From Potter`s Field

20

The March Against Crime began on time with fifteen church groups and a miscellaneous contingent of men, women and children who wanted to take their neighborhoods back. The weather had worsened and snow blew on frigid winds that drove more people into taxis and the subways because it was too cold to walk.

At two-fifteen, Lucy, Commander Penn and I were in the control room, every monitor, television and radio turned on. Wesley was in one of several Bureau cars that ERF had painted to look like yellow cabs and equipped with radios, scanners, and other surveillance devices. Marino was on the street with Transit cops and plainclothes FBI. HRT was divided among the Dakota, the drugstore and Bleecker Street. We were unclear on the precise location of anyone because no one on the outside was standing still, and we were in here, not moving.

'Why hasn't anyone called?' Lucy complained.

'He hasn't been sighted,' said Commander Penn, and she was steady but uptight.

'I assume the parade has started,' I said.

Commander Penn said, 'It's on Lafayette, headed this way.'

She and Lucy were wearing headphones that plugged into the base station on the console. They were on different channels.

'All right, all right,' Commander Penn said, sitting up straighter. 'We've spotted him. The number seven platform,' she exclaimed to Lucy, whose fingers flew. 'He's just come in from a catwalk. He's entered the system from a tunnel that runs under the park.'

Then the number seven platform was on black-and-white TV. We watched a figure in a long dark coat. He wore boots, a hat and dark glasses, and stood back from other passengers at the platform's edge. Lucy brought up another subway survey on the screen as Commander Penn stayed on the radio. I watched passengers walking, sitting, reading maps and standing. A train screamed by and got slower as it stopped. Doors opened and he got on.

'Which way is he bound?' I asked.

'South. He's coming this way,' Commander Penn said, excited.

'He's on the A line,' Lucy said, studying her monitors. '

'Right.' Commander Penn got on the air. 'He can only go as far as Washington Square,' she told someone. Then he can transfer and take the F line straight to Second Avenue.'

Lucy said, 'We'll check one station after another.

We don't know where he might get off. But he's got to get off somewhere so he can go back into the tunnels.'

'He has to do that if he comes in the Second Avenue way,' Commander Penn relayed to the radio. 'He can't take the train in there because it's not stopping there.'

Lucy manipulated the closed-circuit television monitors. At rapid intervals they showed a different station as a train we could not see headed toward us.

'He's not at Forty-second,' she said. 'We don't see him at Penn Station or Twenty-third.'

Monitors blinked on and off, showing platforms and people who did not know they were being watched.

'If he stayed on that train he should be at Fourteenth Street,' Commander Penn said.

But if he was, he did not disembark, or at least we did not see him. Then our luck suddenly changed in an unexpected way.

'My God,' Lucy said. 'He's at Grand Central Station. How the hell did he get there?'

'He must have turned east before we thought he would and cut through Times Square,' Commander Penn said.

'But why?' Lucy said. 'That doesn't make sense.'

Commander Penn radioed unit two, which was Benton Wesley. She asked him if Gault had called the pharmacy yet. She took her headphones off and set the microphone so we could hear what was said.

'No, there's been no call,' came Wesley's reply.

'Our monitors have just picked him up at Grand Central,' she explained.

'What?'

'I don't know why he's gone that way. But there are so many alternative routes he could take. He could get off anywhere for any reason.'

'I'm afraid so,' Wesley said.

'What about in South Carolina?' Commander Penn then asked.

'Everything's ten-four. The bird has flown and landed,' Wesley said.

Mrs. Gault had wired the money, or the Bureau had. We watched while her only son casually rode with other people who did not know he was a monster.

'Wait a minute,' Commander Penn continued to broadcast information. 'He's at Fourteenth Street and Union Square, going south right at you.'

It drove me crazy that we could not stop him. We could see him and yet it did no good.

'It sounds like he's changing trains a lot,' Wesley said.

Commander Penn said, 'He's 'gone again. The train's left. We've got Astor Place on-screen. That's the last stop unless he goes past us and gets out at the Bowery.'

