The Crossroads

by F. P. Lione

  “Yeah, look,” he pointed his thumb down the street, where we saw the signs lining the poles.

  “How’d you do that so quick?” The signs had metal clasps with rubber bands that had to be punched through the paper and wrapped around the pole.

  “I ran, and I put the rubber holder through while I was running to each pole.”

  “I’m impressed, Nick,” Joe said. “Tony usually rips three or four of them before he gets it right.”

  “Joe, I’m serious, are we gonna get blown up here tomorrow?”

  “Nick, no one is going to get in Times Square with a package bomb. The whole area is searched,” Joe said.

  “What about those suicide bombers, or car bombs?” Romano asked.

  “They can’t get a car bomb in here. We put salt trucks at every block so they can’t drive a car through here. As far as a suicide bomber, he’d blow up at the checkpoint or get shot there,” I said. “They’d have a better shot at blowing something up during rush hour, but not on New Year’s Eve. The whole inner perimeter is secure.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Nick. It’s been eight years since anyone tried to bomb us,” Joe said. When Romano didn’t look convinced, Joe emphasized, “Listen to me, Nick, everyone’s gonna sign out tomorrow night. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “What about the Oklahoma City bombing?” he asked.

  “It was in Oklahoma, you hose head,” I said. “Plus it was one of those white supremacist groups.”

  “They still bombed the building,” he insisted.

  “That was different,” I said.

  “Last New Year’s that guy came over from Canada with a car full of explosives,” Nick said.

  “So what? They caught him,” I snapped. “Are you done with your coffee?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking his last sip.

  “Then go put your signs up and stop worrying.”

  “My hands are freezing. I can’t even wear gloves with these stupid signs,” he said as he got out of the car.

  “Actually, Joe, there were serious terror threats last year,” I said.

  “I know, the city was on alert, I was here.”

  “Well, you remember how last year everyone was worried about the Y2K thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lieutenant Farrell gave Rooney and me the inside scoop on what was going on,” I said.

  “What’d he say?”

  I filled him in on what Lieutenant Farrell had told me. He said, last year with all the ominous warnings about the Y2K threat, everyone was sure that as the clock hit 12:01 on New Year’s Day, there would be complete pandemonium throughout the city. There was real concern about the city’s vulnerability to the 2000 computer glitch.

  While the Police Department plays the major role in keeping order on New Year’s Eve, the Fire Department, Sanitation, and Con Edison all have their part. Sanitation handles the cleanup of tons of debris as soon as the crowds leave. Con Edison keeps the city lit and makes sure the ball drops and the lights don’t go out in Times Square. The Fire Department and EMS are trained for large-scale casualties.

  For the millennium, Con Ed assured us they were not worried about a computer failure or a blackout from an overloaded power system. Considering all the blackouts the previous summer, nobody believed them. RMPs escorted the Con Ed trucks around the city. In case of a blackout, the trucks would be able to get anywhere they needed to go. Con Ed said we wouldn’t be using enough juice to overload the system; they said the security of their power plants posed more of a threat than a blackout.

  A computer defect or power failure would affect New York City on New Year’s Eve more than anywhere else on earth. If you take into account that we have eleven thousand traffic lights, plus power lines, phones, elevators, toll booths, subways, bridges, tunnels, banks, hospitals, police computers, and court records, a defect in just one of those could cripple us.

  Since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the city had been implementing new procedures for the threat of terrorism. Last year’s millennium celebration generated so much speculation about a possible terrorist attack that people were getting hysterical about it. The press kept talking about terrorists getting into Times Square, but the mayor was saying there was no specific threat against New York City.

  Last year, before I became partners with Fiore, I went out drinking with Rooney, Garcia, and McGovern from our squad.

  It was the week after Christmas, and like this year, a lot of overtime was available. We had gone to the bar on 9th Avenue after working some OT following our tour. Lieutenant Farrell was there talking football and drinking shots with us. Since it was a Sunday, we went to the bar to watch the Giants play Minnesota.

  McGovern and Garcia went back to the precinct to get some sleep, leaving Rooney and me to keep an eye on the lou, who was half in the bag. Eventually the conversation came around to the job, and the lou began to fill Rooney and me in on what the Brass was saying about New Year’s Eve.

  According to Farrell, the Times Square gig was almost called off. He said the city was gravely concerned about some kind of terrorist attack within Times Square. He told us that hospitals had biohazard suits and decontamination showers. They also had antibiotics for anthrax and ventilation rooms for chemical attack. Something like fifty ambulances were on standby, as opposed to the usual twenty. He also told us that body bags were being stockpiled up at the Javits Center on the West Side and at Bellevue Hospital. He also told us there were twenty buses at each location to transport the injured, or the dead.

  If it was anyone but Farrell, we would have questioned it, but the lou’s not that kind of guy. He’d be the one to know what’s going on in Midtown. He’s worked here for thirty years and is probably the smartest guy they’ve got. The reason he’s never gone further up the ranks is because as a lieutenant he still makes overtime. He’s still able to run a whole detail, and if he makes captain, there’s no hands on. He doesn’t delegate, he likes to do things himself.

