The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  Ryder had merely nodded incuriously, but the dealer had gone on.

  “I wish somebody would take him off my hands and save me the trouble of killing him,” the dealer said with morose humor. Then, looking at Ryder thoughtfully: “Maybe you’ll do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know what. It just occurred to me—you’re buying four tommy guns. You got all your personnel picked out?”

  Ryder said that he hadn’t and that he was open to suggestion. It was typical of him, he thought now, that he had given armament priority over people.

  “So maybe you’d be interested in this maniac?”

  “You’re not exactly making him sound like attractive merchandise.”

  “I’m a sincere man. Right?” The dealer paused and, when Ryder stared at him unresponsively, shrugged and went on. “This boy happens to be a square peg in a round hole. I’ve got him out in Jersey running my warehouse, but he’s bored. He’s an action character, a swinging dick. If I was ripping something off, if I needed a gun, a soldier, I would hire him right away. If I had a submachine gun, for instance, that needed a shooter, I wouldn’t hesitate to put him behind it. Guts to burn.”

  “But crazy.”

  “Only a little. Crazy is a way of speaking, I don’t mean psychotic. Wild. Uninhibited, say. But gutty and tough and…” He cast about for a word, and brought it out with a look of surprise. “And honest. Honest.”

  Ryder smiled. “You think I’m going to do honest work with those tommies?”

  “What you’re going to do with them is not my business. But if you’re in the market for a shooter, this boy could fill the specifications. By honest, I mean that he is not a double crosser, that he won’t sell somebody out. That’s not so easy to find these days. Does that part hit you?”

  “It’s a consideration, unless he’s too honest.”

  “Nobody is too honest,” the dealer said flatly. “Look, can it hurt to take a look at him?”

  Ryder had taken his look the following week. The boy was cocky and tough and too intense for comfort, but Ryder didn’t regard these qualities as serious drawbacks. The main question was whether or not he could take orders, and on this point Ryder had never been completely satisfied.

  Eventually, he brought up the Organization. “I understand you left them to go into business for yourself. But you’re working for somebody.”

  “He told you that, the boss?” The boy looked contemptuous. “That’s a bunch of crap. I quit them because they’re a bunch of old fuckers, and they got old-fashioned ways. I hope what you got in mind ain’t old-fashioned.”

  “I wouldn’t say so. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever been done before.”

  “What they call unprecedented?”

  “It’s dangerous,” Ryder said, watching the boy closely. “You could get killed.”

  Welcome shrugged. “I didn’t expect you were offering a hundred gees for something where you couldn’t get hurt.” He fastened his brightly glowing eyes on Ryder and said aggressively, “I don’t scare. Even the Organization didn’t scare me.”

  Ryder nodded. “I believe you. Can you take orders?”

  “Depends on who’s giving them.”

  Ryder curled his index finger in and touched it to his chest.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Welcome said. “Right now I can’t promise. I don’t know you, you know?”

  “Fair enough,” Ryder said. “Let’s talk about it again in a few days.”

  “You’re a quiet stud,” Welcome said. “And I’m a loudmouth. But quiet don’t have to be bad. The boss told me a few things about you. You had a career. I respect that.”

  The following week, after another talk, and not entirely without misgivings, Ryder signed Welcome on. Meanwhile, he had met Steever, and about Steever he had had few reservations. He, too, had come recommended by the weapons dealer.

  “Fellow came looking for work. Business is slow, so I couldn’t put him on. Have a talk with him. Looks like a good soldier.”

  In the caste system of the underworld, Steever was a heavy, as opposed to someone like Longman, who would be classified as a brain. Ryder probed his background thoroughly. He had come originally from the Midwest, had graduated from petty theft and strong-arm work to armed robbery, and had served time once, appropriately enough, when he had stepped out of his class and attempted a confidence hustle. Since then he had been arrested seven or eight times and been brought to trial twice, but had no additional convictions. About Steever, Ryder had no doubt that he would take orders.

  “If it works,” Ryder said, “you’ll make a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “That’s a big score.”

  “You’ll earn it. It’s a high-risk job.”

  “It figures,” Steever said, meaning, Fair enough, I don’t expect something for nothing.

  And so, for better or worse, he had his army.

  MURRAY LASALLE

  Murray Lasalle allowed his secretary to look up the number of the bank for him but warned her that he wanted to initiate the call himself; it was no time for protocol, although, in normal circumstances, he knew its value and exploited it. The secretary, an old Civil Service war-horse, was miffed at this expropriation of her rights and became even more so when Lasalle, sitting on the edge of a desk in the historic downstairs room that had once been Archibald Grade’s salon, urged her to “move her ass.” Since she had begun working for Murray Lasalle, her anti-Semitism, nurtured in her girlhood in the rich culture of an Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn, but tempered by her years of service with a spectrum of people she thought of as “all kinds,” had undergone a virulent rebirth.

  Lasalle dialed the number with impatient flicks of his finger and told the switchboard operator that the mayor’s office was calling, that it was an emergency, and that he must be put through to the chairman of the board immediately. He was connected with the chairman’s secretary.

