Run for Your Life (3 page)

Chapter 4

The man in the beautifully tailored, two–button Givenchy suit had finished his morning’s work with his usual expertise and speed. Many things in his life had changed since he had seen the truth — he was a new man now — but his superior intelligence and skills remained intact.

As he stepped into the garage of the stately Locust Valley home, he heard the lawn sprinklers kick on. He glanced at the black dial of his stainless–steel Rolex Explorer. Seven A.M. sharp. Excellent: he was running ahead of schedule, just the way he liked it.

He opened the gleaming door of the BMW 720Li, placed his Vuitton briefcase on the passenger seat, and swung his long, muscular legs under the steering wheel. As he adjusted the rearview mirror, he caught his own reflection. With his lean, brutally chiseled features, his razor–straight, collar–length black hair, and piercing, almost royal blue eyes, he looked like a model in a Vanity Fair ad. He smiled, showing himself his dimples and his perfect, gleaming white teeth.

He had it all, didn’t he? he thought.

The V12 engine of the luxury BMW sedan came to life with an elegant explosion when he turned the key.

Too bad “it all” wasn’t nearly enough.

While the engine warmed, the New Man took a Palm Treo 750 smart phone from his silk–lined inside jacket pocket. The little gadget could do everything: phone, e–mail, surf the Web. He clicked on Microsoft Tasks and opened the file he’d been working on.

It was a mission statement, a brief written summary of his goals, philosophy, and ambitions. He’d actually gotten the idea from the movie Jerry Maguire, of all places. In it, Tom Cruise’s character sends out a mission statement that gets everyone all riled up.

That was precisely what the New Man was going to do today.

Except this was no movie.

He still liked Cruise, even though Cruise had made a fool of himself on Oprah with his couch–jumping antics. Maybe it was the slight resemblance they shared, but the New Man considered him a kind of a role model, almost a psychic brother. Cruise was a perfectionist, a peerless professional, a winner — just like himself.

Rereading the document for the hundredth time, he knew it was complete. The only problem that remained was how to sign it. There was no way he could use his real name, and the “New Man” wasn’t distinguished enough. He could feel the true name hovering at the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t quite reel it in. Well, it would come, he thought, closing the Treo down and tucking it back into his jacket. The important things always did.

He jauntily tapped the garage door opener on the Beemer’s visor, and backed out smoothly toward the daylight flooding in through the rising door.

Then his passing glance caught the rearview mirror again — just in time to see the immense grille of a Lincoln Navigator, parked in the driveway directly in his path.

He slammed on the brakes barely in time to keep from ramming the Navigator and turning the shiny, showy grille into a twisted chunk of metal.

He exhaled a seething breath through his gritted teeth and wrenched the gearshift into park. Goddamn Erica! She had to leave her monster SUV right there, didn’t she? Exactly in the one spot where he couldn’t get around it. Now he’d have to go back inside the house, find the keys, move it, then start all over again in the Beemer. Like he wasn’t in a distinct rush here. Like he didn’t have important things to do. Erica wouldn’t understand that — she’d never had anything important to do.

And now, she never would.

That thought made him feel a little better, but when he strode back to the Navigator three minutes later, his annoyance erupted all over again. This was cutting into his comfortable extra margin of time.

He twisted the key in the ignition so hard it bent, floored the accelerator, and threw the tranny into reverse. The SUV’s seventeen–inch tires screamed as it rocketed backward, streaking rubber down the length of the herringbone–patterned limestone driveway. Instead of curving along with it, he kept going straight, onto the immaculate lawn. The spinning tires tore deep gouges and threw up tufts of shining green grass.

Leaving the Navigator’s engine running, he parked the BMW, much more carefully, on the deserted suburban street. He was feeling a little calmer now. He was almost done with this crap, almost back where he’d started, and still ahead of schedule.

Then, as he was getting into the Navigator to return it to where it had been, a cold jet of water from a sprinkler pop–up lashed across the back of his designer suit from his shoulders to his waist.

