The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  Ryder waited, and a new voice came on, slightly out of breath. “What’s this all about?”

  “Identify yourself,” Ryder said.

  “Lieutenant Prescott, Transit Police. Identify yourself.”

  “I’m the man who stole your train, Lieutenant. Ask the desk trainmaster to let you see his notes. Don’t be too long about it.”

  Waiting, Ryder could hear the lieutenant’s breathing. Then: “Prescott to Pelham One Two Three. I read it. You’re crazy.”

  “Very well, I’m crazy. Does that give you comfort? Is it a reason for not taking me seriously?”

  “Look,” Prescott said. “I take you seriously. But there’s no way you can get away with it. You’re underground; you’re in a tunnel.”

  “Lieutenant, look at the seventh point. At precisely three thirteen we’ll begin executing the passengers, one each minute. I suggest that you contact the mayor at once.”

  “I’m a Transit Police lieutenant. How do I go about getting to the mayor?”

  “That’s your problem, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay. I’ll try. Don’t hurt anybody.”

  “Report to me immediately for further instructions after you’ve contacted the mayor. Over and out.”

  SEVEN

  240 CENTRE STREET

  Although the Transit Police have a direct line to Police Headquarters, that old and forbidding building at 240 Centre Street, the call advising of the hijacking of Pelham One Two Three was fed into the 911 line, the emergency system designed to speed up police response to exigent calls. In doing this, the operator who took the call was not expressing disdain for a secondary police force or being evenhandedly democratic, but merely acting on procedure in the interest of efficiency and full employment of the headquarters computer.

  The message containing such information as time of call, location of incident, nature of emergency, was typed into the computer, which performed some twenty-five to thirty operations in three seconds, and delivered a readout to the radio room.

  Granted that stealing a subway train wasn’t an everyday occurrence, nevertheless the dispatcher who handled the call didn’t get overly excited about it. When you dealt with riots, mass murders, catastrophes of every conceivable nature, the alleged theft of a subway train, while it had an intriguingly kinky sound, was thus far nothing to write home about. The dispatcher followed routine procedure.

  The readout informed him which of the dozen or so sector cars patrolling in each of the bordering precincts, the 13th and 14th, were available. He then radioed the designated cars, 13 Boy and 14 David, and instructed them to check out the incident and report back at once. Depending on the report and its judgment of the seriousness of the incident, Planning would order up an appropriate force to cope with the situation, through a rising scale of signals: for example, a Signal 1041 (a sergeant and ten men), 1042 (sergeant and twenty men), 1047 (eight sergeants and forty patrolmen), and including higher ranks as well.

  In less than two minutes, one of the sector cars reported. “Fourteen David to Central. K.”

  “Go ahead,” the dispatcher said. “K.”

  But while the dispatcher was receiving 14 David’s report from the scene, another report was being transmitted on an elevated level. Lieutenant Prescott had contacted Chief Costello of the Transit Police, who had in turn phoned the chief inspector of the NYPD, with whom he was personally acquainted. The chief inspector, who was practically out of the door of his office on his way to catch a plane for a vital conference in Washington at the offices of the Justice Department, turned the matter over immediately to Planning, ordering a major mobilization, which would involve manpower from other boroughs, mainly Brooklyn and the Bronx. Then, regretfully, he left for the airport.

  Patrol cars from the 13th and 14th precincts converged on the affected area to control traffic and open up passage for all arriving police units, which would be rushing to the site by way of predetermined access routes. Such routes are available to expedite delivery of men and vehicles to every part of the city.

  The Tactical Police Force was ordered out to handle the inevitable crowds.

  A police helicopter was ordered into the air.

  Special equipment was issued to members of the Special Operations Division: machine guns, submachine guns, shotguns, tear gas, rifles equipped with scopes for sniper use, bulletproof vests, searchlights, bullhorns. Much of the ammunition would be .22 caliber, to minimize the danger of ricochet casualties among police and bystanders.

  A number of the division’s “big trucks” (the size of a small truck) and “small cars” (the size of a large station wagon) sped to the scene. These vehicles are an awesome arsenal of weapons, rescue equipment, and specialized tools and instruments. Both carry keys for the opening of subway emergency exit grates, and the big trucks carry generators.

