The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  “You think I’ve been sitting on my ass? They’re all on their way over. But it’s a waste of time. After all the bullshitting is over, we’ll still do it my way.”

  “—and Susan.”

  “What the hell do we need Susan for?”

  “For domestic tranquillity.”

  The phone slammed in the mayor’s ear. Damn Murray Lasalle. Shit Murray Lasalle. He was brilliant and a bear for work and worth his weight in ruthlessness, but he had to learn to curb his arrogant impatience with slower-moving Christian minds. Well, maybe this was the time to teach him that other people could make decisions, too. And that’s what he would do, sick as he was.

  POLICE COMMISSIONER

  From the rear seat of his limousine, speeding uptown on the FDR Drive, the police commissioner spoke to the borough commander at the scene of the crime.

  “What’s it like there?” the commissioner said.

  “Murder,” the borough commander said. “As usual, they came out of the woodwork. I estimate twenty thousand spectators, and more pouring in all the time. I’m praying for a hailstorm.”

  The commissioner leaned to his right for a glimpse of the clear blue sky over the East River. He straightened up at once. He was an incorruptible and intelligent man who had come all the way up from patrolman, and although he understood that the luxurious black limousine was a valid, even necessary, prerogative of his rank, he would not sit in it comfortably, as though in this way to dissociate himself from unseemly opulence.

  “Got barriers up?” he said to the borough commander.

  “Certainly. And muscle courtesy of the Tactical Police Force. We’re holding our own and trying to push new arrivals off into the side streets. I mean push. We’re not going to be winning any new friends.”

  “Traffic?”

  “I’ve placed a patrolman at every intersection from Thirty-fourth to Fourteenth, and crosstown from Fifth to Second. I suppose the backwash is making trouble elsewhere, but the immediate area is under control.”

  “Your second in command?”

  “DCI Daniels of Special Operations Division. He’s breathing fire. He wants to go into the tunnel and clean those bastards out. So do I.”

  “Don’t let me hear that kind of talk,” the commissioner said sharply. “Stand by, take up tactical positions, and await further instructions. Nothing more.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what we’re doing. All I’m saying is that it goes against my grain.”

  “Never mind your grain. Do you have all the emergency exits manned up top?”

  “Both sides of the street, as far south as Union Square. I’ve got about fifty men in the tunnel—north and south of the train, well concealed. All wearing vests and armed with machine guns, riot guns, tear gas, Mace, the whole goddamn arsenal. And a half-dozen snipers with night scopes. We could fight the Vietnam War down there.”

  “Just make sure it’s understood that nobody is to move. Those people will kill. They proved it by killing that trainman. We’re taking all their threats seriously.”

  “Those are my orders, sir.” The borough commander paused. “You know, sir, some of the snipers report that they can see people moving around in the car fairly freely. A couple south of the train say that the hijacker in the motorman’s cab is exposed and an easy shot.”

  “No, damn it. You want to get all those passengers massacred? I repeat—we take their threats seriously.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “See you remember it.” The commissioner checked the progress of his car against the landmarks in the river. The driver, with his siren screaming, was weaving through the traffic on the drive like a broken field runner. “Did you interrogate the passengers they turned loose?”

  “Yes, sir, as many as we could latch onto. Most of them melted away or simply got swallowed up in the crowd. The others are contradictory witnesses. But the conductor, a nice young Irish kid, is helpful. We know how many took the train, and how—”

  “A dozen?”

  “Four. Just four of them, wearing stocking masks, armed with what would appear to be Thompson submachine guns. Dressed in black raincoats and black hats. According to the conductor, they’re well organized and familiar with the methods of subway operation.”

  “Yes. You might put somebody on the files of discharged transit employees. Not that it will help at the moment.”

  “I’ll ask the transit police to take it on. There are a few hundred of them here, too. Including their chief. In person.”

  “I want him treated with the utmost respect.”

  “Communications are awkward. TA Command Center is the only direct contact with the hijacked car. The DCI has set up his command post in the motorman’s cab of a train standing in the Twenty-eighth Street station, and he can use its radio to talk to the Command Center, but not the hijacked car. Standard two-way radio—he can hear the Command Center’s end of a conversation with the hijackers, but not the hijackers’. I asked the hijackers through Command Center if they would allow us to communicate with them directly by bullhorn in the tunnel, and they refused flatly. They like it complicated.”

  The commissioner braced himself as the limousine eased off the drive, its siren scattering cars like frightened birds. “We’re leaving the drive. Anything further?”

  “Another warning from the hijackers about the time limit. They remain firm on it. Three thirteen.”

  “Who is the person in direct contact with them?”

  “A TA police lieutenant. Seems sharp, according to the DCI. What reason would those people have for not agreeing to bullhorns?”

  “Psychological, I guess. Show us who’s boss. I’m signing off now, Charlie. Keep everything cool, and I’ll be in touch the moment we have a decision.”

  The limousine swung into the climbing driveway adjoining Carl Schurz Park. It barely slowed at the white guard house as the two patrolmen on duty snapped to attention and saluted. At the top of the incline the limousine entered a circular drive at the side of the mansion, with the river visible over a large expanse of lawn, and, beyond it in the near distance, Hellgate Bridge.

