The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  WELCOME

  Joe Welcome remembered a girl who once said to him, “I never met any cat who was more ready to do it than you.” And this was a real mink, this girl, all you had to do was throw a dirty thought at her and she was down on her back and spread out. One time, he remembered, they fell out of the sack and went into the kitchen, and by the time the mink finished putting the coffee up and came to the table he was sitting in her chair, and she sat down on a big surprise. That was the time, bouncing up and down on his pole, when she gave him her testimonial.

  Any time, Welcome thought, and any place too. Floor, bed, ceiling, vestibule, dark alley, sitting, standing, or riding a bicycle. Or in the middle of heisting a subway train!

  Right this second, with a machine gun in his hand, about a million cops in the tunnel, and a tough getaway coming up, he was ready. The chick in the funny hat could see he was ready, and that mouth of hers was saying, Put something in it, baby. It was crazy to even be thinking the way he was at a time like this, but didn’t everybody say he was crazy? Sure he was—cunt crazy. And what was wrong with a healthy stud being cunt crazy? It was nature!

  Right now, with his joint aching and the chick practically begging for it, he was going to blow his stack if he couldn’t get it off. How? Where? Christ, any place. He could take her down to the other end of the car and lay her right out on the seat. Let the passengers watch. He’d show them some first-class action. Ryder would go wild. But Ryder was in the cab, so screw Ryder. Screw Ryder anyway. He had handled Ryder before, when he came out, and he could do it again, anytime. If Ryder wanted to try him, he was ready. Any time.

  KOMO MOBUTU

  Mobutu’s wound had bled itself out, although it still seeped somewhat into his saturated handkerchief. I blew my cool, he thought, I took a hit upside my head for a couple of niggers who will suck white ass to they last day on earth, gnawed to death by the rats of exploitation. He looked at his red handkerchief and thought, I would not mind shedding my blood, every pure black drop of it, if it would help to set my people free. But face it—sometime it do not avail, it simply do not avail.

  He felt a tap on his arm. The old dude beside him was offering a large folded handkerchief.

  “Take it,” the old man said.

  Mobutu pushed the handkerchief away. “I got my own.” He held the bloody rag up and the old man turned pale, but didn’t give up.

  “Go. Take my handkerchief. We’re all in the same boat.”

  “Old man, you are in your boat, and I am in my boat. Don’t sell me no same boat deals.”

  “Okay. So we’re boats that pass in the night. But take the handkerchief anyway. Please be a good boy.”

  “I do not accept castoffs.”

  “Castoffs I cast off,” the old man said. “This handkerchief I bought maybe a month ago.”

  “I will take nothing from a white peeg, so fuck off, old man.”

  “White, granted.” The old man smiled. “Pig, you happen to have the wrong religion. Come on, young man, let’s be friends.”

  “No way, old man. I am your enemy, and one day I will cut your throat.”

  “That day,” the old man said, “I’ll borrow your handkerchief.”

  Mobutu touched his handkerchief to his torn brow. It squeegeed, too wet to absorb any longer. He looked at the thick folds of the old man’s handkerchief, which he had surely bought with profits wrung from the blood of black brothers and sisters. The handkerchief truly belonged to them, to him. It was a small enough reparation.

  “Sheet,” Mobutu said, and took the handkerchief.

  “Not a sheet,” the old man said, “just a little handkerchief.”

  Mobutu stared at the wrinkled, oversolemn face. Damn if the old dude wasn’t putting him on.

  THIRTEEN

  THE CITY: UNDERGROUND SCENE

  The Twenty-eighth Street southbound platform was the arena of what was to be described later as a “mini-riot.” The borough commander, shortly after his arrival on the scene, had dispatched a squad of patrolmen down the stairs to clear the platform. They straggled back ten minutes later, sweating, disheveled, and angry, one of them limping badly, another streaming blood from a clawed face, a third nursing a bitten hand. Not only had the passengers—except for a docile few—refused to leave, but they had hurled invective, drowned out instructions with derisive shouts, resisted being herded toward the exit, and, finally, resorted to violence. The squad had arrested six citizens, four of whom had been lost on the way to the street as the result of harassment and obstruction by the crowd. One of the surviving arrestees was a black lady who had been punched in the eye by a patrolman after she kicked him in the ankle; the second, a young man with a scraggly beard and a mass of crinkly hair, had been clubbed, reason unstated, and was semiconscious, drooling, and probably concussed.

