Death by Laser
This is New York City’s financial district. Across the narrow street downtown from the gray building is the beautiful Chase Manhattan Plaza—headquarters for one of the world’s largest commercial banks. A little to the east is Bankers Trust. A new building is going up on the southwest, which will also house a bank, and yet another is rising directly north. All of these buildings are or will be giants, and they tower high over the heavy gray building, cutting it off from sunshine and the sky.
But this forbidding structure dominates them all.
A dark gray Continental swung east off Broadway, on Liberty Street. It was 7:30 p.m., and the color was already gone from the chill fall air. Cabs still cruised the narrow, canyon-like streets, but most of the office workers had left for the night. The tall, thin man with the bald head threaded his Continental effortlessly through the thinning traffic, swinging left again into Liberty Place, a gloomy alley-like street only a block long. A no-parking sign stood at the curb, but the bald-headed man gave a negligent twist to his wrist and, aided by power steering, bumped his big car up over the curb, and to rest, half blocking the sidewalk. There was only scant room for other cars to slip past, but it didn’t appear to concern the man. There was little traffic on this neglected street, anyhow.
The man remained seated behind the wheel for several moments, apparently lost in thought. Passersby, what few there were on this early night, would have given him only a token glance. Sitting in the luxurious car, wearing a handsome dark topcoat and a black Homburg, the tall thin man appeared obviously a part of his surroundings; a banker perhaps, certainly a financier.
A smile tugged at his lips. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a gold cigarette case. It held extra-long filter cigarettes. As he removed it, something else fell into his lap, a money clip, a few bills folded into it.
He started to return the money to his pocket and then, instead, separated a bill and stared at it thoughtfully.
It was a single dollar bill, one of the new ones. These did not say “Silver Certificate” on them; they were not backed by silver.
“Only by promises…” the man murmured to himself. “And we’ll see about those.”
The bill was a Federal Reserve Note, Series 1963 A. To the left of the portrait of George Washington was a seal, with the large letter “B” in its center. “Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York,” it said.
One block further east was Nassau Street. On the other side of Nassau sat the gloomy gray building, its sides bounded by Liberty Street, Nassau Street, Maiden Lane, and William Street. Its walls were great blocks of sooty granite. Its windows were heavily barred.
“B”.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York. 44 Maiden Lane. The bank that dominates all the banking in New York City, financial capital of the world.
The tall, bald man held the dollar bill for a few silent moments, his lips pursed, his thin fingers precise and motionless. Then he shrugged, returned the money to his pocket, and took out a cigarette.
He sat a few moments more, smoking the cigarette, and then glanced at his watch. 7:45p.m.
Pulling the coat tighter and buttoning it, he eased open the door and stepped out. Pausing only to lock the car, he moved quickly down the street to the middle of the short block.
This was a neglected street, bypassed by the expansion of the financial district, beckoning no new construction. The buildings here were old commercial buildings—lofts and stores, a lunch counter, a stationery store, a job printer, a messenger service. The storefronts were grimy, and looked forlorn. The bald-headed man couldn’t have cared less.
He turned between two commercial entrances and pushed open the grime-encrusted door of a little-used hallway. One faint twenty-watt bulb dangled on a frayed cord from the ceiling. Rubbish lurked in the corners.
Stairs led upward to the right; instead he ducked to the left, under them. He groped for a minute, then clicked on another light. This one showed stairs leading down. They were wooden, covered with metal cleats, and the man made his way down slowly and carefully.
When he reached the basement, he pushed his way into the dim shadows and around. cans piled high with junk and refuse. If the dust on the handles was any indication, these cans had not been emptied since the outbreak of World War II.
Shelves cluttered with miscellaneous junk leaned against the basement walls, and the man walked up to them, and reached under a low one.
A thin, high-pitched whine began and, as though on newly oiled casters, the entire section of shelves rotated smoothly out from the wall.
He reached through the opening now revealed and flicked another switch. Immediately the light at the stairs went out, and a new one beyond came on. He moved quickly through the concealed doorway, and the shelves, servo-mechs whining again, slid back into place.
Quite another sort of man was cautiously easing out of a dark subway tunnel onto a station platform.
He was short, thick-bodied, the muscles standing out on his exposed neck and forearms. The passengers standing and waiting on the subway platform paid no attention to him. He was wearing coveralls, a faded blue denim, and looked not unlike a track worker, one of those men who perennially rove the subway tunnels under the great city looking for and making necessary track repairs.
His hair was dark and grizzled with gray specks. It came low on his brow and, combined with the bushy eyebrows just below, gave him a simian look—the look of a man of low intelligence, but of a certain animal craft and cunning.
Soon a train was rumbling out of the tunnel, its brakes screeching in tortured protest as it came to a halt. The doors slid pneumatically open, and the simian-looking man boarded the train with the other waiting passengers.
The train became an express only a few stops further uptown, and it was only a matter of some ten or fifteen jolting minutes before it was stopping in the 86th Street station.
The short, heavy-set man rose and, shouldering his way past two girls at the door, stepped hastily off the train. The two girls stared past him in indignation. “Did you see that?” one of them said to the other. She fingered her nose. “I wonder when the last time was, he took a bath.”
