The Railroad (3 page)

Everything seemed a haze after that. Somewhere along the line I turned in Bill’s direction to find that he was gone, along with his wife.

It was getting late but that had never stopped me once the party really got started. I had called Dennis from the bar and offered to meet him in one of the strange bars in Tribeca located amid grimy factories; a hidden yuppie enclave. The Next Corner Bar was just off West Broadway. It had good hamburgers and the drinks were relatively cheap.

I’d known Dennis since I was a nerdy pre-teenager. We’d grown up in a suburb of New York where kids spent their weekends trying to get some adult to buy them beer. We’d met at a mutual friend’s party and got along well for reasons no one around us could tell.

Dennis had made it to the bar before I got there and was already on his third beer. “Give my friend here a formaldehyde, bartender,” he called out as I took a stool at the bar.

“Laphroaig please,” I corrected him.

The bartender smirked. “I think we have a bottle of that. Wait a second.” He disappeared behind the bar, poring over the contents of the shelves. “One more place to look,” he told us as he went off to the back storeroom. A few seconds later he came back with a smile on his face, holding a green bottle. “Three bottles left. I think they’ll be there for a while. You might drink all of it. It’s not popular.

He placed a rocks glass before me, three quarters filled with an amber liquid. Dennis leaned over and sniffed it. “You’re on your own.”

“Fine with me. Liver ho!” It was code from our murky younger days when drinking had first become a hobby. I took a healthy pull.

“So you’re the golden boy now.”

I thought of Bill Halleran’s face only an hour before and I smiled. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“You think they’ll make you an officer?”

“There’s been talk of that.”

“What would they think of us back home? The two fuck-ups. And look at us now.”

“Maybe we should go back. Take the grand tour.”

“Oh yeah. The grand tour of Jerry’s bar. We could talk to them about systems architecture or criminal law.”

“Criminal law would go over with some of them. I’ve been waiting for some of them to show up in some case you’re trying.”

His eyes lit up. “The People v. Adrian Tannery.”

I nodded my approval. Tannery had been the bully of bullies in our home town. “That would be sweet. Except I think he’s a real estate broker now.”

“It figures. Hey Alfalfa?” It was a name we called each other, something from a time before we could even drink legally. No one besides us knew what it meant.

“Hey Dennis?”

“Do you really like what you’re doing?”

“Whoa! Are you getting philosophical after only three drinks?”

“I mean it. Do you really like it?”

I hadn’t asked myself that question in such a long time that I found that, to my surprise, I didn’t have an answer. “It excites me. It gets me up in the morning. I like the highs. I try not to think about the lows. But…well now I’ve managed to do something I never did before and I’m going to get recognized for it. Maybe someday I’ll be CIO. Who knows? Why? Are you thinking about leaving the DA's office?”

“No. I do like what I do. But sometimes I wonder if I will in a few years. Or if what I do makes any difference.”

“Dennis, you need another drink.”

“You may be right. It can’t hurt.”

Three drinks and an hour later saw us in a cab up to the fifties. It was Monday night at Iridium and Les Paul was playing. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s responsible for creating much of the electronic musical equipment rock guitarists use today. One of the legendary rock guitars bears his name.

I ordered smoked salmon with capers and some more single malt scotch. Dennis stayed with his beer and had a burger. Les Paul went through a number of his jazz standards and talked to the crowd. It seemed like a standard evening of New York Club jazz until an unexpected guest showed up: Randy Bachman of Bachman, Turner, Overdrive was in town for a BTO revival and had come by to see Les Paul, someone he’d idolized as a kid no doubt. We were graced with an impromptu and unexpected rendition of “Taking care of Business” which seemed pretty incongruous in a jazz club like Iridium.

Meanwhile Dennis, emboldened by liquor, had started up a conversation with an auditor from one of the big eight firms. I caught his eye and silently asked a time-honored question. The woman just looked my way and giggled. I sensed that my presence would soon be redundant and, after another half hour, I made my apologies and took a cab home.

The next morning I was musing over the kiss I’d shared with Debbie Baum when a few words from my radio caught my attention. …
airplane crashed into the World Trade Center…  fire raging in the top stories… rescue workers rushing to the scene
…

I guess I’d been ten or so when my father had told me the story of an army plane that crashed into the Empire State building back in the fifties. It had seemed like something out of fairytale past, where great shocking events occurred and appeared in movie newsreels.

What were the odds, I thought, of two such events happening in a fifty year span; how often, statistically, could you expect a plane to crash into a skyscraper?

