Gone Tomorrow

Two cops, an acre of ground, maybe thirty people still on benches, maybe ten newly mobile.

I watched.

The cops kept on coming. Their flashlight beams jerked through the night-time haze. Long shadows were thrown. They checked a fourth guy, and then a fifth. Then a sixth. More people stood up. Some left altogether, and others simply moved from bench to bench. The square was full of shapes, some inert, some moving. Everything was in slow motion. A tired, lazy dance.

I watched.

New indecision in the cops’ body language. Like herding cats. They approached the people still on benches. They turned away and jerked their beams on the people moving out. They kept on walking, bending, turning. No pattern. Just random movement. They kept on coming. They got within ten yards of me.

Then they quit.

They played their flashlight beams one last time around a token circle and then they headed back to their car. I watched it drive away. I stayed on my bench and breathed out and started thinking about the GPS chips in the captured cell phones in my pockets. Part of me said it was impossible that Lila Hoth would have access to tracking satellites. But another part of me focused on her saying We’re never beaten. And we is a big word. Only two letters, but a large implication. Maybe the bad guys from the Eastern bloc had grabbed more than oil and gas leases. Maybe they had taken over other kinds of infrastructure. The old Soviet intelligence machine had to have gone somewhere. I thought about laptop computers and broadband connections and all kinds of technology I didn’t fully understand.

I kept the phones in my pockets, but I got up off the bench and headed for the subway.

Which was a bad mistake to make.

FIFTY-FIVE

THE UNION SQUARE SUBWAY STATION IS A MAJOR HUB. IT has an entrance hall as big as an underground plaza. Multiple entrances, multiple exits, multiple lines, multiple tracks. Stairs, booths, long rows of turnstiles. Plus long links of machines for refreshing Metrocards, or buying new ones. I used cash and bought a new card. I fed two twenty dollar bills edge-first into the slot and was rewarded with twenty rides plus three free as a bonus. I collected my card and turned around and moved away. It was close to six o’clock in the morning. The station was filling up with people. The work day was starting. I passed a newsstand. It had a thousand different magazines. And squat bales of fresh tabloids ready for sale. Thick papers, piled high. Two separate titles. Both headlines were huge. One had three words, big letters, plenty of powdery black ink: FEDS SEEK TRIO. The other had three words too: FEDS HUNT TRIO. Practically a consensus. On balance I preferred seek to hunt. More passive, less committed. Almost benign. I figured anyone would prefer to be sought than hunted.

I turned away.

And saw two cops watching me carefully.

Two mistakes in one. First theirs, which was then compounded by mine. Their mistake was conventional. The federal agents and 22nd and Broadway had put the word out that I had escaped by subway. Whereupon law enforcement generally had assumed that I would escape by subway again. Because given the choice, law enforcement always fights the last battle one more time.

My mistake was to walk straight into their lazy trap.

Because there were booths, there were supervisors. Because there were supervisors, there were no high entry-exit turnstiles. Just regular thigh-high bars. I swiped my new card and pushed on through. The plaza changed shape to a long wide walkway. Arrows pointed left and right and up and down, for different lines and different directions. I passed by a guy playing a violin. He had positioned himself where the echoes would help him. He was pretty good. His instrument had a solid, gutty tone. He was playing a mournful old piece I recognized from a movie about the Vietnam war. Perhaps not an inspired choice for early commuters. His violin case was open at his feet and not very full of contributions. I turned casually as if I was checking him out and saw the two cops step over the turnstile behind me.

I turned a random corner and followed a narrower passageway and found myself on an uptown platform. It was crowded with people. And it was part of a symmetrical pair. Ahead of me was the platform edge, and then the line, and then a row of iron pillars holding up the street above, and then the downtown line, and then the downtown platform. Two sets of everything, including two sets of commuters. Tired people, facing each other numbly, waiting to head out in opposite directions.

The live rails were back to back either side of the central iron pillars. They were shrouded, like live rails are in stations. The shrouds were three-sided box sections, open on the sides that faced the trains.

Behind me and far to my left, the cops pushed their way on to the platform. I checked the other way. To my right. Two more sops pushed into the crowd. They were wide and bulky with equipment. They moved people gently out of their way, palms against shoulders, short backhand moves, rhythmic, like swimming.

I moved to the middle of the platform. I edged forward until my feet were on the yellow warning stripe. I moved laterally until I had a pillar directly behind me. I looked left. Looked right. No trains were coming.

The cops kept moving. Behind them four more showed up. Two on one side of me, two on the other, threading through the crowd slowly and surely.

I craned forward.

No headlights in the tunnels.

The crowd moved and hunched beside me, pushed on by new arrivals, disturbed by the ripples of the cops’ relentless progress, pulled forward by the subliminal certainty any subway rider feels that the train must be coming soon.

I checked again, over my shoulders, left and right.

Cops on my platform.

Eight of them.

No cops at all on the platform opposite.

FIFTY-SIX

PEOPLE ARE SCARED OF THE THIRD RAIL. No REASON TO BE, unless you plan on touching it. Hundreds of volts, but they don’t jump out at you. You have to go looking for them, to get in trouble.

Easy enough to step over, even in lousy shoes. I figured whatever my rubber footwear would subtract in terms of precision control, it would add in terms of electrical insulation. But even so, I planned my moves very carefully, like stage choreography. Jump down, land two-footed in the centre of the uptown line, right foot on the second rail, left foot beyond the third rail, squeeze through the gap between two pillars, right foot over the next third rail, left foot on the downtown track, small careful mincing steps, then a sigh of relief and a scramble up on to the downtown platform and away.

Easy enough to do.

Easy enough for the cops to do right behind me.

They had probably done it before.

I hadn’t.

I waited. Checked behind me, left and right. The cops were close. Close enough to be slowing down and forming up and deciding exactly how they were going to do what would need to be done next. I didn’t know what their approach would be. But whatever, they were going to take it slow. They didn’t want a big stampede. The platform was crowded and any kind of sudden activity would put people over the edge. Which would lead to lawsuits.

I checked left. Checked right. No trains were coming. I wondered if the cops had stopped them. Presumably there was a well-rehearsed procedure. I took a half-step forward. People slipped in behind me, between me and the pillar. They started pressing against my back. I braced the other way against them. The warning strip at the edge of the platform was yellow paint over raised circular bumps. No danger of slipping or sliding.

The cops had formed up into a shallow semicircle. They were about eight feet from me. They were moving inward, shovelling people outward, collapsing their perimeter, slow and cautious.

People were watching from the downtown platform opposite.

They were nudging each other and pointing at me and going up on tiptoe.