Rocks Beat Paper

by Mike Knowles

  I likely would have agreed with the con man, especially after the third police car joined the pack that was getting close to nipping on our bumper, but we had just passed 33rd Street.

  On 34th, I turned the wheel hand over hand without taking my foot off the gas. The tires squealed and the car flirted with letting two wheels do the driving, but the Ford managed to take the turn without tipping over. I shoved Miles off me and wove around a car following the rules of the road. Thirty-fourth wasn’t empty at three thirty in the morning. There were enough cars on the road to turn our sprint into a slalom. I held no allegiance to the lanes while pushing the car faster and faster. Miles kept his head pointed towards the rear windshield.

  “Whatever this is supposed to be, it isn’t working.”

  “You’re buckled, right?”

  Miles took his eyes off the police cars behind us and looked at the strap across his chest. The word came out slowly. “Ye-ah.” He angled his head so that he could see the speedometer. “What are you going to do?”

  I saw the stairs on the left. These ones weren’t like the others — they would work. I let the Ford drift into the left lane and made another car do the swerving for once.

  “Tell me this is part of the plan.”

  I wasn’t a driver. I didn’t have the precision and finesse of a wheelman. I was competent behind the wheel, but I never had a knack for making cars do the kinds of things that made the laws of physics do a double take. I knew all of this as I paralleled the curb; I also knew my chances of shaking three cops on my bumper. I stopped thinking when I saw the green railings of the subway entrance — I gave up on thinking, clenched my teeth, and yanked the wheel to the left.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The sharp change in direction and the nudge from the concrete curb took the car off of all four of its wheels. I had wanted to thread the needle and send the car down the stairs, but I wasn’t a wheelman. The Ford stayed on its two left wheels for less than half a second and then opted for rolling over. The Ford rammed into the railing of the stairwell and lost its forward momentum in less than a second. The airbags exploded into existence with a loud bang as the green railing cleaved a jagged wound into the driver’s side window. The rear section of the railing caught the Ford like a line drive to first and halted its momentum with a savage jolt.

  “You alive?”

  Miles groaned.

  The seat belts had kept us in the car, but gravity was working at getting us out of our seats and down to the roof. “Yes or no, Miles.”

  “I’m alive,” he croaked.

  “Get your belt off,” I said. “Don’t fall on your head.”

  Miles rubbed his head. “What?”

  “Belt.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Watch your —”

  Miles released his seat belt and crashed into the ceiling. I was no doctor, but I took Miles’s complete failure to react to the fall as a sign that not one hundred percent of him made it through the crash intact.

  I put a hand on the roof and used the other to click the seat belt. I fell with less grace than a cat but with way more than the con man. I took the impact on my shoulder and quickly worked my legs under me. The windshield had taken a worse beating than my partner, and it took only a few kicks to make a hole big enough to crawl through. I slid out of the car, pulling Miles along behind me.

  Miles put two feet on the concrete stairs and spent a few seconds figuring out how to navigate a world that was probably spinning a lot faster than he was used to. I started down the stairs and was pleased to see that he followed without being told. Any pleasure I felt disappeared when I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw Miles plodding four steps behind. It wasn’t his speed that furrowed my brow — it was his right shoulder hanging out of its socket that had me concerned.

  When Miles stepped off the stairs, I took hold of him with two hands and pivoted my body. The sudden movement put him against the wall and confused him enough to give me time to get my hands on his shoulder. In one movement, I jammed the bones back into place and then stepped back to let Miles deal with the pain.

  He handled the additional pain louder than I thought he would have, and I had to brace him against the wall with my forearm against his windpipe to quiet him down.

  “Shut up,” I hissed.

  Miles brought his hands up to my face and pressed his fingers into my eyes. I shook my head and pushed my mouth close to his ear.

  “We don’t have time for this. Now shut up and get your badge out.”

  I let Miles go and took out my badge.

  Miles wheezed, “They know we’re not cops.”

  I jutted a thumb towards the stairs and the smoke starting to snake out of the shadows and into the light. “They know we’re not cops.” I pointed in the direction of the terminal ahead of us. “They have no idea we aren’t. We need to take advantage of that while we can.”

  I heard shouts coming our way. “In or out, Miles?”

  Miles rubbed at his throat and then worked out the word, “In.” It almost sounded like him.

  I pulled my gun and kept it pointed at the floor. I looked at Miles and saw a glassy-eyed return of my gaze. It was the best I was going to get.

  “Follow my lead,” I said to Miles before I yelled out, “NYPD! Everyone get back! NYPD!” Badge up and gun down, I walked around the corner.

  There were two people waiting for us. One was wearing a subway worker’s uniform; the other wore the uniform of someone on professional twenty-four-hour street patrol.

  I focused on the man with a job. “Are you in charge down here?”

  “What?”

  “Are you in charge down here?”

  The middle-aged guy with grey on his temples and in just the middle of his moustache looked around. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I work here.”

