Page 109 of Goose

“What color is it, underneath?” she asked.

“Red,” Cash responded. “It’s…red. Baker thinks…he thinks it’s bad luck.”

“Not tonight,” she said.

She swerved into the local bypass lane, on the right side. After reaching an eye-opening 165 miles an hour, she veered toward the exit.

“What the fuck!” I shouted. “Are we doing?”

“We’re going to peel off the wrap,” she said. “And change the plates.”

“We’re gonna what?”

“All you do is grab a corner and peel,” she explained, her voice calm and steady. “It’s like taking off a sticker. Reno and Tito take the right side. Cash and Goose take the left. I’ll do bumpers and hood.”

“Where’s the cop?” I asked.

“She lost the cop,” Reno said with a laugh. “He’s still on the freeway. That smoky-tired thing back there fucked him all up. He shot past that light by a mile.”

We took the exit at 150. The SUV shot down the ramp like we’d been pushed off a mile-high cliff. After coming to a vomit-inducing stop, she calmly drove behind a building that backed up to Torrey Pines Preserve.

Shielded by the two-story building, we frantically peeled the vinyl wrap from the vehicle. It wasn’t as easy as I expected.

In fifteen minutes, I was standing beside a three-foot high pile of black plastic film. A bright red SUV was in front of me. The transformation from flat black to red was ingenious. It looked like an entirely different vehicle.

She glanced at Reno. “Switch the plates?”

“Sure did.”

She retrieved her purse from the car. After rummaging through it, she handed each of us a handful of wet tissues. “Wipe your faces off.”

“What the fuck are—”

“They’re make up wipes,” she said. “Wipe the paint off your face.”

When we were all relatively paint-free, she took her hair out of the ponytail and twisted it into a bun.

“Load that pile of plastic wrap in the back, please,” she said, checking her reflection in the window.

After Reno and Tito loaded it, she opened her door. “Cash, you’re sitting up front,” she said. “Everyone else, stay in the floorboards. This is hubby and wife coming home from a date.”

I felt like I’d just got off an hour-long rollercoaster ride. I had no idea whether to shit, fart, or check my watch. So, I simply did as she asked and got down in the floorboard with the other two men.

She rolled down her window and advised Cash to do the same. “Hang your arm out the window, like you’re enjoying the night air.”

“Are you fuckin’ serious?”

“Dead serious. We’re driving the speed limit.”

“There’s going to be cops everywhere.”

“Looking for a black BMW with five people in it. This is a red one with two. You ever seen a roadblock on the 5?”

“No,” Cash responded.

“Well,” she said. “I doubt they’re going to start tonight.”

She was right. I’d seen countless crimes much worse than the one we’d just committed, and I’d never seen them block the 5 to check traffic. In SoCal, escaping a cop’s grasp in a high-speed chase was just another ho-hum day.