Alex Bobl - Memoria

“By subway,” both answered in unison and smiled for the first time that morning.

A quarter of an hour later they took the Sixth Avenue Express heading for the Bronx. The coach had to get rid of the rifle. The handgun he’d put into the attaché case. The three had been lucky enough to grab a quick wash in a vacated utility room. On one of its walls they found a set of clothes: the shirt fit Frank just fine even though the trousers proved a little too tight. They passed around a large water bottle till they could drink no more. They couldn’t get rid of the stench of sewage but at least their faces and their hair looked decent.

It took them two stops to get to the carriage in the middle. Other passengers covered their noses as the three went past leaving muddy footsteps on the floor. They failed to look like homeless bums and rather resembled a group of Wall Street clerks who’d survived a burst toilet accident.

That’s why, as the train approached the platform at 115th Street, Max took off his jacket and stayed in a pair of filthy trousers and a dress shirt, relatively clean in places. Maggie didn’t have to remove anything or otherwise change her appearance. Her sunken face and exhausted eyes embarrassed everyone who looked at her. So young, the passengers had to be thinking, and already stooping so low.

At 155th, very few passengers stayed on the train. They were approaching the end of the line. First, the tunnel under the Harlem, and then, finally, the Bronx. The camp. Only migrants went so far. And a new obstacle: the old Yankee stadium housed the police force that guarded the New York perimeter. You couldn’t just get off the train there.

Max turned to the others about to speak when an indifferent patrol officer on the platform pushed his hat back and approached their carriage.

“Turn away,” the coach whispered to Frank. “Slowly.”

The train jerked and moved along the platform. The cop behind the window moved along speaking into a microphone on his shoulder.

Whatever he said on the radio, the train wasn’t going to stop. The cop ran waving his hands at the driver. But the train picked up speed and overtook the cop a mere couple of feet before the platform ended. The officer shook his fist at them and disappeared.

The chopper hovered over the deserted landing pad in front of the Yankee stadium. Behind the pilot, Bud Jessup peered into the window from his seat.

He’d sent all the available staff, including the reserve squad, to the subway station where Shelby had last been sighted. The moment the chopper touched the ground, Jessup unblocked the door, forced it aside and jumped out. The rotor still moving overhead, he ducked in from the downdraft and ran for the station entrance at 161st.

To his left, the stadium stretched its oval bowl, paralleled by a tall barbed-wired concrete fence. About three hundred feet away, the fence was broken by a two-story checkpoint building, with turnstiles and the sentries’ room below and a watchroom above, a guard pacing its balcony. More than once had his superiors suggested that Jessup got rid of the structure: the stadium perimeter was well covered with alarms and cameras, and the stadium roof offered sentries a much better view of the Bronx than the watchroom balcony. But the Captain wasn’t in a hurry to follow their advice. He didn’t want his men to lose the only vantage point they had over the migrants at the Bronx’s only entry.

The chopper’s roar abated, replaced by a strange new noise. Jessup turned his head in the direction of the Harlem. Two black dots over the river grew in size until he could make out Memoria’s orange flowers. The company choppers were approaching the camp limits.

Jessup cursed and hurried to the subway. Those guys were quick. To arrive so promptly whenever a Shelby sighting was reported, they had to have a mole in his department. Someone really close to him. It could be anyone, that was the problem — Gizbo, Salem, the secretary, one of his own operatives. Before reaching him, the information was passed on from the patrol officer who’d sighted Shelby, all the way down to the city controller.

Lieutenant Gizbo met him by the platform, clenching a radio in a dark hand. Behind his back, the station swarmed with cops. An idle passerby might have thought it chaotic, but in fact, everyone there knew their job and were doing it. A patrol squad questioned the passengers crowded in the center of the platform. A forensic team was working their way through the train. All the carriages were brightly lit, with a guard inside each of them.

“Have you found Shelby?” Jessup asked Gizbo as they headed to see the forensics.

“No, sir,” Gizbo turned off the radio, and the rattle of patrol policemen stopped. Now they could talk. “He wasn’t on the train. Once we received the report, we blocked all the exits and searched the train.

“Where’s Lieutenant Salem?”

“Gone into the tunnel, sir. He’s got seven men and more track workers with him. The train traffic has been stopped in both directions. The live rail has been cut off. They’ve been gone five minutes, sir.”

“How on earth did he escape?” The captain stopped to face the open doors of a carriage watching the forensics team work. “Do you know?”

“One moment, sir,” Gizbo called a sergeant and whispered something in the man’s ear. He then slapped his shoulder and the man walked off.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment, sir.”

The sergeant approached the group of passengers and came back with a dark man in a subway uniform.

“This is the train driver, sir,” Gizbo turned to the man. “Can you repeat your statement for the captain here?”

The driver sized Jessup up and down. He looked at the lieutenant, then at the sergeant.

“Well?” Jessup said.

“I tell ya, sir,” the man shrugged, “I didn’t get the radio message until it was too late…”

“The cop who made the 151st Street sighting, tried to stop the train,” Gizbo explained. “Go on now,” he said to the driver.

“I tell ya, sir,” the driver nodded at the sergeant, “they ordered me to go non-stop till the end of the line. But the train stopped in the Harlem tunnel, sir.”

“ Was stopped,” Gizmo added.

“Exactly so, sir,” the driver said. “Clean job, sir, I tell ya. Not everyone can do that, sir.”

“What do you mean?” Jessup glanced back at the staircase rising to the station entrance. The Memoria choppers could land at the stadium at any minute. Doubtful they’d come here for a breath of fresh air. The corporation knew about Shelby. They wanted him, now.

“I tell ya, sir,” the driver grinned, “you gotta know how to open the hatch. There’re handles and things, you know. Not a DIY job, sir.”

“Shelby had to have had help,” Jessup looked at Gizbo. The lieutenant gave an unnoticeable nod.

“Could you do me a favor, sergeant,” Jessup glanced at the staircase, “could you take this gentleman to our base for a while? Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give him something to eat, will you? I won’t be long.”

Jessup said nothing to Gizbo’s puzzled stare. He was puzzled enough as it was. Why did Shelby have to gatecrash Memoria’s HQ? Why did he go to the Bronx? Who was helping him? More importantly, why did the Feds insist it was a one-man job?

“Let’s go,” he said to the lieutenant. Together, they went up the stairs following the sergeant and the train driver. “Close the station and send all the witnesses to the base for a quick and quiet questioning. I want the tapes on my desk the moment the questioning’s finished. Make sure the other platforms are under control, as well as the parallel lanes. Search all potential suspects and detain if necessary, but make sure you keep the Feds at bay and give the public no excuse to file complaints.