Reliquary

= 44 =

CAPTAIN WAXIE stepped out of the ancient puddingstone Central Park precinct station and huffed along the path that angled northward into the wooded gloom. On his left was a uniformed officer from the station. On his right was Stan Duffy, the city’s Chief Engineer of Hydraulics. Already, Duffy was trotting ahead, looking back at them impatiently.

“Slow it down a bit,” Waxie said, panting. “This isn’t a marathon.”

“I don’t like being in the Park this late,” Duffy replied in a high, reedy voice. “Especially with all these murders going on. You were supposed to be at the station half an hour ago.”

“Everything north of Forty-second is messed up,” Waxie said. “Gridlocked beyond belief. It’s all that Wisher woman’s fault. There’s some kind of march, formed out of nowhere.” He shook his head. They’d jammed up Central Park West and South, and stragglers were still wandering up Fifth Avenue, causing all kinds of chaos. They didn’t even have a damn permit. And she’d given no warning. If he were mayor, he would have clapped them all in jail.

Now the band shell loomed ahead to their right: empty and silent, festooned with impossibly dense graffiti, a haven for muggers. Duffy glanced at it nervously, hurrying past.

The three angled around the pond, following the East Drive. In the distance, beyond the shadowy borders of the Park, Waxie could hear yelling, cheering, the sounds of horns and motors. He glanced at his watch: eight-thirty. The plans called for initiating the drainage sequence by eight forty-five. He trotted a little faster. They were barely going to make it.

The Central Park Reservoir Gauging Station was housed in an old stone building a quarter mile south of the Reservoir. Now, Waxie could see the building looming through the trees, a single light glowing through a dirty window, the letters CPRGS chiseled on the doorway lintel. He slowed to a walk while Duffy unlocked the heavy metal door. It swung inwards to reveal an old, stone room sparsely decorated with map tables and dusty, long-forgotten hydrometric instruments. In one corner, in dramatic juxtaposition to the rest of the equipment, sat a computer workstation, along with several monitors, printers, and strange-looking peripherals.

Once they were inside, Duffy closed and locked the door carefully, then went over to the console. “I’ve never done this before,” he said nervously, reaching under a desk and removing a manual that weighed at least fifteen pounds.

“Don’t crap out on us now,” Waxie said.

Duffy swiveled a yellow eye in his direction. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to say something. Instead, he paged through the manual for a few minutes, then turned to the keyboard and began to type. A series of commands appeared on the larger of the monitors.

“How does this thing work?” Waxie asked, shifting from one foot to the other. The intense humidity of the room made his joints ache.

“It’s fairly simple,” Duffy said. “Water from the lower Catskills is gravity fed into the Central Park Reservoir. That Reservoir may look big, but it holds only about three days’ worth of water for Manhattan. It’s really more of a holding tank, used to smooth out rises and dips in demand.”

He tapped at the keys. “This monitoring system is programmed to anticipate those rises and dips, and it adjusts the flow into the Reservoir accordingly. It can open and close gates as far away as Storm King Mountain, a hundred miles away. The program looks back over twenty years of water use, factors in the latest weather forecasts, and makes demand estimates.”

Safe in his locked chamber, Duffy was warming to his subject. “At times there are departures from the estimate, of course. When demand is less than expected, and too much water flows toward the Reservoir, the computer opens the Main Shunt and bleeds the excess into the storm drain and sewer system. When demand is unexpectedly high, the Main Shunt is closed and additional upstream gates are opened to increase the flow.”

“Really?” Waxie said. He’d lost interest after the second sentence.

“I’m going to do a manual override, which means I’m going to open the gates upstream and open the Main Shunt. Water will pour into the Reservoir and drain immediately into the sewer system. It’s a simple and elegant solution. All I have to do is program the system to release twenty million cubic feet—that’s about a hundred million gallons—at midnight, then revert back to automatic mode upon completion.”

“So the Reservoir isn’t going to go dry?” Waxie asked.

Duffy smiled indulgently. “Really, Captain. We don’t want to create a water emergency. Believe me, this can be done with the most minimal impact on the water supply. I doubt we’ll see the level in the Reservoir drop more than ten feet. It’s an incredible system, really. Hard to believe it was designed over a century ago, by engineers who anticipated even the needs of today.” The smile faded. “Even so, nothing on this scale has ever been done before. Are you sure you really want to do this? All the valves opening at once… well, all I can say is it’s going to make one heck of a surf.”

“You heard the man,” Waxie said, rubbing his bulbous nose with his thumb. “Just make sure it works.”

“Oh, it’ll work,” Duffy replied.

Waxie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Of course it will,” he said. “Because if it doesn’t, you’re going to find yourself a junior sluice gate operator in the Lower Hudson sewage treatment plant.”

Duffy laughed nervously. “Really, Captain,” he repeated. “There’s no need for threats.” He resumed his typing while Waxie paced the room. The uniformed cop stood soberly by the door, watching the proceedings disinterestedly.

“How long will it take to dump the water?” Waxie asked at last.

“About eight minutes.”

Waxie grunted. “Eight minutes to dump a hundred million gallons?”

“As I understand it, you want the water dumped as quickly as possible, to fill up the lowest tunnels under Central Park and sweep them clean, right?”

Waxie nodded.

“Eight minutes represents the system at one hundred percent flow. Of course, it will take almost three hours for the hydraulics to get in position. Then it will simply be a matter of draining water from the Reservoir, at the same time that we bring new water into the Reservoir from the upstate aqueducts That should keep the Reservoir’s water level from dropping excessively. It has to be done just right, because if the flow coming into the reservoir is greater than the flow going out… well, that means a major flood in Central Park.”

“Then I hope to hell you understand what you’re doing. I want this thing to proceed on schedule, no delays, no glitches.”

The sound of typing slowed.

“Stop worrying,” Duffy said, his finger poised on a key. “There won’t be any delays. Just don’t change your mind. Because once I press this key, the hydraulics take over. I can’t stop it. You see—”

“Just hit the damn key,” Waxie said impatiently.

Duffy pressed it with a melodramatic flourish. Then he turned to face Waxie. “It’s done,” he said. “Now, only a miracle can stop the flow. And in case you hadn’t heard, they don’t allow miracles in New York City.”