Run for Your Life - James Patterson [14]
-Take-out food bags flew into the air like startled pigeons as he clotheslined the deliveryman with a forearm across the throat.
“Where’s the fire, buddy?” the Teacher roared. “This is a sidewalk, not a racetrack. Show some fucking courtesy, you got me?”
He took off again, his flying feet barely touching the pavement. He felt incredible, invincible. He could run straight up the fronts of the glass canyon office towers and down the backs of them. He could run forever.
“WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU!” he screamed into startled faces. He’d always hated that song, but damn if it didn’t feel spot-on right now.
People stopped and stared. The street-smart ones, hot dog vendors and waiting radio car drivers and bike messengers, were wisely getting the hell out of his way.
It was hard to rouse attention on the jaded streets of Manhattan, but he was doing a bang-up job.
The light bouncing off the dark glass curtains of the monstrous buildings poured down on him like a holy baptism. His face split into a huge grin, and his eyes filled with happy tears.
He was actually doing it. After all the planning, all the obstacles, it was showtime.
He jumped out into the curb lane of the wide avenue and sprinted full bore toward the trees of Central Park.
Chapter 11
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the Teacher emerged from Central Park on the Upper East Side. Though he’d run more than thirty blocks, he hardly noticed it. He wasn’t even winded. He raced out across tony Fifth Avenue and kept going east down 72nd.
Then he finally slowed to a halt, in front of a fabulously ornate four-story French château–-style building on the southeast corner of 72nd and Madison—the flagship Ralph Lauren store.
The first target that really counted.
The Teacher glanced at his watch to make sure he was still on schedule, then took a long look up and down both the side street and the avenue. There were no cops in sight, which wasn’t surprising. This store sat smack-dab in the middle of the city’s most populated precinct. Roughly fifty officers, probably fewer counting sick days and vacation, were supposed to protect more than two hundred thousand people. Good luck, the Teacher thought. He pulled open the store’s shining brass door and stepped inside.
He gazed around, taking in the Persian rugs, chandeliers, and oil paintings on the fifteen-foot mahogany-paneled walls. Not exactly your local Kmart. Among the antiques and flower arrangements, piles of cashmere cable knits and oxford-cloth button-downs were distributed with artful casualness. The overall impression was that you’d walked in and caught the Vanderbilts unpacking from a summer in Europe.
In other words, it was disgusting. He jogged up the wide mahogany stairs to the men’s shop.
A slick-haired man in an impeccably tailored three-piece suit stood behind an antique glass display case filled with neckties. One of his eyebrows rose just enough to signify his contempt for the slovenly buffoon he saw approaching.
“May I help you?” he said with a condescension that bordered on vicious. The Teacher knew that if he answered “yes,” the salesman would laugh out loud.
So he just smiled.
“Are we a trifle language-challenged, sir?” the malicious bastard crooned. Then he dropped the polished pretense and spoke in much coarser, and much more natural-sounding, Brooklynese. “We’re all outta fanny packs today. Maybe you better go to Mo’s instead.”
The Teacher still didn’t speak. Instead, he unzipped the little pack and took out a pair of objects that looked like Cheez Doodles. They were actually firing-range earplugs. Without hurrying, he pressed one of them into his left ear.
The haberdasher started to look flustered, and took on his piss-elegant tone again.
“I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t realize you needed hearing aids. Still, if you’re not here to purchase something, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The Teacher paused, with the second earplug still between his fingers,