4
Sandy Palmer crouched in an uptown corner of the Seventy-second Street subway platform with The Light's editor on the other end of his cell phone. The connection was tenuous from this underground spot, and he feared losing it at any second.
George Meschke's voice growled in his ear. At first he'd been pissed at being disturbed at home, now he was all ears. "You're sure you've got that number right?"
"Absolutely."
"Six dead?"
"As doornails. Two men and four women—I counted them twice before 1 left the car." Sandy peered through the controlled chaos farther down the platform. "A seventh victim, a black woman, was still alive but with an ugly head wound. The EMTs are just taking her away."
"You're amazing, kid," Meschke said. "I don't know how you kept your cool. I'd've lost it after going through what you've just told me."
"Cool as a cucumber," Sandy said. "That's me."
He neglected to mention that he'd given up dinner soon after the train had stopped. Even now—what, fifteen minutes later?—his hands were still shaking.
Those first moments were something of a blur. He remembered seeing the GPM run out, and his abrupt exit had seemed to throw a switch in the crowd. Suddenly everybody wanted out—immediately if not sooner. Sandy had had to pull aside the still sobbing film student from the mass exodus to keep her from being trampled.
As he'd helped her to her feet he'd realized he had a golden opportunity here: he was a trained journalist who'd witnessed a front-page crime. If he could gather his senses, focus on the details, and make the most of the fact that he was his own primary source, he could accomplish something here, something big.
"What's your name?" he'd asked the shaken young woman. "Your real name?"
"Beth." Her voice was barely audible, her skin so white she looked almost blue.
"Come on. Let's get you out of here."
As he'd moved behind her, guiding her, half supporting her, he turned and checked out the front end of the car… the sprawled bodies of the victims… the killer, whose upper half had fallen through the doors when they opened, lying half in and half out of the car… the OR tech still tending to the wounded woman… and the blood, good Christ, the blood—the whole end of the car was awash in pools of it. Who'd have thought people could hold so much blood? And the smell—books always described the smell of blood as coppery, but Sandy had no idea what the hell copper smelled like, only that the whole car reeked of death and unimaginable violence and suddenly he couldn't breathe and the hot dog and Mountain Dew he'd wolfed down on the run after work couldn't stay where they were, wanted out of him as urgently as he'd wanted out of that charnel house on wheels.
And so as he propelled Beth ahead of him and stepped into the marginally fresher air of the station, his stomach heaved and ejected its contents in a sour, burning arc that disappeared into the dark chasm between the train and the edge of the platform.
Wiping his mouth Sandy looked around and hoped that no one had noticed. No one seemed to. After what they'd all been through, vomiting was a nonevent.
He'd then become aware of the noise that filled the station—the cries, the moans, the wails of the survivors who'd just escaped mixing with the screams of the waiting would-be passengers as they got a look inside and turned away with wide eyes and slack jaws. He noticed some getting sick just as he had, or collapsing onto benches and weeping, or simply slumping to the concrete platform.
He'd also noticed others hightailing it up the stairs, those who either didn't want to be questioned by the police, or didn't want to get involved in any way.
Sandy very much wanted to be involved—up to his eyeballs.
He'd found an empty spot on an initial-gouged wooden bench and eased Beth into it. Behind him he heard the automatic doors hiss closed after their programmed interval. He whirled, afraid the train would leave, but no chance of that: the killer's body was blocking one set of doors from closing—they kept pincering his corpse, then rebounding, closing again, and rebounding…
A conductor trotted down, his annoyed expression melting to horror, his forward charge stuttering to a halt when he saw the carnage, reversing to a wobbly-kneed retreat as he staggered away for help.
Sandy noticed a woman nearby sobbing into her cell phone. "Nine-one-one?" he asked.
She nodded.
Good. That meant the cops would be here in minutes. Scanner-equipped stringers and reporters wouldn't be far behind. He didn't have much time to get ahead of them.
"You'll be okay if I leave you here for a bit?" he'd said to Beth.
She'd nodded but said nothing. She was sobbing again. He felt bad leaving her but…
"I'll only be a couple of minutes."
Sandy had hurried then down to the far end of the platform where he could have some privacy and hear himself think. He wondered why he wasn't coming apart like so many of the others. He had no illusions about his inner toughness—he'd had lessons in piano, tennis, even karate, but none in machismo. Maybe it was because he had a job to do, and when he'd finished he too would fall apart. He hoped not.