  With the possible exception of a limited number of plainclothes detectives who would be scattered inconspicuously on the scene, all the forces would be uniformed. In large and necessarily confused operations, detectives are used sparsely and kept safely in the background, since in the heat of action, and especially if they draw a gun, they may be mistaken for criminals.

  The designated officer in overall charge of the operation was the borough commander. His rank is assistant chief inspector, and his command, known as Manhattan South, encompasses the entire area south of Fifty-ninth Street to the Battery. His headquarters, the borough office, is located in the Police Academy on East Twenty-first Street, little more than a brisk ten-minute walk to the scene of the incident. However, he did not walk. He rode to the scene in an unmarked four-door chauffeur-driven car.

  In all, at the height of the operation, more than 700 police personnel would be involved.

  WELCOME

  With the Thompson hanging down along his right leg, Joe Welcome looked out the window of the rear door. The tunnel was dark and shadowy, with an abandoned look. It was a little spooky, reminding him of a carnival he had been at once, late at night, after everything was shut down. The stillness bugged him. He would have appreciated seeing a piece of paper floating around or even one of those rats that Longman claimed lived in the tunnels. If he saw a rat, he might pop it. At least it would be action.

  He was a sentry with nothing to watch, and he was getting itchy. When they were planning the trick and Ryder was spelling out the assignments, he made it sound important: “sole responsibility for securing our rear.” But it turned out to be dullsville. Not that it was so glamorous up front, either—guarding a bunch of scared-shitless squares—but at least Steever had had a little fun beating on the smartass spade’s head.

  Since then, the passengers were little angels, hardly even moving. Longman and Steever didn’t have anything to do except stand there. He would like it better if the passengers woke up and tried to pull something. Not that they had a chance. They would be chopped meat before they got their ass six inches off the seat, Steever would see to that. Maybe Longman would zap them, and maybe not. Longman was supposed to be a brain, but he was a creep, and he was yellow. Steever had guts, but he had shit where his brains belonged.

  He turned his eyes to the chick in the boots and the funny hat. She looked like talent. Her legs were crossed, one white boot swinging. He followed the leg up to the exposed thigh, smooth and round, in pink panty hose which, if you squinted your eyes a little, looked like naked flesh. And maybe she didn’t know it? He sent his mind traveling the rest of the way up the route, between the lines of the crossed legs, right home to where it all lived—a fine black bush, and a slit like a mouth standing up on one end. If there was an opening, before they got through the job, he would ball that juicy bitch. Joey, you’re one crazy ginney!

  Crazy. Well, he had heard it so many times, maybe it was true. But what was so wrong with crazy? He lived the way he wanted to, and he got his kicks. Crazy? Okay. Who else would be thinking about gash during a million-dollar heist? In the next hour they could all wind up dead. So what would a sane guy want his
last thoughts to be about if not gash—getting ahead in the world?

  He turned back to the tunnel. Nothing. A few green signals on the uptown side, some blue lights… dullsville. What was taking Ryder so long? Himself, he liked fast action; you go in and you get out, no waiting around and no complications.

  Ryder. He wasn’t wild about Ryder, but you had to give him two things: He was a good organizer, and he had guts, for sure. But he was a cold-ass stud. Even in the Organization, where they also had this thing about discipline, not to mention that old-country shit of rispetto, respect, at least they weren’t cold-ass. They were wops, and you always knew what was on a wop’s mind. When a wop was pissed off, he let you know it. You didn’t have to have any kind of a dream book to interpret screaming Sicilian curses. Ryder never raided his voice.

  Not that he liked wops that much either, or he wouldn’t have changed his name. He remembered the judge asking him if he knew that Joseph Welcome was an exact translation of Giuseppe Benvenuto. He needed some big Yid to bring that up. People had been kidding him about it practically since the day he was born. The only one who had ever done it in a nice way was Miss Linscomb, back in high school, and then later the bitch had turned on him.