“People like that they shouldn’t let onto these trains,” the other girl agreed. The doors slapped shut, and the train started up again. Soon the pillars of the station were a blur, and the dark thick man gone from sight.
When he climbed to the street, the man turned west. He walked in short, pumping strides, his stubby legs covering distance within an amazingly short time. The dark late-model Ford sedan, with only its parking lights on, had no trouble pacing him.
There were two men in the car. They were both young, and looked younger. Each was crewcut, each wore impeccable Ivy League suits, dark and a little conservative for present fashion. One man was a sandy blond; the other had dark hair. That was about the only visible distinction. Both were freshly shaved—and as a matter of fact, the odor of after-shave lotion still lingered within the closed confines of the car. They looked like assistant junior executives, on their way up.
The short man in the coveralls turned south on Madison Avenue, which is one-way for vehicles heading uptown. The driver of the Ford cursed for a moment.
“Don’t sweat it,” the other said. “We know where he’s going. He has to be.”
“Right.,
The Ford went a block further west, to Central Park and Fifth Avenue, a one-way street downtown. The light was just turning red, but Dark Hair cut the corner and jabbed the accelerator viciously, and the car skinned through the light.
Ahead, the lights, all timed, began turning green just before the Ford reached each intersection.
They didn’t go far, but cut left again on a cross street.
“Blasted one-way streets,” Dark Hair muttered.
“Ease off. We’ve got plenty of time,” Sandy Hair answered. “He’s on foot, remember?”
“Yeah, but these streets—these lights! It’s enough to drive ya batty. I gotta go all the way around three sides of the square before I can get there, and meantime—here we sit!”
The light turned green, and the Ford turned left again, up Madison Avenue.
The light at the next block was red and, just as they pulled up to it, Sandy Hair said, “Hey! There he is!”
The short, simian man was just turning the corner ahead of them.
Dark Hair shifted his foot from the brake to the gas and, with tires chirping, swung left through the red light.
Behind them a horn sounded angrily. Ahead, their quarry gave a sudden startled glance over his shoulder, then tucked his head down, hunched his shoulders, and began to run.
The Ford’s headlights held him pinned for a timeless moment and, in that moment, Sandy Hair leaned out his window, gripping a long, thin tube in his tightly clenched fist and his crooked elbow. A wire ran from the tube to under the car’s dash.
The headlights dimmed, then brightened.
A scarlet needle probed into the running man’s back.
He kept on running, his arms pumping, legs churning.
The Ford’s headlights swept beyond him, and then the car was accelerating past him. Its taillights winked once, and then it had made the corner and was gone.
The man was still running. Only his arms jerked up and down erratically, and his feet kept stumbling.
The man was still running as he fell.
A tall, well-muscled man strode back and forth across a lavishly furnished room. His thick blond hair was tousled, and every so often his right hand would rise, as if by its own volition, to push absently through his hair again.
“This inactivity,” he muttered to himself. “It’s got me climbing the walls. It’s got me talking to myself, just to hear my own voice.” And it brought back memories, memories he didn’t want to face, memories of other days, other places, other people. Memories of people lost—and dead.
On his bed were strewn a half-dozen paperback books:
One was a science-fiction novel. Another was a detective mystery. There were two Westerns, a brittle modern comedy, and a war novel. The war novel had been a mistake. Reading—or trying to read—had been a mistake anyway but, after starting the war novel and throwing it down after five pages, it was useless to try to escape into the pages of any of the other books.
He couldn’t quite get interested in the plight of the helpless homesteader against the ruthless cattle baron.
The kooky life of a square kid with Greenwich Village parents didn’t even bring a smile. And the science-fiction novel—all about invaders from the twenty-sixth century—seemed, like the detective novel, to blend too many fantastic memories with too many melodramatic absurdities.
The door opened, and a balding man in livery poked his head in.
“Ah, Mr. Rogers, sir? There seems to be a disturbance in the street. I thought you might…?”
Rogers whirled to face the smaller man, turning so suddenly that he startled him. His face lit with a grin. “What’s happening?”
“Ah, a man, sir. He collapsed on the sidewalk. I don’t know what else…”
Rogers pushed his lithe body past the other and hurried out into the hall, down the heavily banistered stairs.
Still hatless and coatless, he burst out of the front door to see a small group of people clustered in a knot just down the sidewalk.
One of the men was saying, “Looks like a drunk to me.”
“No, no,” insisted a teenaged girl. “They shot him! I saw it!”
“I didn’t hear any shots,” sniffed a matronly woman in furs.
“Why doesn’t somebody call a doctor?” the girl asked.
“He could be dying!”
“If you ask me, he’s just had a few too many,” repeated the first man.
“More and more of them drifting over here all the time,” the matronly woman stated. “I don’t know what we’re paying the police for!”
Rogers elbowed his way into the group, and knelt at the man’s side. Expertly, he lifted the man’s wrist and felt for a pulse. It took him a while to find one; it was weak and erratic.
“Let’s have some air, please,” he said, addressing the crowd. “Has anyone called the police?”
