The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  When the pipe construction was pushed inward toward the train, it would shove the controller clockwise through switching into series position, where the bulk of the cast iron weight would serve to prevent it from moving further into multiple position. A sharp pull backward would then disengage the two long pieces of pipe, leaving only the short first piece, which would not be visible from outside the train.

  For the rest, Ryder was banking on “illusion,” on the power of assumption to triumph over actuality. People didn’t really see glass, and so, with no shards to pick up a stray beam of light, they would assume it. The police would know that a train could not move without a motorman (the more knowledgeable they were, the more strongly they would accept the fact), and so they would assume the presence of a motorman in the darkened cab. He acknowledged that some observer, hurdling the psychological barrier, might perceive the truth, but even then it would be met with official skepticism long enough for them to make their escape.

  When he had checked the arrangement of pipes to his satisfaction, Ryder hauled himself up into the car and entered the cab. Edging Longman to one side, he inspected the placement of the weight over the controller.

  “It’s all set,” Longman said impatiently. “I wish we were getting started.”

  “We’ll start when Command Center tells us the track is clear.”

  “I know,” Longman said. “It’s just that I’m getting itchy.”

  Ryder was silent. He estimated that Longman had about ten minutes more of courage—such as it was—before he went to pieces. Well, ten minutes should be enough; in ten minutes they should be home free.

  WELCOME

  Ever since the lights came back on, Joey Welcome had been feeling pissed off. For one thing, he had cooled on the chick. The bright light took something away from her. Still a hot chick, sure, but the mileage was showing. Not that he didn’t dig older broads, too—he dug broads, period—but this one was beginning to look too professional, and he wasn’t all that wild about a thousand or so guys being up the same road ahead of him.

  She was still giving him the eye, but he wasn’t all that horny anymore. Instead, he was beginning to get uptight about the operation. It was too long drawn out, and there wasn’t enough action. Though he had almost had a little unscheduled action with General Ryder a while ago. To be continued—right? The best part had been back at the beginning, when he had unloaded on that fat guy on the tracks. That was how he liked it—fast and tough. Ryder was a brain, Longman was a brain, but they were too fancy. Himself, he would have done it the simple way. You want to get out of someplace? Come out fast, and come out zapping. Sure, there was lots of cops around, but they had four fast shooters, didn’t they? Some big attack soldier Ryder was!

  And the smg’s—that was another one of his beefs. It surprised the hell out of him when Ryder said they would have to ditch them, and he didn’t agree with it one little bit. The whole strength of the thing was in the firepower, in the tommy guns, that was why everybody was scared of you and the cops were kissing your ass. So why weaken yourself where you’re strongest? Ryder’s way, ditching the fast shooters, if something screwed up, all you could count on was four handguns. Handguns to shoot a hundred cops? But give him a tommy gun, and he would face up to a thousand cops.

  The girl was giving him one of those fuck-me-faster looks, mouth open—she knew the tricks of the trade, all right—and he began to feel a little horny again, but just then Ryder climbed in through the front door. Too bad, sister, it’s just about getaway time.

  ANITA LEMOYNE

  Somewhere along the line, Anita Lemoyne realized, the creep had gotten away from her. Okay, so she lost the creep. What was she supposed to do—blow her brains out? Now that it was beginning to look as if they would all be getting out of this with a whole skin, there were more important things to think about—for instance, what line to take with the television crumb, assuming he didn’t just hang up on her when she phoned him. The one thing she knew for sure was that he wouldn’t think she had a reasonable excuse for standing him up. Knowing him, she could practically write the whole conversation.

  “Of course I believe you were involved in the subway rip-off, but that’s irrelevant to the main point, which is that you wanted to be.”

  “Yeah, sure. I woke up this morning and said, ‘Anita, doll, go see if you can’t get your ass shot off.’”

  “Exactly. Though not consciously. Have you heard of accident-prone people? Well, there are people who are danger-prone, who court disaster without being aware—”

  “You’re full of shit, buster.”

  “Look, that kind of talk is perfectly acceptable in bed, but not otherwise.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. But that talk about prone. Maybe I’m prone-prone, if you know what I mean.”

  “Don’t try to be funny.”

  “All I did was take a goddamn subway train, honey.”

  “Perfect. Tell me—when was the last time you rode the subway?”

  “I just happened to be feeling cheap today. Is that so criminal?”

  “With all the money you make peddling your ass, and in view of the well-known profligacy of whores, do you expect me to buy that?”

  “Okay. Fine. You got me cornered. I took the subway train because I knew it was going to get ripped off. Not only that, but I knew the exact subway line, and the exact time—all because I’m prone, right?”

  “An ignorant whore shouldn’t challenge well-established psychiatric assumptions. Any number of variables governed your actions before you left the house this morning—having to return for a handkerchief, dawdling five minutes longer than usual in your bath—”

  “All for you, sweetheart, so my cunt would smell pretty.”

  “—deciding to stop at the liquor store to place an order when you could just as well have done it in the evening, taking a different route than usual to the subway—”

  “It happens I went shopping today, and took the subway at Thirty-third.”

  “You ruined my sammawich, you bitch.”