The train's stopping,' Lucy announced.

We watched people in the monitors and did not see Gault.

'All right, he must be staying on,' Commander Penn said into the microphone.

'We've lost him,' Lucy said.

She changed pictures like a frustrated person flipping television channels. We did not see him.

'Shit,' she muttered.

'Where could he be?' The commander was baffled. 'He's got to get out somewhere. If he's going into the pharmacy, he can't use the exit at Cooper Union.' She looked at Lucy. 'That's it. Maybe he's going to try. But he won't get out. It's bolted. But he might not know.'

She said. 'He's got to know. He read the electronic messages we sent.'

She scanned some more. Still, we did not see him and the radio remained tensely silent.

'Damn,' Lucy said. 'He should be on the number six line. Let's look at Astor Place and Lafayette again.'

It did no good.

We sat without talking for a while, looking at the shut wooden door that led into our empty station. Above us, hundreds of people were walking sodden streets to demonstrate they were fed up with crime. I began looking at a subway map.

Commander Penn said, 'He should be at Second Avenue now. He should have gotten off at an earlier or later stop and walked the rest of the way through the tunnel.'

A terrible thought occurred to me. 'He could do the same thing here. We're not as close to the pharmacy, but we're on the number six line too.'

'Yeah,' Lucy said, turning around to look at me. 'The walk from here to Houston is nothing.'

'But we're closed,' I said.

Lucy was typing again.

I got up out of my chair and looked at Commander Penn. 'We're here alone. It's just the three of us. The trains don't stop here on the weekends. There is no one. Everyone is at Second Avenue and the pharmacy.'

'Base station to unit two,' Lucy was saying into the radio.

'Unit two,' Wesley said.

'Everything ten-four? Because we've lost him.'

'Stand by.'

I opened my briefcase and got out my gun. I cocked it and pushed on the safety.

'What's your ten-twenty?' Commander Penn got on the air to ask for their location.

'Holding steady at the pharmacy.'

Screens were flashing by crazily as Lucy tried to locate Gault.

'Hold on. Hold on,' Wesley's voice came over the air.

Then we heard Marino. 'It looks like we've got him.'

'You've got him?' Commander Penn, incredulous, asked the radio. 'What is the location?'

'He's walking into the pharmacy.' Wesley was back. 'Wait a minute. Wait a minute.'

There was silence. Then Wesley said, 'He's at the counter getting the money. Stand by.'

We waited in frantic silence.

Three minutes passed. Wesley was back on the air. 'He's leaving. We're going to close in once he gets inside the terminal. Stand by.'

'What's he wearing?' I asked. 'Are we sure it's the person who got on at the museum?'

Nobody paid me any mind.

'Oh Christ,' Lucy suddenly exclaimed, and we looked at the monitors.

We could see the platforms of Second Avenue station, and HRT exploding out of the darkness of the tracks. Dressed in black fatigues and combat boots, they ran across the platform and up steps leading to the street.

'Something's gone wrong,' Commander Penn said. 'They're grabbing him above ground!'

Voices ricocheted on the radio.

'We've got him.'

'He's trying to run.'

'Okay, okay, we've got his gun. He's down.'

'Have you got him cuffed?'

A siren went off inside the control room. Lights along the ceiling began flashing blood red, and a red code 429 began flashing on a computer screen.

'Mayday!' Commander Penn exclaimed. 'An officer is down! He's hit the emergency button on his radio!' She stared at the computer screen in stunned disbelief.

'What's happening?' Lucy demanded into the radio.

'I don't know,' Wesley's voice crackled. 'Something's wrong. Stand by.'

'That's not where it is. The Mayday isn't at Second Avenue station,' Commander Penn said, awed. This code on the screen is Davila's.'

'Davila?' I said numbly. 'Jimmy Davila?'

'He was unit four twenty-nine. That's his code. It hasn't been reassigned. It's right here.'

We stared at the screen. The flashing red code was changing locations along a computerized grid. I was shocked no one had thought of it before.

