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It was cold outside; I could see that in the mist from my breath. But I didn’t feel it. Up ahead I saw the red and blue flashes of a police car. These passed by the intersection of Broadway and Maiden Lane.

“Hey!” Mel called.

He’d pulled to the curb just behind me. His van was middle green and there was a sign on the side that read HOBART AND SONS CONSTRUCTION.

We left the wheelchair at the curb and lay Man’s inert form on a mattress on the floor.

I sat back there with him while Mel drove.

We made it through the Holland Tunnel to Jersey City and then took 95 to 78 past Newark International and on, twenty miles or so past Elizabeth, arriving at a private airport. I spent most of that time making sure Man didn’t bounce around too much.

The elation was flaring inside me. I had done something, something real. This meant more to me than anything other than the birth of my daughter.

We were allowed in by a security guard at the gate to the airfield. He was a short white guy with a huge face.

“Who are you?” he asked Mel, the driver.

“Lansman,” my friend said. It was the code name I gave to my grandmother’s billionaire boyfriend.

“Your pilot is already here.”

The pilot was a tall, very handsome Hispanic man who told us to call him Jack. The three of us carried Man into the small jet and strapped him into yet another chair.

My only interaction with A Free Man was with his unconscious body. It was as if, I suppose, I was his dream. An apparition that he’d never remember but that changed his life.

“I know Jack here,” Mel said to me while the pilot made ready at the controls. “I’ll go down with him to Panama City and make sure your boy’s settled in.”

“I should go with you.”

“You been talking to people about this guy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That means you should be living your normal everyday life in case anybody wants to look at you. Also we need to get this van away from where your friend’s airplane is to keep you out of that. I mean, we don’t know if maybe somebody saw us drive away. Don’t worry, Joe. I didn’t go through all this to trick you now.”

He was right. And I really didn’t want to go away just then.

“You brought my duffel bag down from that office?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He rummaged around the back and gave it to me.

I pulled out the leather satchel that Teegs had given me.

“There’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in here. Twenty-five is to cover your costs. After you pay the pilot the rest is for Man.”

Mel took the satchel and smiled.

“You see that, Joe? A man like Mr. Man here is one’a my people. And there you are on the other side of the wall doing what’s right.”

“You better get outta here before we start kissin’ or somethin’.”

I parked the van in the long-term section of an automated underground parking lot. I had a hat and my whiskers and hope in my heart that there was no camera to see my disguise. Then I took the train from Newark back to Manhattan and the A train, which ran local after 10:00 p.m., to High Street in Brooklyn.

39.

I got to bed by noon and slept for nineteen hours without even getting up to urinate.

In the early morning I read all about the daring prison escape. Stuart Braun had set up seven visitors for his client. The man’s wife, three doctors, Willa Portman of course, Stuart himself, and a Catholic priest for prayer. All were questioned. None were held. The investigation would go on for decades, if I was lucky. Even if Willa told about the package we gave her she had no proof of what was in it. Our note told Man to destroy and discard the note and packaging after taking his powder.