  “I know, and I feel rotten. Because I get the sweetest fucking of my life out of you, every time. You’re the best, honey.”

  “You spoiled my sammawich.”

  “That dirty subway, I’ll never ride the sonofabitch again in my whole life.”

  “You ruined my sammawich.”

  That was the way it would go, Anita thought, and she would end up losing him. Clients like him didn’t grow on trees. If she was going to open up that boutique, every John counted. Well, maybe she could crawl on her knees, lick his ass, kiss his goddamn feet…. Shit, that was what she did anyway, in the sammawiches.

  Gloomily, she watched the leader climb back into the train.

  BOROUGH COMMANDER

  “They’re sitting right there,” the borough commander said, pointing to the carpeting of the limousine. “If the street collapsed we would probably land right on top of them.” The commissioner nodded.

  Union Square Park, deceptively attractive in the lowering light, lay to their right. A block to the south, and on the left, was S. Klein, the ramshackle department store that had been a discount house long before the term became current. The crowds that normally thronged the sidewalks were beginning to coagulate, attracted by the swarm of police cars that had spilled into the area. Traffic was piling up, and policemen at intersections were attempting to siphon it off into the side streets.

  The driver turned around. “Sir, we got an opening. Want me to move on?”

  “Stick here,” the borough commander said. “It’s the closest I’ve been to those bastards since the whole thing began.”

  The commissioner, watching through his window, saw a cop getting bowled over by a sudden surge of the crowd on the sidewalks. He picked himself up and hit a woman a backhanded blow in the chest.

  “If the street collapsed,” the commissioner said, “it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The whole city, sinking down and disappearing. It’s not such a bad idea.”
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br />   The commissioner’s pessimism came as still another surprise to the borough commander. But he said nothing, instead directing his gaze to the park and coddling an old memory that it evoked and that he found comforting.

  “The people,” the commissioner said. “Subtract the people from the scene and it would be easy to catch crooks.”

  The borough commander wrenched his eyes away from the park, whose stone retaining walls were beginning to be obscured by the gathering crowd. “You know what I’d like to do, Mr. Commissioner? I’d like to slip down one of those emergency grates and shoot the hell out of those bastards.”

  “Haven’t we been over that before?” the commissioner said wearily.

  “I’m just talking. It makes me feel better.”

  The borough commander glanced upward at the bare scraggy branches of the trees in the park, and his old memory came to the surface. “One of the first assignments I ever had when I joined the force was right here. Nineteen thirty-three. Or four? Three or four. I was a horse cop, and I was detailed to keep order at a May Day parade. Remember when those parades were a big thing?”

  “I never knew you were a horse cop,” the commissioner said.

  “A real Cossack. My horse was called Daisy. A beauty, with a white blaze on the forehead. Cossack. They really called us that in those days.”

  “They call us worse now, don’t they?”

  “Once every hour or so there would be a clash, and we’d hit a few heads, Daisy would step on a few feet. But those were different times. Nobody tried to kill anybody. And if you split a few Commie heads, there was no outcry except from the Commies themselves. Anyway, radicals were a lot softer in those days.”

  “How about their heads?”

  “Their heads?” The borough commander paused. “I see what you mean. Yeah, we used the nightstick more freely in those days. Police brutality. I guess there was some of that. Cossacks. Maybe there was something to it.”

  “Maybe.” The commissioner’s voice was flat and gave no clue to his emotions.

  “Daisy,” the borough commander said. “The Commies used to hate the horses almost as much as they hated the cops. In their cell meetings, they used to hype themselves up: ‘Hamstring the Cossacks’ horses!’ And they would discuss how to duck under the horses’ belly with a knife and cut the hamstrings. But I never heard of a horse actually being hamstrung.”

  “What the hell is going on?” the commissioner said. “They’re sitting down there, and we’re sitting up here, and it’s like a holiday truce.”

  “Right there,” the borough commander said, “on the Seventeenth Street side, from that balcony, that’s where the Commies did their speechmaking. But the action could be anywhere around the square or in the park. Forty years ago. How many of those Commies do you think are still Commies? Not one. They all became businessmen, exploiters of the masses, and they live in the suburbs, and they wouldn’t hamstring a horse if you turned it upside down and held its head.”

  “Their kids are the radicals now,” the commissioner said.

  “And much tougher. They would hamstring a horse. Or tie a bomb to its tail.”

  The radio crackled. “Central to PC. Come in, sir.”

  The borough commander answered. “Come in, come in.”

  “Sir, the hijackers are being informed that the track has been cleared.”

  “Okay, thanks. Flash through as soon as they start moving.” The borough commander signed off and looked at the commissioner. “Wait, or get started?”

  “Get started,” the commissioner said. “For once we’ll be a step ahead of them instead of behind.”

  TWENTY

  RYDER

  “Command Center to Pelham One Two Three.”

  Ryder pressed the transmitter button. “Pelham One Two Three here. Report.”

  “The track is cleared. Repeat, the track is cleared.”

  Longman was pressed against him, his breathing a succession of deep sighs that sucked his mask into his mouth. Ryder glanced at him and thought: He’ll come to grief. Whatever happens, however well it comes out, in the long run Longman will fail.