  Miss Linscomb, Latin I, who had given him a zero on his report card. A real gasser—Giuseppe Benvenuto, with his Latin heritage, getting the all-time low grade for Latin in the school’s history, a zero, a goose egg. But what nobody ever knew was why she did it. She had kept him after class one afternoon, and he began to get ideas. She let him put his hand on her tit and kissed him with her tongue out, but when he went ape and unzipped himself and tried to put his pecker in her hand, she had turned chicken. Giuseppe! How dare you! Clothe yourself at once, and she had turned her back to him. But he was wild. He locked his arms around her waist and rammed himself up against her ass. She started to struggle, but all that did, her tight little ass grinding against him, was to make him come in thirty seconds flat. All over the back of her dress!

  She wasn’t able to report him without a lot of explaining, so she took her revenge with the zero in Latin. He was surprised to see how well he could recall her: a plain pale Protestant broad with little peaky tits and terrific legs and that twitchy tail. It suddenly occurred to him, for the first time, that maybe she didn’t have to rotate her ass like that, that she could have broken away from him without too much trouble. Maybe the only reason she got mad at him and pinned the zero on him was because he came all over her dress?

  Well, it was too late to get smart. No instant replays.

  The boys in the Organization picked up on his name, they had a weakness for those funny nicknames, and so, when he had made his one appearance in the public press—on an assault rap that was dropped for lack of evidence—the newspapers wrote him up as Giuseppe (Joey Welcome) Benvenuto. That was a few weeks before he pulled the stunt that got him fired. The Organization had ordered him to mess up a couple of guys, but instead he offed them. What the hell was the difference—he just wanted to make his bones in a hurry, was all. But they gave him a beautiful reaming out. Not that they gave a shit about the guys he killed, but he had disobeyed orders. Discipline. Instead of admitting he was wrong and promising to be a good boy, he gave them a lot of guff, and next thing he knew he was out on his ass. Fired by the Mafia!

  They never laid a hand on him, so maybe everything you heard about nobody ever leaving the Organization unless it was feet first was a lot of crap. But he had been worried about it, and maybe if it wasn’t for his uncle, his Zio Jimmy, who was a big capo, maybe something would have been done to him. Well, screw all the ginneys. He didn’t need them. He had been making a living on his own without having to soil his hands with work, and if this deal came off he would have a hundred thousand out of it, and that was more money than a lot of ginzos in the Organization made in ten years, and forget the crap you read in the papers.

  His eyes were tearing from all this staring into the tunnel. He dabbed at them with the nylon, then returned to his scrutiny of the deserted track. But it wasn’t deserted. In the distance—he squinted his eyes to sharpen his vision—in the distance, someone was walking the roadbed, coming straight on.

  ANITA LEMOYNE

  The machine guns were freaky, but Anita Lemoyne wasn’t frightened by them. Nobody was going to hurt her; the others, maybe, like the bigmouthed spade, but not her. Now and then she met a man she couldn’t turn on, but not every day. Even if a man didn’t like her particularly, he was sold out by that ounce or two of flesh he wore between his legs. Tough as these gunmen might be, they weren’t about to destroy a commodity whose value they appreciated, if only objectively. So she wasn’t scared, just annoyed, because if this crazy thing didn’t wind itself up pretty soon, it was going to cost her money.

  She sat calmly—she knew how to keep a poker face, just as she knew how not to—but she was beginning to fidget. She couldn’t afford to be hung up in a goddamn subway train three lousy stops away from her destination, hijack or no hijack. The John she was on her way to see was a hundred-and-a-half trick, and he didn’t like people being late. She had once heard him ream out a girl, his pursy little child’s mouth twisting like a worm as he told her, “If we’re able to split a second in our business, I see no reason why a whore should be fifteen minutes late.” And he had turned the girl out and never used her again.

  His business was television, and he was some kind of heavy hot dog in the news end of it. Producer or director or what-all. The indispensable man, to hear him tell it. Maybe he was. At least he lived like it—pad at Number One Fifth, summer house in Southampton, boat, cars and the rest of it. He had a few kinky ideas about sex, but who didn’t? And who was she to question anybody’s preferences? Short of being hurt, which she wouldn’t stand for, there was no dopey turn she wouldn’t try. The television character liked two girls at a time—which was pretty commonplace—and he had worked out a pretty weird series of combinations and permutations, as he called it. Fine with her, though she had been getting the feeling lately, from the things he liked best, that he was an unconscious homo and that if he ever got on to himself, he would make the girls disappear and buy himself a nice young boy.

