Riding with Merker, the belt around my neck, whizzing past other cars at high speed, pedestrians jumping out of our way, I thought I’d break my ankle, I was pressing so hard. A van backed out of a drive into our path, and I slipped my hands up between my neck and the belt, seeking to mitigate its strangling effect when we collided.

I closed my eyes.

When another two seconds went by without an impact, I opened them.

“Close, eh?” Merker said, twirling the pencil in the air.

Trixie had mentioned something else about her car. Another problem, something she’d been notified about in the mail.

Air bags. That was it. Something about the air bags. That they were extra sensitive, that the slightest bump on the front bumper could set them off.

If Merker hit something, even nudged it, and if that set off the air bags, maybe that would provide enough of a distraction that I could turn the belt around, bring the buckle to the front, loosen it enough to get my head out, and bail out of the car. Merker didn’t have the gun, Leo did, and I wasn’t convinced he’d be as quick to use it. And it would take a few seconds to hand it to Merker in the front seat.

Merker made another turn, slammed on the brakes. He’d taken us into a dead end. He threw the car into reverse, backed up so quickly he couldn’t control the steering, and the front end of the car whipped around so that we were facing the other way immediately. Back into drive, and we were off again.

“Just like Jim Rockford,” Merker cackled.

“Hey, Gary, this isn’t very good for my stomach,” Leo said. “I was just starting to feel better, like I could eat something.”

“Jesus, Leo, enough.”

Up ahead, at the next cross street, a police car went screaming past from left to right.

“Yikes!” Merker shouted, and slammed on the brakes. I didn’t have time to get my fingers in between my neck and the belt and I lost my breath, gagged, as the belt cut into my windpipe. I closed my eyes a moment, wondering whether I’d pass out.

Maybe, I thought, keeping them closed was a smart idea. If we did have an accident, there might be flying glass.

But curiosity prevailed, and I opened them. We were approaching a stop sign. A small car-it looked like another Civic, not unlike the one Merker had rammed with the truck on our way to the prison-was waiting to make a right turn.

Merker might ordinarily have driven around the car, to the left, but there was a brown UPS truck there. Not enough room to get through. On the right, our path was blocked by a metal pole supporting a stop sign.

Our car screeched to a halt behind the Civic. “Jesus Christ, lady, let’s go!”

This time, his prejudice against lady drivers was at least accurate. The person behind the wheel of the Civic was an elderly woman, her hair tinted a light shade of blue.

Behind us, we could all hear the approaching sirens.

The lady’s right turn signal continued to blink while she waited for a break in traffic.

“Maybe,” I said, wanting to sound as helpful as I could, “you need to give her a bit of a nudge.”

“Fucking right,” Merker said.

And again, I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.

The car bolted forward, but we only had to go a foot or two before the bumper of the GF300 would connect with the rear bumper of the Civic. Merker wouldn’t be able to get the car up to much speed.

But it was enough.

I scrunched my eyes shut as hard as I could, threw my hands up to my neck to get them around the belt, and then we hit.

There was a soft explosion as I was jerked forward. Not that I could go that far, with Leo’s belt and all. The explosion was loud, but muffled at the same time. I felt the fabric of the passenger-side air bag brush, only momentarily, against my face.

For the few milliseconds my eyes were closed, I plotted out my moves. Move the belt back to front. Hunt for the buckle. Slip out. Open the door.

Run like hell before Merker could grasp what had happened and tried to grab me, or worse, shoot me.

I opened my eyes. My air bag, and the one that had exploded out of the steering wheel, had already deflated. I started twisting around the belt, my heart pounding, but fingers fumbling for the buckle.

But the sense of urgency seemed to have passed.

Merker was not moving.

His head was tilted forward, and there was blood dripping from his face onto his shirt and pants.

His eyes were still open, but they seemed lifeless.

Then I noticed something silver and pink and rubbery under his nose.

It was the yellow wooden pencil. The force of the airbag had driven it clear up Gary Merker’s right nostril.

The only thing left sticking out was the eraser. He had six inches of pencil in his brain.

42

“GARY?” SAID LEO, who’d been tossed to the floor of the back seat and was getting himself reoriented.

I had my hands on the buckle, was pulling the belt through it. Once I had enough slack, I pulled it over my head.

“Gary, you okay?” Leo leaned forward between the seats and tapped Merker on the shoulder. Leo saw the blood, then saw the end of the pencil sticking out of his nose.

“Gary!” he shouted. He burst into tears. “Gary?”

I opened the door and stumbled out of the car. I could hear sirens coming from different directions. The elderly woman in the Honda had gotten out too, and was standing next to her car, shouting back at us, “Where’d you get your license, asshole?”

I took three steps over to the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and collapsed onto the perfectly cut yard of a two-story brick house.

Leo, gun in hand, got out of the back seat and opened the front driver’s door. His beltless pants were slipping down and he tugged them up with his free hand. “Come on, Gary! Wake up! Come on! Wake up.”

Gary Merker was not waking up. Not with a lead pencil through his head.

A police car barreled up the street from the direction we’d come, and a second one was screeching to a halt in front of the Civic. A cop jumped out of each, weapon drawn.

There were tears running down Leo’s cheeks. “Come on, Gary, jeez, come on.” He saw the cop approaching from the rear vehicle, and waved the gun at him, not intending to use it menacingly, I thought, but gesturing the cop to come up, to give them some help. “He’s hurt!” But the cop wasn’t reading it that way.

He screamed, “Put the gun down!”

But Leo was too busy crying and yelling to get the message. “He’s hurt, man, you gotta help him.”

“They ran into my car!” the old lady shouted, pointing, seemingly oblivious to the guns that were being waved about.

“Ma’am, get down!” the officer from the second car shouted.

“On purpose!” she said. “They ran right into me!”

“Ma’am, get down!”

The old lady stopped shouting, but she did not get down. She turned and started walking over to where I was. “Were you in that car?” she asked me. “They ran right into me!”

But instead of talking to her, I was back on my feet, shouting at Leo. “Leo! Do what he says! Put the gun down!”

Leo, however, overcome with despair, was still waving the weapon around. Everyone was shouting. The cops were shouting at Leo to drop the gun, I was shouting at Leo to drop the gun, and Leo was shouting that his friend needed help.

From my vantage point on the lawn, it seemed that all the clichés were true. It’s like it was happening in slow motion. Like a dream.

The cop shouted again for him to put the gun down. The other cop was braced against the open door of his cruiser, his weapon bearing down on Leo.

“Can’t you see he needs help?” Leo pleaded to the first cop, and waved the gun in the officer’s direction. Not pointing. It was more like he was making gestures of hopelessness, and forgot that he had this thing in his right hand that could kill people.