Run for Your Life - James Patterson [17]
The truth, I knew perfectly well, was that Daly didn’t want anybody talking to the media about last night until all the facts were in. But he was using it to make me think he was doing me a favor. Add public relations savvy to his skill set, I thought.
“Get on your horse and go straight to Seventy-second, ASAP,” he finished. “Chief of Detectives McGinnis will fill you in.”
Get on my what? I thought, listening to the dial tone. No wonder he was commissioner. The man was a professional manipulator. Not only did he show no respect for my personal day, he hadn’t even given me a chance to tell him about my sick kids.
I put the phone away, pissed off at Daly and at all the idiots out there who used guns to solve their problems, but mostly heartbroken because my rare quality time with my kids was ruined. At least Mary Catherine was here to take over, and they’d probably have more fun with her, anyway. I was the big loser.
I decided I’d better take a quick shower. I hadn’t washed off the sweat from my run, and I might not get another chance for a couple of days. Distracted by thoughts of the crime scene I was about to face, I stepped into the bathtub without looking—until my toes squished in the vomit-choked drain.
I’d failed at playing hooky from work, and I couldn’t even get away with it here at home, I thought, reaching for the toilet paper.
Chapter 13
STRADDLING HIS FREJUS ten-speed, the Teacher clung with one hand to the rear fender of a number 5 city bus barreling along Fifth Avenue. Just as it got to 52nd, he let go and peeled off down the side street. Legs already pumping, he was just able to thread the bike between a town car and the huge wooden wheels of a Central Park buggy.
After being dropped at the Port Authority, he had jogged back to his apartment and changed into another, entirely different outfit—frayed Bianchi bike shorts, faded Motta top, and bike helmet—and picked up the ten-speed. Now he looked like any other low-rent, imitation Lance Armstrong bike messenger.
Stick and move, he thought, wrenching the ten-speed high into the air to bunny-hop a construction plate.
And this disguise had another beauty of its own. It was bursting with irony and symbolism. Because he was delivering one mother of a message this morning.
To: World
From: The Teacher
Subject: Existence, the Universe, the Meaninglessness of Life
Like background music to his thoughts, a cacophony of car horns on full blast rose from the vehicles clogged motionless in the narrow trench of the street as a delivery truck tried to parallel-park.
“Shaddup, ya dirty scumbags!” the truck’s ape-faced driver was yelling out the window.
You have a nice day, too, the Teacher thought, lasering the bike through the mess.
The stink of garbage and piss assaulted his nostrils as he sailed past a waist-high line of black Hefty trash bags piled along the curb. Or was it coming from the hot dog cart beside them? Hard to tell. He spotted a parking sign with the pleasant greeting DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE! Jesus—why not just cut to the chase and say, COMMIT SUICIDE?
He gaped in disbelief at the gutless herds of secretaries and businesspeople milling around on the corners, waiting like sheep for the stoplights that controlled their lives. How could they even pretend that this living hell they were zombie-shuffling through was acceptable? Legions of the walking dead, with a brainlessness that defied reason.
But wait. They weren’t necessarily brainless, or even stupid—that was a bit harsh. They were ignorant. Uninstructed.
And that was where he came in: to show them the way.
He brought the bike to a skidding, tire-squealing stop in front of a restaurant on the north side of the street.
This morning’s second lesson was going to be even more impressive than the first one.
The line of jockey statues on the 21