Grand Central Noir Page 12

  His target had paused, checking the information boards, seeking which of the sixty-seven tracks he needed for his onward journey. Terry also paused. A flutter went through his bowels. Before he’d been experiencing anxiety, but now genuine fear went through him and he felt a very real need to find a lavatory. No, he told himself. Get a grip, goddamnit. You can’t back down. Not now, you coward. Do it. DO IT!

  His self-admonishment did the trick.

  He lunged at his target, as he pulled the glittering steel fully from his pocket.

  The tall man flinched. In the next instant he relaxed, and there was barely a shadow of annoyance on his face as he peered down at the steel in Terry’s hand.

  Terry’s cheeks flushed red.

  “I’m . . . I’m really sorry for troubling you,” he stammered, as he drew a dog-eared paperback novel from his opposite pocket. “But would you mind autographing your latest book for me? I’m your biggest fan.”

  “Sure. No problem,” said Lee Youngman, the best-selling thriller writer in the world. He accepted the old-fashioned fountain pen from Terry’s trembling fingers with a nod of approval at its fine steel construction.

  Herschel’s Broom

  - by W. Silas Donohue

  GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL was a completely different world for the third trick overnight maintenance crew, and Herschel enjoyed the serenity. In the very early morning hours of New York City, the crowds are gone, and the shops are closed. There are no harried workers or frantic shoppers or mesmerized tourists or clambering children with their bedraggled parents. The lights are dimmed now to save energy and the only interruption besides the whine of the floor cleaning machine are the late night train crews hurrying home and the occasional distracted police officer checking the email messages on his phone. The terminal may be called the crossroads of America during the day, but late at night it was as lonely as sunset in a dusty ghost town.

  The overnight maintenance crew was lining up for assignments but the talk was all about a lost and found little boy.

  “Didja hear? They found the kid.”

  “Really? Where was he? How’d they find him?”

  “Seems he just walked into the police office. He said that some big old guy took him by the hand and walked him over, but no one saw anyone with the kid. He just walked up to the sergeant’s desk and said, ‘I’m lost.’ They figure he just got scared and ran away, and when he got hungry enough and smelled the doughnuts he just walked into the office.”

  “The cops were really eating doughnuts? Are you serious? Fuggedaboutit . . .”

  The big floor-washing machine was the assignment that most of the workers wanted as they got ready for tonight’s shift. On the hockey rinks they use a machine called a Zamboni to smooth the surface and lay down a new fresh layer of ice. It is a sort of a mongrel mix between a farm tractor and a convenience store’s Slurpee machine. The terminal’s floor equipment looked a little like that except it sprayed out hot water and detergent in front and had a squeegee and vacuum in the back to suck it all up. It was quicker and better than the old fashion gang of workers with mops.

  The best part for the staff though was that the driver got to sit up high in the seat like a stagecoach driver in the Wild West. Herschel chuckled as everyone pushed to get the assignment of chauffeuring the device around the extent of the station. Herschel even patted Vincent on the back when he was anointed, but Vinnie was too excited to notice and was beaming when he climbed into the driver’s seat. Herschel stood back behind the group and was happy to grab the big old dust mop and, even considering his seniority in the company, was happy to stay out of the nightly jockeying for the noisy machine. The broom was cotton and had soft tassels along the edge and was wider than Herschel was tall, and Herschel was a big man. Herschel was most comfortable when slowly pushing the broom around the boundaries of the waiting area in that little strip where the floor cleaner couldn’t reach; somewhere between the hard edges of the beige marble wall and the vast expanse of the rotunda. Roughly comparable to that fuzzy boundary between reality and hope.

