We’re stuck on a plane at La Guardia airport, waiting for a ground stop in Chicago to lift so we can return home from a weeklong romp through the east coast. I’ve just seen Ja Rule in the airport terminal, and I figure this random sighting will provide me with some conversational fodder back home.
But then two Port Authority cops board our plane, stopping two rows behind us.
“Let’s go, John,” they say.
John, middle-aged and red-nosed, obediently gets out of his seat.
“Get his luggage!” calls an airport employee.
“You almost got away with it, John,” says one of the cops, relishing the spotlight. He shakes his head. “You almost got away with it.” John says nothing. You can hear a pin drop.
“Does he have any luggage?” the woman calls again.
“Leather jacket, just above row 24,” the cop says. With that, they take John off the plane, and speculation runs wild.
“He was drunk,” the guy in front of me says to his neighbor across the aisle. “I could smell the liquor on him.”
“They would really pull him off for being drunk?”
The first man shrugs. “Guess he didn’t know the rules.”
Not to be outdone, the flight attendant returns minutes later with an even more ridiculous explanation:
“He stiffed a New York City cab driver. Told him he was going to the ATM, then got right on the plane.”
Right. And he told the cabby his name and his flight number, too. I watch The Wire, people; I know how this stuff works.
Back home, I check for headlines about a big-time mob informant trying to skip town, or something along those lines, but nothing comes up. That’s probably how New York’s Col. Daniels wants it, though.