His blue eyes practically smoked with fury, and he almost started pounding on the steering wheel with the heels of his hands. But a memory cut in, from an anger management therapy session he’d been ordered to take part in several years before. The therapist had concentrated on techniques to ratchet down his destructive rage: count backward from ten, breathe deeply, clench his fists, and pretend he was squeezing oranges.

Squeeze your oranges, he could almost hear her soothing voice saying to him. Then flick, flick, flick off the juice.

He gave it a try. Squeeze and flick. Squeeze and flick.

The sprinkler jet shot across the Navigator again, pissing into his face through the open window.

“I’ll show you anger management, you idiot bitch!” he snarled, and stomped on the accelerator.

Spraying grass and chunks of limestone, the SUV hurtled straight through the garage and into the back wall at thirty–five miles per hour. The crash was like a bomb going off in a phone booth, with studs splintering and clouds of drywall dust billowing through the air.

He managed to switch off the ignition around the deployed air bag, then squeezed himself out of the seat. Things were nice and quiet now, except for the hiss of the cracked radiator and the soft spattering of the lawn pop–ups.

“That’ll teach her,” he said.

Then he stopped dead.

Teach her. Teacher.

That was it — the perfect name he’d been looking for!

“Erica, you finally did one useful thing,” he said softly.

He shook the Treo out of his damp suit coat and blooped it on.

At the bottom of his mission statement, below “Best wishes,” he typed across the glowing screen: “The Teacher.”

One last time, he checked the recipient boxes to make sure the address for the New York Times was correct.

Then he hit Send.

He tucked the Treo into his pocket and jogged along the elegantly sweeping drive toward the waiting BMW.

He could hardly believe it. Finally, the deed was done.

He was the Teacher, the world was his students, and class was about to begin.

Chapter 5

The Teacher zipped the 720Li into the resident parking section of the Locust Valley, Long Island Rail Road, station, between a Mercedes SL600 convertible and a Range Rover HSE. Even the cars in Locust Valley insisted on expensive neighbors, he thought.

He cut the engine and checked his suit coat, which he’d spread out on the backseat to dry. With the warm, sunny weather helping, the fine fabric had recovered nicely. No one would notice the slight dampness that remained.

His good mood had returned. In fact, he was feeling great. Things were going his way again. He was on top of the world. Whistling the first aria from Mozart’s Idomeneo, he lifted the butter–soft Vuitton briefcase off the passenger seat and got out of the car.

As he approached the platform, he noticed a tall pregnant woman struggling with a baby stroller on the platform steps.

“Here, let me help you with that,” he said. He gripped the stroller’s front axle with his free hand and helped her boost it the rest of the way up the stairs. It was one of those complicated–looking Bugaboo models — expensive, like everything else around here. Including the mother. She was in her early thirties, a head–turning blonde with a diamond tennis bracelet blazing like an electrical fire around her right wrist. Did she notice that her breasts were practically popping out of her skintight lace cami above her swollen belly? he wondered, and decided, Yes. The package was very tantalizing in a kinky way — a way he liked.

He smiled as she appreciatively sized up his Givenchy suit, Prada shoes, and tanned, chiseled face. Of course she was impressed. He had looks, the kind of high sheen polish that came only from money, and unerring taste, and balls. The combination wasn’t all that common.

“Thanks so much,” she said, then rolled her eyes at her sleeping, angelic little boy. “Wouldn’t you know it — we flew back from the Maldives yesterday, I have a lunch date at Jean Georges today that I simply can’t break, and on the flight, our nanny quit. I should have left her there.” She lowered her voice to a teasing, conspiratorial tone. “You wouldn’t want to buy a one–year–old, would you?”

The Teacher gazed into her eyes for a long, leisurely moment, the kind of look that told her he was everything she imagined, and much, much more besides. Her lips parted a little as she stared back at him, rapt.

“I’d certainly rent him for an hour or two if the mom came with him,” he said.

The full–bodied stunner arched herself like a cat, giving him a sly smile of her own.

“You’re naughty and sexy, aren’t you?” she said. “I go into the city two or three days a week, usually about this time — and I’m usually alone. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again, naughty man.” The bastion of elite modern motherhood winked, then sashayed away on her Chanel peep–toe pumps, giving him a show of her long, firm calves and rolling hips.

