Terminal City

TWENTY-NINE

We had each cleaned up as best we could, put on our new shirts, and were back in Ledger’s office. Mike had brought in sandwiches, suggesting we eat now because there was no telling when we would have the chance again.

“Where to?” I asked.

“We’re going to the Waldorf.”

“Something breaking over there?”

“No, we’re taking the Terminal City path,” Mike said. “We’re going underground. We need to see if our perp could have found his way in through this route.”

“I’m assuming however we’re going is a path without a blueprint,” Mercer said. “There’s got to be a reason no one was aware of this connection.”

“Better than a blueprint. Hank Brantley, the cop whose specialty is the tunnel homeless population, is going to lead us through.”

“So much for a fresh change of clothes.”

I was hungrier than I thought and washed down half a turkey sandwich with a full bottle of water. Brantley arrived within minutes, handed out our hard hats and flashlights, and we were ready to take off again.

He led us down to the gate on the lower level-number 100-which a Metro-North patrol officer was guarding.

“Same rules apply,” Hank said. “Stay close. Walk on the platform as far as it goes. It gets pretty narrow up ahead, and this time you will have a third rail off to the far side of the tracks. That’s what electrifies the trains. It’ll light you up pretty good, too, if you give it the chance.”

We headed down the first ramp away from the departure gate, a slight incline that took us away from the brightly lit terminal into the dark, subterranean maze of tunnels.

I would never get used to seeing people huddled in holes in the concrete walls or foraging for scraps between the railroad ties, but on this trip I was slightly less shocked than I had been a day earlier.

The live tracks were only a dozen feet away from our platform. As a train approached, headlights glaring through the arched openings in the wall between where we stood and where the train was slowing to a stop, I froze in place, unable to stabilize my footing. We were in a single row-Indian file, as Mike called it-with him behind Brantley, then me, then Mercer last in line.

“I can’t get you there myself,” Hank said. “It’s not exactly a straight line any longer, so I took a walk out just now and asked Smitty to meet us at the point this platform stops.”

“Great,” I said to Mercer as I flapped my arms to regain my balance. “What’s wrong with starting out up in the daylight on Park Avenue? Taking the Northeast Passage? I’m beginning to feel like a troglobite.”

Mike got half of what he heard right. “Troglodyte?”

“That’s you, Detective. Somebody whose thinking is out of step with the times. A throwback to Neanderthal thinking.”

“What’s the difference between bites and dytes?”

“Troglobites are animals who spend so much time in caves that they’re practically blind, but their eyes adapt to seeing in the dark.”

“Bite me, Coop.”

“I would, but you’re walking too fast.”

Our presence in the tunnels, now at least one city block away from the terminal, had stirred up some of the population. Heads poked out above us and below. Huge rats-seemingly unafraid of us-played on the tracks while roaches the size of small rodents crunched under Hank Brantley’s feet.

Smitty, the former mayor of the Grand Central tunnel system, was waiting for us in the shadows of an enormous steel girder. I figured we were somewhere near 45th Street, in our slow trek north of the terminal.

Hank handed him a small plastic bag. “Three sandwiches and sodas and a carton of cigarettes. We appreciate your help.”

“The platform ends up ahead about fifty feet,” Smitty said, now leading our pack.

An outbound train made so much noise as it passed by us that I couldn’t hear what Hank said back to him.

“What happens when the platform ends?” I called out.

“We go the rest of the way on the tracks,” Smitty said, “but it’s a dead line. No trains running on it these days. It only goes so far as the siding up by the hotel you’re going to.”

“That makes no sense,” I said to no one in particular.

The walkway ended abruptly. There were two large steps down to the tracks. I didn’t question Hank Brantley, who seemed to have complete faith in Smitty.

Three men and a woman were sitting on the old rail ties in our path, playing cards and drinking beer. They greeted Smitty and expressed surprise at seeing the rest of us.

I flinched as a locomotive, which seemed to be heading in our direction, rounded the corner on an adjacent track as it slowed on its final approach to Grand Central.

Smitty turned to face us, making sure we all made it past the cardsharps.

“You heard about the other body they found last night?” Mike asked him.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the third rail, which was painted a bright neon orange and was painfully close to the trail we were taking.

“Yeah.”

“You know anything?”

“Like I told you, Mr. Detective, it’s not good to know too much down here. Private railcar, dead girl, big commotion. Anything that brings the man into the tunnels is a bad deal for us. We try not to bring trouble on ourselves.”

“That’s two bodies in as many days, Smitty. Must be some kind of talk.”

Smitty started to cough, grabbing his chest as he did. “Not so much. She wasn’t one of us, is all I know. The whole NYPD wouldn’t be taking such an interest if she was.”

“Not true. Carl came from your world.”

“So-so.” Smitty spat across the tracks, dislodging a gaggle of roaches. “Half up, half down.”

“You’ll let Hank know if you start getting information?” Mercer said. “We can pay you for it. Feed you and your sources.”

Smitty laughed. “That’s a whole lot of food you’d be haulin’ in. All I know so far is that the young lady here, she gave Dirty Harry a pass.”

“I-I didn’t really do-”

“You’re down with me, Ms. Detective. He didn’t hurt her.”

I was rethinking my own decision to tell the cops not to bother with Dirty Harry. My sympathetic instinct for a mentally ill man had overruled my usual concern about thoroughness.

Smitty had stopped talking and moved on his way again. We all had our flashlights on, stepping carefully on the tracks that skirted the active train line.

I thought of both young women, Corinne Thatcher and Lydia Tsarlev, and wondered whether they had been subjected to the torture of spending time in this underground hell. It was truly an inferno in this part of Terminal City. Filth and stench, rodents and insects, the mad and the disenfranchised, all dancing around a third rail that supplied a constant flow of electricity to the hundreds of trains coursing through here every day. The throbbing vitality of Grand Central and its busy concourses was turned upside down in this strange underbelly of Manhattan.

The path forked once more, and we again took the western route, separating slightly further from the incoming and outgoing commuter trains.

We trudged on, occasionally rattling some living thing-large or small-that got out of our way.

“What’s that?” I heard Mike ask, as he came to a standstill almost half an hour after we had started our exploration.

He moved to the left, one foot underneath the track and the other on one of the old ties on which we’d been walking. Then he reached back to grab my hand and move me forward so I could see-and Mercer behind me-what was directly in front of us.

“It’s a railroad car, Detective,” Hank Brantley said.

“I can tell that for myself.”

The enormous, windowless train looked like an armored tank on steel wheels. It was dark green, like a military vehicle, old, and covered with layers of dust.

The tracks on which we were walking had broken ties and didn’t appear able to support the weight of this mysterious train.

Mike approached it, running his hand across the side of it as though to remove a layer of grime. “It’s a relic, isn’t it? It must have been sitting on this siding for decades.”

“That’s because it was built for just one man, Mike.”

“The armored train?”

“The armored train and the special siding here. Track sixty-one.”

“Who was the man?”

“The president of the United States.”

Mike whistled. “Well, if he’s counting on this to spirit him out of Manhattan in case of a terrorist attack, he’d better send in a team to spiff it up. This iron horse isn’t about to make a run, Secret Service be damned.”

“Not for this president,” Hank said. “This train was designed for Franklin Roosevelt, during the Second World War. And so was this secret entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.”

“We’re right below the Waldorf?” Mike asked. “And there’s a secret entrance?”

Hank pointed to an unusually narrow elevator shaft. “Terminal City ends here.”