Just coincidence, sir. And it turned out there wasn’t much I could do about it. Having a knowledge of old bombardment aircraft didn’t do me much good-it just confirmed in my mind that the suspect’s threats had real teeth in them.
Who suggested calling in the Air Force?
I did, sir.
At what time did you make that suggestion, and to whom?
My first telephone report to Lieutenant O’Hara. That was at approximately eleven twenty.
Then it was no more than fifteen minutes between the time you arrived at the scene and the time you made your first report back to the lieutenant?
Yes, sir. It took us that long to get a coherent story. Everybody was trying to talk at once, you know how it is. I stuck to Criscola until I had the outlines of the thing. Then I talked briefly with Ryterband. He didn’t add anything new-only repeated his threat and his demands. Then I called the lieutenant, reported in, told him about the situation, told him I’d actually seen the airplane up there. He said he’d seen it too, of course. It was flying back and forth, the length of Manhattan. I suppose most everybody had seen it by that time. A few people I’ve talked to thought, it was some kind of publicity stunt or somebody making a movie.
In fact, that was the department’s official explanation at the time, wasn’t it?
It was until the explosions, yes, sir. I mean the damn thing was there in plain sight of anybody in New York. Anybody over forty would recognize the plane from the war, and a lot of younger people had seen movies and TV shows like Twelve o’clock High. I mean, at that altitude nearly everybody on the street recognized it for what it was, and naturally there were a lot of telephone inquiries. The news media were particularly curious, but then that’s understandable. We had to tell them something. I mean the department had to. I don’t know who dreamed it up, but the official line that was given out was that they were making a movie. Naturally a gang of reporters kept after us to tell them what movie and what producer and what studio and who was the star. I don’t know how the department shunted those questions off, but I gather they did. Of course you know New Yorkers-everybody had their own theory. All kinds of street-corner superstitions and wise-ass ideas. Some middle-aged German immigrant had a heart attack on Forty-third Street. Turned out he’d been in Dresden during the war.
So you suggested to the lieutenant that they ought to bring in the Air Force?
Yes, sir. Somebody who might be able to figure out how to handle the situation. He agreed right away.
But it was quite some time before anybody from the Air Force actually entered the case, wasn’t it?
Yes, sir, it was.
Harris
Your name, please?
Jack Harris.
Is that your full name?
Yes. Jack no-middle-initial Harris.
Your employment, Mr. Harris? For the record.
Reporter. Free-lance.
Oh? Weren’t you working for one of the stations during the Craycroft episode?
I was doing a feature story for WIMS-TV, yes. I wasn’t in their employ, not on salary. I do features for radio and TV news departments. If they like the idea, they buy it from me. I’m an independent.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know it could be done on that basis.
Well, I usually sell the story before I do it. In other words, I’ll call one of the stations, ask them if they’d like me to do a story on such-and-such. They give me the go-ahead and then I do the story.
You must have a fine nose for features then.
That’s my bread and butter, Mr. Skinner.
And perhaps a bit of ESP? Prescience? Is that how you happened to be there on the day Craycroft pulled his episode?
That was blind luck, nothing else. I was doing a story on the reconstruction of the West Side Highway. I wanted to go up and take some aerial footage-I do some of my own photography. I happened to have a contact at the Port Authority, one of the chopper jockeys, fellow named Woods. I went up with him that day. At that point I didn’t know Craycroft existed.
Is it normal for civilians to hitch rides on Port Authority helicopters?
They don’t mind. They’ve got a spare seat. You’ve got to sign a waiver, of course. And they don’t take ordinary people up. Joyriders, tourists, that kind of thing. But if you’ve got a legitimate reason to be there, they don’t mind. As long as you sign the waiver. They don’t want to get sued if you crack up. That’s life in these modern times, isn’t it-everybody’s got to cover his own ass.
I’m a bit surprised they agreed to. take you up on that particular flight. Wasn’t the pilot ordered to do a close-up surveillance on Craycroft’s aircraft?
Not originally, no. If that had been the case, you can bet they wouldn’t have allowed me to ride along. No, what happened was they’d assigned Woods to the standard harbor-survey flight. They do periodic spot checks to make sure the shipping traffic is keeping inside the buoy markers, look for hazardous debris floating on the water, even sometimes people stranded in small boats or life preservers. It’s a big harbor, New York. Anyway Woods was assigned to fly the normal spot check, and he’d arranged his flight path to give me a good run over the lower west side of Manhattan so I could get my footage of the highway construction. We were already in the air when he got instructions by radio to discontinue the normal survey and go chasing after Craycroft.
What time was this?
I don’t know exactly. You might ask the PA people-they must have kept a log. I know it was somewhere around twelve thirty, maybe twelve forty-five. We’d taken off at noon, but I can’t be sure how long we’d been up before Woods got the new orders.
Had you noticed the bomber before that?
Sure. We weren’t over Manhattan, of course-we were out the other side of Staten Island a good part of the time. But we’d come in over Port Newark and made one or two circuits around the Hudson estuary. We’d seen the plane a couple of times. I must have gawked at it for a while. I’m kind of an old-plane buff myself.
So I understand. You have a pilot’s license, don’t you?
Single engine. I flew Sabres when I was in the service. Never liked them much. Too fast to maneuver. One time I checked out in a Mustang-now, there was an airplane.
You fly for a hobby, don’t you?
Once in a while I go up to Rhinebeck and tootle around in the air show in some old biplane. I’m not a serious pilot. More of a fan. I wrote a novel about fliers once, but it got turned down-they said it was too closely imitative of Ernest K. Gann. I’d never read Gann at the time. After that I latched onto everything he ever wrote. Spectacular stuff. Have you ever read him?
I don’t read fiction much, I’m afraid.
Well, we’re not here to talk about that anyway, are we?
You said you’d noticed Craycroft’s plane.
Who wouldn’t? It looked brand-new. He’d done a marvelous restoration job. I mean that B-17 had to be at least thirty years old. They stopped making them around the end of the war.
What was the plane doing when you first noticed it?
Making a steep turn over the Battery and that corner of Brooklyn down where all the bridges are. I remember watching it cruise back up north-it was flying over the east side of Manhattan. I remember thinking what a beautiful goddamn airplane it was. They never built a plane that had so much grace, you know?
A rather brutal kind of grace, I’d say.
There’s violence in most grace.
Did you wonder what Craycroft was up to?
I assumed it was a publicity stunt for that new war movie that just opened at the Loew’s on Third Avenue. You know, the one about the Hiroshima raid.