The Teacher stood there, puzzled. Naughty? He’d meant his remark to insult the whore, to shame her by letting her know how much her assault on human dignity disgusted him. Hadn’t his sarcasm been clear? Obviously, it had gone right by her.

But he’d been plenty clear enough. The problem was that you couldn’t possibly shame someone who had none.

There had been a time in the not–so–distant past when he would have used his formidable charm to get her “digits,” as they said — a time when he’d have taken her to a hotel and let his sadistic lust, inflamed by her pregnancy, run rampant.

But that man was someone he had once been and no longer was — someone he’d left behind in the dust as he trod the path that had made him the Teacher.

Now he could vividly imagine beating her to death with the Bugaboo stroller.

The roar of the arriving New York City–bound train mounted in the Teacher’s ears, and its weight subtly tilted the concrete platform beneath his feet.

“All aboard!” the conductor called from the ringing doors.

Next stop, the Teacher thought, as he joined the other passengers stepping onto the train: Revelation.

Chapter 6

About an hour later, the Teacher stepped onto the 34th Street subway platform for the 2 and 3 trains. It was eight thirty–five A.M., the height of rush hour, and the strip of cement was jam–packed with all stripes of humanity from one grimy end to the other.

He walked to the platform edge’s warning line, near the southern end of the downtown side. On his right was a homeless man who smelled like an open sewer, and on his left, a young female strap hanger, talking loudly on her cell phone.

The Teacher tried to ignore them both. He had tremendously important things to think about. But while he succeeded with the homeless man, it was impossible to shut out the brazen young hussy who was punishing everyone within earshot with the details of her boring, pointless life.

He watched her out of his peripheral vision. She was eighteen or nineteen, tall and thin, and, like her squawking voice, her appearance was all about calling attention to herself — dark tan set off by hair bleached an unnatural white, oversized shades, and a pink cutoff designer hoodie that revealed a diamond belly stud in front and one of those oh–so–original, above–the–butt, slut tattoos in the back.

Forced to hear her rant about her purebred dachshund’s hernia operation through mouthfuls of her onion bagel, he actually found himself leaning more and more toward the reeking Dumpster diver.

The dime–sized lights of an approaching train appeared in the distance of the far tunnel. The Teacher relaxed — relief from this petty torment was on its way.

But the human Bratz doll stepped closer to the platform’s edge, brushing past him as she moved. A blob of cream cheese fell from her breakfast and plopped onto the toe cap of his Prada shoe.

He stared in disbelief, first at his six–hundred–dollar footwear, then at her, as he waited for an apology. But so entrenched was she in the profane hollowness she called her life that she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care that she had offended a fellow human being.

He felt a sudden lightness in his belly — a hatred and contempt that went far beyond mere anger.

But just as swiftly, it turned to pity. People like her were the very ones that he had come to educate.

Do it now! It’s the perfect opportunity. Start the mission! came a barrage of voices in his head.

But the Plan, he protested. Don’t I have to stick to the Plan?

Can’t you take a fucking bonus when you see one, you anal prick? Improvise, overcome, remember? Now!

The Teacher closed his eyes, as a purpose that he could describe only as holy descended upon him.

Very well, he thought. So be it.

The girl weighed barely a hundred pounds. It took him only a slight hip–check to send her over the edge of the platform.

Too shocked even to scream, she clawed at empty air as she plunged the four feet onto the tracks and landed spread–eagled on her tattooed ass. With beautiful symmetry, her cell phone landed at the exact same instant and clattered along the rails toward the oncoming train.

Yes! the Teacher thought. It was a sign — a perfect beginning!

Now she was screaming. Her mouth was open wide enough to stuff in a tennis ball. For once in her life, instead of drivel, something genuine and human was coming out of it. Congratulations, he thought. I didn’t think you had it in you.

But it wouldn’t do to let his amusement show. “Oh, my God! She jumped!” he called out.

She was trying to drag herself off the track with her hands, as if her legs wouldn’t move. Maybe her spine had been injured in the fall. He could just hear her words before they were drowned out by the roar of the approaching train: “Help me! Somebody, please, God? —”