That was when he'd got hold of George Meschke. He hadn't been sure what he'd accomplish. The Light was a weekly, published on Wednesdays, and tomorrow's issue had already been put to bed. But Meschke was the editor, this was news, and he seemed to be the one to call.
Cops and emergency teams had flooded into the station and he related everything as he'd seen it.
"This is great stuff, Palmer. Amazing stuff."
"Yeah, but what can we do with it? This week's issue is set." Never before had Sandy wished so fiercely that he worked for a daily.
"Not anymore. As soon as I hang up with you I'm calling everyone in and we're going to scrap the first three pages. Redo them top to bottom. I'm going to rough this out pretty much as you told it to me. It'll be your story—your first-person account—under your byline with a front page go-to."
"My byline—front page? My byline?" Sandy resisted the urge to jump up and do an arm-pumping victory dance. This was not the time or place. "You mean that?"
"Damn right. Now get off the phone and nose around there. Pick up as much as you can. The Times, the Post, and the News will be stuck up on street level. You're the only one down below, Palmer, so milk this dry. Then rush down here and we'll see about doing a box feature. Hell, with an eyewitness on staff, we're going to be the paper on this story."
"You got it, George. But listen. I've thought of a headline."
"Give it to me."
"'Underground Galahad.'"
"I don't think so."
"How about 'Nightmare on the Nine'?"
"Better. But let's leave the headline for later. Concentrate on your first-person opportunity down there."
"Sure. Talk to you soon."
Sandy snapped the phone shut and leaped up from his crouch. His nerve endings sang. Front page… his own byline… on a major story—the story of the year! This was better than sex!
As he started back toward the chaos, he realized he was probably grinning like a nerd who'd just lost his virginity. He wiped it off. And slowed his bounding pace. Had to be professional here. This was a monster leg up for his career and he'd better not blow it.
The NYPD had swarmed in and taken command. Plainclothes detectives and uniforms were everywhere, sectioning off the platform with yellow crime scene tape, stretching more between columns and across stairways.
They'd herded the survivors into one area. As Sandy approached he noticed some looking dazed, some still sobbing, one hysterical, a few trying to hide the large wet spots on their pants, all coming down from the adrenaline overload of fearing for their lives as cops tried to take statements from the more coherent ones.
Sandy wove slowly through the crowd, pausing to listen whenever and wherever he could.
"… and then out of nowhere, this savior appeared," said a stooped old woman in a wrinkled blue dress.
"What did he look like, ma'am?" said the female officer bending over her with notebook in hand.
"Like Jesus."
"You mean he had long hair?"
"No."
"Short, then?"
"Not exactly."
"Can you tell me what he looked like?"
"We were not to look upon his face…"
Sandy moved on, pausing again by the tall ministerial black man he recognized from the death car.
"… and so then I spoke to him."
"Spoke to who? The second shooter?"
"We think of him as the Savior."
"'We'?"
"We who were blessed enough to survive. When we were freed from the train, someone said, 'Who was he? Who was our savior?' And that's how we now refer to him."
"Can you give me a description of this 'savior,' sir?"
"Medium build, brown hair… I can't tell you much about his face because I didn't see it. He had this hat, you see, and he pulled it down to hide his face."
"How tall was he?"
"I'd say average height. Shorter than me, anyway."
Sandy kept moving, taking a circuitous route back to Beth, and along the way he kept hearing his fellow survivors trying and failing to describe this man they were calling 'the Savior.' He understood their problem: a guy so unremarkable seemed virtually invisible. Sandy had tagged him GPM for that very reason: he was a paradigm of the generic pale male.
He found Beth again but now she wasn't alone. A plainclothesman was seated next to her, his notebook held at the ready. Beth had her hands stuffed stiff-armed between her knees and was still shaking. Sandy knelt beside her. She jumped when he laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Oh, it's you," she said with a nervous flicker of a smile.
"And you are…?" said the detective.
"Sandy Palmer. I was on the train with Beth."
"Have you given a statement yet?"
The word no was approaching his lips when a subliminal warning from somewhere in his subconscious made him pull it back.
"Who's that policewoman back there?" he said, trying to avoid getting caught in a lie later. "I forget her name."
The detective nodded. "Were you able to get a look at the second shooter?"
"You mean the Savior?" Sandy replied.
"Whatever."
