The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  The borough commander looked at his watch: 3:10. He looked at it again almost immediately. Still 3:10, but the sweep second hand was racing at high speed. He looked southward down the avenue and then at his watch again.

  “They can’t make it,” he muttered.

  A hand tapped him on the back. It belonged to Murray Lasalle. Beside him, the mayor was smiling, but he was pale and drawn, and his eyes were tearing and half-shut. He was leaning wearily against the commissioner.

  Lasalle said, “The mayor is going down into the tunnel with a bullhorn to make a personal appeal to the hijackers.”

  The borough commander shook his head. “No can do.”

  Lasalle said, “I wasn’t asking for your permission. All I want you to do is to make the arrangements.”

  The borough commander looked at the commissioner, whose features were absolutely blank. He read the commissioner’s expression as a hands-off policy, and that suited him well enough.

  “Sir,” he said to the mayor, “I appreciate your concern in this matter.” He paused, marveling at the diplomacy of his language. “But it’s out of the question. Not only for your own safety, but for the safety of the hostages.”

  He saw the commissioner nod his head minimally. The mayor, too, was nodding, but whether in agreement or from sheer physical weakness, he couldn’t tell.

  Lasalle eyed him briefly, then turned to the commissioner. “Mr. Commissioner, order this man to comply.”

  “No.” It was the mayor, his voice firm. “The officer is right. It would only louse things up and maybe get me shot in the bargain.”

  Lasalle said ominously, “Sam, I warn you—”

  “I’m going home, Murray,” the mayor said. He reached into his pocket, took out a scarlet woolen stocking cap, and pulled it down over his ears.

  “Jesus,” Lasalle said, “have you flipped?” The mayor started to walk off. Lasalle chased after him. “Sam, for God’s sake, since when does a politician wear a hat with a hundred thousand people watching him?”

  The commissioner said, “Carry on, Charlie. I’ll see them off and be right back. You’re running the show.”

  The borough commander nodded, remembering that it was the mayor, not the commissioner, who had scotched Lasalle. Maybe the commissioner would have spoken up if the mayor hadn’t jumped in, but still, he would have felt better if the commissioner had been faster on the draw.

  A siren screamed on the avenue. The borough commander whirled around, but the siren suddenly died.

  Someone said, “Burglar warning on a parked car.”

  The borough commander looked at his watch: 3:12. “That TA lieutenant had the right idea.” He turned to the walkie-talkie man. “Signal the DCI. Tell him to get word to the hijackers that the money has arrived.”

  FOURTEEN

  RYDER

  Ryder switched on the overhead light in the cab and looked at his watch: 3:12. In sixty seconds he would kill a hostage.

  TOM BERRY

  Tom Berry felt rage erupt unbidden from some deep volcanic core inside him. He recognized it as macho, atavistic maleness, a primitive anger at being humiliated and its concomitant urge to strike back, to prove his masculinity.

  For a dizzy moment he was tensed to spring, his vocal cords vibrating to a wild, unreleased scream. But nothing happened. The even stronger atavism of survival held him back, and he subsided. Trembling, he began to comb his fingers nervously through his long blond hair. Instinct had elected against self-slaughter. He couldn’t go it alone.

  But, he thought slyly, in union there was strength. The other passengers. Swiftly, he formulated a plan for concerted action and passed it along by telepathy. He warned them to wait for his signal. One by one, expressionless, they acknowledged by thought wave. Ready?

  He brought his hand away from his hair in a sharp downward slash, and the plan went into action. The diversion unit acted first: The wino lady tumbled off her seat into the aisle; the old man feigned a heart attack; the hustler stripped off her pantyhose. The mother and her boys went to the aid of the wino lady, who produced a switchblade from the infinite layers of her clothing and passed it to the mother. The stout black lady got up and chafed the old man’s wrists, her bulk effectively blocking out the line of sight between the hijackers at the front and center of the car. Her hair pie exposed, the hustler undulated toward the Latin lover boy.