  “The chairman is on another phone,” the secretary said. “He’ll be happy to speak to you as soon as—”

  “I don’t care whether he’s happy about it or not. I want to speak to him right this very instant.”

  The secretary fielded his rudeness smoothly. “He is engaged in an overseas call, sir. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Don’t back talk me, sister. This is life or death, seventeen lives, minimum. So you better break in, and no more back talk.”

  “I’m not permitted to do that, sir.”

  “Look, if you don’t get your ass inside his office and get his attention, you’re going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for criminal obstruction of the law.”

  “Hold on, sir.” For the first time, the secretary’s voice faltered. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk, and then a plummy voice filled his ear, “Murray! How are you, old man? Rich Tompkins here. What’s the flap, Murray?”

  “How the hell did I get you? I asked for the boss, goddammit, not his lousy press agent.”

  “Murray!”

  Protest, terror, a prayer for mercy were contained in those two syllables, as Lasalle had known there would be; he had struck at the soft underbelly. Rich Tompkins was vice-president in charge of public relations for Gotham National Trust, a position of importance and dignity, the chief purpose of which consisted in suppressing matter adulterous to the bank’s image of purity from becoming public knowledge. He was a well-thought-of conservative pillar of the banking community, but he had a disreputable skeleton hidden in the closet of his past—for five mad months, after graduating from Princeton and before finding his true métier, he had worked as a movie press agent. It was the equivalent, in his world, of having been Jew or a priest, and he lived in a permanent state of fear that his incriminatory secret would be revealed and destroy everything: hundred thou salary, Greenwich estate, a forty-foot yacht, lunches with the governor of the Stock Exchange…. He had been a scholarship student at Princeton and had no ancestral fundame
nt of family or finances. Stripped of his position and perks, he was wiped off the face of the earth.

  Coldly, Murray Lasalle said, “What are you doing on this phone?”

  “Oh, that’s easily explained,” Tompkins said eagerly.

  “Explain it.”

  “You see, I was already in the chairman’s office when Miss Selwyn came in, she told me about… Can I help, Murray? In any way that I can possibly help—”

  In three sentences, Lasalle informed Tompkins of the situation. “Now, unless you can personally authorize the transfer of a million dollars, I want you to break into that old windbag’s conversation. Immediately. Do you read me?”

  “Murray…” Tompkins’ voice was almost a wail. “I can’t. He’s talking to Burundi.”

  “Who the hell is Burundi?”

  “It’s a country. In Africa? One of the newly formed underdeveloped African republics?”

  “I’m not impressed. Get him off and onto my phone.”

  “Murray, you don’t understand. Burundi. We finance them.”

  “Who is them?”

  “I told you. Burundi. The whole country. So you see why I can’t—”

  “I see only a former movie flack obstructing the function of the city government. I’ll blow your secret, Rich, don’t make any mistake about it. Get him for me in thirty seconds, or I’ll blow the whole thing sky high.”

  “Murray!”

  “The countdown has begun.”

  “What can I tell him?”

  “Tell him to tell Burundi that he’s got a most urgent local call waiting, and he’ll phone them back.”

  “My God, Murray, it takes four days to get a call through; their telephone system is very underdeveloped.”

  “Fifteen seconds left, and then I start tipping the media. Republic Pictures, Vera Hruba Ralston, pimping studs for hard-up actresses visiting New York—”

  “I’ll get him. I don’t know how, but I’ll get him. Hold!”

  The wait was so brief that Lasalle envisioned Tompkins leaping across the room, and cutting off the call to Burundi in mid-syllable.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Lasalle.” The chairman’s voice was grave and measured. “I understand the city has an emergency?”

  “A subway train has been hijacked. Seventeen people are being held hostage—sixteen passengers and the motorman. Unless we deliver a million dollars in less than a half hour, all seventeen will be killed.”

  “A subway train,” the chairman said. “What a novel idea.”

  “Yes, sir. You understand about the haste, sir? Is there any problem about that much cash being available?”

  “Through the Federal Reserve Bank, none whatsoever. We are members, of course.”

  “Good. Will you arrange at once for us to be given the money with all possible haste?”

  “Given? How do I take given, Mr. Lasalle?”

  “Lent,” Lasalle said, his voice rising. “We want to borrow a million. The sovereign City of New York.”

  “Borrow. Well, you see, Mr. Lasalle, there are certain technicalities involved. Such as authorization, signatures, terms, duration of loan, and perhaps some other details.”

  “We haven’t got time for all that, with all due respect, Mr. Chairman.”

  “But all that, as you put it, is of importance. I too have a constituency, you know. The directors and officers and stockholders of the bank, and they will ask—”

  “Look, you stupid cocksucker,” Murray screamed, and then paused, awed by his own audacity. But it was too late for apology or retreat, and in any case they were not his style. He plunged on, his voice an open threat. “You want to keep our business? I can take it around the corner to another bank, you know. And that’s only the beginning. I’ll find violations on every one of your goddamn stand-pipes!”