  He spoke into the mike. “Is the track cleared all the way to South Ferry? Confirm.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know the penalty if you’re lying?”

  “I want to tell you something. You’re not going to live to spend that money. I have a strong hunch about it. Do you read me?”

  “We’re starting the train now,” Ryder said. “Over and out.”

  “Mark my words—”

  Ryder switched the radio off. “Let’s go,” he said to Longman. “I want the train to be moving in thirty seconds.”

  He opened the latch and gave Longman a nudge. Longman half stumbled through the door. Ryder took a final look at the Gimmick, then followed Longman out of the cab. The door clicked, locking behind him.

  TOM BERRY

  The emergency brake cord hung out of a metal-lined hole in the ceiling of the car just behind the motorman’s cab. It looked like a skipping rope, with a red wooden handle dangling to a point about six inches below the ceiling. Tom Berry watched the small hijacker reach up with a long thin scissors, insert the scissors an inch or two into the hole and cut the cord. The wooden handle clattered and rolled as it hit the floor. From the tail of his eye Berry saw the heavy man at the other end of the car cutting the second cord. He caught it as it fell and put it in his pocket.

  The small man made a hand signal, and Berry saw the heavy man acknowledge it with a nod before he opened the rear door, crouched, and dropped out of sight to the track. The small man, moving with awkward speed, slid by the leader, who was covering the passengers with his tommy gun, and pulled the front door open. He sat down before dropping to the track. The leader nodded crisply to the man in the center of the car, who started to turn, paused, and blew a kiss to the girl in the Anzac hat. Then he trotted jauntily to the rear. He opened the door and, barely bending his knees, jumped down.

  The leader was looking at the passengers, and Berry thought, He’s going to make a farewell speech, tell us what a great bunch of hostages we’ve been….

  “You will remain in your seats,” the leader said. “Don’t try to get up. Remain seated.”

  He felt behind him for the handle and slid the front door open. He moved out onto the steel plate, and Berry thought: Now is the time, his back is turned, whip out your gun and plug him…. The leader dropped from view. Just before the door slid shut, Berry caught an oblique view of the small man on the tracks. He was holding what seemed to be a length of pipe, and Berry, with a sudden flash of insight, knew what was going to happen to the train and made a wild guess at how they proposed to throw off pursuit and, as the press would surely refer to it, make their brilliant and daring escape.

  He didn’t believe what he was doing. He was really still sitting in his seat, not running in a crouch with his drawn gun in his hand. The train started with a shattering jerk, and the momentum carried him past the center poles and almost to the end of the car. His hand struck the yellow metal of the door handle. He found a grip on it and slid the door back. He stared at the tracks fleeing backward beneath him and thought: You were a parachutist, you know how to make a landing, and then he thought: There’s still time to go back and sit down.

  He jumped, sailed, and felt an agonizingly prolonged moment of sickening pain before he blacked out.

  GRAND CENTRAL TOWER

  When the red blips on the Model Board at Grand Central Tower indicated that Pelham One Two Three was moving, Marino was passably cool. “They’re on their way,” he said.

  In a matter of seconds the information was broadcast from Police Headquarters to all cars.

  Simultaneously with Marino, Mrs. Jenkins, in her quiet voice, was saying to Lieutenant Garber, “Pelham One Two Three has begun to move and is presently about a hundred feet south of its former position.”

  All foot patrolmen and cars were alerted to the new development.

 
The entire pursuit, aboveground and below, surged southward as if attached by invisible strings to Pelham One Two Three.

  RYDER

  Longman had been overanxious and had stumbled after pushing the pipe. But he had kept his grip on it as he recoiled when the train started, and it came away in his hand. Ryder pulled him off the track into the shelter of the tunnel wall and braced an arm across his trembling chest as the car rumbled by, a towering, terrifying bulk.

  Ryder took the pipe from Longman’s unresisting hand and tossed it across the track. It struck a pillar and skittered away to the northbound track. Steever and Welcome were waiting for them, close to the tunnel wall, a car’s length back.

  “Let’s move along,” Ryder said.

  Without waiting to see if they were following, he trotted southward and stopped in the white glare of the light marking the emergency exit. The others straggled up to join him.

  “Let’s keep it lively,” Ryder said sharply. “You know the drill.”

  “I thought I saw something fall out of the end,” Steever said. “The end of the car.”

  Ryder looked down the track. The light from the moving car was fading. “What did it look like?”

  Steever shrugged. “Big. A shadow, like. Could be a person. But I’m not even sure I saw it.”

  Welcome said, “If anybody fell out of the end of that car, he’s ready for the embalmer.” He hefted his machine gun. “You want me to take a look? If anybody’s there and still alive, I’ll finish him off.”

  Ryder looked down the track again. There was nothing, no one, visible. He glanced, at Steever. Battle nerves? He had seen tension conjure up ghosts before, and in men equally as self-contained and unimaginative as Steever. Troops on night patrol screaming a warning where no threat existed. Guards blazing away at shadows. Yes, it could even happen to a Steever, taking into account some pain from his wound, the lightheadedness of loss of blood….