To avoid a direct answer Sandy turned to Beth. "You saw him, didn't you, Beth?"
She shook her head.
"But you were right there, just a couple of feet from him."
"But I wasn't looking at him. I barely looked at you, if you remember."
Sandy smiled. "I remember."
"I mean, I saw his back when he went after the killer—wait! He had a name on the back of his shirt!"
The detective leaned forward, his pencil poised over his pad. "What did it say?"
Beth squeezed her eyes shut. "It was all such a blur, but I think it said 'Sherbert' or something like that that."
"Sherbert?" the detective said, scribbling. "You're sure?"
Sandy rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. "Chrebet," he offered. "I remember now. He was wearing a green-on-white Jets jersey. Number eighty."
"Christ," the detective muttered, shaking his head as he scratched out a line on his pad with hard, annoyed strokes. "I think we can figure it wasn't Wayne Chrebet."
"You know him?" Beth said.
"Wide receiver for the Jets," Sandy replied, then added, "That's a football team."
"Oh." She seemed to shrink a little. "I hate football."
"You didn't see his face?" the detective said.
"No. He had it covered when he turned around." She turned to Sandy. "You didn't see him either?"
Sandy wet his lips. An idea was forming. Its boldness tied his gut into knots but its potential made him giddy. It meant going out on a limb—far out on a very slim limb. But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained…
"I saw what you saw," he said.
"Shit," the detective muttered and slapped his notebook against his thigh. "What was this guy—invisible?"
"When can we leave?" Beth said. "I want to go home."
"Soon, miss," the detective said, softening. "Soon as we get names and addresses and statements from all you witnesses, we'll see that you all get home safely."
As the cop moved off, Sandy leaned close to Beth and whispered, "I'm getting stir crazy. I've got to move around. You'll be okay for a few minutes?" He didn't know why but somehow he felt responsible for her.
"Sure," she said. "Not like there aren't any cops around."
"Good point."
He left her and edged back toward the death car where flashes from the forensic team's cameras kept lighting the interior like welders' arcs. He noticed a cluster of three plainclothesmen and one uniform gathered outside one of the open sets of doors. Farther on, a man wearing latex gloves—from the forensics team, no doubt—examined the killer where he'd fallen through the doorway.
Sandy needed to be over there, needed to hear what these cops were saying, but he couldn't get his feet to move. One step past that tape and he'd be sent scurrying back with his tail between his legs to stay put with the rest of the survivors. But he wasn't just a survivor, he was the press too, damn it—the people's right to know and all that.
He tried to remember techniques from that assertiveness training course he'd taken last year but came up blank except for the old bromide about how the worst that could happen was that someone simply would say No.
But fearing rejection, of all things, seemed more than silly after what he'd just been through.
Sandy pulled his press card from his wallet and palmed it. A quick glance around showed no one looking his way. He noticed that one of the plainclothes cops was pretty big. Huge, in fact. Choosing an angle of approach that used the big guy's bulk as a shield, Sandy ducked under the yellow tape and sidled up to the foursome, listening, taking mental notes.
"… like the second shooter knew what he was doing."
"How you mean?"
"According to what we're hearing he got the crazy in the shoulders first, then blew him away."
"Fucking executed him's more like it. But what was he carrying? Nobody can tell us anything about his gun except it was real small."
"And holds at least four rounds."
"Not a .22, I can tell you that. Not a .32 either from the size of the crazy's wounds. Guy took his brass with him so we can't use that."
"The whole thing's weird—including the way he blew away the crazy. I mean, why not just do the head shot and have it done with?"
"'Cause if you miss that first head shot—and if we're talking about a tiny little barrel, there's a damn good chance you will—you're a goner because this Colin Ferguson wannabe's got a pair of nines and he's going to blow you away. So if you're smart you do what our guy does: you go for an arm and—"
"Seems low percentage to me. I'd go for center of mass."
"Fine—unless he's wearing a vest. And witnesses say the crazy was turned sideways when he took the first hit. An arm's bigger than a head, and even a miss has got a good chance at the torso, vested or not. So our guy goes for an arm and makes the shot. Now there's one less gun to deal with, and he's also a few steps closer. So now it's easier to take out the other arm."
"Sounds like he's been trained."
"Damn straight. Taking his brass with him says he's a pro. But trained by who? With both arms messed up, the crazy wasn't going to do any more shooting. Could've left him like that. But he finished him off."
"But good."
