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.
Twenty minutes ago they’d made a mistake and it cost them time. Under the deluded notion there was a goods-delivered platform, they'd driven around, realized they were lost and had to go back to Vanderbilt Avenue.
Rayette Debs stood with her umbrella in the pouring rain on the corner of Vanderbilt and 42nd Street. She eyed the van with the botched paint job take off. They’d kept her waiting an extra twenty minutes.
She watched Jaxon at the wheel but didn’t give him a sign. Dark glasses hid her eyes. A black scarf swathed her hair and covered the low-cut neck of her black outfit. Long legs, black stockings and little French heels. She carried a valise tied with a strap, and a stylish lizard cosmetics case.
Rayette walked over behind the stack of crates to the coffin. She studied it. English oak, varnished to a gleam, with handles and mountings of brass. No name plate. Rayette laid a gloved palm on the lid, and smiled, satisfied to feel the death within.
It was Rayette who had tipped the brothers off. She'd overheard something big at the Nifty Nail Parlor on Stagg Street, Jersey City, where she had a job refilling nail-polish bottles. She didn’t know how to do manicures and her bitchy boss wouldn't let her try. Rayette didn't plan on going back.
Rayette had put two-and-two together from what she gleaned. A hefty amount of jewels and money were stashed in a Gifford Avenue apartment where a high roller lived with his girlfriend. Rayette found their names, and checked when the two swells would be out on the town, drinking and clubbing all night. The brothers broke in the apartment and got a much bigger heist than they expected. They also got a big surprise that could've wrecked the operation. The man and his girl came back early, giving the burglars no choice but to take out the suckers. Six shots with a.32 revolver. That left them with two problems. Two bodies.
Rayette prodded the brothers to come up with a brainstorm. What could be more public and crowded than Grand Central? Didn’t the songs and the patter go like that? When you had a zillion bodies all jammed together, people said, This is like Grand Central. What was one more body, or two?
Rayette had gone over to Grand Central and surveyed the layout. “Leave it to me,” she told Jaxon. “First we need a box.” They drove out to a mortuary supplies warehouse in Lodi, New Jersey, and bought a fancy oak coffin. Acting like it was for Rayette’s grandmother. They stowed the two bodies, minus the corpses’ four hands, which Jaxon hacked off and wrapped in a shower curtain.
Rayette turned on her French heels to get in out of the rain. She made for the terminal’s front portals on 42nd Street. Gateway to America. She didn’t glance up at Mercury on the façade, walking on air in his little winged hat. She focused on the job at hand. Finding the right fall guy for the brothers. Then Jaxon said, him and her could turkey trot.
She made her way down the ramp to the Ladies area of the waiting room, bypassed the free toilets and paid for a private stall with a mirror. She tucked on a gray wig and fixed her makeup. She donned the glasses some old bat had left behind at Nifty Nails. Rayette had taken them, in case they came in handy. They gave her a headache but she put up with it.
In her grandma disguise, Rayette found the baggage room and checked a travel kit packed with the kind of stuff a man would carry on a trip. Mennen’s shave cream, toothbrush and Ipana, socks, underwear, shirt and ties. Folded racing sheets, sports pages, help-wanted ads. A west coast timetable with the LA trains circled in grease pencil. Padded in some Fruit of the Looms was the.32 shooter.
She zipped the baggage check in her purse. Still in the old-bat glasses, Rayette took a pew-like bench in the waiting room. Hidden by pots of greenery, she settled down with a Bible until the Newsreel Theatre opened.
When it was time, Rayette paid for another private toilet stall and changed-hosiery, wig, cosmetics and a douse of Evening in Paris perfume from Woolworth’s. She examined her bag for cigarettes and crossed the Main Concourse, transformed and unrecognizable.