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and picked up his car, a gunmetal-gray 1937 Cord convertible. Once in the car,
     before starting up the motor, he checked his .38. He had little regard for Toomey, no fear of him when it came right down
     to it, but it paid to be careful.
    He pulled out of the garage and headed downtown, traffic thick, horns ceaselessly blaring, jaywalking pedestrians darting
     in and out of the tangle every time they saw an opening or thought they did.
    Slowly he made his way downtown and then turned off to the left, heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge. His eyes routinely swung
     toward the rearview mirror and fixed there. There was a big black Packard behind him, and its occupants all seemed to have
     their gaze fixed on his car.
    He dropped down a block, and the car followed. He went up two, and the Packard remained behind him, implacable and unswerving.
    He hit the gas, roared up the next block, goosed it through a traffic light that had just turned red, swung through the corner
     driveway of a Shell station, went into a screeching U-turn, and, the next time he looked, found himself alone.
    He drove aimlessly for a few minutes, putting the Cord through a random traffic pattern, then, satisfied he’d shaken them,
     made his way to the Brooklyn Bridge.
    He was halfway over it when the Packard showed again. It was four cars away, hanging back a little more discreetly this time.
     For the moment, he could do nothing. The bridge was packed solid with scores of other cars.
    He continued on, searching the rearview mirror, seeing if he could make out who it was, but they were too far away, and the
     light was wrong. The bridge ended, and he sliced over to the left, hurtling onto Tillary. The Packard wheeled the same way,
     moving after him, brakes squealing as drivers whose path it crossed hit their pedals, cursed, and hoped.
    He went a few blocks up Tillary, and, at the last minute, turned up Duffield. The Packard, caught off guard, barreled past
     the intersection. But a moment later, Lockwood saw it back up and then tear up the street after him.
    He moved onto Willoughby and then Gold, hampered by the traffic, by the narrow streets, a wary eye out for the kids who dotted
     the area and who at any moment might rush out in front of him.
    Suddenly he shot onto the broad reaches of Flushing Avenue, down by the Navy Yard. He hit the accelerator all the way, the
     Packard Twin Six engine throbbing into full power under the Cord’s coffin hood.
    He was in his element now, leaving the Packard in the dust, when an approaching Mack truck in the opposite lane and an iceman
     with a horse-drawn cart that trotted dispiritedly ahead in his own lane, cars double-parked on either side of the street,
     forced him to slow down, unable to break through the temporary bottleneck.
    It was all the Packard needed. It roared forward, barely missing the suddenly swerving Mack, and forced him off the street,
     the two cars zooming diagonally up onto the sidewalk, almost crashing into the red brick warehouse that faced it.
    He was already shoving the gear into reverse when the occupants of the Packard flung the Cord’s door open, and the four of
     them, all very big and very bulky, pulled him out, flinging him to the sidewalk.
    Then the kicking and punching began.
    Still down, Lockwood grabbed at a leg and pulled, and one thug tumbled over him, screening him for the moment from the blows
     of the others. He scrambled halfway up and wrapped his arms around the waist of the second man, feet digging into the ground
     as if in a football scrimmage, this one being a scrimmage played for keeps.
    “Get ’im, you stupid mugs! Finish ‘im off!” came a voice, and The Hook wheeled and thundered a punch into the jaw that flashed
     before him. The resulting crunch was satisfying, but now they were all over him again, punishing him on the back, about his
     head, his shoulders, his kidneys, feet again slamming against his sides and gut. “This’ll teach ya—stay away from