"Probably didn't want to hear about 'yellow rage' for the next two years."
"Like I said—a fucking execution."
"You got complaints about that, McCann?"
"Maybe. Maybe I don't like executioners running around loose."
"Which is probably just why he took off. He—"
The black plainclothesman speaking caught sight of Sandy over the big guy's shoulder and pointed at him. "You are in a restricted area."
"Press," Sandy forced himself to exclaim, holding up his card.
Suddenly he found himself the object of an array of outraged expressions.
"How the hell—?"
"And an eyewitness," he quickly added.
That mollified them somewhat, until the big detective, the one they'd called McCann, florid faced with thinning gray brush-cut hair, looking a little like Brian Dennehy, stepped in for a closer look at his press card. His breath reeked of a recent cigar.
"The Light? Christ, he's from the fucking Lightl Aliens and pierced eyeballs! Oh, shit, are you guys gonna have a ball with this!"
"That was the old days. We're different now."
It was true. The new owner had moved The Light away from the shock-schlock format that had made it notorious decades ago—every issue with an eye injury on page three, with photo if possible, and an alien story on page five—into a kinder, gentler scandal sheet, concentrating on celebrity foibles.
"Yeah? I wouldn't know."
"Of course not," Sandy said, feeling braver now. "Nobody but nobody reads The Light. Yet somehow the issues keep disappearing from the newsstands."
"Probably those aliens," McCann said. "Tell me, did your journalist's powers of observation happen to register a description of the second shooter's face?"
Sandy had already settled on how to play this. He shook his head. "No. But I know someone who did."
He was suddenly the center of attention, all four of the cops who-ing like a chorus of owls.
Sandy pointed to the killer. "Him."
"A wise-ass," McCann said. "Just what we need." He gave Sandy a dismissive wave. "Get back on the other side of the tape with the other useless witnesses."
Sandy managed not to move. He couldn't let this happen. What could he say? One of his therapist's remarks about every relationship being a negotiation of sorts filtered back to him. Negotiate… what did he have to offer?
The gun. They'd been talking about the gun, wondering what kind, and Sandy'd had the best look at it.
"Okay," Sandy said, turning and staring to move away. "I came over here because I got a good look at his gun. But if you're not interested—"
"Hold it," said McCann. "You better not be playing any games here, newsboy, or you're gonna find your ass in a sling."
Again he had their attention. Now he had to play this just right. Negotiate. Give them something they needed, something real, and in return get to hang here where the action was. But he sensed that a direct quid-pro-quo offer would only land him in hot water. Damn, he wished he had more experience at this.
Okay, just wing it and hope they're grateful.
"He pulled it out of an ankle holster."
The detectives glanced at each other. The black one nodded. "Go on. You know the difference between a revolver and an automatic?"
"It looked like an automatic. I saw him pull back the slide before he started toward the killer, but…"
"But what?"
"Maybe it wasn't working right because he pulled the slide back before every shot."
"I'll be damned!" said the lone uniform. "Could be a Semmerling."
"A what?" McCann said.
"Semmerling LM-4. Supposedly the world's smallest .45. Saw one at a gun show once. Would have picked it up if I'd had the dough. Looks like a semi-auto—has the slide and all—but it's really just a repeater."
"How small?" McCann wanted to know. He was looking Sandy's way.
Sandy tried to remember. "Everything happened so fast… but I think"—he straightened his fingers and placed his palm against his hip—"I think I could cover it with my hand."
McCann looked back to the uniform. "That about right?"
A nod. "I'd say so."
"Sounds like a stupid piece to me," the black detective said.
"Not if you want maximum stopping power in a little package."
"C'mere," McCann said to Sandy, motioning him to follow.
Sandy stayed right on the big detective's heels. Oh, yes. This was just what he'd been hoping for.
But when they came upon the killer's corpse he wasn't so sure. Close up like this he could see that the man's shoulder wounds were worse than he'd thought. And his face… the right eye socket was a bloody hole and the remaining eye was bulging half out of its socket… his face was all swollen… in fact his head seemed half again its normal size.
Be careful what you wish for, Sandy thought, averting his gaze as stomach acid pushed to the back of his throat.
He swallowed and looked again at the corpse. What a photo that would make. He felt in his pocket for the mini-Olympus he always carried. Did he dare?
"Hey, Kastner," McCann said to the gloved man leaning over the killer. "Your best guess on the caliber—and I won't hold you to it."