I dismissed the thought; there was nothing I could do about it, except perhaps to go to the office and deal with the mountain of work that still waited for me. At the corner I turned my attention south. There was the north Tower, miles away, its top engulfed in flames that showed no sign of dissipating. I stood and stared for a good stupefied five minutes before I realized that I was simply wasting time. What was done was done and I couldn’t change it.

The subway was as it always was, annoying and a little too crowded. I’d taken to riding in front of the train so I could look out the window at the dirty tracks passing by. There were a few others who did the same, part of a small but dedicated cadre. I saw “Mr. Cool”, as I called him, a finger-snapping, suit-wearing, self-defined arbiter of cool. He’d snap in time to the music on his CD player and offer a too-hip finger pointing gesture at anyone whose style he approved of. I tried to avoid looking at him but it was sort of like trying to keep your eyes off a car wreck. When he saw me looking at him he smiled, just before I turned away in disgust. A few seconds later we pulled into one of the stations and I concentrated on the window in front of me.

A woman rushed in, barely missing the closing doors. Breathing heavily, she came to stop just inches from
Mr
.
Cool
. “Hey!” he shouted to the woman, pointing his index finger. Everyone around him turned conspicuously away, including the woman in question.

When I left the train, a few minutes later, I saw
Mr
.
Cool
snapping his fingers and nodding his head in time to music only he heard. I wondered if he spent all his off-work time alone, lost in his fantasies

Back on the street, I knew something was wrong; there were very few people on the sidewalks at a time when people would normally have to fight just to move a few feet. Any other weekday we’d all be part of a complex dance that involved dodging human beings while continuing to move forward, non-stop. That day I could have spread my arms wide, run down the street and I wouldn’t have touched a soul.

I made my way through an empty lobby to my bank of elevators, feeling like I was in some science fiction movie about the end of the world. Finally the guard at my floor confirmed my suspicions: there was something wrong and we were all instructed to leave immediately. The second building in the Trade Center had been hit; no one thought it was an accident any more.

Like any good New Yorker, feeling the pulse of the City, I had my plan of action worked out immediately. I would walk eastward to the other side of the island, getting as far away as possible from the towers. I knew it would be bedlam on the subways as all of the Wall Street area tried to make it to trains, buses, ferries and water taxis at once. I wouldn’t let myself get caught up in the chaos.

Chapter Two

              As I made my way through the lobby, I was playing my route home in my head, trying to anticipate the areas most likely to be congested. There had to be some way to avoid them.

I was almost through the doors and to the street when I heard someone call my name. Peter Krauss was a balding man in his thirties. We had shared a few jokes in the bathroom but I’d never felt any kinship toward him and was certainly not in the mood for him just then.

“Mike!” he called. “Are you going to take the subway?”

I grimaced. “To be honest, Peter, the subway is going to be a mess.”

“Come on! Just ride with me to City Hall. I’m going to get off and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe I can get a bus or call my wife to come get me.”

“I’d really rather not get on the subway.”

“It’s only two stops.”

I considered it; I’d made it downtown with no problem. “Let’s go see if there are any signs down in the station. Maybe they’ve closed the trains.”

“I guess we can walk to the bridge. Let’s go down anyway, and take a look.”

I wondered for a second why I was going against my own instincts but Peter looked so panic-stricken that I felt some odd need to help him; I started walking down the subway stairs into Bowling Green station “Okay, we’ll see.”

There were no signs in the subway; the trains seemed to be running smoothly. Two stops, I told myself. What could happen?

We took the one stop to Wall Street with no problems. Peter gave me an “I told you so” nod and I relaxed. We began to talk about the office as the train pulled out of the station on its way to Fulton Street. We’d just gotten into a discussion of budgeting when the train did something no other subway car has ever done in my experience as a New Yorker: it jerked to a stop with enough force to practically knock me over.

The shock was profound; I righted myself and took stock of the situation, becoming increasingly aware of my fellow riders. Each of us looked from one to the other, searching for an answer to this unexpected break in our proper routine. I knew that two planes had hit the Twin Towers separately and the conclusion I’d been avoiding hit me full force. Someone had planned it. Was someone now sabotaging the subways, perhaps cutting the power? The possibilities poured through my mind in a rush: someone had sabotaged the electrical systems; someone had set off a bomb somewhere in the subway system; someone had blocked the tunnel; someone was going to board the train and…

I stole a few furtive glances at my fellow passengers and noticed they were doing the same thing. No one wanted to lock eyes; that would have made our disaster too real. Instead we stared around each other, catching small glimpses of the people near us.

