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who jumped up and cheered every time he was at bat. No way did that faggot deserve a girl like her. So the Teacher had decided to show her what a real man was all about.
    He smiled at the memory. It had been his last game, but far and away the best of his life. He’d broken the Dartmouth third–base coach’s nose and all but spiked the ear off their catcher. If you had to go out, that was the way to do it. Too bad he’d never seen the girl again. But she’d remember him for the rest of her life.
    The Teacher shook away the reverie and tucked the Treo safely back into his fanny pack. He stood, spent a moment stretching, then lowered himself to a runner’s on–your–mark stance, fingers digging into the gravel path.
    He had his game face on now. It was time to get to work.
    Bang! went an imaginary starting pistol in his head.
    With his strong legs churning and gravel flying behind him, he bolted into a sprint.
     
    Chapter 10
     
    Step one of the plan was to create a smoke screen. The Teacher was racing along the pavement between 41st and 40th when he spotted a perfect opportunity — a middle–aged businessman jaywalking across Sixth Avenue.
    Strike like a cobra, he thought, instantly changing the course of his pounding footsteps.
    He crashed into the suit like a linebacker, catching him in a headlock and dragging him to the curb.
    “Hey! What the hell?” the guy gasped, struggling feebly.
    “Cross on the green, not in between,” the Teacher sang, and spilled him to the pavement. “Like a human being — not a worthless animal.”
    He spun away, and within seconds he was back at full speed, arms pumping, alert for his next target. He spotted it in an Asian restaurant deliveryman who was rushing south down the opposite sidewalk, jostling other pedestrians as he wove in and out of the crowd.
    The Teacher made another instant turn, dashing out in front of the oncoming traffic and across the street, accompanied by a symphony of blaring horns, screeching brakes, and shouted curses.
    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