  At the precise instant when she threw her pantyhose into his face and disarmed him with a vicious judo chop, the assault force, led by the militant spade, joined the action. Separating into two groups, one squad of three knocked down the hijacker at the front of the car and then made way for the theater critic, who fell on him and knocked the breath out of him. The main force stormed down the aisle toward the heavyset hijacker at the rear. His finger tightened on the trigger of his submachine gun, but before he could fire the mother of the boys, throwing from behind her ear, sent the switchblade whizzing the length of the car. With dazzling accuracy, the blade pinned the heavyset man’s hand to the butt of the gun. An instant later he disappeared under a half dozen eager bodies.

  Berry himself was waiting for the leader to appear. When he rushed out of the cab, he simply put out a deft foot, and the leader went crashing to the floor, the gun jarring loose from his grip. He snaked out a hand for it, but the old man was too fast for him. Scooping it up, he trained it on the leader’s chest.

  “Don’t shoot,” Berry said quietly. “This one is mine.”

  The leader got up and came on in a maddened rush, his fists swinging. Berry measured him coolly and threw a perfect overhand right. The leader went down with a crash, twitched once, and then lay still. The cheering passengers lifted Berry to their shoulders and began a triumphal processional through the aisle of the car….

  Breathless from the whirlwind action, Berry inhaled deeply and thought: In fantasy there is self-preservation. A man’s a man for all that, isn’t he, without having to get himself killed to prove it?

  CLIVE PRESCOTT

  “Pelham One Two Three. Come in, Pelham One Two Three.” Prescott’s voice was vibrant with emotion.

  “Pelham One Two Three to Command Center. I read you.” The leader’s voice, as always, was calm and unhurried.

  “The money has arrived,” Prescott said. “Repeat: The money has arrived.”

  “Yes. All right.” A pause. “You made it just on the tick.”

  A flat statement of fact. No emotion. Prescott was outraged, remembering the quaver in the DCI’s voice when he relayed the information, remembering how his own feeling of relief had left him trembling. But the leader was impervious to feelings. Ice water for blood. Or psycho. He had to be psycho.

  “And if we went a tick further,” Prescott said, “you’d have knocked off an innocent person?”

  “Yes.”

  “For a tick. Is that all a life is worth?”

  “I will now give you instructions for delivery of the money. You will follow them to the letter. Acknowledge.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I want two policemen to walk down the track. One to carry the bag with the money, the other to carry a lit flashlight. Acknowledge.”

  “Two cops, one with the money, one with a flashlight. What kind of cops—Transit or NYPD?”

  “No difference. The one with the light will flash it continuously from side to side. When they reach the car, the rear door will open. The one with the money will toss the bag onto the floor of the car. Then both of them will turn around and walk back to the station. Acknowledge.”

  “Check. That’s it?”

  “That’s it. But keep in mind that the ground rules remain in full effect. Any action on the part of the police, any wrong move, and we’ll kill a hostage.”

  “Yeah,” Prescott said. “I could have guessed that part of it.”

  “You have ten minutes to deliver the money. If it isn’t here by then—”

  “Yeah,” Prescott said. “You’ll kill a hostage. It’s getting monotonous. We ne
ed more than ten minutes. They can’t walk it that fast.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Give us fifteen,” Prescott said. “It’s a hard walk on the roadbed, and one of them will be carrying a heavy package. Make it fifteen.”

  “Ten minutes. No further discussion. When we have the money in hand, I’ll call you back with final instructions.”

  “Final instructions for what? Oh, the getaway. You’ll never be able to pull it off.”

  “Check your watch, Lieutenant. I’ve got three fourteen. That gives you until three twenty-four to deliver. Over.”

  “Over,” Prescott said. “Over, you bastard!”

  PATROLMAN WENTWORTH

  Patrolman Wentworth, pushing the accelerator to the floor in the wake of the roaring motorcycle escort, reached Union Square at 3:15:30, whipped through the rightward dogleg bounded by Klein’s to the east and Union Square park to the west, and sailed through an open route up the Avenue to 28th Street in forty seconds. A lieutenant, no less, signaled a U-turn. He cornered sharply, jolted the center ramp with his left rear tire, and pulled up in a rubber-burning stop in the parking lot as the motorcycle escort tailed away.

