The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  He spent the next week questioning details and working out solutions, and at their next meeting he trotted out his homework without waiting to be asked. Ryder attacked again, probing for weaknesses, forcing him to defend himself. Ryder made no effort to help solve problems or add refinements; he simply played devil’s advocate, a gadfly stinging Longman’s invention into activity. It was only later, when the technical problems were out of the way, that Ryder began to contribute ideas of his own.

  One day—it must have been their sixth or seventh meeting—Ryder said, “Determined people could probably succeed in taking the train, but I’m not satisfied they could get away.”

  “I admit it’s tough,” Longman said casually. “Very tough.”

  Ryder looked at him sharply, then came as close to a smile as he usually allowed himself. “You’ve been thinking about it.”

  Longman grinned, too, but suddenly thought: That’s why he steered away from it before, he knew I would anticipate the question, and he was giving me lots of time to work on it.

  “Well, yes,” Longman said. “I gave it a few minutes of my spare time. I think I know how it can be done.”

  “Tell me,” Ryder said.

  It spilled out of him eagerly and proudly, and when he was finished, he looked at Ryder in triumph.

  “Another round,” Ryder called out to the waiter. Then he said to Longman, “Let’s do it.”

  Attempting to match Ryder’s nonchalance, Longman said, “Sure, why not?” But he felt suddenly dizzy, and later he was to recall that it was how he felt on the verge of going to bed with a woman.

  Yet there was still time to back out. He needed only to have said no. True, he might have lost Ryder’s esteem, but there would have been no reprisals. And there was something more than Ryder involved. It was as if his whole life reared up before him, a dreary, squalid grayness—loneliness, scrabbling for a living, the lack of a real friend, man or woman. At forty-one, if not exactly unemployable, he was at best doomed to a succession of inane, menial, or dead-end jobs. That was the story of his life since he had left the transit system, and it could only get worse. What probably convinced him finally to make this last desperate pitch for a better life was the bitter memory of a period when he had been an apartment-house doorman. Holding doors for people who never really acknowledged his existence, even those who condescended to greet him; dashing out into the rain to whistle up cabs; relieving strapping matrons of their bundles; walking dogs for residents who were away for the day or who simply didn’t want to go out in inclement weather; arguing with snotty errand boys; turning away drunks who wanted to come inside to warm up; smiling and groveling and pulling at the bill of his cap. A flunky, a servant in a maroon monkey suit.

  It was a powerful memory, and it sustained him throughout the months of preparation, although he never shook off the foreboding feeling of a man approaching a critical operation in which the chances of dying in the surgery were at least as good as those of survival….

  Joe Welcome’s voice shattered the silence, as terrifying as an act of sudden violence. Longman turned pale under his mask. A car’s length away, Welcome was squared off in front of the door, screaming into the tunnel. Longman knew, was certain, that Welcome would fire and that someone, whoever was out there, would die. And so the actual firing was almost an anti-climax. Before the echo died, Longman was already pounding frantically on the cab door with his fist.

  CAZ DOLOWICZ

  Like a thin somber Pied Piper, the conductor stood at the head of a line of passengers that straggled far back on the roadbed into the darkness. It was cool in the tunnel, drafty and damp, but the conductor was sweating, his fair skin stained pink, worry lines embedded in the smoothness of his forehead.

  Dolowicz shouted, “I don’t give a damn if they were armed with cannons.” His voice echoed off the walls. “You aren’t supposed to leave your train without authorization.”

  “They made me. I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Like the captain of a ship leaving his ship, it’s the exact same thing.”

  Dolowicz heard out the conductor with a rapidly increasing pressure in his chest, and a new pain in his stomach and head, as if the growing list of disasters—cutting the train, moving the front car, intimidating the passengers and crew, cutting the power—as if each of these produced a corresponding reaction in a different organ.

  “They said they would kill me….” The conductor ran out of voice, and turned to the passengers, appealing for corroboration. “They had machine guns!”

  Several of the passengers nodded their heads gloomily, and from back in the shivering line a voice called out, “Let’s go, let’s get outta this dump.” Other voices picked up the refrain, and Dolowicz realized the danger of panic.

  “Okay,” he said to the conductor. “Okay, Carmody. Carmody? Okay, get these passengers back to the platform at once. There’s a train in the station. Use its radio to tell Command Center what you just told me. Tell them I’m on my way to investigate.”

  “You’re going down there?”

  Dolowicz brushed by the conductor and started down the track. The line of passengers were strung out farther than he had expected, there must have been nearly two hundred of them. They called out to him as he went by, complaining about their interrupted trip, threatening to sue the city, demanding the return of their fare. A few warned him to be careful.

  “Just keep moving along, folks,” Dolowicz said. “It’s not dangerous. The conductor will take you back to the station, it isn’t far. Just keep moving, folks, step lively, nothing to worry about.”

  After clearing the last of the passengers, Dolowicz was able to cover ground more quickly. His anger renewed itself at the sight of the nine cars that had been cut away standing uselessly, hulkingly, their weak emergency lights giving them a pathetic half-life. A pocket of gas backed up against his heart and caused him a moment of intense pain. He concentrated on a belch and succeeded in bringing one halfway up his windpipe, giving him relief or the illusion of relief. He pursed his lips and strained his abdominal muscles, but it was useless. The pain returned.