  He’s the one who told me the Coast Guard would be patrolling the harbor. The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and under the bridges would be possible targets. We knew how extreme it was in Times Square; we’d been working the details.

  Last year, by the evening of the thirtieth, people had already set up camps on Broadway. A detail the city had put together to manage the early crowd that didn’t get there on time. They pulled us off bomb duty because five hundred people had already congregated in Times Square, blocking the sidewalks up and down Broadway. By 4:00 in the morning on the thirty-first, the barricades were already being set up, as opposed to the afternoon, when they usually cordon off the area. By the time I got there at 2:00 in the afternoon, the people were already in barricades as far as 47th Street. By 9:00 there was a sea of people all the way up to Central Park at 59th Street. I heard that the people who spilled over from the barricades wound up inside Central Park.

  The millennium was a global celebration, with festivities starting in New Zealand at 6:30 in the morning of the thirty-first. The campers planned to stay in Times Square until the following morning, when the final toll of the new century would be in French Polynesia, in the Midway Islands.

  The streets were almost impassable as the crowds thronged into Midtown. People had bags and backpacks with food and clothes that we checked as they walked into the inner perimeter cordoned off around the core zone. If they wouldn’t let us check their bags, they took their Constitutional rights with them when we tossed them out of Times Square.

  If we found booze when we checked them, we dumped the booze and got rid of the bottles so they couldn’t throw them at us later. Once they got inside the interior of the barriers, they picked their spots and tossed their belongings in a pile. They donned their 2000 glasses and funny hats that they paid too much for on the street and waited for the ball to drop.

  Most people don’t realize that the best spot to see the ball drop is a couple of blocks up from where it sits on top of One Times Square.

/>   There was no way for us to check the contents of every bag that came into Times Square, so the best we could do was clear the perimeter. Cars were towed, manhole covers were welded shut so they wouldn’t blow up into the crowd during an explosion. Mailboxes were locked and garbage cans were removed so bombs couldn’t be planted in them. Bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled under the streets to search for explosives, and helicopters patrolled the area from the sky.

  For the first time I saw sniper teams leaving the ESU (Emergency Service Unit) trucks and going into buildings with their Remington 700 8-mm bolt action rifles.

  Salt trucks were parked crosswise at the corners of each street coming into Times Square so no one could drive a car bomb into the crowd.

  On the whole, the city did everything it could to secure the area. When the clock struck twelve, the ball dropped, the lights stayed on, the computers didn’t crash, and the old century ended.

  17

  Romano was on the other side of the street now. He went down to 8th Avenue and was working his way back toward us. We planned on letting him do 42nd Street and then stay on his post while Joe and I finished up 41st and 40th Streets.

  “I remember the big thing last year was Y2K. People were getting nuts about it, piling up on food and bottled water, worrying that the world was gonna end,” Fiore said, still talking about last year.

  “Were you worried?” I asked.

  “No. I mean, I took extra money out of the bank and filled the cars up with gas. Donna wanted me to drive in that night in case the computers went down and the Long Island Railroad wasn’t running, but we didn’t panic. We had enough food and water for a couple of days in case the power went out, but I was okay about it. How about you?”

  “I wasn’t sure what would happen. Half the things you heard said it’d go off without a glitch, and the other half said to find a hole to crawl into and bring enough food to last you six months. I was too busy the week before New Year’s to worry about it.” When I wasn’t working I was drunk and picking up women, but I didn’t mention that.

  I moved the car up toward 7th Avenue. A barrier truck was on the corner, and a couple of plainclothes cops were unloading barriers, stacking them up in piles. They were the blue barriers with “Police Line Do Not Cross” in white letters across them. We threw them a wave, and they waved back, we’re all cops.

  As the last barriers were placed and the truck pulled away, an ESU truck pulled up across the street, on 42nd just off 7th Avenue. An old, battered white utility truck pulled up behind it, one of those trucks with drawers on the side and a back compartment to hold larger tools.

  Two ESU cops got out of the truck and pulled on leather gloves. One of them was holding a metal hook, the other a handheld searchlight.

  The cop with the hook knelt down and pulled the manhole cover up with the metal claw. It made a loud scraping sound as he dragged it off the hole and clanked it on the street. The cop with the light climbed down into the hole and disappeared below the street. A guy in overalls climbed out of the utility truck. He went in the back for his welding gear and placed it on the ground next to the open hole.

  “Looking for bombs again, huh?” Fiore asked.

  “Yup, let’s go check it out,” I said, getting out of the car.

  We walked over to them. “What’s going on, guys?” I asked.

  The cop turned. “How you doing, guys?” he said, shaking our hands. He leaned back over toward the open manhole. Fiore and I looked down into the hole and saw the faint beam of light and heard the hollow sound of footsteps on the metal staircase below.

