Gone Tomorrow

The cops kept moving. Behind them four more showed up. Two on one side of me, two on the other, threading through the crowd slowly and surely.

I craned forward.

No headlights in the tu

The crowd moved and hunched beside me, pushed on by new arrivals, disturbed by the ripples of the cops’ relentless progress, pulled forward by the subliminal certainty any subway rider feels that the train must be coming soon.

I checked again, over my shoulders, left and right.

Cops on my platform.

Eight of them.

No cops at all on the platform opposite.

FIFTY-SIX

PEOPLE ARE SCARED OF THE THIRD RAIL. No REASON TO BE, unless you plan on touching it. Hundreds of volts, but they don’t jump out at you. You have to go looking for them, to get in trouble.

Easy enough to step over, even in lousy shoes. I figured whatever my rubber footwear would subtract in terms of precision control, it would add in terms of electrical insulation. But even so, I pla

Easy enough to do.

Easy enough for the cops to do right behind me.

They had probably done it before.

I hadn’t.

I waited. Checked behind me, left and right. The cops were close. Close enough to be slowing down and forming up and deciding exactly how they were going to do what would need to be done next. I didn’t know what their approach would be. But whatever, they were going to take it slow. They didn’t want a big stampede. The platform was crowded and any kind of sudden activity would put people over the edge. Which would lead to lawsuits.

I checked left. Checked right. No trains were coming. I wondered if the cops had stopped them. Presumably there was a well-rehearsed procedure. I took a half-step forward. People slipped in behind me, between me and the pillar. They started pressing against my back. I braced the other way against them. The warning strip at the edge of the platform was yellow paint over raised circular bumps. No danger of slipping or sliding.

The cops had formed up into a shallow semicircle. They were about eight feet from me. They were moving inward, shovelling people outward, collapsing their perimeter, slow and cautious.

People were watching from the downtown platform opposite.

They were nudging each other and pointing at me and going up on tiptoe.

I waited.

I heard a train. On my left. A moving glow in the tu

I took another tiny step forward.

The headlight was coming straight at me. Head on. Rocking and jerking. It made it hard to judge distance.

Then I heard a train on my right.

A downtown train, approaching fast front the other direction. Symmetrical, but not perfectly synchronized. Like a pair of drapes closing, with the left-hand drape leading the right.

By how much?

I needed a three-second lag, for a total gap of five, because climbing up the downtown platform was going to take me a whole lot longer than jumping off the uptown.

I paused a whole second, guessing, estimating, feeling it, trying to judge.

The trains howled inward, one from the left, then one front the right.

Five hundred tons, and five hundred tons.

Closing speed, maybe sixty miles an hour.

The cops edged closer.

Decision time.

I went.

I jumped down, with the uptown train a hundred feet away. I landed two-footed between the rails and got steady and minced through the steps I had pla

I stared right.

The downtown train looked huge.

Decision time.

I went.

Right foot high over the live rail, left foot down in the rail bed. The downtown train was almost on me. Just yards away. It was rocking and jerking. Its brakes were clamping hard. I could see the driver. His mouth was wide open. I could feel the air damming ahead of his cab.

I abandoned the choreography. Just flung myself towards the far platform. It was less than five feet away, but it felt infinitely distant. Like the plains horizon. But I got there. I stared right and saw every rivet and bolt on the downtown train. It was coming right at me. I got my palms flat on the platform edge and vaulted up. I thought the dense press of people was going to knock me right back down. But hands grabbed at me and pulled me up. The train slammed past my shoulder and the wash of air spun me around. Windows flashed past. Oblivious passengers read books and papers or stood and swayed. Hands hauled on me and dragged me into the crowd. People all around me were screaming. I saw their mouths open in panic but I couldn’t hear them. The yelp of the train’s brakes was drowning them out. I out my head down and barged on through the crowd. People stepped left and right to let me pass. Some of them slapped me on the back as I went by. A ragged cheer followed me out.

Only in New York.

I pushed through an exit turnstile and headed for the street.

FIFTY-SEVEN

MADISON SQUARE PARK WAS SEVEN BLOCKS NORTH. I had the best part of four hours to kill. I spent the time shopping and eating on Park Avenue South. Not because I had things to buy. Not because I was especially hungry. But because it’s always best to give pursuers what they don’t expect. Fugitives are supposed to run far and fast. They’re not supposed to dawdle through the immediate neighbourhood, in and out of stores and cafés.

It was just after six in the morning. Delis and supermarkets and diners and coffee shops were all that was open. I started in a Food Emporium that had an entrance on 14th Street and an exit on 15th. I spent forty-five minutes in there. I took a basket and wandered the aisles and pretended to choose stuff. Less conspicuous than just hanging out. Less conspicuous than wandering the aisles without a basket. I didn’t want an alert manager to call anything in. I developed a fantasy where I had an apartment nearby. I stocked its imaginary kitchen with enough stuff to last two whole days. Coffee, of course. Plus pancake mix, eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread, butter, some jam, a pack of salami, a quarter-pound of cheese. When I got bored and the basket got heavy I left it in a deserted aisle and slipped out the back of the store.

Next stop was a diner four blocks north. I walked on the right-hand sidewalk with my back to the traffic. In the diner I ate pancakes and bacon that someone else had shopped and cooked. More my style. I spent another forty minutes in there. Then I moved on half a block to a French brasserie. More coffee, and a croissant. Someone had left a New York Times on the chair across from me. I read it from end to end. No mention of a manhunt in the city. No mention of Sansom’s Senate race in the national section.