  He plodded on doggedly, head down, until, a hundred yards forward, he looked up to see the pale illumination in the first car of Pelham One Two Three. He fell into a half trot, but almost immediately slowed to a walk again. As he came closer, he saw that the rear storm door was open and that a man was standing in it, like a cut-out silhouette. It occurred to him to approach cautiously, but the warning flashed by, leaving cold rage in its place. Bastards! Daring to monkey with his railroad! He pressed on, massaging his left tit to cozen the pain or dislodge the gas pocket.

  A voice traveled down the tunnel from the mouth of the car: “Stay where you are, Johnny.”

  It was a loud voice, echoing, distorted by the acoustics of the tunnel. Dolowicz stopped dead in his tracks, not in obedience but outrage. Gulping for breath, he shouted back, “Who the fuck are you to give orders?”

  “I said to stay back.”

  “Bullshit,” Dolowicz yelled. “I’m the trainmaster, and I’m coming on board.” He started walking again.

  “I warned you to stay back.” The voice was a shout now, with an edge of violence to it.

  Dolowicz waved a hand at him in dismissal.

  “I warned you, stupid!” The voice was almost a scream.

  Dolowicz looked up at him from a distance of a dozen feet, and in the same instant that he realized the man was pointing something at him, he saw the muzzle flash, bright as a sunburst, and felt a sharp intense pain stitch across his stomach. He had one more conscious thought, a surge of fury at this new indignity added to, laid on top of, the gas pain.

  He never heard the stuttering burst of the gun, racketing off the walls in a prolonged echo. Dead, he staggered two paces backward before lurching to his left and collapsing across the polished rail.

  EIGHT

  ARTIS JAMES

  Transit Patrolman Artis James was out on the street, or, more accurately
, in the lobby of an office building on Park Avenue South, down the street from the Twenty-eighth Street station. He had come up ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes, but actually he was goofing off. He had felt in need of a relaxing interlude of chatter with Abe Rosen, who ran the cigar stand in the building.

  Artis James and Abe Rosen had formed their friendship on a mutual attraction of opposites, and it throve on a diet of kidding based on watchfully modulated ethnic abuse which they managed to keep well this side of accidental (or unconscious) offense. This day they exchanged fifteen minutes of soft insults, as usual, and then Artis took his leave.

  “See you tomorrow, gonif,” Artis said.

  “So long, schwartzer.”

  Artis went out into the sunlight. As he started down the station entrance steps, it didn’t occur to him to bemoan the fact that he was leaving the outside for the duration of his tour of duty. The underground was his element, as the high air was the airman’s, the sea the sailor’s. He was almost through the gate, waving to the change booth clerk, before he remembered that he had turned his radio off. He switched on, and a call came through at once. He cleared his throat and acknowledged.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Sorry, Sarge, I had to go outside, I had an ’Eighty—”

  “That’s no reason to go off your radio.”

  “I had to help this ’Eighty into a cab,” James said glibly. “She was an elderly person and so weak I couldn’t hear her voice. When I put her into a cab, I had to get her address, and in order to hear her, I turned down the radio.”

  “Some story. Never mind. Where are you now?”

  “Twenty-eighth, southbound platform, just going in.”

  “Help maintain order there. Help is on the way. Platform very crowded?”

  Artis noticed a train at the platform, its doors shut. Outside, some people were banging their fists against the doors and windows.

  “I can handle it,” Artis said. “What’s the problem?”

  After a pause, the sergeant said, “Look, don’t react to this. Train has been hijacked. Don’t react. Assistance on the way. Maintain order on the platform, and don’t say very much. Over and out.”

  As soon as Artis appeared on the platform, he was surrounded by passengers demanding that the train open its doors to them.

  “Minor technical problem,” Artis said. “Relax. We’ll have it adjusted soon.”

  “What kind of a technical problem?”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Goddamn mayor oughta be impeached.”

  “Calm down, everybody,” Artis said. “Just be patient, and—”

  At the south end of the station he saw a boil of people climbing up from the roadbed onto the platform. He shook off the passengers and hurried quickly forward. Half a dozen people started babbling in high excitement. While he was trying to calm them down, he saw a young conductor at the end of the platform.

  “The train is hijacked,” the conductor said shrilly. “Get through to somebody. Armed men, with machine guns—”

  Artis held up his hand to stem the flow of the conductor’s hysteria. Shifting the radio on its shoulder strap and bringing it against his mouth, he said, “Patrolman Artis James calling Nerve Center. Patrolman James calling Nerve Center.”

  “Come in, Patrolman James.”

  “There’s at least a hundred passengers coming up off the tracks.” The passengers who had been waiting for the train to open its doors were crowding around him, and mingling with those who had been on the hijacked train. “No way to keep the secret. I’ll get lynched if I continue to pass off that crap about technical difficulty. Can’t you put it on the station speaker?”