  Herschel followed the same routine every night with almost no variation. After picking up his broom from the closet by Track 115 he would go upstairs and start his sweep. Herschel started by circling around the clock and the information desk in the middle of the floor. There was always a hint of a grin as he looked up at the big mural of the night sky. The story was that the constellations were painted on the ceiling backwards but Herschel thought that people who worried about things like that were missing the point. The only thing that he saw was that the cosmos had been frozen in place forever and brought indoors; and that was pretty terrific no matter which way the stars were supposed to be pointed. “It’s amazing,” he thought, “how people get so caught up in the little crap that they miss the thrill of the big picture.” The rumor was that over the years the workers repairing the ceiling signed their name and left little notes in places that were invisible 125 feet below. Herschel liked the idea that someone could leave a little bit of his mark for posterity in this great old building.

  As Herschel slowly pushed his broom, a different recollection would pop into his mind in each corner of the building. Every night was a special set of highlight reel memories that rolled through his mind’s eye. In the old days, the cleaning crews worked while the building was still open to the public. It was a little more difficult to maneuver with all of the people but Herschel enjoyed seeing many of the same faces night after night. This evening, as he headed towards the ticket windows, he remembered an old acquaintance, an accountant type who was always nervous and scampering from one place to another.

  One night Sal, that was his name, a wiry little man from the Bronx, was heading to a meeting in the old New York Central Building at the north end of the terminal. He stopped, as he usually did, and spoke briefly with Herschel about how the Yankees were doing and making fun of Herschel’s poor Dodger team. Herschel turned out to be the last man to see Sal alive because at the same time they were talking about sports, a bunch of thugs were on their way over from a big time gangster named Lucky Luciano to silence Sal forever. Herschel never talked baseball with anyone again and lost interest altogether for the game a few years later when the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

  One of Herschel’s favorite people, though he never talked to him directly, used to hold court in the corner of the rotunda. He was a drifter and a con artist, but when he spoke, he was as smooth as the newly polished marble floors. Herschel almost laughed out loud when he thought about the time Grand Central Pete, which was what everyone called him though no one really knew his name, sold the entire building to a guy who had just gotten off the 20th Century Limited train from Chicago. The 20th Century was one of the fastest and nicest trains in the whole world back then and it was usually filled with lots of wealthy customers.

  Grand Central Pete was schmoozing with a well-dressed man for a while, had him laughing and feeling pretty good about himself, then he took his money and handed the poor guy some fancy looking paperwork that was supposed to be the deed for the terminal. Pete then sauntered over to the far corner of the rotunda, about a football field away from the first guy, still laughing and smiling, and sold the whole building again, right away, to another stranger in an expensive suit. And everyone laughed and felt real good as Grand Central Pete walked out of the building with his head held high, his hat set at a jaunty angle and all his pockets filled with hundred dollar bills. What a showman. What a crook.

  Herschel turned right and headed up a long ramp between the two rows of ticket windows to the old waiting room. There used to be long wooden benches there, as if you were in church, lined up one in front of another. But as the railroads began to lose money and people started to forget about the old building, the poor and the homeless and the drug users turned this part of New York City into their own kingdom. The toilet was at one end of the hall and almost no one except the motley citizens of this unkempt kingdom would use those facilities. Herschel even remem
bered when the maintenance staff would sometime “forget” to go there. Then the mood shifted and the government spent more money than Herschel could imagine and fixed up the old station. They got rid of the benches, moved the toilet downstairs and cleaned up the old waiting room for the rich to use for parties and things like that. Even though the seats are gone, with a closer look, the outline of where the old wooden benches sat is still visible.

  The floors here are made of the same marble found in the main rotunda, but running the full length of each ghost bench lies a shallow gully. Almost like the ridges of a washboard. After one hundred years of feet being crossed and uncrossed and toes tapped and shoes shuffled while waiting for a train, there is now a noticeable trough in the marble. The gullies are evenly spaced where the benches use to be located. Row after row. Much as water had eroded away the mountains to make the Grand Canyon, the leather shoes of countless travelers had done the same thing to the floors of Grand Central Terminal. Herschel loved the idea that an act as seemingly insignificant as sitting down and waiting, unnoticed by the same people who were worried about how the ceiling was painted, would have such a real and permanent physical impact. “Folks just don’t seem to appreciate that what is not seen is usually a lot more important than what is seen” was one of Herschel’s favorite observations.