  “No one,” the chairman said in slow wonderment, “no one has ever called me by that epithet before.”

  It was an opportunity to make generous amends, but Lasalle pushed on recklessly. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Chairman. If you don’t get started on that money this instant, it’s going to be on everybody’s lips.”

  PRESCOTT

  The decision at Gracie Mansion had been relayed from the PC to the borough commander, from the borough commander to Deputy Chief Inspector Daniels in the cab of Pelham One Two Eight at the Twenty-eighth Street platform, and from the DCI to Prescott at Command Center. Prescott called Pelham One Two Three. “We agree to pay the ransom,” he said. “Repeat, we’ll pay the ransom. Acknowledge.”

  “I read you. I will now give you further instructions. You will obey them to the letter. Confirm.”

  “Okay,” Prescott said.

  “Three points. First: The money is to be paid in fifties and hundreds, as follows: five hundred thousand dollars in hundreds and five hundred thousand dollars in fifties. Check me.”

  Prescott repeated the message slowly and clearly, for the benefit of the DCI, who would be monitoring the call and would hear his end of the conversation.

  “That works out to five thousand hundred-dollar bills, and ten thousand fifty-dollar bills. A total of fifteen thousand bills. Point Two: These bills are to be put up in stacks of two hundred bills each, bound with a thick rubber band lengthwise and another widthwise. Confirm.”

  “Five thousand hundreds, ten thousand fifties, in packs of two hundred bills, bound fore and aft with rubber bands.”

  “Point Three: All the bills will be old bills, and the serial numbers will be random. Check me.”

  “All old bills,” Prescott said, “and no serial number sequences.”

  “That’s all. When the money arrives, you will contact me again for additional instructions.”

  Prescott signaled Pelham One Two Eight.

  “I picked it up from your repeats,” the DCI said, “and the message is already on its way to the mansion.”

  But Prescott repeated it again, in the event that the hijack leader was monitoring. He probably wouldn’t care that the police were listening in, but there was no point in taking a chance that he might object.

  The DCI said, “Get back to them and try to get us more time.”

  Prescott called Pelham One Two Three and, when the leader answered, said, “I passed on your instructions, but we have to have more time.”

  “It’s two forty-nine. You have twenty-four minutes.”

  “Be reasonable,” Prescott said. “The money has to be counted, put up in stacks, brought all the way uptown…. It just isn’t physically possible.”

  “No.”

  The flat, unyielding voice left Prescott momentarily stunned with a sense of helplessness. Across the room, Correll was in full cry, apparently in the process of working out a flex. The same kind of bastard as the hijackers, Prescott thought, concerned with his thing, and screw the passengers. He calmed himself and returned to the console.

  “Look,” he said, “give us another fifteen minutes. Is there any point to killing innocent people if it’s not necessary?”

  “Nobody is innocent.”

  Oh, Jesus, Prescott thought, he’s some kind of a lunatic. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Is it worth slaughtering all those people just for fifteen minutes?”

  “All?” The voice sounded surprised. “Unless you force our hand, we have no intention of killing them all.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Prescott said, and thought: It’s the first human or near-human emotion that cold voice has expressed. “So give us the extra time.”

  “Because if we killed them all,” the voice said calmly, “then we would surrender our leverage. But if we kill one or two or even five, there are still enough left for leverage. You will lose one passenger for each minute over the deadline. I won’t discuss it any further.”

  Prescott wavered on the edge of rage, hopelessness, a willingness to demean himself in any way that was necessary, but he knew that all of it, any of it, would come up against an implacable will. And so, fighting to control his voice, he shifted
his ground. “Will you let us pick up the trainmaster?”

  “Who?”

  “The man you shot. We’d like to send a stretcher down to take him away.”

  “No. We can’t allow that.”

  “He may still be alive. He may be suffering.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “He’s dead. But if you insist, well put a half dozen rounds into him to put him out of his misery, if any.”

  Prescott folded his arms on the console and slowly lowered his head. When he looked up again, his eyes were streaming with tears, and he could not tell whether they were caused by rage or pity or some soul-destroying combination of both. He balled up a handkerchief and pressed it deeply into each of his eyes in turn, then signaled the DCI. He said in a disciplined voice, “No time extension. Flat refusal. He’ll kill a passenger for every minute we’re late. He means it.”

  The DCI, in a voice as inflectionless as his own, said, “I just don’t think it’s physically possible.”

  “Three thirteen,” Prescott said. “After that we can start scratching passengers, one per minute.”

  FRANK CORRELL

  Hyped up, noisy, leaping athletically from console to console, Frank Correll devised a flex to keep the entire line from being paralyzed.

  Lexington Avenue line trains departing from Dyre Avenue and East 180th Street in the Bronx were diverted to the West Side tracks at 149th Street and Grand Concourse.

  Trains which had already proceeded south of 149th were switched over to the West Side line at Grand Central.

  South of Fourteenth Street, some trains were run off into Brooklyn; others were sent around the loop at City Hall or South Ferry, which brought them back northward to the Bowling Green station, where they began to pile up.