  “Then you’re in charge. Get on your radio and relay a message to your supervisor.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Miles beat me to the answer. His shoulder might have been wrecked and his bell might have been rung, but his mouth was fine. “Terrorists,” he said. “They’re using cars this time. Filling them with gasoline and fertilizer and then using them like Kamikazes. We need everyone away from the exits. Just get everyone into a washroom and stay there until we notify you that you can exit. Can you do that?”

  The guy looked at our badges and guns and then at the smoke that had started to follow us. “I can do that, Officer.”

  “Detective,” Miles said.

  “Sorry, Detective.” The subway worker turned to the only other person in the terminal. “Let’s go. We need to get into the washroom.”

  “We’re going back up. Make sure that you keep everyone down here safe.”

  The man stood up a little straighter. “I can do that, sir.”

  We watched the subway worker open the gate and usher the vagrant through. I gave them thirty seconds before I said, “Let’s go.”

  I hopped the turnstile and helped Miles over. When we got to the platform, we found it empty. I crossed the platform to the mouth of the tunnel and climbed down onto the subway tracks.

  Miles eased himself to the concrete and draped his legs over the side of the platform. He paused and let his legs dangle out of sight. “You sure this is a good idea?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t wait to see if Miles would follow me, and I didn’t look back. If Miles had second thoughts about the getaway route, he could work it out with the cops who were currently figuring out a way around the smoking vehicle we had left in our wake.

  The mounted fluorescent lights tinged the subway tunnel an eerie blue and created just enough ambient light to make the graffiti along the walls visible. We weren’t the first people who had decided to use the tunnel as a footpath, not by a long shot. I jogged beside the tracks, listening for any sign of a train on i
ts way towards me. It was late and there should have been less cars on the tracks, but I wasn’t having any luck with things working out like they were supposed to.

  As if on cue, I felt the faint rumbling through the soles of my shoes. The rumble climbed my legs as it became a sound. Ahead, I saw the tunnel illuminate as the train got closer. I considered hugging the wall, but I didn’t want a driver to report two men in the tunnel. That report would go straight to the cops and put them back on my scent when I was no longer in possession of a combustion engine. I wasted a second looking over my shoulder for Miles and saw that he was trailing five metres behind me. There was a concrete divider twenty metres ahead of me where the track widened to accommodate some space that was previously used but now neglected. I yelled to Miles to move faster and started running.

  The ground, uneven and littered with all manner of trash and debris, slowed me down, but the bend in the tunnel gave me an advantage. The train was approaching fast, but it wouldn’t be able to see me or Miles until it came around the bend. I slid behind the divider and scrambled to the edge to look for Miles. The con man was lagging ten metres behind. He was having more trouble than I had with the uneven ground. His need to clutch his damaged shoulder didn’t boost his speed, either. I didn’t check on the train. The light in the tunnel and the noise in my ears told me that it was coming around the bend.

  “Drop,” I yelled.

  Miles kept running.

  “Get on the ground!”

  Miles saw the train.

  “Drop!”

  He kept running. He fell behind the barrier a second before the train rolled past, and long after the driver got a good look at him.

  The second the subway was out of sight, I said, “Go.”

  Miles was slow getting to his feet. I took him by his good arm and sped him up.

  “How much time do you think we have before they figure out we’re in the tunnel?”

  “Less, now that the conductor saw you running beside the tracks.”

  Miles spoke around huffing breaths. “I should have dropped to my stomach.”

  I grunted a response and pulled Miles along a little faster. The tunnel was quiet after the train had passed, and I worried that the natural silence of the space made the clamour of our ragged breaths and the beat of our heavy feet stand out. I kept worrying as I ran. The only advantage we had came from the confusion created by the tunnels. The police had to cover two directions at once, and that kind of response took time to orchestrate. If we moved fast enough, we might have a chance of evading the net being thrown over us.

  After ten minutes, the tunnel began to shed its darkness. Dim light from the next station was working its way towards us — and so were the focused beams of flashlights.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “Shit,” Miles said.

  “I see them.”

  “I can’t go back the other way. I don’t have the steam for a chase.”

  “Can you climb onto the platform?”

  Miles squinted down the tunnel. “I could do it, but it’s not that simple. I see —” He paused to squint some more. “Two guys with flashlights coming towards us. You think they’re cops?”

  I moved away from the wall and looked down the tunnel. I saw orange vests instead of black. “MTA. Word about us escaping must not have reached the trains yet. He probably called us in as vagrants or urban explorers.”

  “Think we can badge them?”

  I looked at Miles. His right arm was hanging loosely at his side and his head had an egg-sized lump near his temple that had swollen and become discoloured while we were running alongside the tracks. “We? No. No one is buying you as a cop looking like that.”

  “Looking like what? What do I look like?” He grabbed my arm. “What the hell do I look like?”

  “Perfect,” I said. I took hold of the back of his jacket and pushed him forward.

  “What the hell are we doing?”

  I spoke into Miles’s ear, “I’m arresting you.” Then I shouted to the men down the tunnel. “You two better not be my escorts.”

