THE STORY SO FAR: PART 61

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AS WE WERE FLYING THE MAYOR: WE DROPPED HIM…FROM ABOUT A THOUSAND FEET.

SORRY ABOUT THAT

Writing about Jim Fox, FBI, brings tears to my eyes—but mostly of laughter. When we were together, one war story tended to follow another'; and the funny thing is that the most outrageous ones tended to be true. But, they tended to be disguised amidst throw-away humor. It just wasn’t the thing to talk up your own achievements, no matter how valid there were.

The Blue Musketeers—my name for our group—were no different. All had been in harms way, sometimes frequently—and all made light of that fact.

One of my favorite stories, as told by my friend, former NYPD detective and bodyguard Dennis Martin (much better than I can, by the way) concerns the ever vocal Mayor Koch. Apparently, on one of their many helicopter trips, not only was the door next to Koch not properly secured, but he had forgotten to fasten his safety belt.

A thousand feet up, as the helicopter banked, gravity being gravity, Mayor Koch started to slide out of the aircraft. Grab him by the hair? The man had no hair!

Reportedly, Dennis grabbed him somewhere more practical at the last micro-second; and thus prevented a rather embarrassing incident.

I don’t know why that story appeals to me so much, but it does; and I write that as someone who rather likes Koch. Still, the whole idea of accidentally losing a mayor—“A trifle careless, wouldn’t you say?”—has immense appeal appeal as far as I am concerned.

It is so wonderfully, elegantly, ridiculous. And I have great respect for the ridiculous.