  The crowd, the reporting sergeant continued, was unruly and violent. A number of windows had been broken in the train standing at the platform, and there were other instances of vandalism: Posters had been torn down, benches overturned, toilet paper taken from the lavatories and thrown around like confetti. The DCI, unable to hear the radio in the motorman’s cab over the hubbub, was in a rage and had respectfully requested that the borough commander send down a force in sufficient numbers to clear the fucking platform of every last single fucking citizen.

  The borough commander ordered a detail of fifty Tactical Patrol Force men and ten detectives to enter the station. With drawn nightsticks, the police charged into the tightly massed passengers on the platform and in five minutes had succeeded in moving the crowd toward the exit. However, a bottleneck developed; many of the passengers demanded that their fare be refunded. In the ensuing melee an undetermined number of passengers and at least six cops suffered injury. The captain in charge fought his way through to the change booth and ordered the clerk, a middle-aged man with wispy gray hair, to pass out a token to each passenger. The clerk refused, demanding authorization. The captain drew his service revolver, pointed it at the gray-haired clerk through the bars of his cage, and said, “Here’s your authorization, and if you don’t start handing out those tokens, I’ll blow your goddamn mouth out of your goddamn ugly face!”

  An additional number of citizens and police were injured in the crush to get on line for the return of the token (more than a dozen seriously enough to require medical attention, four to be hospitalized), but fifteen minutes from the time that the force had entered, the last of the passengers was pushed up the steps to the street. No unauthorized personnel remained on the station platform except (unknown to the police) three men, one black and two white, total strangers to each other, who were industriously raping a young black girl, age fourteen, in the women’s lavatory.

  COMMAND CENTER

  The Communications Desk of the Command Center continued to cut cassettes containing bulletins directed toward clearing the station platforms in the area affected by the power cut. Played over the station PA systems, they urged passengers to leave the platforms for alternate routes—“a short walk to the BMT, IND, or West Side lines,” “Your attention is called to the MABSTOA buses, no charge”—which would carry them north or south to their destination. Each message contained an adjuration to “clear the stations, please, by order of the New York City Police.”

  Although a number of people responded and sought the open air, the majority refused to budge (“It’s the way they are,” the TA police chief said to the borough commander. “Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s just the way they are”). To avoid a repetition of the Battle of Twenty-eighth Street, the police made no effort to clear any other platforms by force. Instead, they mounted guards at the street entrances to keep newly arrived passengers from descending. This measure proved effective except at the Astor Place station, where a group of passengers, under inspired leadership, rushed the entrance, overwhelmed the guards, and stormed down the stairs to the platform.

  THE CITY: OCEANIC WOOLENS BUILDING

  In the lobby of the Oceanic W
oolens Building (the eponymous company had long ago emigrated to the South and cheaper labor, but the name remained irrevocably engraved over the august doorway), Abe Rosen was enjoying the most fantastic business of his life. Spectators were streaming off the streets and into the lobby, gathering four deep in front of his little stand. As fast as his display stock of candy bars disappeared, he would open new supplies, which were bought right out of the cardboard boxes. He sold out his stock of cigarettes completely in a half hour, including the unpopular brands. Then his cigars began to go (cigarette smokers and even women took them as a substitute) and finally, for lack of anything else to buy, his newspapers and magazines.

  The lobby had become all but impassable, since many of the spectators remained, smoking, eating candy, reading magazines and newspapers, and inventing and circulating dozens of rumors about the hijacking.

  Sooner or later Abe Rosen heard them all.