  Wentworth recognized the borough commander, coming toward them in a lumbering heavyweight trot. From the side of his mouth, Wentworth said, “We’re in fast company, Al. I figure for our fine work he hands us a two-grade promotion on the spot.”

  The borough commander, breathing hard, yanked Ricci’s door open and shouted, “Throw that goddamn bag out!”

  Ricci, flustered, gave the bag a heave. It struck the borough commander and buckled his knees. He picked it up and tossed it to two cops who were standing by—a TPF patrolman in blue helmet and a TA sergeant.

  “Move it,” the borough commander shouted. “You got about eight and a half minutes. Never mind the fucking salutes. Take off!”

  The TPF cop hiked the bag over his shoulder and, with the TA sergeant beside him, ran to the subway entrance. The borough commander watched the sky-blue helmet and the serge cap disappear down the stairs, then turned briefly to Wentworth and Ricci.

  “Don’t hang around here,” he said. “We got too many cops as it is. Report in to your dispatcher and go back to work.”

  Wentworth put the car in gear and drew out of the crowded command post sector. “Inspector Gracious,” Wentworth said to Ricci, “he sure has a heartwarming way of saying thanks.”

  “Jumped two grades,” Ricci said. “It’s a wonder he didn’t bust us back down to probationary.”

  Wentworth swung southward onto Park Avenue South. “Now you wish I made that turn, like I said, and run away with all the money?”

  “I wish,” Ricci said gloomily, and reached for his microphone.

  “Bust your ass, and not so much as a well done or thank you. So it wasn’t practical to run away with the money, but would anybody know if we dipped in for a thousand or two?”

  “The hijackers would have reported the missing money,” Ricci said, “and we’d be up the creek.”

  Ricci spoke to the dispatcher. Wentworth waited until he signed off. “I’m sorry we didn’t boost a few packages, I honestly mean it. But the hijackers would holler police corruption, and you think anybody would take our word against the word of those bums? Never! That’s how much they trust New York’s Finest. I wish I was a criminal, so I could win a little respect from somebody.”

  SERGEANT MISKOWSKY

  The only previous time TA Sergeant Miskowsky had been on the track in his eleven years on the force had been when, as a patrolman, he had chased a couple of drunks who had taken it into their dumb heads to jump off the platform and gallivant down the tunnel. He remembered being scared stiff about stumbling and falling into the power rail as he ran down the track after the drunks, who were whooping it up as they staggered along the roadbed. Eventually, he had chased them up onto the next platform, where they ran into the arms of another TA patrolman.

  He felt spooked now, and the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. The tunnel was dark, except for the signal lights, bright and green as emeralds. It should have been very quiet, but it wasn’t—the wind made a soft noise, and there were odd rustlings that he couldn’t identify. After they passed the nine empty cars of Pelham One Two Three, he knew that the tunnel was crawling with cops. Every once in a while you could make one out in the shadows, and a couple of times he could have sworn he heard several of them inhale at the same time. Spooky as hell. Not that the TPF cop seemed to be affected by it. He loped along easily, as if the money slung over his shoulder was weightless.

  He held his five-cell flashlight tightly in his hand—they would be in one beautiful jam if he dropped it—swinging it slowly from side to side, touching the rails, the rust-and-dirt colored roadbed, the streaked walls. They were making good time, but Miskowsky was beginning to suck wind. The TPF cop, even with his burden, was breathing like a baby.

  “There she is,” the TPF cop said.

  Miskowsky saw the pale emanation of light down the tunnel and began to sweat. “You realize we’re walking right straight into four submachine guns?”

  “Hell, yes,” the TPF cop said. “It’s got me pissing.” He winked cheerfully.

  “Not that there’s any real danger. We’re just the messenger boys.”