“Well!” the matronly woman announced. “I’m sure if anyone had, they’d have been here by now!”
“Well, then,” Rogers said, looking up over his shoulder, “why don’t you get them?”
“Me? Why, I never!”
“Did anyone see what happened?” Rogers asked, ignoring her.
“I did,” said the girl. “He was running down the street and this car was chasing him, and a red ray came out of it and it knocked him down!”
“Ahhh, bushwaw,” an older man said in tones ringing with disgust. “She’s been seeing too many James Bond movies, mister. This car, see, it ran the light and some- body honked at it, and that’s all she saw. This guy was blind, staggerin’ drunk, that’s all.”
“Really,” Rogers said. “Strange—I smell no alcohol on him.”
“Yeah? You a doctor or something?”
Rogers ignored him, and began easing the man over, onto his back.
The man’s dark brows grew close together, then relaxed. He gave a racking cough, his mouth opening and closing convulsively. Blood drooled from the corner of his mouth. Those who saw it gasped and drew back.
“Hey!” It was the same man. “You a doctor, or what? What are you doing to that man?” He reached down and plucked at Rogers’ sleeve.
The big blond man’s eyes narrowed momentarily and his muscles tensed. “Keep your hands off me,” he said in a voice that was not loud, but somehow carried its threat effectively. The man drew back hastily.
On the pavement, the dying man’s eyes opened. For a moment his gaze was clear and lucid.
“Cap—Captain America,” he gasped, and then began choking and coughing. “Gotta get to him…”
A peculiar gleam came into Rogers’ eyes then, but no one saw it. The man on the sidewalk said nothing more. His breath seemed to hack once or twice, and then he was still.
Totally still.
Dead.
Manhattan Island is riddled with tunnels. These tunnels serve as the veins and arteries that keep this, the most important part of New York City, alive. Through small tunnels thousands of miles of wires and cables are laid to bring light and electricity as well as telephone communications to everyone who needs or wants them. Other tunnels carry the gas mains, water, and sewage. But the most important tunnels for many New Yorkers are the subway tunnels, for through these speed the multitude of trains which carry over four million people daily to and from work, and carry many more midday shoppers, evening theatergoers, and people who just need to get from one part of this vast city to another easily and cheaply. The subways are the backbone of the city. Without them—as subways strikes have proven—the city is reduced to chaos, for no city’s streets could handle the number of cars that would be necessary for a population of over eight million.
Subways honeycomb Manhattan, for Manhattan is the focus of the city. But few people realize that, although the New York City subway system has not stopped growing, its subterranean network is still greater than that which is in use.
Children who stand gawking at the front of the first car in a subway train sometimes catch glimpses of branching tunnels, shadowy, unlit, tracks rusting. But when they ask their fathers, those worthy gentlemen are wont to scratch their heads and mutter, “I dunno, son. I guess that’s just something they never finished.”
One of the tunnels they never finished is in Lower Manhattan—in the financial district. It was to be part of a line constructed just before World War I, linking Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn.
The workers in those days were often immigrants, fresh off the ship from the Old Country, and eager for the money said to be lying in the gutters of the cities of America.
They didn’t find streets of gold, but they found a bustling, growing city, and one still eager for unskilled labor and the brawny back.
They poured into the construction trades, wielding picks, shovels and, later, power hammers and other more demanding tools. But in 1912, they used mostly their broad backs, cutting and shoveling through the underpinnings of Manhattan, digging tunnels where the ground was soft enough, resorting to the sledgehammer, the hand-held drill, and dynamite where it wasn’t. They were a tough lot, working and cursing, long, hot, dark days, deep under the city streets.
These men were a superstitious lot, often uneducated, steeped more in the lore of Europe and the Old Country than in the science of industrial America. They believed in magic, in vampires, in the Evil Eye—and in trolls.
Trolls are said to be evil ogres who dwell underground, far from the sun’s rays. They are terrible creatures, and no man, no matter how toughly muscled, would want to meet up with one.
One day—who can say for sure?—a man, a tunnel digger, working on the new stretch of subway tunnel that would link Manhattan with Brooklyn, saw a troll.
He said he saw a troll.
Does it matter? He may have seen only the reflection in a bit of quartz from his own lantern.
Or he may have seen the red gleam of the eyes of a troll.
It made no difference. He told his fellow workers. The story spread. He’d seen a troll.
That section of the subway was blocked off. The city authorities didn’t believe in trolls. But they were faced with a working force which did. And those men, those strong, tough, superstitious men, wouldn’t work in that tunnel. It was connected with a cavern of the trolls, they said. They didn’t want to dig a subway at all. But the authorities—at no small expense—authorized a change in the routing of the tunnel. They ordered the tunnel head blocked off. They ordered a new tunnel to detour around the abandoned working.
And the construction went on, and the subway line was completed, opened, used, and is still used today by thousands of people.
The abandoned tunnel?
It ran under Liberty Street, coming to a halt near Nassau Street. Right near Liberty Place.
Almost directly under the illegally parked Continental.
Spoiler Alert: The dead guy's identity will surprise you!
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