Step On A Crack

Chapter 93

STRAIGHTENING THE WHEEL of the lead sedan heading east on 57th Street, Eugena Humphrey sucked in a deep breath. The heat of the cramped car was making her sweat, and the gamy stench of the ski mask the hijackers had made her wear was another distraction. Just what she didn’t need right now.

She glanced at two uniformed cops, just standing there on the sidewalk, gaping at the passing sedans from in front of an art gallery on the north side of the street.

Nobody was doing anything! How could they?

Frightened as she was, sick and tired, she knew she couldn’t break down now. She couldn’t crack. And she wouldn’t.

When was the last time she’d actually driven herself around? she thought. Ten years ago? She remembered a red Mustang she’d bought herself after her transfer out of the Wheeling, West Virginia, affiliate to LA. What a wild ride she’d been on since then.

And this was how it would end? Unwashed on Christmas Day at the mercy of some degenerate criminals. After all she’d done. All the hard work and astute decisions, pulling herself up out of nothing. She not only had risen above what the world tried to enforce as the limits of her race and class, but had tapped in to the higher limits of human potential. Become a force for good in the world, a strong force.

But at least she’d lived a full life, hadn’t she? Done just about everything there was to do.

Eugena gasped as the gunman in the front seat jabbed her violently with the pipe of a sawed-off shotgun.

“Speed it up,” he yelled at her.

At that moment, Eugena felt her despair pop and her adrenaline surge.

Speed it up? No problemo. I can certainly do that.

She hit the gas, and the V-8 engine seemed to cry as buildings and windows began to blur past. The sedan briefly left asphalt as it hit the hump of Park Avenue.

“That’s it, momma. Punch it!” the hijacker howled as they landed, showering sparks.

As they hurtled toward Lexington, Eugena’s eye caught the gleam of one of those steel telephone company nitrogen tanks on the corner. She fantasized hitting it head-on.

Outside the windshield, it was as if New York City-the world itself-was coming at her now at warp speed. An unstoppable force at an immovable object.