  The driver came to a lurching stop behind three other black official limousines. The commissioner jumped out of the car and started on a trot for the verandaed front of the house.

  TEN

  THE CITY: MIXED MEDIA

  Newspaper reporters and photographers arrived at Park Avenue South and Twenty-eighth Street a few minutes after the police themselves; in fact, many police units were still en route. With their special brand of self-assurance they contrived to penetrate the police lines, an agglomeration of wooden barriers, cars, mounted police and the sinewy bodies of patrolmen, most of whom wore the distinctive sky-blue helmets of the Tactical Police Force. The newsmen flowed toward the downtown subway entrances on the southwest and northwest corners. They attempted to enter but were beaten back by the police. Working their way through the lines at the curb, they streamed across Park Avenue South to the uptown entrances. Repulsed again, they recrossed the avenue and began to collar brass.

  “What’s the situation to this moment, Inspector?”

  “I’m not an inspector; I’m a captain. I don’t know anything.”

  “Has the city decided to pay the ransom?”

  “Is the trainman’s body still lying in there?”

  “How can you tell he’s dead?”

  “Who’s in charge of the operation?”

  “I’m not answering any questions,” the captain said. “I don’t know any answers.”

  “Are you under orders not to say anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who issued them?”

  “They weren’t meant to apply to the press. What’s your name, Captain?”

  “Who issued those orders?”

  “I did. Now get lost.”

  “Look, this isn’t Germany, Captain.”

  “Right this minute, it is. It’s Germany.”

  “What’s your name, Captain?”


  “Captain Midnight.”

  “Joe, take a picture of Captain Midnight.”

  Radio reporters, packing tape recorders on their backs and carrying their microphones overhead for protection as they pushed through the crowds, concentrated their fire on “the little man.”

  “Officer, how do you estimate the size of this crowd?”

  “Very large.”

  “The largest you’ve ever seen gathered at the scene of a crime?”

  The TPF man, his back and shoulder muscles straining as he fought to contain a bulge in the line of spectators, grunted his reply. “Looks like it. But you can’t tell about crowds. Might not be.”

  “Would you describe it as an unruly crowd?”

  “Compared to some, I’d have to say it was ruly.”

  “I appreciate that while what you’re doing might not be as dramatic as catching crooks, it’s a very arduous and important part of police work. Congratulations on a good job well done. And what is your name, sir?”

  “Melton.”

  “You’ve just been listening to Officer Milton of the TFP—that’s Tactical Police Force—TFP, here on the scene of the subway hijack at the intersection of Twenty-eighth and Park Avenue South. Thank you, Officer Milton, holding back the crowds. Here’s another gentleman, standing by my side is another gentleman, I believe a plainclothes detective, also helping crowd control. Sir, am I correct in assuming you are a plainclothes detective?”

  “Well, I don’t guess so.”

  “You are not a detective?”

  “I am not.”

  “But, nevertheless, you are helping the police hold back this huge crowd.”

  “I’m not holding nobody back; they’re holding me back. I’d like to get out of here and get to hell home.”

  “I see, sir. My error. Thank you very much. You look like a plainclothes detective. Do you want to tell us your actual line of work?”

  “On welfare.”

  “I mistook you for a detective, as you know. Good luck to you, sir, in your efforts to find your way out of here and reach your home.”

  With a single exception, the television stations put the news of the hijacking on the air within seconds of receiving the story on their news tickers. Most of them broke into the ongoing soap opera, movie or housewife-giveaway show to make the announcement, then went back to their program. Several, less willing to offend their faithful midday audiences, ran a slow-moving strip across the bottom of the screen, thus making it possible to enjoy fact and fiction at the same time. The delinquent channel lagged behind the others by forty-five seconds, unhappily trapped in the middle of a commercial when the flash came through.

  The news departments of the stations—networks and locals—sent crews with mobile equipment winging off downtown. Universal Broadcasting System, the largest of the networks, sent the largest and most plushly equipped crew of any and, in addition, dispatched Stafford Bedrick, their news superstar, in person. Ordinarily, Bedrick covered only the most dignified news events—Presidential inaugurations, assassinations on the ambassadorial level or better—but he had volunteered for this assignment, sensing its vast potential in human interest.

  Some camera crews commandeered offices in buildings overlooking the scene and through their windows shot panoramic views of the crowd; of the surrounding cityscape, with its brick and mortar gleaming frostily in the bright sunlight; of the hundreds of police cars; and, with zoom lenses, of various interesting faces and well-stacked girls. Meanwhile, other crews and reporters circulated at the street level. Most of them, frustrated in their efforts to reach the police command post which had been set up in a parking lot on the southwest corner next to the subway entrance, kept themselves occupied with “man-in-the-street” interviews.

  “And you, sir—” The well-known reporter of city news on a six o’clock telecast thrust his microphone into the face of a man with three chins, a cigar in the mouth, and a sheaf of racing forms bunched in the right, or gesturing, hand. “Do you have some comment on the drama taking place under these very sidewalks?”

