12th of Never

Chapter 97

BY THE TIME we blew past the American flag and turned onto Amador, I had gathered my wits, even the ones that had rolled into the far corners of my mind.

For instance, I understood what Randy Fish had thought was so funny. While we were rooting around in his book and record collections, his ride was coming to get him.

Very frickin’ hilarious joke on the SFPD and the FBI.

And the punch line was that a heinous serial killer and a rogue cop were taking us on a high-speed chase through the city on a cloudy night, visibility of about ten feet in front of the headlights, precipitation coming on and slicking the road.

I was on the car radio, using the designated clear channel, talking to May Hess in dispatch, also to Sergeant Bob Nardone and Officer Gary Hoffman in the lead pursuit car.

Nardone’s voice came through the speaker as he shouted over the blare of sirens: “Turning left onto Cesar Chavez at sixty. I can’t read his plates.”

We were gaining on Nardone and Hoffman, and other cars joined in as dispatch sent units ahead to cut off the renegade cop car. Conklin and I followed a more or less straight route over the Illinois Street Bridge, took a heart-stopping turn onto Cesar Chavez, then an equally hard right onto 3rd. We sped parallel to the streetcar tracks on 3rd and continued over the Lefty O’Doul Bridge.

On the far side of the bridge was AT&T Park, the Giants home field—and there was a game on tonight. I could see the neon marquee and the stadium lights like a row of stars blazing through the fog. If the sirens hadn’t been screaming, I might have been able to hear the fans cheering as a game-winning Giants home run cleared the wall and plopped into McCovey Cove.

As it was, the sirens were screaming, but I knew that the Giants had won because inebriated fans, euphoric with victory, had begun wandering out onto the glistening street.

I was looking ahead as we hit King Street and Willie Mays Plaza, and that’s when, in the space of an instant, Randy Fish’s ride ran into trouble.

A tractor trailer was coming toward us in the opposite lane, like a freight train appearing out of nowhere in the night. Fish’s car was speeding, weaving through traffic, and had almost cleared the length of the big rig when the driver turned the wheel ever so slightly to the left.

Maybe the driver miscalculated how far he was from the semi, or maybe his hand slipped on the steering wheel. But whatever the reason, the getaway car clipped the back wheel of the looming, fifty-three-foot, twin-screw tractor trailer, and the whole freaking night exploded.