'Was Davila's radio with him when his body was found?' I asked.

Commander Penn didn't react.

'Gault's got it,' I said. 'He's got Davila's radio.'

Wesley's voice came back, and he could not know of our difficulty. He could not know about the Mayday.

'We're not sure we have him,' Wesley said. 'We're not sure who we have.'

Lucy intensely looked over at me. 'Carrie,' she said. 'They're not sure if they have her or Gault. She and Gault are probably dressed alike again.'

Inside our small control room with no windows and no people nearby, we watched the flashing red Mayday code move along the computer screen, getting closer to where we sat.

It's in the southbound tunnel heading straight at us,' Commander Penn said with growing urgency.

'She didn't get the messages we sent.' Lucy had it figured out.

'She?' Commander Penn asked, looking oddly at her.

'She doesn't know about the parade or that Second Avenue is closed,' Lucy went on. 'She may have tried the emergency exit in the alleyway and couldn't get out because it's been bolted. So she just stayed under and has been moving around since we sighted her at Grand Central Station.'

'We didn't see Gault or Carrie on the platforms of the stations closer to us,' I said. 'And you don't know it's her.'

'There are so many stations,' Commander Penn said. 'Someone could have gotten out and we just didn't see them.'

'Gault sent her to the pharmacy for him,' I said, more unnerved by the minute. 'He somehow knows every goddam thing we're doing.'

'CAIN,' Lucy muttered.

'Yes. That and he's probably been watching.'

Lucy had our location, the Bleecker Street local stop, on closed-circuit TV. Three of the monitors showed the platform and turnstiles from different angles, but one monitor was dark.

'Something's blocking one of the cameras,' she said.

'Was it blocked earlier?' I asked.

'Not when we first got here,' she said. 'But we haven't been monitoring this station where we are. There didn't seem to be a reason to check here.'

We watched the red code slowly move across the grid.

'We've got to stay off the air,' I told Commander Penn. 'He has a radio,' I added, because I knew Gault was the red code on our screen. I had no doubt. 'You know it's on and he's hearing every word we say.'

'Why's the Mayday light still on?' Lucy asked. 'Does she want us to know where she is?'

I stared at her. It was as if Lucy were in a trance.

'The button may have been hit inadvertently,' Commander Penn said. 'If you don't know about the button, you wouldn't realize it's for Maydays. And since it's a silent alarm, you could have it on and not know it.'

But I did not believe anything happening was inadvertent. Gault was coming to us because this was where he wanted to be. He was a shark swimming through the blackness of the tunnel, and I thought of what Anna had said about his hideous gifts to me.

'It's almost at the signal tower.' Lucy was pointing at the screen. 'Goddam that's close.'

We did not know what to do. If we radioed Wesley, Gault would overhear and disappear back through the tunnels. If we did not make contact, the troops would not know what was happening here. Lucy was at the door, and she opened it a little.

'What are you doing?' I almost screamed at her.

She quickly shut the door. 'It's the ladies' room. I guess a janitor propped open the door while cleaning and left it that way. The door's blocking the camera,'

'Did you see anybody out there?' I asked.

'No,' she said, hatred in her eyes. 'They think they have her. How do they know it's not Gault? It may be her who's got Davila's radio. I know her. She probably knows I'm in here.'

Commander Penn was tense when she said to me, 'There's some gear in the office.'

'Yes,' I said.

We hurried back to a cramped space with a beat-up wooden desk and chair. She opened a cabinet and we grabbed shotguns, boxes of shells, and Kevlar vests. We were gone minutes, and when we returned to the control room Lucy was not there.

I looked at the closed-circuit TV monitors and saw a picture blink onto the fourth screen as someone shut the ladies' room door. The flashing red code on the survey grid was deeper inside the station now. It was on a catwalk. At any second it would be on the platform. I looked for my Browning pistol, but it was not on the console where I had left it.

'She took my gun,'1 said in amazement. 'She's gone out there. She's gone after Carrie!'