  “I guess,” the TPF cop said indifferently. He hiked the canvas bag to a new position on his shoulder. “At that, you know, twenty-five or so pounds, it’s not so much weight for a million bucks.”

  Miskowsky laughed nervously. “I just thought of a hell of a note—suppose we got mugged. You know what I mean? Suppose a couple of muggers…” But the thought was too frivolous to pursue; it would put him in a bad light.

  “That’s not so funny,” the TPF cop said. “A police officer I know, he did get mugged last week, when he was off duty. Slipped up on him from behind, and coldcocked him with a steel rod wrapped in a newspaper. Took his wallet, his credit cards, his gun. The gun, that’s serious.”

  “Well, we’re in uniform. They don’t go around mugging cops in uniform.”

  “Not yet. That day will come.”

  “Somebody in the rear door of the car,” the TPF cop said. “See him?”

  “Jesus,” Miskowsky said. “I hope he knows it’s us. I hope he don’t get confused and start shooting.”

  “Not yet,” the TPF cop said.

  “What do you mean, not yet?”

  “Not till he can see the whites of our eyes.” The TPF cop glanced sidelong at Miskowsky and laughed softly.

  ARTIS JAMES

  Artis James was numb. He felt as if he had been in the tunnel forever and would remain forever. It had become his element. Like the fish’s element was the water, his element was the tunnel—an underground ocean, dark, damp, whispering.

  He did not dare look behind him for fear of what the shadows might contain. Even the car ahead was more reassuring, because it was a known quantity. He turned the peak of his cap to the rear and put his eye to the edge of the pillar as if it were a vertical keyhole and saw part of a figure come into view, half of the head, the right shoulder. It remained for about ten seconds, then withdrew. It kept returning at intervals of a minute or so, and Artis knew it was the rear lookout checking the track, his submachine gun muzzle pointed forward like an exploring antenna. The second time the figure appeared it occurred to Artis that against the light in the car it made a good target for somebody. Granted, the revolver was inaccurate at that distance, except for an exceptionally good shot. Like himself, for instance. Given time to aim carefully, bracing his gun and wrist against the edge of the pillar, he knew he could pick it off.

  He tried to remember the exact orders he had been given by the Operations sergeant. Stay put? Something like that: Stay put and no action. Still, if he could offer a dead criminal as an apology, could they penalize him for not obeying his orders to the letter? When the blocky figure next showed itself in the door Artis’ revolver was in his hand, the barrel resting on the wrist of his left
hand. He lined it up in the sight, watched it withdraw, and returned the revolver to his holster. But he drew it again at once and took up his firing position. When the figure next came into alignment, he squeezed the trigger.

  With the safety off he would have had himself one dead criminal. After the figure withdrew, he flicked the safety on and off a few times, for no good reason, and reholstered the revolver. But he couldn’t be sure the last flick hadn’t left the safety on fire, so he drew again and checked. It had been on safety; he was too careful with a gun to make that kind of mistake. He held onto the gun, and it was hanging by his side the next time the figure showed. After it disappeared, he lined up on the doorway, and this time, for kicks, he flipped the safety to fire.

  When the figure reappeared, it lined up in his sight as if by appointment. Artis drew a deep breath and squeezed off. The shot echoed through the tunnel like a bomb explosion, and he heard, or thought he did, the tinkle of glass as the bullet drilled through the window. He saw the figure pull back sharply, and he knew he had scored a hit. Then the tunnel became a madhouse of racketing gunfire and muzzle flash bouncing spitefully off the walls. He dug in behind his pillar as bullets spanged toward him, and he was sure that if he wasn’t killed by the hijacker he would catch it from behind if the cops in the tunnel returned the fire.

  FIFTEEN

  SERGEANT MISKOWSKY

  When the shot rang out, Sergeant Miskowsky screamed, “They’re shooting at us,” and dropped to the roadbed, pulling the TPF cop down with him. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. Miskowsky buried his head in his arms, and there was a second burst.