Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) by David Rosenfelt Page A

mean great wealth.
    The opposite meant death.

 
    I leave at 6:30 A.M. to pick up Marcus. The early departure means I only get to do an abbreviated walk with Tara, though Laurie promises to take her on a longer one later.
    Our flight isn’t until ten forty-five, but Marcus says that he’ll be at a diner in Oakland, which is north of Paterson off Route 208, putting it in the opposite direction from JFK Airport.
    Marcus is standing in front of the diner, holding a small duffel bag, when I arrive. I’m not sure what he’s doing there, although a place of residence is one of the many things I am in the dark about concerning Marcus. His cell phone is a 646 area code, which is Manhattan, so I always assumed that’s where he lived. But maybe not.
    “Unhh,” he says, when he gets in the car, which is likely to sum up the quality of the conversation for the rest of the trip.
    I offer a “good morning,” but that either isn’t worthy of a response or “Unhh” is Marcus-ese for an early-morning greeting.
    “Is your car here?” I ask.
    “Nunh.”
    And we’re on our way.
    Route 208 is fairly empty at this time of the morning. It never gets very crowded, but the peak will be in an hour or so when people start their daily commuting trek into the city.
    Marcus changes the station on the radio to classical music. I’ve driven with him before, so I’m not surprised by either his musical preference or his sense of entitlement regarding the radio. I have a tendency to indulge Marcus.
    We’re passing near Wyckoff when I detect Marcus sitting up slightly and seeming to grow more alert. He also seems to be looking at the passenger-side mirror.
    “Something wrong?” I ask, but I don’t get a response. There is no doubt he’s staring at the mirror. I look in the rearview mirror, but nothing seems amiss.
    “Marcus?”
    Still nothing; it’s as if I’m not here.
    We’re in the left-hand lane, going about seventy in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone. I notice a car approaching from behind on our right. It’s probably going seventy-five or so, and is therefore steadily gaining on us. And Marcus hasn’t taken his eyes off the mirror.
    The trailing car is about two car lengths behind us, when I notice with horror that there is a gun in Marcus’s left hand. “Marcus! What the hell is going on?”
    No answer from Mr. Chitchat, but that is to be expected. What is not expected is that the car on the right has inched slightly ahead of us, and is slowly drifting toward our lane. The trunk of the other car is even with the front of our car.
    My horror at the gun in Marcus’s hand pales next to the realization that we are approaching a small tunnel, with large concrete stanchions on each side. If the car moves much closer to our lane, cutting us off, I will have no way to move to the left, because of the stanchions.
    “Marcus, he’s cutting us off!”
    The other car can’t be more than a few inches to our right, and I have no breathing room at all. If he so much as nudges us, we’re going to crash head-on into the concrete.
    The gun, which was in Marcus’s left hand, resting on his lap, is suddenly in his right hand at the window, and is firing, I think twice. It looks like he is aiming low, at the tires, but I can’t tell if he hit anything, because my attention is drawn back to Marcus’s left hand, which violently grabs the steering wheel and yanks it to the right.
    We smash into the car on our right, and send it spinning away from us, toward the right shoulder of the road. Suddenly that shoulder is no longer there, as we have reached the stanchions, and the other car crashes into it in the largest, most fiery collision I have ever seen, in real life or the movies.
    But we’re not out of the woods yet, going into a spin of our own, through the length of the tunnel and out the other side. Marcus still has his hand on the wheel, and he is desperately trying to maintain control of the car. I have been reduced to a passenger in