We loaded shotguns as fast as we could but did not take the time for vests. My hands were clumsy and cold.

'You've got to radio Wesley,' I said, frantic. 'You've got to do something to get them here.'

'You can't go out there alone,' Commander Penn said.

'I can't leave Lucy out there alone.' 'We'll both go. Here. Take a flashlight.' 'No. You get help. Get someone here.' I ran out not knowing what I would find. But the station was deserted. I stood perfectly still with the shotgun ready. I noticed the fixed camera bracketed to the green tile wall near the restrooms. The platform was empty, and I heard a train in the distance. It rushed by without pause because it did not have to stop at this station on Saturdays. Through windows I saw commuters sleeping, reading. Few seemed to notice the woman with a shotgun or even think it odd.

I wondered if Lucy could be in the bathroom, but that didn't make sense. There was a toilet just off the control room, inside our shelter where we had been all day. I walked closer to the platform as my heart pounded. The temperature was biting and I did not have my coat. My fingers were getting stiff around the stock of the gun.

It occurred to me with some relief that Lucy might have gone for help. Perhaps she shut the bathroom door and ran toward Second Avenue. But what if she hadn't? I stared at that shut door and did not want to go through it.

I walked closer, one slow step at a time, and wished I had a pistol. A shotgun was awkward in confined spaces and around corners. When I reached the door my heart was pounding in my throat. I grabbed the handle, yanked hard and thrust myself inside with the shotgun aimed. The area around the sink was blank. I did not hear a sound. I looked under the stalls and stopped breathing when I saw blue trousers and a pair of brown leather work boots that were too big to be a woman's. Metal clanked.

I racked the shotgun, shaking as I demanded, 'Come out with your hands in the air!'

A big wrench clanged to the tile floor. The maintenance man in his coveralls and coat looked as if he might have a heart attack when he emerged from the stall. His eyes bulged from his head as he stared at me and the shotgun.

I'm just fixing the toilet in here. I don't have any money,' he said in terror, hands straight up as if someone had just scored a touchdown.

'You're in the middle of a police operation,' I exclaimed, pointing the shotgun at the ceiling and pushing the safety on. 'You must get out of here now!'

He did not need the suggestion twice. He did not collect his tools or put the padlock back on the bathroom door. He fled up steps to the street as I began walking around the platform again. I located each of the cameras, wondering if Commander Penn saw me on the monitors. I was about to return to the control room when I looked down dark tracks and thought I heard voices. Suddenly there was scuffling and what sounded like a grunt. Lucy began to scream.

'No! No! Don't!'

A loud pop sounded like an explosion inside a metal drum. Sparks showered the darkness where the sound came from as the lights inside Bleecker Street station flickered.

Along the tracks there was no light, and I could not see because I did not dare turn on the one in my hand. I felt my way to a metal catwalk and carefully descended narrow stairs that led into the tunnel.

As I inched my way along, breathing rapid, shallow breaths, my eyes began to adjust. I could barely see the shapes of arches, rails and concrete places where the homeless made their beds. My feet hit trash and were loud when they knocked objects made of metal or glass.

I held the shotgun out in front to shield my head from any projection I might not see. I smelled filth and human waste, and flesh burning. The farther

I walked, the more intense the stench, and then a strong light rose loudly like a moon as a train appeared on northbound tracks. Temple Gault was no more than fifteen feet ahead of me.

He held Lucy in a choke hold, a knife at her throat. Not far from them Detective Maier was welded to the third rail of southbound tracks, hands and teeth clenched as electricity flowed through his dead body. The train screamed past, returning the darkness.

'Let her go,' my voice quavered as I turned on the flashlight.

Squinting, Gault shielded his face from the light. He was so pale he looked like an albino, and I could see small muscles and tendons in his bare hands as he held the steel dissecting knife he had stolen from me. In one quick motion he could cut Lucy's throat to her spine. She stared at me in frozen terror.

It's not her you want.' I stepped closer.

'Don't shine that light in my face,' he said. 'Set it down.'

