Anyway, he wasn’t flipping his lid. Now the question was-should he get this other wheel or should he scram with the one he had? He had an order for two. He needed the money. That little chippie he was so crazy about had told him the palm needed greasing. She didn’t say palm, but it meant the same thing: money-the one lubrication for love.

If the old lady wasn’t dead, she was past caring. And it wouldn’t take him but ninety seconds to have this wheel off…

He was starting to bend over to his task when the next sight froze him. The old lady had moved. He noticed it at first out of the corners of his eyes; then his head jerked up.

She was getting up. She had her two hands on the pavement and one knee up, and she was pushing to her feet. He could hear her laughing to herself. He felt the goose pimples breaking out down his back, and his scalp began to crawl like a battlefield of lice. If this kept up, his black kinky hair was going to turn out white as bleached cotton and straight as the beard of Jesus Christ.

He was watching the old lady, his brain trying to absorb the impact of what his eyes were registering, when the second car turned the corner. He didn’t see it until it went past.

It was a big black sedan with the lights off, traveling at a hip-tightening clip, and it made a sound like someone blowing suddenly in his ear.

The old lady had got both feet planted and was standing bent over, bear-fashion, with all four feet and hands on the ground, just about to straighten up, when the big black sedan hit her in the rump.

He never knew how he saw it; the street was black dark, the old lady was dressed in black, the car was black. But he saw it. Either with his eyes or with his mind.

He saw the old lady flying through the air, arms and legs spread out, black garments spread out in the wind like a nuclear-powered vampire full of fresh virgin’s blood. She was flying in an oblique line to the left; the black car was streaking straight ahead; and her snow-white hair was flying off to the right and rising, like a homing pigeon headed for the nest.