His target entered the terminal, pushing through the heavy wooden doors, averting his gaze to avoid eye contact with any of those pushing out. Terry hung back a pace, under the shade of the red awnings. They don’t recognize you or what you are, Terry thought, but I do. This time you won’t get away from me.
His target slipped inside, hurrying through the crowds toward the Main Concourse. Terry wondered about the man’s luggage. If he was going on a trip, then where were his bags? Then again, the man was known to travel light, to purchase what he needed when he needed it. Must be nice to get incredibly rich off murder and mayhem, Terry decided. Not that Terry begrudged him the wealth; he worked hard for his pay.
Terry followed into the echoing hall, his rubber-soled boots sucking on the marble floor. He was surrounded by the Beaux-Arts style and architectural opulence of grand staircases, an arched ceiling the color of a tropical sea, and the world famous four-faced gold and opal Tiffany clock. He noticed none of it. Terry’s attention was all on his target. He slipped the pointed length of steel part way from his pocket even as he moved another pace closer.
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.