobriety test.”

“Don’t, Clare! Don’t pull over!” Madame cried.

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m very serious. I bought a little something in the Garden.”

“Excuse me?”

“There was this nice Jamaican man. He and I hit it off— you know, I’ve been to his native island many times—and he offered to sell me some clove cigarettes. But I suspect they might have a little something more than cloves in them.”

“A little something more? What are you telling me? What something more?!”

“You know, something of that famous native crop from the man’s island home.”

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“Ganja?”

Madame nodded.

“You made a drug deal at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens!”

“I have the cigarettes in my bag, and I’ll gladly throw them out the window, but you have to evade the police car well enough for me to get rid of them without those two nice-looking officers seeing me dispose of the evidence.”

“For the love of... !”

The burst of siren was louder now and longer. “Lady in Red! Pull over!”

Clearly, the cop had a case of agita, and I wasn’t helping. But I couldn’t pull over if Madame was carrying marijuana. I had no idea how much she had, or how much was enough to land her in Rikers Island Correctional Facility for the night.

“Look, the Town Car!” Madame cried.

I’d sped up enough to catch sight of it near the end of Court Street. We were also out of Carroll Gardens by now and entering Red Hook, a neck of land that jutted out into Upper New York Bay. Years ago, Red Hook had been a bustling working class enclave for dock workers, then it fell on hard times.

A little over a decade ago it was discovered by artists, who were inspired by (as a visual artist put it to me one day in the Blend) “stunning harbor views clashing with urban decay.” And now, the same old song was playing again: the area was on its way to gentrification, with waterfront development plans that included the largest Ikea in the world replacing a nineteenth-century dry dock.

The police siren wailed again, and I noticed in my mirror that cherry red SUV, driven by that lady who had stranded me back at the traffic light. She started pulling over, clearly misunderstanding that the cop was after me.

I took the opportunity to push the envelope—along with the gas pedal.

The cherry SUV moved between me and the police car to get to the side of the street, and I punched forward, just making the end of a yellow light at the bottom of Court. I didn’t know where the black SUV was, but I saw Ellie’s Town Car. It had swerved right, and was now heading for Hamilton Avenue and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Plaza.

“Of course! They’re taking the tunnel!”

I always took one of the three bridges to and from Brooklyn, so I hadn’t recognized this route to the tunnel.

“Looks like Ellie’s going to Manhattan, after all,” Madame noted, turning in her seat. “And it also looks like you shook that traffic cop.”

“Yes, it seems I did,” I said, checking my rear view, as well.

Thank goodness, I thought with relief. For once, it appeared I’d dodged the bullet. It also appeared I was wrong about the Asian man in the silver-blue track suit. He and his black SUV were now nowhere in sight.

Fourteen