Finally, in mid-June a weather pattern settled in predicting to bring at least two days of heavy rains. Atwater called Fat Lip and told him the job was on. That night, after work, Fat Lip took a bus into the Bronx and boosted a Mustang, which he then parked in the back of his uncle’s garage covering it with an old canvas tarp so the old man wouldn’t see it.
The following day, under dark clouds and constant, heavy rainfall, he, Atwater, and Levins carried out the robbery. It went like clockwork with Atwater and Levins charging into the small jewelry store wearing Halloween masks and waving their guns in the air. In five minutes they had filled two black satchels with diamonds, pearls, and other assorted gems that would later be valued at eighty thousand dollars.
Fat Lip sat in the Mustang, revving its engine, and when his partners exited the shop and jumped aboard, he let go the clutch and floored the muscle car making a quick get-away long before any patrol car could arrive on scene. He kept the pedal to the floor and wove them through the tight city streets until they were roaring over the Brooklyn Bridge. Two hours later they were deep into the woods of New Jersey. Earlier in the day they had left Levin’s Chevy Impala in an old abandoned barn. They abandoned the hot Mustang, switched cars, and then drove back into the city as clean as angels.
They dropped Fat Lip off at his uncle’s place. Atwater had told the naïve driver that it would take him a few weeks to find a fence and convert the stolen jewels into cash. Then they would all get together and split their ill-gotten gains. Poor Fat Lip had bought into it hook, line, and sinker. He had no clue what was coming his way.
Three days later the cops came barging into the garage with a warrant to search the place and Fat Lip’s apartment. Uncle Max was ready to blow a gasket and kept yelling at the cops that he’d call a lawyer and sue them. Meanwhile, the two detectives and three blues searched the place. It was later revealed in court that they had received an anonymous phone call saying Fat Lip Crawford was one of the men behind the downtown jewelry heist. Try to imagine Fat Lip’s shock when, while tossing his belongings, one of the bulls finds a small silk bag hidden beneath some shirts in his bedroom dresser. In the bag were two diamond broaches; part of the haul from the robbery.
Fat Lip was arrested and taken in for booking and arraignment. Two days later a Grand Jury indicted him for grand theft and he was held over for trial. His bail had been set at ten thousand dollars, a sum far beyond his means to produce.
Now I know what you’re thinking; that Charlie Atwater set him up to take the fall. Of course he did, and it didn’t take Fat Lip long to figure it out for himself. At the advice of the public defender appointed for him by the court, he spilled the beans and told the cops everything. The trouble was, by then both Atwater and Levins had vamoosed for parts unknown, leaving the kid to take the fall all by his lonesome.
Atwater had been savvy enough to know if he threw the authorities a bone, it would appease them just enough so as to have no real desire to man a lengthy, expensive manhunt for he and Levins. Oh sure, their faces were sent out via the FBI channels and would end up on the Most Wanted List. But hey, with close to eighty grand between the two of them, creating new identities wherever they ended up wouldn’t be hard at all.
Meanwhile, poor Fat Lip went to trial and was sentenced to twenty-five years at Sing Sing. His mother was devastated and as he was led off in cuffs to begin his new life behind prison walls, she stood weeping her eyes out, supported by his two sisters.
Over the next ten years, she and the girls would come to visit him whenever it was possible for them to make the trip. But then his sisters both got married and stopped coming. During his tenth year of incarceration his mother came down with cancer and died within six months of being diagnosed. He was given special leave to attend the funeral, under guard of course.
Ironically, it took place on a cold and rainy day.
Okay, I know, I’m getting way off track here what with Fat Lip’s history and all and this is supposed to be story about the Grand Central. Just let me grab another beer, my throat’s kind of dry, and we’ll get to that part.
Better, thanks. Like I said earlier, I’ve been working here at Grand Central Terminal for going on eight years now and I love the place. I mean, it’s almost impossible not to from the first time you walk into it from 42nd Street and see the Main Concourse with its high ceiling all painted up like the stars in heaven. Did you know those stars are on there backwards? Yup. The two guys who did it somehow got their prints turned around and didn’t realize it till the job was done. When the owners, the Vanderbilt family, found out, they told everyone that the ceiling was done to show how God looked down on the sky from his lofty perspective. Yeah, it’s a cool story. Honestly, there are hundreds of them about the station.
Here are some quick facts for you. It was opened in 1871 having been constructed by the New York Central Railway and is the largest train station in the world by the number of platforms. There are two levels below street level with 41 tracks on the upper one and 26 on the lower level. The entire terminal covers an area of 48 acres. Right smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. Statistics say more than 21,600,000 people come through the terminal every year.
Which is what brings us back to Fat Lip Crawford and how he ended up here. Back in those days, even with his record of good behavior, the system was much tougher than it is today and the guy ended up serving his full twenty-year sentence.
When he got out, things had changed and not for the better; his uncle had sold the garage and retired to Florida and most of his old Harlem friends were gone. He hardly recognized the neighborhood any longer. It was his sister, Flora, who took pity on him and let him stay in a spare bedroom until he could get himself a job.
Well, as it turned out, her husband, one Leo Runard, had a cousin named Booker Jackson who worked the shoe shine concession here at the terminal. Jackson was in his late sixties then and been doing a lot of talking about taking on an assistant and maybe even looking at quitting in the near future. One night, after dinner, Leo suggested to Fat Lip that he go down and meet the old fellow and see about getting himself a job.
At first Fat Lip wasn’t all that keen on the idea. You see, what he hadn’t told Flora or Leo was that ever since he’d gone up the river, he’d spent every day for twenty-five years dreaming of hunting down the men who had betrayed him, Atwater and Levins, and getting some payback. Though he was looking for a job, it wasn’t his main focus now that he was a civilian again. Still, to make his sister happy, he went down to the terminal to meet Jackson and talk with him.
Now Jackson was a great character known to most of the people who worked at Grand Central. A tall, white-haired black man, he had a belly laugh you could hear a mile away and he truly liked his job getting to meet people from all walks of life and help them look their best with a fancy, spit-polish shine. He liked to think he was helping these gents have a better day what with his friendly banter and attitude, and who is to say he didn’t do just that.
By then, I’d been working there for just under two years and considered Booker Jackson a good friend. In fact, I must have been on duty the day Fat Lip first showed up and introduced himself to the King of Shines, though I don’t recall that. From what I do remember, Fat Lip had been working at the stand nearly a week before me and my partner, Ed Bishop, met him for the first time.
He was tall, on the thin side with a forty-six-year-old man’s gray hair, cut short and a kind face that looked guarded. Old Man Jackson was all enthusiastic about introducing us to his new employee and how Fat Lip was going make his days a whole lot easier. I can remember all of us politely shaking hands and making nonsense small talk. Fat Lip’s eyes had widened slightly upon first seeing us and I knew immediately it had been our uniforms that triggered that reaction. I pegged him for an ex-con on the spot.