He walked up the stairs at the western end of the terminal, coming up just below the grand staircase leading out to Vanderbilt Avenue. Just at the head of the stairs was Mike’s destination, the Grand Central Bar. He had tended bar there off and on through the years, helping out his old friend Pete, who owned the place. It was the kind of bar where commuters could start their serious after-work drinking, continue the process on the bar car home, then pass out. In enough time to get up and suffer through another day of indentured servitude.
Mike approached the locked door, looked around quickly, and tried his old key. It turned easily and he silently entered the joint. As he stepped toward the bar, his foot stubbed something soft. Mike flicked on his flashlight and saw a homeless man sprawled on the floor, passed out. The guy had groaned softly when Mike booted him but was still now.
Mike looked at the rank-smelling mound for a moment and wondered if he should do something about this new situation, then decided, enough bodies for one night’s work. I’ll probably regret this, but, what the hell.
Mike went to the back of the bar where a moveable decorative panel was installed; Pete had shown it to him years ago, and no one else knew about it. Mike jotted a note to Pete, slid open the panel, stashed the coins with the note inside under some rags, and closed the panel. He figured he’d get back in a couple of months or so, and, if Pete found the booty, he’d know what to do.
As he left, Mike turned back one more time and looked at the homeless guy stretched out on the floor. Brother, he thought, if you only knew.
Mike made his way to the back of the train. As he stared out the door’s window, watching the platforms and tracks recede, Mike raised his hand to his mouth, and blew a goodbye kiss to the guts of the city.
Mike Callahan stepped off the train in Grand Central about eleven in the morning. His leg was bothering him today, a reminder of a shanking in Sing Sing twenty years ago. As he looked around the Main Concourse, Mike was stunned. The place was spotless. Where were all the bums?
Food was being sold everywhere, all kinds of food. Mike remembered when you’d be lucky to get a hot dog and a candy bar in the terminal. Looking up, he saw the green constellation ceiling. So that’s what was under there? Jeez, it had been black as night for as long as he could remember.
And the tourists! Where the hell did they come from? From the sounds of things, Europe.
Worst of all, the cops. There were cops everywhere. And soldiers! What the hell was going on here. Yeah, he’d heard about 9/11. Guess that’s what it is.
Mike made his way up the stairs to Vanderbilt Avenue, figuring he’d have a cold one at the Grand Central Bar. As he got upstairs, he saw no door, just a big open bar, surrounded by elegant tables. Michael Jordan? Who the fuck is Michael Jordan? Well, Mike knew who he was, he just didn’t know he’d gone into the restaurant business.
But where was the bar? And the panel? There was nothing left of the old hiding place and its surroundings. There was no point in even trying to hang around and look for the coins. They just weren’t there.
And Pete? He had to find Pete.
Mike remembered that Pete lived in Bay Ridge on 76th Street. He found a pay phone. Great, no phone book. Where the fuck are all the phone books?
He called information and got the exact address.
On the R train out to the far southern reaches of Brooklyn, Mike thought about the last 25 years. The most horrendous job he’d ever been part of, he gets away, only to get nabbed in some cheesy B & E upstate. With his record, it was twenty years in maximum.
The whole time, he was afraid to contact Pete or anybody so as not to bring attention from the Alderstein job unto his head. Stiggy was nabbed, got the max, and, God bless him, kept his mouth shut and took what they gave him. Which ended with Stiggy getting shivved in Attica some years back.
As far as anyone was concerned, Mike had never been there.
And the nice part is that, it’s been so long, Mike can fence the coins and get pretty near whole value for them. Piece of cake.
Mike walked from the 77th Street station to Pete’s house, already feeling a bit better about things in general. Even after all these years, he remembered the neighborhood, having been out here a couple of times for parties at Pete’s place. The area was full of detached houses, some small, some grander, all with a patch of yard in front and back. The suburbs in the city, Pete had always called it.
Mike rang the doorbell and a brunette woman in her 40s answered the door. Mike thought she looked like Pete’s daughter. He introduced himself as an old friend of Pete’s and asked where he was. She said she was Moira and asked him into the house.
“You didn’t know?” she said. “My father died about ten years ago.”
“I’ve been away for a long time. I never heard,” said Mike, feeling a bit sick. “Listen, your father was holding something for me. A case. It held some coins. I asked him to hold it for me ’cause I moved around a bit. I’ve come to get it.”
“Mr. Callahan, is it? I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. When Dad died, we went through everything here, and there was no case, and no coins. In fact, I lived with my father for the last five years he was alive, and I never saw anything like that.”
“Look, they have to be here,” said Mike, starting to see red. “I left them with your father at the bar and I know he would have brought them here!”
“Don’t shout at me! I don’t know where your goddamn coins are. Now get out of here!” Moira shoved Mike. “I’m calling the cops!” She grabbed her cell phone and punched in 911 with her thumb.
Mike watched her, feeling his chest tighten in panic. “No, don’t do that! Just give me the fucking coins and I’m outta here.”
“I told you I don’t know where or what they are and I am calling the cops. You’re fuckin’ nuts!” Moira connected to the 911 dispatcher and started shrieking into the phone.
That’s when Mike grabbed the big glass ashtray from the end table and slammed it into Moira’s head. And by the way she slumped onto the carpet and lay there with her eyes wide open, Mike knew he hit her way too hard.
Mike was still staring at Moira’s head, watching her blood ooze into the pale pile carpeting when the door was kicked in and two cops grabbed him, cuffed him and took him away.
About five years later, Mike was lying on his mattress in Attica, with about nineteen years to go on a second-degree murder conviction. He has just gotten a way-out-of-date issue of the Post. Flipping through, he saw an item on Page 6, which made him stop turning pages.
It was about this rich guy who had just donated a large amount of money toward the continuing restoration of Grand Central Terminal. It seems that, about thirty years ago, this guy was truly down-and-out, so low he was homeless and sleeping in Grand Central. It turns out that, while earning some food money by cleaning the old Grand Central Bar, he found a stash of coins. It turns out they were stolen, and this guy turned them in and collected the reward. He then used the money to turn his life around. And he was always grateful to Grand Central for making it possible.
After that, everything went off for him without a hitch.
The Drop – by J. Walt Layne
THE HARD WHEELS OF THE BICYCLE clattered and every bolt in the frame rattled over the rocky pathway behind the trench. The men heard the bike crossing no man’s land long before it came into view. The doughboys, save for the poor guys with the unlucky job of being snipers or spotters, stayed low in the trench to avoid being spotted by the Kaiser’s sharpshooters, whose rifles were equipped with very accurate telescopic sights.