  “We’re searching underneath to make sure there’s no explosives down there before we seal off the manhole covers. There’s another unit that has a dog sniffing out the areas with underground walkways through them.”

  “They did this last year too,” I said.

  “We’ll probably do it every year,” he said.

  We saw the light coming back toward us now as the second cop reached us and climbed up out of the manhole. As he popped his head out, he said, “Everything’s clear.”

  When he climbed out, his partner grabbed the metal hook again and dragged the manhole cover back in place. The guy in the overalls fired up his torch and said, “Don’t look at it,” as he pulled the visor on his helmet down over his face.

  We turned away as he began welding the manhole cover closed. We stood there talking to the ESU cops. They were talking about their bomb searches around Times Square, and I was starting to feel insignificant until I realized we’d been searching for bombs too. But they are the elite.

  Emergency Services are the cop’s cop. If we have a situation we can’t handle, we call them in. If we’re outmatched or out-gunned, they come on the scene and even up the odds. They’re better trained for jumpers and hostages and are better equipped for the more sophisticated emergencies. They have the saws, the jaws of life, the sniper rifles, and the machine guns. It’s a nice gig, but hard to get. They’re the first to respond to all the extreme situations like killer animals, building collapses, and catastrophic events.

  One of them was telling us about their New Year’s Eve detail, when we heard an explosion to the north of us. We all stood there for a second. I knew the sound was from up near 43rd Street, but I thought for a second it might have had something to do with the guy welding the manhole cover.

  As we looked up toward 43rd Street, we saw people running toward the back of a Con Edison truck with a protective area closed off around where they had been working underground. A small cloud of smoke rose up from the work area, and one of the workers was screaming while looking down into the hole.

  The four of us looked at each other and took off together toward 43rd Street, leaving the welder and his flame behind. As we were running toward them, I heard over the radio, “South substation to Central, there’s been an explosion on four-three and seven.”

  When we reached the truck, a small crowd had gathered and the Con Ed worker was still yelling down into the hole. Cops were coming from everywhere, most of them the Time Square detail and our foot posts.

  “What happened?” Romano yelled, looking scared out of his mind as he came running up behind us.

  Reporters from the New York Times were coming toward us now, and I heard South substation asking Central for two buses forthwith.

  We could hear coughing and screams coming from below. Within a couple of minutes, EMS was on the scene with two ambulances. Hanrahan pulled up along with South Eddie and rushed out of the cars.

  “What’s up?” Hanrahan asked, looking serious.

  “I don’t know, some kind of explosion underground,” I said.

  “Everyone alive?” he asked.

  “They’re screaming, that’s a good sign,” I said. “If we didn’t hear anything, then I’d be worried.”

  They took the first guy out. He was cut up and knocked around but looked okay.

  “What happened?” his buddy asked.

  “Cable shorted out.”

  You could almost feel the relief that it wasn’t any kind of explosive. When they brought the second guy out, he looked a little more serious. He must have been the guy to catch the juice from the cable. From where I was standing, I could see burns on his legs. EMS got them right out of there, and other Con Ed trucks were pulling up and going down to the site.

  We walked back down to 42nd Street with Romano and the two ESU cops.

  “What happened?” the welder asked, turning off the flame as we approached.

  “Con Ed was working and a cable shorted out,” Fiore told them.

  “Everybody okay?”

  “A little banged up,” his ESU buddy said. “They’ll be fine.”

  He nodded and began packing up his welding gear.

  We said good-bye to them and went back over to the RMP.

  “You okay?” Fiore asked Romano.

  “Yeah. I thought a bomb blew up,” he said. Both Romano and I lit cigarettes. We were smoking with our gloves on. We’d b
een outside for a while now, and while we were warm enough with our thermals on, we were feeling it on our hands, feet, and faces.

  “Nick, what would you do if you got in a situation where you were in danger?” Fiore asked.

  “I don’t know.” Romano shrugged, “Why?”

  “Would you pray?” Fiore looked at him.

  Romano seemed to be thinking about that. “Probably,” he shrugged. “Twelve years of Catholic school will do that to you.”

  “What would you pray?” Fiore asked.

  “I don’t know,” Romano sounded annoyed. “I’d probably ask God to help me. Why?” he asked again.

  “Because God tells us we can call on him to protect us,” Fiore said, taking out his little Bible.

  “Where does it say that?” Romano said, leaning into Fiore.

  “In Psalm 91,” Fiore said, flipping through the Bible.

  “Listen to this: ‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge. His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow,’—or bullet,” Fiore added, looking up at Romano—“‘that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.’”

  “What does that mean?” Romano interrupted. He had been listening intently but looked a little confused.

  Fiore was quiet for a second. “It’s about God’s protection,” he said. “It talks about the person who lives in the secret place of God’s protection. The one who says, ‘The Lord is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in him I will trust.’ It says God will deliver them. Do you understand that?”

  “A little,” Romano said. “Like the other stuff you were telling me about. I understand what you’re saying, but if God protects us, why didn’t he protect my father?”