"Don't have to guess. If these wounds aren't from a .45, I'm in the wrong biz."
McCann nodded. "Okay. So our second shooter wanders around with something called a Semmerling LM-4 strapped to his ankle."
"Not exactly government issue," the black detective grunted. "And hey, if the crazy was hit with a .45, how come his brains aren't splattered all over the car?"
"Because the second shooter was using frangibles," Kastner the forensics man said.
"Whoa!" said the uniform.
"Frangibles?" Sandy asked. "What's a frangible?"
"A bullet that breaks up into pieces after it hits."
"Lots of pieces that bounce all over," Kastner commented. "They're going to find puree du brain when they crack this guy's cranium."
McCann turned to the black detective. "Which brings us back to what I said before, Rawlins: an execution."
With McCann not looking, Sandy had his chance. Carefully he wormed his camera out of his pocket and pointed it toward the corpse. He couldn't risk a flash but the lights looked bright enough. He covered the flash with a thumb. A quick glance showed Rawlins and the others facing McCann.
"Doin' a crazy who's just blown away half a dozen good people and on track to do a dozen or two more?" Rawlins said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. "That's not an execution, that's putting down a mad dog. That's steppin' on a cockroach."
Keeping his face toward the cops, Sandy held the camera at hip level and started shooting.
"Maybe," McCann was saying. "But I like to know who's doing the stepping."
After half a dozen quick frames Sandy slipped the camera back into his pocket. He was sweating. He felt as if he'd just done a two-mile sprint.
"Easy enough in this case," Rawlins said, breaking into a grin. "We just roust all the average-height-medium-built-brown-haired white guys in the five boroughs and check their ankles for holsters."
"We'll find him," McCann said. "Guy does something like this, saves a carload of lives, he thinks he's a hero. He's gonna tell someone. No way he'll be able to keep his yap shut. And then we'll have him."
"And then what?" Sandy said, alarmed. They were talking about the man who'd saved his life. "What'll you do to him?"
McCann squinted at him. "Probably nothing. A lot of people are gonna want to give him a ticker-tape parade—I know you and everyone else on that car sure as shit will—but plenty of others won't be so keen. He may have saved lives, but he's also probably some sort of gun nut, and as of tonight he's a killer. Not exactly the perfect poster boy for civic responsibility."
"You want to lock him up?" Sandy said.
McCann shook his head. "Not particularly. But I do want to know who he is. Anybody who wanders through my precinct carrying that kind of firepower and who's able to use it to such deadly effect, I want to know about."
"But you have no description beyond average-height-medium-built-brown-haired Caucasian, right?" Sandy asked. The answer was crucial.
"Don't even have his eye color," Rawlins said.
Sandy almost blurted brown before he caught himself in the nick of time.
"Think the survivors could be protecting him?" the uniform said.
McCann narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Sandy. "How about that, Mr. Newspaperman? You and your friends here wouldn't be obstructing justice now, would you?"
Sandy's tongue took on a leathery taste and texture. He swallowed and tried to muster some indignation.
"If you mean did we all get together and cook up a useless description, how could we? None of us was in any state of mind for that kind of thinking. If you want to see what I had for dinner, detective, check out the tracks over there. We were all too sick with relief at just being alive."
"Even if they'd wanted to," Rawlins said, "I doubt they'd've had time. Let's face it: this second shooter was an average white male who hid his face and took off."
"Yeah, I guess so," McCann said. "Doesn't matter much anyway. Like I said: he'll turn up. Just a matter of time."
But I'm going to find him first, Sandy thought, as visions of talk shows and book contracts danced in his head.
The Savior… the second shooter… the GPM… whatever he was called, only one person in this whole city could identify him. And Sandy Palmer wasn't about to fritter that away. Simply having survived that death train would earn him a moment in the journalistic sun tomorrow. But what about the next day, and the day after that? He'd be—quite literally—yesterday's news.
But not if he held onto this ace in the hole… and played it right.
Mama Palmer didn't raise no dummy. A once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity had been dropped into his lap, a chance to parlay his eyewitness status into an even bigger media coup: he'd find the Savior, wrangle an exclusive to his story, then bring him in.
He thought of reporters linked for all posterity with the sources of their greatest story: Jimmy Breslin and his Son of Sam letter, Woodward and Bernstein and their Deep Throat.
How about Sandy Palmer and the Savior?