I did not turn the flashlight off but slowly set it on a concrete ledge, where it cast an irregular light and shone directly on Detective Maier's burned, bloody head. I wondered why Gault did not tell me to put the shotgun down. Maybe he couldn't see it. I held it pointed up. I was no more than six feet from them now. Gault's lips were chapped and he sniffed loudly. He was emaciated and disheveled, and I wondered if he were high on crack or on his way down. He wore jeans and jungle boots and a black leather jacket that was scraped and ripped. In a lapel was the caduceus pin I imagined he had bought in Richmond several days before Christmas.

'She's no fun.' I could not stop my voice from trembling.

His terrible eyes seemed to focus as a thread of blood ran down Lucy's neck. I tightened my grip on the gun.

'Let her go. Then it's just you and me. I'm who you want.'

Light sparked in his eyes, and I could almost see their weird blue color in the incomplete dark. His hands suddenly moved, violently shoving Lucy toward the third rail, and I lunged for her. I grabbed her sweater, yanking her on top of me, and together we fell to the ground and the shotgun clattered. Fire popped and sparks flew as the greedy rail grabbed it.

Gault smiled, my Browning in hand as he tossed the knife out of his way for now. He snapped the slide back, gripping the pistol with both hands, pointing the barrel at Lucy's head. He was used to his Glock and did not seem to know that my Browning had a safety. He squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. He did not understand.

'Run!' I yelled to Lucy, pushing her. 'RUN!'

Gault cocked the gun, but it was already cocked, and no cartridge ejected, so now he had a double-feed. Enraged, he squeezed the trigger, but the pistol was jammed.

'RUN!' I screamed.

I was on the ground and did not try to get away because I did not believe he would go after Lucy if I stayed here. He was forcing the slide open, shaking the gun as Lucy began to cry, stumbling through the dark. The knife was close to the third rail, and I groped for it as a rat ran over my legs and I cut myself on broken glass. My head was dangerously close to Gault's boots.

He could not seem to fix the gun and then I saw him tense as he looked at me. I could feel his thought as I tightened my grip on the cold steel handle. I knew what he could do with his feet, and I could not reach his chest or a major vessel in his neck because there was not time. I was on my knees. I raised the knife as he got in position to kick and plunged the surgical blade into his upper thigh. With both hands I cut as much as I could as he shrieked.

Arterial blood squirted across my face as I pulled the knife out and his transected femoral artery hemorrhaged to the rhythm of his horrible heart. I ducked out of the way because I knew HRT would have him in their sights and were waiting.

'You stabbed me,' Gault said with childlike disbelief. Hunched over, he stared with shocked fascination at blood spurting between his fingers clutching his leg. 'It won't stop. You're a doctor. Make it stop.'

I looked at him. His head was shaved beneath his cap. I thought of his dead twin, of Lucy's neck. A sniper rifle cracked twice from inside the tunnel in the direction of the station, bullets pinged, and Gault fell close to the rail he had almost thrown Lucy on. A train was coming and I did not move him free of the tracks. I walked away and did not look back.

Lucy, Wesley and I left New York on Monday, and first the helicopter flew due east. We passed over cliffs and the mansions of Westchester, finally reaching that ragged, wretched island not found on any tourist map. A crumbling smokestack rose from the ruins of an old brick penitentiary. We circled Potter's Field while prisoners and their guards gazed up into an overcast morning.

The BellJet Ranger went as low as it could go, and I hoped nothing would force us to land. I did not want to be near the men from Rikers Island. Grave markers looked like white teeth protruding from patchy grass, and someone had fashioned a cross from rocks. A flatbed truck was parked near the open grave, and men were lifting out the new pine box.

They stopped to look up as we churned air with more force than the harsh winds they knew. Lucy and I were in the helicopter's backseat, holding hands. Prisoners, bundled for winter, did not wave. A rusting ferry swayed on the water, waiting to take the coffin into Manhattan for one last test. Gault's twin sister would cross the river today. Jayne, at last, would go home.