  “A dozen ambulances just took off screaming. Seems they turned the third rail on by mistake, and some passengers were on the tracks. When you get that juice in you, a million volts…”

  “Castros. A bunch of Cuban Commies. The cops chased them into the tunnel and they commandeered a train….”

  “This cop outside told me they give them a ultimatum. If they don’t surrender by three o’clock, the cops are going in and blasting them out….”

  “They’re talking about cutting off the air in the tunnel, the compressors, you know, and when they start gasping, they’ll come crawling out….”

  “You know how they’re going to get away? The sewers. They got a map of the sewers, and they know exactly where the big mains connect with the subway….”

  “They’re asking a million for each passenger. They got twenty, which is a cool twenty million dollars! The city is trying to jew them down to half a million each….”

  “The mayor? Forget it. The only direction he ever goes is uptown. If this train had got heisted at, say, a Hundred Twenty-fifth and Lenox Avenue…”

  “Dogs. All they got to do is loose a pack of Dobermans, and sic them into that train. So they might shoot half the dogs, but the other half will tear their throats out. And the beauty part is that all you’re losing the lives of are dogs!”

  “They’re bringing in the National Guard. The only question is how can they get a tank down there….”

  Abe Rosen kept saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He believed nothing and doubted nothing. Near three o’clock he was completely sold out—every pack of cigarettes, every cigar, bar of candy, newspaper, magazine, even his last pack of flints. He sat on his scarred wooden stool with nothing to do and a sense of bewilderment and loss. Three o’clock and nothing to do but shake his head sadly at the people who still came up to the counter hoping to buy something, anything at all. Through the lobby doors he could see part of the huge crowd, standing patiently, waiting for God knew what—a body being carried out on a stretcher, a sheet over its face and helpless feet sticking up; the sound of gunfire; somebody with blood on him….

  Suddenly, he remembered Artis James. The schwartzer had gone back to duty right about the time it all started. Could Artis be involved? Nah, he answered himself, with thousands of cops, did they need a subway shamus? Most likely, they would have Artis guarding the chewing gum machines.

  Idly, Abe watched a man come out of the elevator, stop in his tracks, and stare in surprise at the boiling activity in the lobby. The man came over to the stand.

  “What’s up, Mac?” he said.

  Abe shook his head in wonderment. What’s up, Mac? A half a block away the crime of the century, and this dumb goy didn’t know what was up.

  “What could be up?” Abe said, shrugging. “A parade or something.”

  CLIVE PRESCOTT

  Lieutenant Prescott, who had been the best basketball player in the history of his little college in southern Illinois, had not been quite good enough for the pros. He had been chosen late in the draft and worked hard during his tryout, but been dropped before the season opened.

  He was essentially a doer, what he would have called, if he didn’t think it pretentious, a man of action. His desk job at headquarters did not suit him, although he recognized that it was highly privileged and, for a black man, a distinguished one. Lately he had been thinking of looking around for something else, even if it meant taking less money, but he knew it was hopeless because of his four hostages to fortune—his wife, his two kids, and his pension.

  He sat at the desk trainmaster’s console and stared at the constellation of flickering lights, feeling sorry for himself and for the captives on Pelham One Two Three. He held himself in some measure responsible for both. He should, for example, have been three inches taller and had a more reliable outside shot; he should, for another, have been able to persuade the leader of the hijack gang to extend his deadline. With about twelve minutes remaining and the money not yet on its way, there wasn’t a chance of making it. And he had no doubt that the hijackers would keep their word and kill some passengers as penalty.

  Across the room, Correll was all bombast and motion, shunting trains here and there, haranguing motormen and towermen, screaming at a MABSTOA dispatcher, hysterical and happy. A contented man, Prescott thought sourly, a man who adored his work, who throve on the ultimately solvable adversity. “Prop him up against a pillar until after rush hour….” The true believers were truly blessed of the Lord. And so were the active, he thought. He jumped to his feet and made three mindless circuits of the console, then sat down suddenly and signaled Pelham One Two Eight at the Twenty-eighth Street platform.