  “Stop right there.” The voices were responding to what they had heard not what they had saw. The beams of their flashlights began a frantic search that ended when one of the lights flashed across Miles’s face.

  I kept my voice loud and full of the kind of authority that could only be gained by permission to carry a gun around. “I was told I was going to have two men help me search the tunnel. They also said that they would stop the train from coming through. I guess you guys are oh for fucking two.”

  Both lights were on Miles as we approached. Miles tucked his chin into his chest to avoid the blinding glare.

  When the voice that had told us to stop barked at us again, it was ten metres away. “What the hell are you talking about? We got a report of two men walking on the tracks. They sent us down here to find out if it’s true.”

  “That was me and this piece of shit right here.”

  “Hey,” Miles complained.

  “Shut up.” I looked over Miles’s shoulder at the two men while I erased the distance between us one step at a time. “He jumped off the platform and ran down the tunnel. I called it in. You telling me no one relayed the message?”

  Up close, I could make out the two MTA workers. They were an odd pairing. Each man seemed to be a direct contrast of the other. The speaker’s excessive body weight and four-day-old stubble looked slovenly next to the toned body and baby face of his partner. The bigger, older man was apparently the one in charge because he did all the talking. “No one told us anything. Like I said, we got word from the conductor that there was a man down in the tunnel.”

  “So you’re down here to find him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now that you have?”

  “We call it in and get you off the tracks.”

  “You have a radio?”

  The fat man nodded. “Of course I got a radio.”

  I took the gun away from Miles’s back and pointed it at the bigger of the two men. After some slow reaching, peppered with groans, Miles got his gun out, too.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  I stepped left so that the kid could see what kind of situation he was in without his partner’s body blocking his view.

  “Who do you call in to?” I asked.

  “Our supervisor, Jimmy.”

  “Radio Jimmy right now and tell him you saw a man in the tunnel. You hear me? A man. Tell him you think he was a bum and that the guy went running back the way he came when he saw you.”

  The bigger of the two men looked at my gun before he looked at me again. “Listen, I got no problem with you. Walk away right now. We won’t try to stop you. Just don’t do nothin’ stupid.”

  I kicked the man in groin with as much force as I could muster. He went to his knees and then onto his side. His mouth made wide silent gasps that pulled no air into his lungs.

  I pointed the gun at the kid. “Radio Jimmy right now and tell him you saw a bum run back the way he came.”

  The kid said, “Okay. Sure, no problem.” He pulled his radio from his belt and brought it to his mouth.

  I took a step closer. “Stick to the script and everything will be fine.”

  “Okay.” Before he used the radio, he looked at me and said, “Could you maybe point the gun someplace else?”

  “No.”

  The kid nodded, took a shaky breath, and radioed his supervisor. Miles and I listened as he fed his boss the lines we gave him. Jimmy didn’t like what he heard because it meant he had to make “a fucking hell of a lot of fucking calls.” The kid replied with, “uh hunhs,” until Jimmy got sick of talking and moved on to start his calls.

  The kid let his radio dangle in his hand. “So now you’ll let me go, right? I mean, that’s our deal.”

  Miles
laughed and then said, “Ow.”

  I pointed at the fat man on the ground. He was breathing again, but he wasn’t trying to get to his feet. “His clothes. Now.”

  “What?”

  “Get his clothes off, and then lose yours.”

  Five minutes later, we were dressed in coveralls, an orange vest, and a hard hat.

  “Cops, now construction workers. I feel like I’m in the village people.”

  I ignored Miles and dragged the kid’s unconscious body to the side of the tunnel where his partner was already laid out.

  “Time to go.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We walk back to the platform, climb the stairs, and walk away from each other.”

  Miles nodded and followed behind me. “Y’know, I gotta say, I’m kind of surprised. I thought you’d shoot me or leave me in the tunnel because I was slowing you down. You might be going soft, Wilson.”

  Miles had watched me kill a man to get out of a jam, and the experience had left an impression. I didn’t bother to tell him that the calculations that had led me to pull the trigger was the same cold math that had kept him alive. I had put up with the delays and complications of dragging the con man along with me because I had the endgame in mind. We were going to walk out of the tunnel and separate. The cops were looking for two men, so we’d split up and become something else. I could have left Miles behind and walked out alone, but I wanted the two of us to stick together; especially when one of us was Miles. He was hurt and moving slowly. That made him bait moving in the opposite direction.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I got on the first bus I saw and rode the route until we passed a church. I got off at the next stop and doubled back. In the rear lot of the church was a clothing donation box that I had spotted as the bus rolled by. The box was full and people had left donations in garbage bags on the pavement. I pierced the first trash bag and wasted a minute sifting through women’s clothing. The second bag had some men’s items, but it was all beachwear. I finally scored on the fourth bag. Inside, I found jeans, a sweatshirt, and a coat that matched the season. I dumped the rest of the bag onto the pavement, changed, and packed the sweaty suit and coveralls I had worn over top of it into the bottom of the bag. I scooped up the spilled clothing on the pavement and refilled the bag before tying a new knot.