As poor bastard villains went, something told Chance that the Jerk wasn't worth the aggravation of a trip cross-town in the backseat of Penny Dreadful's phantom taxicab. Between the receding hairline, almost invisible chin, and predilection for letting the air out of front tires, the Jerk didn't equal world-destroying peril. His getaway car was a hatchback, for God's sake, with peeling green paint and defaced dealer's plates. Wretched fingers mid-rigor mortis on the steering wheel while traffic lights flickered behind them, Penny was too busy cackling to let street signs enter into the conversation. They say Penny died in '45 but after convincing Charon to let her steer the ferry she got kicked out of Hell for reckless endangerment. Was it any wonder she lost out on that Vault of Horrors gig? "That sorry slob stole my gas-cap just last week! Deserves the chair if you ask me."
Chance didn't, and ignored her as much as one could when breaking seventy in the middle of downtown. The concept of speeding tickets was quite beyond Penny Dreadful, which made her ideal for one's rampant car chases with tommyguns firing. Chance shuffled his lucky deck of cards to keep his mind off all those innocent bystanders maybe possibly stuck to the front fender by the end of the evening. Penny could be trusted upon to ride the ass of any car she was chasing. There was no losing her. He gathered she was something of an urban legend among the junior traffic cops, whistles stuck in their mouthes and a brisk sense of street-level, cussing semaphore.in their arms. Children. Years of riding with Penny meant he could even sleep back there without too much trouble, a state of being preferrable to the absolute awareness of every nasty thing she was signalling to other drivers with those fat pinky lips which had once been quite fetching, he gathered, before she was claimed by the cab and the spirits in the engine, the gastank, the trunk. She was possessed by ghosts of dashboard and headlight. The clutch was her guardian.
Nothing to do but ride on. Chance stared at the nine of clubs for a while before shoving it back in the deck. The Jerk wouldn't get away with it, certainly, and after tonight there'd be more sleepless meter maids with insomniac tales to tell...