I numbed out and went into New York mode, a state hard to explain to anyone not from the City. People think New Yorkers are hard and aloof, but what they really are is overloaded. When you’re thrown back on your own devices, you start thinking of what you can do to fix things and everything else is tuned out. I immediately thought of my escape route. All of us knew about the third rail, where it was, how to avoid it; I’d seen signs for years in every car I’d ever been in showing that it wasn’t safe to leave the train without the aid of transit crews. But I knew if things got bad, I’d simply leave the train and walk back to Wall Street, hugging the right side of the tracks.

I stole some more glances around me.
Who was thinking the same thing I was
? I wondered. Was someone else going to suggest it? Should we leave now? I glanced at Peter who simply gave me a confused look. No one moved and there was little conversation.

That was until the smoke started drifting in. That was the best way I could describe it, like being a block or so away from a fire and having some of the smoke drift into your house. As things began to go slightly hazy, I lost my sense of security. Other people had seen it too and were looking around, starting to shuffle like cows in a pen, whispering to each other.
 

It is possible that I might die
. There was the thought that I’d been avoiding and it came into my mind without any preamble. It was just there. Yes, people die in situations like this. Like on the news. I had the stark realization that I could be a statistic, just like one of those people in earthquakes in South America or in auto accidents. That those people who never had been real to me before actually were real, was a horrifying thought. I imagined someone reading about me in a newspaper or hearing about me from someone who knew me after I was gone.

I looked at my fellow passengers once more and wondered if a group so ordinary could be a group that could die. And it occurred to me that groups that die in tragedies always seem ordinary to themselves.
Oh shit.

Someone began singing a spiritual. At first it shocked us all in the closed space, but soon a few others joined in. I listened, slightly uncomfortable till one man shouted, “Stop that! They’re going to get us out.”

“Pray to Jesus,” answered another man.

There was an electric silence that followed; we all stared at each other. I felt the shock along with everyone else; some of us had spoken spontaneously; it was a violation of the rules that guided our lives. People who spoke with no apparent reason were automatically insane. I could see in everyone’s eyes that they had registered how strange it was. Oh God.

We were in deep shit; I knew that. Only desperation or shock could make a New Yorker act that way. Not attracting attention was what we all strove for in our daily lives. How stupid that seemed now.

The silence continued. Only it seemed to curdle somehow now that we’d left our comfortable little bubbles. Peter and I avoided each other’s eyes. I looked again at the door to the car, longingly. Maybe it was only the deer that got caught in the headlights that died. Maybe it was time for me to move.

Somehow I didn’t. I went into myself again.

I’d gone somewhere that I couldn’t quite identify. I knew that because my eyes were closed and I was shaken out of a sort of trance when the voice of reason came across the public address system
: Attention please. We’ve stopped due to trouble just up ahead. When things clear up, we’ll be moving. Please stay calm and stay on the train. We’ll give you an update as soon as possible. Thank you.

That was reassuring, or so it seemed; maybe it was just water to a thirsty man; the relief was so great that it had to be truth. I finally got up the nerve to look at Peter again to see his reaction and all he did was shrug. Someone near the middle of the car began speaking, startling all of us after the announcement. “Jesus will guide us all from here. Don’t worry, Just trust in Him.”

There was silence. Again, someone had violated the no talking rule that governed New York.

It seemed that, with that last utterance, the floodgates opened and people began to speak. “Pray to whatever god you believe in,” said one young woman.” I smiled at Peter, realizing that I didn’t really know what his religion was. He simply shook his head and told me, “I just want to get out of here.

A young man in his twenties told us that “he could get us moving”. He smiled, satisfied with himself, and began moving back toward our car’s conductor’s booth. He strutted southward, testing the mood of the crowd. “Yo, man,” someone called. “Let the train crews handle it. Don’t mess things up.”

The young man waved his hand dismissively. “You want to stay here, that’s your business.” But in the end he parked himself by the door and didn’t move.

Another announcement came over the PA; we were to do nothing, only this time we weren’t going to move, we were going to wait for train crews to come and escort us off the train. I imagined myself walking in a line behind Peter; the idea of being out of that car was intoxicating.

And I suddenly felt impatient wondering
when
we’d be getting off the train and
what
they were waiting for. I found I was getting angry; I simply wanted to go where I was going and I was being held back by the same chicken-shit bureaucracy that always held me down in New York. Even in a disaster like this they were simply covering their asses and going by the book. We’d end up dying in here, I told myself, because it would take too long for them to get their asses in gear and get someone down to help us. I’d die just because someone else was part of an inept system full of overpaid clerks. I began to look again toward the back door of the car I was in.

