We went out hastily. I helped her into my car, kicked the starter.
There was a red at the Atlantic Avenue corner. I slowed to try and make it without stopping.
The taxi rolled up alongside with its bumper about at my front hub cap when the first shot shattered the windshield halfway between my head and Tildy’s.
Chapter twenty:
A spray of bullets
My reflexes made me bend over the wheel, jam the accelerator to the floor, swing the car to the left to bump him; it happened too fast for me to reason out the best thing to do.
The shots kept coming. Sparks reflected in the spiderweb of the shattered glass. Staccato explosions like backfiring. A pinggg as a slug ripped the door at my side. Tinkle of glass on the pavement. Tildy screaming. And the terrific crash as my fender collided with him.
I must have been getting up to forty when we hit. It didn’t slow me, but it jounced the wheel so I had to wrench hard to keep from climbing the opposite curb. Tires screeched. The taxi’s headlights swerved left. The cab socked a hydrant with a smash like an ash can full of bottles being dropped from the second story.
I managed to straighten out, zoom around the Atlantic Avenue corner without slowing. There was a subway kiosk at the next corner but I kept revving it up until we’d covered nine more blocks to the next station.
It wasn’t safe to drive any more than I had to. The windshield couldn’t have had more cracks in it if a sledge hammer had worked on it. I couldn’t tell whether intentionally or otherwise the guy with the gun had drilled a tire or my gas tank. Besides, the three bullet holes in my windshield couldn’t have been mistaken for anything else by a traffic cop; we couldn’t have driven much farther without meeting one. I was allergic to blue broadcloth right then.