Terminal City (Alex Cooper)

by Linda Fairstein

  “What does he mean?” Zoya asked.

  I put my finger to my lips. “Be absolutely still, okay?”

  “Are they nearby?”

  I figured Nik Blunt was closer to us than the cops.

  “On the way.”

  I put my hand on the knob, bracing my arm against the door so it opened only slightly. I focused my eyes, which was hard to do going from total darkness to the combination of searching floodlights and bolts of lightning. Nothing.

  I closed it and waited ten seconds. Zoya took another cigarette from the pack in her pocket and asked me for the lighter.

  “You can’t do that right now.”

  “It helps my nerves.”

  “You’ll give us away when I open the door.” I didn’t want to tell her that snipers must have been setting up everywhere. “Just wait.”

  “You said that before. I’ve been waiting, okay?”

  I shushed her again and cracked the door. This time, the spotlights all seemed to be aimed in the same general position. They were crisscrossing the giant molding that formed a channel from the catwalk on the east side—from which Blunt had thrown Yolanda—to the one next to us, on the building’s west side.

  I stood on tiptoe, so close to the ceiling of the terminal that my vertigo almost overwhelmed me.

  In the man-sized gully—which appeared to be an architectural design element from the concourse below—where workmen stood twice a year to change thousands of lightbulbs, I could see Nik Blunt. He had crawled onto the deep space through one of the long glass windows—clearly fearless of heights, unlike me—and was creeping across the entire length of the terminal in our direction.

  Spotlights from the floor tried to follow his movement, but most of Blunt’s head and body were below the rim of the channel.

  I had no idea whether he had spotted me when I saw him throw Yolanda off the catwalk, or whether she’d had a chance, before he slit her throat, to give up the fact that his sister was in the terminal, helping the police find him.

  Someone from below yelled the word “fire.”

  A hail of bullets flew in the direction of Nik Blunt, who flattened himself against his sky-high gully and laid perfectly still. They struck the marble walls and burst scores of lightbulbs.

  I pulled the door shut before someone mistook my shadow for the killer.

  FORTY-SIX

  I had my back to the wall, next to the door.

  “What do you have in your apron pocket beside the lighter?” I asked Zoya.

  She had heard the volley of shots and was ten steps ahead of me, backtracking in the corridor.

  “Nothing. Just a Swiss Army knife and a bottle opener.”

  A waitress, of course. “Let me have them, please.”

  She fished in her apron and handed me the multitooled gadget first. I pocketed that, then held out my hand for the corkscrew. I pushed in the lock on the door—there was no bolt—then asked her to come back and hold the lighter so I could see well enough to jam the keyhole with the wine opener.

  “Let’s go. That should buy us a few minutes.”

  “But the gunshots?”

  “It’s the cops. They think they see your brother up here.”

  “Near us? Coming toward us?”

  “I don’t know, Zoya.”

  She started to run in the dark, holding the lighter out in front of her. “He’ll kill me,” she said. “Why aren’t the cops here?”

  He’ll kill anyone he encounters, I thought to myself. “Where are you going, Zoya? You’re heading back the same way we came.”

  Nik could just as easily crawl back to the catwalk he’d started from as come out to the one we’d been standing near. I wanted to find a place to hide.

  The young woman kept running ahead of me.

  “Zoya, how well do you know this area? There must be supply closets up here, aren’t there? Somewhere we can be out of sight.”

  “I’m getting out.” She was frantic now, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t thinking any more clearly, although there didn’t seem a way to escape from the top of the building that had countless entrances and exits on the street level.

  “We’ve got to stay together, Zoya.”

  “I don’t have to do anything you tell me. You’ll get me killed. You’ll get us both killed.”

  Halfway down the corridor, she took a right turn, which was the way back to the situation room that we’d exited with Yolanda Figueroa.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  I caught up with her as she pulled on the door. It wouldn’t open. She stepped aside to let me try, but I couldn’t move it.

  “Don’t you have a key? Don’t you have anything to help us?” Zoya had lost it, emotionally. She was unable to talk to me now. Everything she said was a scream or a high-pitched rant.

  “I don’t have keys. I never did.” This hadn’t been the plan for the evening.

  Zoya swept past me and continued down the narrow hallway. I looked back before I followed her. Blunt didn’t appear to be coming yet, if he was still alive. There was no noise from the direction of the landing, where I’d blocked the keyhole—at least temporarily.

  Ten seconds later, Zoya let out a shriek. I ran toward her in the dark space, farther away from the corridor that led to the two catwalks, and to the stairwells that eventually could take us down to the concourse.

  There was a body on the floor, directly in front of the door to the operations command center. A man in some kind of military camouflage who’d been shot in the chest. He was African American, so I knew that it wasn’t Nik Blunt.

  Zoya was out of control. She began banging on the door of the operations center.

  I knelt beside the soldier—a National Guardsman or reservist. I grabbed the Bic lighter from Zoya’s hand to take a cursory look at his face and chest. The man was dead.

  “Let me in,” Zoya yelled to whoever was inside.