I looked upward. Somewhere on the street people were moving around, being proactive, getting themselves and others to safety. And here I was, needing help, and no one would even think of me down in the tunnels. I’d just be forgotten because I didn’t happen to be up on the street where I could be seen. They’d never think of me down here.

And I realized that I was starting to panic. It scared me even more.

Like most New Yorkers, we didn’t have much trust in the transit authority. What they could and couldn’t do in a situation like this was unknown to us. Would they bog down in a bureaucratic frenzy, leaving us in the train, unable to get clear instructions from their bosses? Were their own communication lines down?

I wasn’t the only one looking toward the back door. Yet none of us moved. Another New York reality: standing out is bad. People who do odd things are as bad as people who talk out of turn. If I was to simply leave the car I’d be breaking the stasis by which we all lived, causing a scene. Even in this, the direst situation I’d ever faced in my life, I still had my dignity to consider; if no one was going to go with me, I was going to stay. I saw the same decision being made in the eyes of most of the people around me.

I noticed that the woman across from me was sobbing, quietly. Soon a woman nearby put her arm around her. Surely a rare moment in New York. People were praying now, audibly. Even the tough young man had ceased to strut and seemed as frightened as the rest of us.

The dynamic was changing quickly. We, the impervious, the uninterested had become a small mob of people stripped bare of our customary apathy. And yet, like any New York crowd, no one screamed, no one panicked out loud. It occurred to me in a strange rush that if the crews came, we’d all move out peacefully, people helping each other down from the train, lending a hand to an elderly person.

It could have been ten minutes or maybe a half an hour before they made the wonderful announcement. There would be no train crews; they weren’t going to wait to get us out. They were going to save us. We couldn’t move forward; I was sure that most of us on the train could guess that the worst had happened in the World Trade Center and driving into the affected area wasn’t possible. As ominous as that sounded the news we heard was wonderful; they were going to
back
the train into Wall Street station, behind us. A cheer rose up from everyone and in seconds I felt the welcome motion of backward movement.

For all of us, this was beyond strange. Trains didn’t move backwards in New York; this wasn’t a commuter railroad where adjustments were made and trains moved in all directions. This was the New York Transit Authority, as unchangeable as the weather. We marveled at the backward movement for about ten seconds. And then the train suddenly ground to a jarring halt that made the previous lurch seem tame.

Someone screeched and I heard some more praying. Somewhere off to my left someone screamed, “Help me!”. I saw a couple of people who had fallen and were being helped up. Suddenly people were talking, reassuring themselves and others that we’d get out of that train in one piece. People began speculating, loudly, as if to make their speculations real.

“They’ve reversed the flow of the electricity in the tracks,” I heard one man say.

“No that’s not possible,” someone answered. “I studied transportation engineering at NYU.”

A debate started. Then a couple of small arguments. I could feel the pulse of the car rise, as each of us tried to distract ourselves from what was happening. “What do you think?” a skinny dark haired woman asked me.

To my surprise I laughed. “Not much, to be honest. Sorry. I think we’re going to get out.”
 

“Really?” she moaned, moving closer to me.

Then we heard the truth.
Please keep calm, the
PA told us
. There’s a failsafe mechanism in the trains that automatically makes the train lose power when it moves backwards. It may take us a few more tries but we’re going to make it into the station. Right now we’re building up power again.

Suddenly I began to doubt again. They were trying to keep us calm because something worse was happening and they didn’t want anyone to know. The train simply was broken and the power had been tampered with.

And then the train moved smoothly backward again. We all looked back, towards the safe haven of Wall Street station. No one said a word as the train moved. I watched the windows, desperately hoping for the sight of station lights, the platform, anything.

Another lurch, the lights flickered and people began talking again. More people told us to pray. I had to wonder, over the beating of my heart, if they were right. Another teasing ten seconds and the train started to move again.

It took perhaps four more tries before my wildest dreams were answered; I saw the window opposite me fill with the lights of Wall Street station. A hush fell over the car, broken by the occasional, “Ah” or “I knew they’d figure it out”. After what seemed an eternity the doors opened. We walked out slowly, quietly, into a world just a bit more bright than our subway car. Whatever substance was causing the haze that had been in our car had drifted into the station as well. We walked through a ghostly, smoky world where stairs, platforms and people were only barely seen. I mounted the stairs expecting the smoke would blow away once we came to the street.