  As the night crept along, it was time for Herschel to take a little breather. Herschel leaned his broom on the wall and took out an old red bandana from his pocket. He wiped his forehead and brushed off the dust from his arms, tilted his large frame back against the wall, and took in the sights around him. The terminal was especially quiet tonight. Besides the Zamboni sliding around the rotunda and cleaning the floors, the only other thing he could see was a new guy climbing up a high ladder in the old waiting room.

  Electricity was a new-fangled idea for a building back one hundred years ago when the terminal was built, so all of the fancy French-designed chandeliers purposely featured the light bulb. Like a newly engaged woman walking around holding her left hand out, just so everyone could see the diamond ring. Over the years the company introduced new super-efficient bulbs that lasted a lot longer than the old bulbs, so a regular light bulb crew was no longer needed. Nowadays the job of occasionally changing the bulbs fell on an unsuspecting new guy. So that is what Ryan – Herschel thought that was the new guy’s name – was doing way up on that ladder. There was a twinkle in Herschel’s eye as he watched Ryan struggle with the light bulbs. To prevent the public from being tempted to take any bulbs, it was an old railroad trick to use left handed bulbs. These bulbs were specially made and screwed in the opposite way from the light bulb in your house. It always took the new guys a while to figure that out and tonight was no different. It was like trying to tie your shoes while looking into a mirror and was a lot tougher than it sounded. The wooden step ladders were tall and Ryan had become all twisted around himself, twenty feet in the air, like a dangling ornament on a wobbly Christmas tree. Soon enough Ryan was cursing out loud as he fumbled with each bulb. “What the ‘fuh’ is the matter with these . . . damn . . . jeez . . . c’mon . . . .”

  Down the ramp in the main rotunda, Herschel turned and watched Vincent swing the floor cleaning machine around towards the ramp. The easiest way to get up the long incline with the Zamboni was to start in the middle of the hall and build up speed and race to the top of the ramp. If done right, the machine would slow down to almost a crawl by the time it got to the top. Without a good head of steam, the machine could stall out before making it all the way up to the waiting room. But since it was quiet tonight, Vincent was able to get an even longer run up the ramp. He looked like an old-time stock car driver behind the steering wheel with his perpetually slicked back hair and his blue work shirt open to show a skin-tight NY Rangers t-shirt below.

  Vincent was fiddling with his cell phone and headphones as the machine started to pick up speed. He seemed more worried about playing a game on his phone then looking where he was going. The vehicle began its sprint up the ramp and the extra headway allowed the engine to rev up faster than anyone had ever seen it go before. To the right of Herschel, Ryan was still completely flummoxed by the light bulbs and was becoming more frustrated by the second. He was so confused and embarrassed that he had become oblivious to the world around him. The Zamboni continued to race as fast as the machine could go as it started up the ramp. Vincent was now completely lost in his phone and rushing along without ever looking up.

  With the newfound power in its wheels, the Zamboni roared like an eight-year-old getting out of school for the summer break, and it refused to slow as it climbed up the incline. It was still racing when Vincent finally realized that he wasn’t in the slow crawl that he expected but was instead sprinting recklessly toward the old waiting room. In the too-little-too-late world that was common for Vincent, he finally put the phone down and grabbed the wheel and jerked the Zamboni to the left. Swerving harder than it ever was designed for, the machine bounded over the antique grooves in the floor. The Zamboni bounced like a baby carriage on a cobblestone street as Vincent completely lost control. His cell phone banged to the floor, a bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his hair lost its permanent cool for the first time in memory.