  Keith Scully and his colleagues had obviously stationed someone outside the room where the trains were controlled. It appeared that Nik Blunt had killed him and taken whatever gun—whatever kind of weapon—the dead man had thought would protect him.

  “Nobody’s coming in here,” a voice called back. “Who are you?”

  “I’m—I’m—just a woman. Just—just—help me. What’s the difference?”

  “I’m a prosecutor. I’m Alex Cooper,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “You got ID? You got a badge?”

  “No, no, badge. But you can call the stationmaster. Call the police commissioner. They’ll tell you who I am.”

  “Lady, we can’t call nobody. How the hell do I know who you are? Somebody was supposed to be outside this door keeping us safe. Sounds like he’s gone. We’re barricaded in here till I see the man I work for. All our furniture’s against the door, so don’t try anything.”

  “The man guarding you is dead,” I said.

  I didn’t know whether I was talking to Yolanda Figueroa’s boyfriend or not, but it wasn’t the time to break that sad piece of news to him.

  “I’ve got a gun, lady. Locked, loaded, and perfectly legal. Try to get yourselves in here and you’re dead, too.”

  Zoya started stumbling forward again, farther into the dark hallway, into what was unfamiliar territory for me.

  I stood beside the man who’d been killed, unable to move.

  Then I heard noise, remote but audible. Someone was playing with the lock that I’d jammed with the corkscrew, jimmying it, trying to force it open.

  I reached up for one of the horizontal steam pipes and grasped on to it. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see Zoya, but there was only one direction in which I could move.

  In ten or twelve steps, I could hear her breathing. I practically bumped into her, where she had stopped at an intersection in t
he narrow passageway.

  I drew next to her and whispered in her ear, as softly as I could. “I think Nik’s going to be coming back this way. We won’t be able to talk. We can’t use your lighter.”

  “How do you know he’s coming?” She was panicky, shaking like a leaf.

  “There’s someone trying to get through that door on the landing we just left. If it was cops, they’d be calling out to us by now. They’d be offering help.”

  “But you said—”

  “We had to leave the position Mike sent us to, so the guys don’t know where we are anymore, Zoya. How can they help us till they do?”

  “Well, I’m getting out. I’m getting out of here.”

  “Where are you going? I’m trying to help you stay safe. There must be some hiding place you remember.”

  She turned her back to me and started to walk briskly. It was too dark to run.

  Zoya Blunt had no intention of answering me. She was simply trying to put as much distance as she could between her brother and herself.

  She made a right turn at the intersection in the corridor. I had no choice but to follow her.

  We must have taken another twenty or thirty steps. To my right was a series of doors—probably equipment closets. I slowed down to twist the knobs, but nothing gave.

  Zoya Blunt stopped short just ahead of me. To her left were only two choices: a steel-framed door or a wooden staircase located at the bottom of a dozen steps.

  I watched as without hesitation she chose the door.

  I was practically on her back as she worked the handle. There was no lock.

  Zoya pushed on the door and it swung open.

  I looked out and gasped. She had stepped out onto the sloping roof of Grand Central Terminal, twenty stories above 42nd Street.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Rain pelted my face as I froze in the doorway, half of me inside and half out. Thunder rolled overhead.

  “You can’t do this, Zoya. You’ll fall!”

  She sat down on the copper plates of the rooftop and started scooting sideways like a crab, heading to the west side of the building. Clearly neither she nor her brother shared my fear of heights.

  I followed her progression with my eyes but was too paralyzed to copy her moves. The tiles were slippery from the storm. Zoya’s skirt ripped as she slid down to the edge of the roof, catching herself on the concrete trim that decorated the entire edge of the vast building.

  Fear was a powerful motivator. She rolled onto her hip and clawed her way up the side of the incline, closer to the top, then continued to propel herself westward.

  Zoya had left me behind. I understood why but didn’t know which way to go to save myself.

  Nothing was moving below me on 42nd Street. Undoubtedly, the massive police operation had resulted in the closure of all traffic routes around the terminal.

  There was a flash of light that stunned me for a few seconds. More lightning, I thought.

  But when I picked my head up, there was a row of Emergency Service floodlights aimed at this side of the roof. Some were on the roadway, and others were directed straight ahead, on the Park Avenue Viaduct that encircled the building directly below me.

  I ducked back inside, rain-soaked and confused. I stepped out of my wet sneakers and left them next to the door.

  It suddenly occurred to me that there were police snipers in every office building on the opposite side of the street. If Nik Blunt had chosen to escape on foot, on any one of the streets or avenues, the sharpshooters would have been waiting for him. And of course, the rooftop was another possible route for someone as nimble as Blunt.

  I closed the door and tried to think about my options.

  Then I heard footsteps. It was neither pounding rain nor the sound of Zoya Blunt scrambling across the roof of the terminal.

  The steps came from the corridor we had just traveled, and since no one was calling my name, I assumed the person approaching me was Nik Blunt.

  I went down the short wooden staircase, wondering why Zoya—who clearly had played in this vast attic as a child—hadn’t taken this passage. I assumed it was because it did not lead out to the rooftop, which, to me, was a good thing.