  DCI Daniels said briskly, “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Sir, I’m checking to see if the money is on its way yet.”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know.”

  “Good,” Prescott said. “It’s on its way. I’ll pass the word to Pelham One Two Three. Over.”

  “I said not yet, ferchrisesake.”

  “Yes, sir,” Prescott said. “And it’s just a question of how long it takes to run it uptown?”

  “Look,” the DCI said irascibly, “I’m telling you the money isn’t—” He stopped abruptly, and Prescott thought: The old bastard has finally remembered that Pelham One Two Three could monitor the dispatcher’s end of the call but not the respondent’s. “Okay,” the DCI said. “I think I know what you’ve got on your mind. Go ahead.”

  Prescott called Pelham One Two Three. “Lieutenant Prescott. The money is on its way.”

  “Yes.”

  The leader’s voice was uninflected, the meaning of his affirmative ambiguous, so that Prescott couldn’t tell whether he had monitored the call or not. But it didn’t matter.

  “We’re cooperating,” Prescott said. “You can see that.

  But it’s physically impossible to get through city traffic in eleven minutes. Do you read me?”

  “Ten. Ten minutes.”

  “It can’t be done. It’s not for lack of trying, it’s just the condition of city traffic. Will you give us a ten-minute extension?”

  “No.”

  “We’re moving as quickly as we can,” Prescott said. He heard the pleading in his voice and knew that just beneath it lay rage. “All we need is a little more time. Give us a break.”

  “No. The deadline is three thirteen.”

  The flat inflexibility of the voice was deadly. But Prescott kept trying. “All right. It’s out of the question for us to get the money to you by three thirteen. But suppose we can get it to the station entrance by then. Will you change the deadline from delivery to you to arrival at the station? Will you do that for us, at least? Come in. Come in, please.”

  After an interval that was so protracted that Prescott had decided to call again, the leader’s voice suddenly came back. “All right. I agree. But no more concessions. Do you understand?”

  Prescott’s breath, expelled in a rush, tasted sour. “Okay. If there’s nothing else, I’d like to pass the word on.”

  “Nothing else. Call me as soon as the m
oney arrives for further instructions. Over and out.”

  So I took action, Prescott thought, and bought a few minutes of time. The only trouble is, it won’t do any good. Even with the revised timetable, the money couldn’t possibly reach the station by three thirteen.

  ARTIS JAMES

  TA Patrolman Artis James was uncomfortable, not only physically but mentally. At a distance of about sixty feet from the rear of the hijacked car, scrunched behind a pillar, he was adequately covered, but there was no leeway at all for movement, and his muscles were stiff and aching. But aside from that, he was beginning to feel spooked. The tunnel was gloomy, and the wind that blew through it carried all sorts of imaginary whispers.

  Not that all of them were imaginary. He knew that there were police in the tunnel behind him—maybe twenty, thirty, fifty, armed with riot guns, sniper’s rifles, machine guns, and all those weapons trained on the car or, to put it another way, aiming in his general direction. Furthermore, he couldn’t be sure they had been advised of his presence; it was the kind of detail the brass overlooked in their concern with the big picture. So he pressed hard into the begrimed unyielding steel of the pillar and tried not to move. A crappy situation. Not only did he have to avoid being spotted by the hijackers, but he had to worry about arousing the suspicions of the cops behind him. For all he knew, some goddamn commando type might sneak up behind him and cut his throat to—as they said on the TV movies—prevent an outcry.

  His right wrist, pressed to his side, felt the oblong shape of the cigarettes he had bought from Abe Rosen, and he had a sudden unbearable craving for smoke in his lungs. Then it occurred to him that if things went badly, he might never smoke again, and the meaning of death took shape: not being able to eat again, or sleep with a woman, or take a satisfying crap…. The whole idea was so painful that he waved it away with a sharp dismissive gesture, then froze as he realized that he had exposed his hand. Nothing happened, but he was shaken. Why didn’t somebody help him, out here in no-man’s-land? He was the forgotten man. Nobody gave a shit about a black man.