  Hershel sized up the situation quickly and dropped his red bandana and ran toward the ladder and the light bulbs. Without slowing down for a step, Herschel leaped up the ladder as far as he could. Ryan was already stretched out and twisted around with the light bulbs and the two of them crashed to the floor. Ryan fell on top of Herschel while still looking up toward the chandelier. Both of them let out a groan as they hit the unforgiving marble floor.

  An instant later the runaway Zamboni slammed into the ladder and snapped off the bottom half.

  If Ryan were still on the ladder he would have been thrown into the air and crashed down headfirst to the floor. Vincent and the Zamboni finally came to a rest just before reaching the far wall. Ryan caught his breath, looked around and got up and started screaming at Vincent. The rest of the crew came running up the ramp from all corners of the terminal to see what had happened. The foreman was last to arrive and began yelling at anything with a heartbeat. Everyone was talking about how lucky it was that Ryan lost his balance and fell off the ladder at just the right moment. The general consensus was that it was a classic case of dumb luck.

  Herschel picked himself up off the floor and in the confusion ambled quietly back to his broom, picked up his red bandana and started his rounds again. Everything happened so fast that Ryan never realized that it was Herschel who had knocked him off the ladder and softened his fall. The rest of the cleaning crew finally settled down, the Zamboni was given to another driver and Vincent and Ryan stayed away from each other the rest of the night. Soon enough the sun started to rise and the morning’s newly delivered soft light began to creep over the windowsills on the east side of the rotunda. Daylight was the call for this maintenance crew to close up shop and head home.

  * * *

  Well after the morning rush was over, but before the lunchtime throng jammed the restaurants on the lower level of the terminal, Chuck was showing a new customer-service representative around. The classic old building was crowded now, buzzing and in full organized confusion. It was Chuck’s job to teach Lizzy the ropes and show her all over. On the lower level, by Track 115, Lizzy saw an old broom behind the stairwell closet with a faded dusty red bandana hanging from a bent nail above.

  Before she could reach out to touch the grimy broom, Chuck jumped in with, “No, no, no. Don’t touch that. It’s a san phra phum.”

  Startled, Lizzy turned and softly asked, “A what?”

  “OK, everyone calls me Chuck but my real name is Chanarong. I’m from Thailand and over there everyone has these little spirit houses outside their home. They are about the size of a little girl’s dollhouse but much fancier. The san phra phum brings protection and good luck. It is kind of where wandering spirits can find shelter or peace. Over here you have haunted
houses; in Thailand they give the spirits their own private villas.”

  Lizzy’s face squished up in confusion and she mumbled, “But, it’s just . . . an old broom . . . .”

  “Yeah, you’re right, but it is the same idea,” said Chuck. “I was told a long time ago that no one touches that broom. It’s been here forever. It is a sort of ‘spirit house’ for all of the maintenance guys. The broom and the red bandana are always there. Look at the dust that has built up over the years. It is a relic. The crews are pretty superstitious about it and they never move it from that spot. Hell, we haven’t even used a broom like that in decades. Anyway, no one moves it. Ever. You have to give the san phra phum the respect it deserves. Hell, if someone thinks it’ll protect him or something like that, what am I supposed to say? Just don’t mess with it. OK?”

  Lizzy stared for a moment at the broom, and then the two of them moved back to the swirl of stories and characters in Grand Central Terminal.

  Timetable for Crime

  - by Marcelle Thiébaux

  Summer 1937

  A CLOUDBURST FLOODED MANHATTAN before dawn. The unmarked van pulled up to the Vanderbilt entrance of Grand Central Terminal. Two men ducked out. They unlatched the rear doors, clambered in to hook up rollers, slid the coffin out of the van and dumped it on the sidewalk.

  They dragged the coffin along the wet pavement and heaved it onto a wheeled trolley. Ready to load. The northbound funeral train for the Cemetery ran at noon. The scam had to be set up by then.

  Jaxon and his brother jumped back in the van. They lurched around the corner in a screech of wet tires heading for the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey.