so automatic, that even driving a getaway car a crook still uses his directional signals.
I was only thirty or forty feet away when he spotted me again and floorboarded it. He plunged into traffic on Denny while the rear of the T-Bird skidded crazily from side to side.
What happened next happened with blinding speed. A driver from the other direction, alarmed by Kaplan's skidding, stepped on his brakes and slid into somebody else. In the fender-crunching melee that followed, two more cars were caught and accordion-pleated. The fourth, an ancient Chrysler Imperial driven by a Mohawked teenager, successfully avoided hitting the other three only to slide sideways into the right-hand lane. The Imperial nailed Kaplan's left fender in a glancing blow that sent the T-Bird spinning up onto the sidewalk.
When the skidding stopped, the street was littered with wreckage and debris. There was a moment of stark silence and then, somewhere, a horn blared.
The Imperial, barely dented, had ended up closest to me, coming to rest with its nose against a fire hydrant which promptly spewed a geyser of water straight up into the air. The driver, unable to open the door, scrambled frantically through the broken window, cutting his hands in the process.
'I couldn't help it,' he cried hysterically, running up to me. 'My dad's going to kill me, but it wasn't my fault.'
His mouth was bleeding, and there was a long jagged cut on one side of his head. I caught him by the shoulders and eased him down on the curb.
'Sit here,' I ordered. 'Don't move around until after the medics get a look at you.'
He sat there, but he wouldn't let go of my hands. 'It wasn't my fault,' he insisted. 'You saw it, didn't you? Will you tell my folks that I couldn't help it?'
'Yes, I will.'
That seemed to satisfy him. He let go of my hand and I turned to look for Kaplan. He was gone. The crippled T-Bird, looking like it had been smashed in a garbage compactor, was still sitting half on, half off the sidewalk. Its left rear tire was flat and the driver's door gone. Kaplan was nowhere in sight.
I looked around for help, but it was hopeless. Denny was totally impassible. Kramer and Manny would never make it through the snarl of wrecks in time to be of much help. It was up to me. But at least now Kaplan and I were even. We were both on foot.
At the corner of Second Avenue, I paused to catch my breath and peer up the street. Second is a vast expanse of boulevard and sidewalk that seems to end abruptly in an elbow of skyscrapers a mile away. Through the rain I could see both sides of the street for blocks. There were people gathered here and there at bus stops, but no one was running. Don Kaplan was nowhere in sight.
I looked up Denny just in time to catch sight of him crossing Third in a crowd of pedestrians heading for Seattle Center. Once more I started after him. My breath was already coming in short gasps. The incline there seems benign enough when you're riding in a car, but on foot it's steep. And the blocks are long. And it was crowded.
Labor Day revelers had finally decided against letting the weather spoil Bumbershoot. Finished with work, they were coming out in force, milling up Broad and Denny in a slow-moving forest of open umbrellas that hampered both vision and speed.
Cops learn to think like crooks. I knew instinctively what Kaplan had in mind. Once he was safely inside the gates of Seattle Center, it would be all too easy for him to blend into the crowd and disappear. He was just leaving the ticket booth when I reached the main gate area. Here the crowd was denser, more so now that some people had turned away from the gate to watch the collection of emergency vehicles screaming in frustration as they attempted to reach the accident scene two blocks away.
I tried to force my way through the crowd. 'What's the big hurry, Bud?' a man demanded as I pushed past him. 'Where's the fire?'
Without answering, I kept on shoving, while fifteen feet and fifty people away, Don Kaplan handed over his ticket and slipped quickly through the gate.
Slowly the crowd gave way, letting me pass. I finally reached the gate and could see Kaplan inside the grounds. He was easy to spot. Except for me, he was the only person there without a raincoat or umbrella. I saw him dash past the fountain with its huge joke of ugly orange statuary near the bottom of the Space Needle.
A woman barred my way. 'Ticket, please,' she said.
Reaching for my ID, I was already launching into an explanation when she caught sight of the Bumbershoot stamp on my hand, the one Heather had insisted on getting as we left the grounds earlier that day.
'Oh,' the woman said. 'I didn't know you'd already been inside. Go ahead.'
Grateful for small blessings, I darted past her and through the gate. The grounds of Seattle Center were far different from what they'd been earlier in the day. It was more crowded now, although still not as bad as it would have been in good weather. Kaplan had a good lead on me. Just as I cleared the gate, he disappeared around the bumper-car ride some fifty yards or so ahead.
I wanted to catch up, but I didn't want to alert him, to let him know I was still on his trail. I hurried up the outdoor corridor between the Science Center and the miniature golf course, using the golf concession to conceal my movements. I came out by an open-air stage where a noisy band was risking electrocution blasting heavily amplified rock music into the pouring rain.
If Kaplan had turned into the Center House, I would have lost him entirely. Instead, he turned up through the food concession area with its outdoor booths and grazing throngs. I followed as quickly as I could. I figured he was heading for one of the other entrances where he'd be able to get back off the grounds and maybe call a taxi. I had to catch him before then.
I was closing the distance when suddenly he stopped and turned. Some sixth sense must have warned him. An electric arc of recognition passed between us. He broke and ran.
There was no longer any pretense of stalking him. I still couldn't draw my weapon, though, not in that crowd. My only hope was in actual physical contact. I ran, if you could call it that, pushing and jostling my way through resisting lines of people waiting outside the various booths.
Luckily for me, Kaplan wasn't thinking straight. Desperate to get away, he headed for the relatively open ground by the International Fountain with me in hot pursuit. He would have been better off sticking to the crowds. People around us were becoming aware that something was wrong. They moved aside and cleared a path, giving me the final edge I needed.
As he started by the fountain, I dove for him and caught him by the knees, bringing him down with the kind of flying tackle I hadn't attempted since high school football. He landed on top of me, smashing my face into the muddy grass. My nose started to bleed. Again.
He got up, kicking me in the head, and scrambling away across the rough paving brick that surrounds the fountain. When I got up, he was teetering on the fountain's concrete wall. With dogged determination I went after him again.
By now several uniformed security guards, alerted by the crowd, were converging on the fountain. 'Break it up,' one of them shouted. I paused long enough to look at my reinforcements. When I did, Kaplan made a break for it and disappeared over the edge of the fountain. I dived in after him.
The fountain has steep sides that drop off abruptly above the border of rugged white rocks. The surface was wet and slick. I tried to stand up, but a sudden burst of water threw me off balance and sent me flying toward Kaplan. I crashed into him and caught him in a crushing bear hug. We both went down, rolling over and over down the incline as the symphonic music around us hit a crescendo. We landed on the rocks, with Kaplan on the bottom.
'Hands up,' someone shouted over the music. 'Get off him and get your hands up.'
'It's all right,' I said, standing up, dripping blood and gasping for breath. 'It's okay, you guys. I'm a cop. Help me get him out of here.'
One of the security guards had splashed down into the fountain beside me. I knew him. He was an off-duty patrolman from the David Sector in downtown Seattle. He recognized me as well. 'Hey, Beaumont, what's going on?'
'Help me move him out of the fountain, then call dispatch. Have them tell Detectives Kramer and Davis where I am. Tell them I've got him. And get Medic One here too, on the double. This guy may be hurt.'
Together the patrolman and I lifted Kaplan and carried him out of the fountain. We lay him flat on the grass. His eyes were open, but glazed with pain. He made no effort to move or get up. I knelt down beside him. 'Are you