  “Communications Desk will have something coming over in a couple of minutes. Just keep them quiet, and get everybody away from the south end of the platform.”

  The conductor was screaming at him. “…down the track. I warned him, but—”

  “Hold on,” Artis said into the radio, and then to the conductor: “Say that again.”

  “The Grand Central trainmaster went down the track. To the train.”

  “Sarge, the conductor says a man identified as the Grand Central trainmaster went down the track. Hold on…. How long ago was that, Conductor?”

  “I’m not sure,” the conductor said. “A few minutes?”

  Passengers spoke up in a dissonant chorus, some disputing, others supporting the conductor’s time estimate.

  “Cool it,” Artis said. “Cool the noise.” He spoke into the radio. “A few minutes ago. Come in.”

  “Jesus. He’s nuts. Look, James, you better go after him. See if you can catch him and turn him back. Move fast, but don’t in any way get involved with the criminals, and exercise extreme caution. Repeat. Exercise extreme caution. Acknowledge.”

  “On my way. Over and out.”

  Artis James had been on the roadbed just once before in the line of duty. With another cop he had chased three kids who had snatched a purse and taken off down the track. The chase had been exhilarating, and there was a sense of community in working with a partner. The trains had been running, of course, which added a spice of danger. Eventually, they had picked the three kids up at gunpoint, trying to force an emergency exit, and led them back quaking to the station.

  But this wasn’t much fun. The darkened tunnel was haunted by shadows, and although the danger from running trains was eliminated, he was heading toward a band of heavily armed criminals. And no matter how much assistance was on the way, right now he was on his own. It occurred to him that if he had just spent a few extra minutes rapping with Abe Rosen, some other lucky cop might have drawn this assignment. But the thought shamed him, and mindful of the trainmaster plunging ahead into mortal danger, he picked up his pace. After skirting the ghostly cut cars of Pelham One Two Three lying dead on the track, he began to run, taking long, loping steps, coming down softly on his toes and the balls of his feet.

  He was puffing by the time the lights of the front car of Pelham One Two Three came into view. A short while later he made out a wavering shape some distance in front of him on the roadbed. He started running again, bent over for concealment, and ahead of him the trainmaster took on bulky definition. Suddenly there were voices in the tunnel, angry and echoing. He kept on, but more prudently than before, advancing from pillar to pillar, taking momentary shelter before moving on.

  He was sixty or seventy feet from the car, behind a pillar, when a staccato burst of gunfire reverberated through the tunnel, repeating itself like a funhouse echo. Blinded by the muzzle flash, his heart pounding, he pressed himself into the ungiving metal of the pillar.

  It must have been a minute before he risked peering around the edge of the pillar. A haze hung in the air near the rear of the car. There were several figures looking out of the storm door. The trainmaster was sprawled on the track. He thought for just a moment of trying to work his way back to safer ground, but the danger of being seen was too great. Instead, first taking the precaution of turning the volume down, he unslung his radio and, in a whisper, called the Nerve Center.

  “Speak up, ferchrisesake, can’t hardly hear you.”

  Whispering, he explained why he had to whisper, and proceeded to describe the shooting of the trainmaster.

  “So far as you can tell he’s dead?”

  He strained to hear the voice of the sergeant. It was dispassionate; it was collecting facts. “He’s lying there,” Artis said, “and they shot him with a machine gun, so he must be dead.”

  “You sure he’s dead?”

  “Must be,” Artis said. “You expect me to go up there and feel his pulse?”

  “Take it easy. Go back to the station and await further instructions.”

  “That’s it,” Artis whispered urgently. “If I move, they see me.”

  “Oh. Then stay where you are until assistance arrives. But take no action, no action without specific instructions. Check me.”

  “I check you. Stay put, and no ac
tion. Right?”

  “Good enough. Over and out.”

  RYDER

  A dead soldier, Ryder thought, peering through the rear door, the other side has suffered a casualty. The body might have been a fat doll, kewpie eyes squeezed shut, pudgy hands clasped to a stomach pouring out red sawdust. The head lay across a rail, the upturned cheek tinged green in the reflection of a signal light.

  “I wasted him,” Joe Welcome said. Through the slits in his mask his eyes were glowing. “The bastard kept on coming after I warned him. I stitched him right across the belly.”

  Ryder studied the body. Almost to himself he said, “He’s dead,” speaking out of long experience.

  “Bet your ass,” Welcome said. “Five, six slugs, right in the bull’s-eye.”

  Ryder looked out past the body—it didn’t count for anything; it was no longer a threat, if it had ever been—at the terrain: the roadbed, the burnished tracks, the grimy walls, the pillars that might conceal a man. There was no movement, only the becalmed darkness of the tunnel fitfully relieved by the bright signals, the lights marking the telephones, the power boxes, the emergency exits.

  “I got the action started,” Welcome said. He was taking short, shallow breaths, and the nylon sucked into and out of his mouth. “I got us on the scoreboard.”

  He was all revved up, Ryder thought, his blood mixture enriched by a killing. “Tell Steever to come back here. I want you and Steever to change places.”