  At the bottom of the steps was an enclosure—also made of wood, somewhat decomposed and rotted out—which was probably original to the old building.

  “Who are you?” It was Blunt’s voice. The same one I’d heard after he’d disposed of Yolanda’s body.

  I took another two steps and was inside the shed, out of sight.

  “I saw you peeking out from the landing. Guess nobody told you it was a bad night to be working late.”

  I was relieved that the killer had no reason to know my name or my role in this manhunt and seemed unaware of his sister’s presence in the terminal.

  I turned around to see where I was, whether entrapped in this wooden corral or if there was another way out.

  My eyes became accustomed to the light and in front of me I could see the interior of a gigantic clock, the rear side of huge pieces of stained glass that fronted on 42nd Street.

  The spectacular timepiece was, I knew, the largest clock ever made in the Tiffany Studios. It was part of the iconic statue Transportation that was Grand Central’s face to the world.

  Blunt was getting closer. “I need you to take a walk with me,” he said. “Come on out, wherever you are.”

  I knew the clock faced due south. Its center was bright blue, with painted rays of sunlight dancing around the dial. Each of the Roman numerals was also gilded against a deep-red circular background.

  Blunt was playing with the knob on the door handle that led to the roof, the same exit Zoya had used.

  I saw a small plaque on the wall of the clock room. Next to the numeral VI on the giant face, which was probably a dozen feet in diameter or more, were the words OPEN HERE. It must have been the way custodians could reach the exterior clock face for maintenance and repairs.

  “Well, well. You must have had a change of heart. There’s a puddle at this door by the roof, so I’m guessing you decided not to take that slippery slope after looking out.”

  I reached for the long handle next to the numeral VI. It opened inward. I squinted at my wristwatch, which said it was 12:26. I looked up and the tip of the minute hand on the Tiffany clock face—an enormous gilded pointer—was just coming into view in front of me.

  It was a heavy piece of steel, taller than I was, with a soldered-on extension that stuck out on both sides of the sharp point. Just beyond the minute hand, I could see the bottom of the famous sculpture that surrounded the clock—a thick rim bordered with oak leaves and cornucopia.

  I didn’t like my odds, but I had no intention of waiting for Nik Blunt to put his hands on me. I lifted one leg over the outer edge of the circular window—numeral VI on the giant clock face—grabbing hold of the minute hand to stay in place. I was tempted to use that long hand to anchor me, but I was afraid it wouldn’t hold my weight. Then I swung my other leg out, so that I was seated on the window’s metal frame, facing south across 42nd Street.

  I pulled the casing closed behind me. Now I was alone on the rooftop of the terminal, outside in the furious storm, rain cascading down my head and shoulders while I tried to figure out how to find a safe place to conceal myself.

  I couldn’t see anything because of the darkness and the blinding spotlights of the NYPD. It was probably better for me that way. I hoped the night-vision goggles of the snipers afforded them greater sight than I had. I needed them to establish that I was a disheveled-looking woman—barefoot, in jeans and a vest—and not the killer they were ready to take out.

  I tried to channel Mercer’s steady voice. I had never known anyone with the serenity that he always displayed. I imagined him standing behind me, steadying me, talking me into a way to save myself.

  I heard the
metal door that led to the roof, the one that Zoya had escaped through, open. Even if Blunt looked out there for either of us, she had long ago rounded the corner of the building, and I was too far in front of him, blocked from view by the statue above the clock.

  “Maybe you slid right off the roof,” Blunt yelled out into the night. “What a mess you’d make all over the sidewalk.”

  Lightning split the sky in two. My hair and clothing were soaked from the heavy rain.

  I closed my eyes and had my silent conversation with Mercer. I needed to get off the frame of the clock. I had to move away from this opening, which was likely to be Nik Blunt’s next point of approach.

  I counted on Mercer to calmly coax me to move, even though he was in another part of the building. Time to go, Alex. Just step yourself down on a piece of that granite, I imagined his voice in my ear. Hold tight. Don’t look down. I’ll come and get you soon.

  I felt for the base of the great sculpture with my toes. The shape of the oak leaves that formed the bottom of it made a perfect foothold. The rough-hewn granite, exposed to the elements and weathered for more than a century, was far less slippery than the panels on the roof of the building where I’d watched Zoya struggle and slide.

  I put one foot ahead of the other, bending over and reaching for the next garland in the elaborate carving.

  I looked up. I had stepped a few feet away from the face of the clock. Directly overhead was the statue of Mercury, and almost within my reach, the giant draped leg of the reclining goddess, Minerva. I was desperate to pull myself up beside her and be sheltered by her strong, still figure. Then I thought of Mike and how he could tell me what each of these gods represented—Hercules, Mercury, and Minerva. I smiled at that connection.

  Then I heard the metal casing on the clock scrape against itself as the circular numeral VI window opened. I could see Nik Blunt stick his head and neck through the hole, and I pressed myself against the cold, wet stone so that he couldn’t make out my position.

  I didn’t move. I watched as he threw one leg over the frame at the bottom of the circular window. The minute hand was about to cross through to the next numeral.