  But she wasn’t about to tell him so, not as long as the yard-and-a-halves kept rolling in. Which they wouldn’t be doing much longer if she wasn’t to hell out of this mess and on her way to the Astor Place station before much more time went by. It wasn’t only that she would blow a fee. Prissy mouth wouldn’t take it into consideration that she was late because some goons were pointing tommy guns at her. He’d boot her out on her ass just the same and probably tell her that even if they were held up at howitzer point at the network, they would still have split-second timing.

  Her foot, which up to now hadn’t stopped kicking to the rhythm of her impatience, suddenly froze. Could she con one of those four bastards into letting her go? Crazy—but how could you tell if you didn’t try? Hadn’t the one at the rear been eyeballing her ever since she got on the train? And was still doing it, from fifty or sixty feet away? She could recall what he looked like before he put on the mask: a ginzo, a Latin lover, pretty in the face. She knew the type—a creep, but cunt crazy. Okay—but how was she supposed to operate when he was half a mile away. One of the other three? The tall one, the leader, was out of sight in the motorman’s cab. The heavyset one or the nervous one? Maybe, though neither of them had given her a decent look so far. Still, she hadn’t really been working at it; she hadn’t turned it all on yet.

  The creep suddenly began to shout. He had the rear door open, with the machine gun stuck through it, and he was beating his gums at a high-decibel level out into the tunnel.

  LONGMAN

  First blood.

  That was the traditional railroad term describing the first time an engineer killed someone on the tracks, and Longman had applied it, somewhat erroneously, he realized, to Steever hitting the loudmouthed spade with his gun. He avoided looking at the victim, sitting there and dabbing at his face
with a bloody handkerchief, but out of sight was not quite out of mind, and his legs were still a little shaky. Steever’s blow, so calmly delivered, tuned up his sense of disbelief again. How, if he had been in his right mind, how could Ryder ever have talked him into it? How could he have let Ryder hypnotize him out of his living mind?

  But was that what really happened? Had he meekly followed Ryder against his own will? Standing here now at the front of the car, with the submachine gun an alien weight in numb hands, sweating lightly but steadily under his mask, he admitted that he had not been so passive as he wanted to believe. In fact, he had cooperated eagerly. And he had been conning himself when he pretended that it was all fun and games, a running gag to divert them as they drank their weekly beer after the unemployment office. The truth was that Ryder had tacitly conceded that the hijack was conceivable; what remained was whether or not it was workable. Thus, Ryder’s probings, his goadings, were entirely serious, leading up to a decision for or against commitment, and Longman knew it. Why, then, had he gone the route? Well, for one thing, Ryder had excited him and stimulated his imagination. But beyond that, he wanted to earn Ryder’s regard, it was important to appear competent and intelligent and even courageous in Ryder’s eyes. Finally, as he had once rationalized it, Ryder was a natural leader, and he himself was a natural follower, perhaps even a hero worshiper.

  He recalled his surprise, the week following the first mention of the subject, when Ryder broached it directly.

  “I’ve been thinking about the subway hijack. It seems preposterous.”

  “Not at all,” Longman said, and didn’t realize until much later that he had risen to Ryder’s bait. “It could really be pulled off.”

  Ryder began to ask questions, and presently Longman began to see the vagueness of the plan he had worked out. Ryder put his finger on the imperfections with uncanny skill, and Longman, challenged and wanting to prove himself to Ryder, found himself sweating out the answers. For example, Ryder had pointed out that a force of approximately thirty men would be required to keep the passengers in all ten cars under control. Longman was stunned to realize how impractical he had been about such a basic point, but he had almost immediately come up with a solution—cut the first car out of the train. Ryder had nodded and said, “Yes, a dozen hostages give you as much leverage as a hundred.” But he was not always so successful.