Step On A Crack

Chapter 92

WE STAYED AT a low hover over the convoy of black sedans. The whirling edges of the rotor couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the smooth glass and ornate stone building facades on either side of the avenue. I swallowed hard. Driving a car in this city was nerve-racking enough for me.

The hard, constant vibration of the helicopter made the cars below appear to tremble through the windshield when they finally pulled away from the cathedral. Now where the hell were they going?

The seat harness bit hard into my chest as we tilted forward and began to pursue.

We inched along in the air behind the convoy as it passed tony Fifth Avenue shops-Cartier, Gucci, Trump Tower. What, were they getting in a little last-minute window shopping?

An even stranger thing happened when the cars arrived at Tiffany’s on the corner of 57th Street.

They stopped!

Were they going somewhere for breakfast? Maybe Jack planned to rob the famous jewelry store as a parting gesture. Anything was possible at this point. The helicopter’s rotors thumped in time with my pulse as I waited and watched.

After a pause of a full minute, the lead car finally inched out from the curb and made a left-heading west on 57th Street. As the next four cars began to follow, I thought maybe the whole strange procession was going to take a slow rolling tour of the West Side. But the sixth car surprised me by turning east on 57th. The remaining cars behind it followed east as well.

I reported the bizarre new twist over the radio.

East Side, West Side, all around the town, I thought, watching the black sedans split away from one another.

Was one group the celebrities and the other the hijackers? There was no way to know from up here.

“Is there any way for you to distinguish who’s who?” Will Matthews asked in an anguished voice.

I stared at the two lines of cars, struggling to figure it out. The combination of diesel fuel, vertigo, and the constant pounding of the helicopter wasn’t exactly helping things in the focusing department. I gave up for the moment.

If there was any clue at all, I couldn’t see it right now.

“There’s no difference I can make out,” I finally called into the radio.

“Which way?” the pilot asked, annoyed, as we just sat there over the intersection at 57th.

“West,” I decided. “Hang a left.”

At least if I was wrong, and I got fired, I thought as Bergdorf’s swung under my right shoulder, it would be a shorter subway ride back to my apartment.