  The man stroked his chins and faced head-on to the camera. “What particular part you want me to commentate on?”

  “Suppose we tackle the subject of safety in the subways. Some people feel that our subways are jungles. Any comment?”

  “Jungles?” The man with the cigar spoke in a voice rich in the rhythms of the sidewalk. “In my opinion, however, they’re jungles. Jungles!”

  “In what way are they jungles?”

  “They’re full of wild animals.”

  “Are you a regular user of the subway, sir?”

  “Every single day, if you call that regular. What am I supposed to do—walk from Brooklyn?”

  “Are you apprehensive on these daily rides?”

  “What else?”

  “Would you feel more secure if, instead of eight hours a day, the trains and platforms were manned by the transit police a full twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day minimum.”

  Turning for his laugh to a matrix of thrusting faces behind him, the man dropped his racing charts. The camera followed him meticulously as he scrambled for them in a thicket of legs; the microphone was held low to pick up his effortful grunt. But, by the time he straightened up, he had lost his place to a thin, huge-eyed black boy who had been forced to the front randomly by the pressing crowd.

  “And you, sir, may we have your thoughts about the subway?”

  The boy, eyes cast down, mumbled, “It do the job.”

  “Your opinion is that it do… does the job. I take it, then, that you would disagree with the previous gentleman, who feels that the subway is dangerous?”

  “Oh, it plenty dangerous.”

  “Dirty, gloomy, inadequately cooled or heated?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Crowded?”

  The boy rolled his great eyes. “Man, you know it.”

  “Well, then, summing up—”

  “It do the job.”

  “Thank you, sir. Yes, young lady?”

  “I met you before. A three-alarm fire in Crown Heights, last year?” The young lady was a middle-aged woman with a towering blond beehive coif. “My opinion is it’s a scandal.”

  “What are you referring to specifically?”

  “Everything.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “What’s more specific than everything?”

  “Okay. Thank you.” The reporter was bored. He knew that most of his interviews would be thrown out in favor of more pertinent coverage, although the editors might salvage a brief clip or two for laughs to leaven the grimness of the story. “You, sir, would you stand right here?”

  “Hello, Wendell. Okay if I call you Wendell?”

  “Sir, the hijackers are demanding one million dollars for the release of the hostages. What position do you think the city should take?”

  “I’m not the mayor. But if I was the mayor—God forbid—if I was the mayor, I would run this city better than the mayor runs it.” He frowned at a chorus of cheers and catcalls. “The first thing I would do, if I was mayor, I would get rid of welfare. Next, I would make the streets safe. Next, I would reduce the fares. Next…”

  Wendell converted a yawn into a somewhat strained smile.

  Stafford Bedrick knew how to use his famous face and voice as instruments of his will. He dispatched them as outriders, as laser beams of personality, and they cut a path to the very center of things, the police command post in the parking lot. His entourage followed, beasts of burden laden with cameras, cables and sound equipment.

  “Inspector? Stafford Bedrick. How are you?”

  The borough commander whirled, but outrage was nipped in the bud by instant recognition of a face that was more familiar to him than his own. Almost by reflex, he checked the position of the camera and smiled.

  “You won’t remember it,” Bedrick said with transparent modesty, “but we’ve met a number of times before. When those
hoodlums tried to set fire to that Russian outside their consulate? And I believe when the President addressed the UN?”

  “Sure,” the borough commander said, and prudently turned his smile off; the PC frowned on intimacy with the media, regarding it as a subtle form of corruption. “I’m afraid I’m pretty busy here at the moment, Mr. Bedrick.”

  “Stafford.”

  “Stafford.”

  “I realize that this is not the ideal time for an interview, Inspector—I hope to have that pleasure some time in the future on Summit Talks, my regular show—but perhaps a few words of reassurance that the police are exerting every precaution to protect the lives of the unlucky hostages.”

  “Exerting every precaution.”

  “The burning question of the moment, of course, is being settled a few miles upriver from here at Gracie Mansion. Is it your opinion, Inspector, that the ultimate decision will be to pay the ransom?”

  “Up to them.”

  “As a police officer, if the decision were yours to make, would you pay the ransom?”

  “I do what I’m told.”

  “Discipline is, of course, the handmaiden of duty. Sir, would you care to comment on the rising rumor that this crime is the work of a political group—a revolutionary rip-off, as it were?”

  “I haven’t heard any such rising rumor.”

  “Inspector—” The borough commander’s uniformed driver called to him from the open door of the car. “Radio, sir, the commissioner.”

  The borough commander turned abruptly and made for the car, followed closely by Bedrick and his crew. He entered the car, slammed the door, and rolled up the windows. Reaching for the hand mike, he saw a camera lens pressed against the window. Turning his broad back, he faced the opposite window. Another camera appeared.

  Within five minutes of the announcement of the hijacking on television and radio, the news desk of The New York Times accepted a telephone call from a man who identified himself as Brother Williamus, Minister of Sabotage of BRAM, an acronym for Black Revolutionists of America Movement. In a rich, fruity and rather jovially menacing voice, the Minister of Sabotage said: