They agreed on the scarce outline of the plan, such as it was, and left the florist around two in the afternoon in a dark blue Mercedes-Benz.
Phyllis drove. She was dressed like a factory worker in a navy blue blouse and denim pants with a canvas belt, looking ready for the factory floor of any wartime industry, a cutter of steel or seamstress of boots. Nobody would question her leading two well-dressed men through the secret paths of the city.
The Zombie sat up front, back straight, eyes searching for threats.
The Baron slouched on the rear bench, receding into the shade cast by the car’s roof at midday. The wheels hissed down lightly trafficked streets.
“Not likely to be stopped,” Phyllis said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“It’s an attitude,” the Baron said. “Stay low for safety.”
“It’s an altitude.”
“Haw, haw.” He slid down lower until he could only see the sides of buildings.
The National Guard’s checkpoints were built along borders and major thoroughfares. Armored cars, half-tracks, and jeeps formed kill zones at narrowed intersections. Servicemen stood around with their weapons just in reach, drinking water from olive canteens and snacking on shared chocolate bars.
Phyllis discreetly avoided them, pulling into alleyways, parking for a minute, and then pulling out again. It was a slow pattern, a vehicular shimmy through the lines of buildings and dense rows. The path bypassed the soldiers and slowly wound east.
“Do you think they’d recognize my face?” the Baron asked.
“They’re on the lookout for a strong man with a shaved head and a tall Asian man with a light beard. It’s not much of a description without pictures, but it’d be enough.”
The Baron nodded slowly. “I bet they have my fake ID on record too.”
“Of course,” the Zombie said matter-of-factly. “It’s the gods-damn CIA.”
They took the car within a block of the East River, then followed Sutton Place to the underside of the Queensboro bridge. Here, it rose no more than twenty feet overhead. Looking out of the window, the Baron could see the rust-colored underbelly of the lower deck. Eggshell white paint, once protection against corrosion, had broadly flaked away, necessitating maintenance. To this end, two narrow catwalks were attached to the steel trusses beneath the roadbed, forming a kind of virtual tunnel beneath the bridge. Only the support piers interrupted their paths, forcing the catwalks to reroute around the outside of each pier.
In the Baron’s estimation, “pier” was a terrible word for them. In regular usage, “pier” suggested a porch above water, a dock or a walkway standing on stilts, piles, or poles. But these were piers in the architectural sense—vast vertical supports, bigger than any pillar, rising up to a hundred feet over land and water to carry the bridge.
In total, there were six of these titanic, architectural piers—massive arches of rebar and concrete, clad in limestone slabs—which bore up the vast bulk of the Queensboro bridge and the countless tons that it carried. Two piers rested on the shores of Queens, two held up the central spans over Welfare Island, and two rested here on rocky Manhattan soil.
Their journey would begin at the anchorage pier furthest from their destination in Queens, and for almost a mile, they’d walk suspended beneath the roadbed.
There was a Saturday market that ran in an old parking lot under this strip of the bridge, southeast of the actual Bridgemarket structure, which had been built into the vaults beneath the Manhattan approach back in the 30s. Its empty stalls were closed and padlocked shut for the week.
Phyllis pulled the Benz off the road, across the tarmac, and into a gap between two weather-stained, wooden shacks. She parked the vehicle on a mat of moldy hay, shut off the engine, and breathed out. “Any last preparations before we head out?” she asked.
The Baron leaned forward. “Do you think we’ll make it the whole way without anyone stopping us?”
“I don’t know,” Phyllis said. “The catwalks aren’t isolated. See those arches under the bridge?” She pointed towards the anchorage pier and the arch that capped its standing columns. “This one is solid, but four of them are hollow. They have a hallway, stairwell access, elevators—all the stuff for the old trolley stations. If you look back there…” She turned towards the waterside pier, pointing out the back windshield towards the arch over a hundred yards behind them. “Right there? They pulled off some of the limestone cladding and made little access entrances to the catwalks. My boys should be waiting for us in that one. The question is—will they have gotten rid of the National Guard before we arrive?”
The Baron turned away from the distant pier and back to face Phyllis. “If there’s Guard, they’ll stay there. Heckhaus will have it covered.”
“Probably,” the Zombie said, “but we can bully our way past a checkpoint.”
“No violence,” Phyllis insisted.
“I mean plain old bullying,” the Zombie replied. “Deception, aggression, frustration. Trust us.”
“We can bully. We’ll have to,” the Baron said. “Still, Phyllis, would you loan me another half-day? Just for safety?” He reached out with a bare hand, hoping she’d supply him with the prestige to dodge at a moment’s notice.
She frowned at him like he’d forgotten to wash after taking a piss. “You want to dodge?”
“No, but if things go wrong, I’m not making the mistake of running dry again. I didn’t have any options back at Tammany Hall. I’d like the option now.”
Phyllis grunted and shook his hand. “I wish you had a half day then.” She pulled that hand back only far enough to point at him. “But don’t you fuckin’ dodge unless things are swimming in shit. You’re keeping the Zombie on a leash.”
The Zombie laughed at the notion, but the Baron breathed deep, feeling a mixed sensation of prestigious pleasure and dreadful anticipation. “I will,” he agreed.
Everyone got out, emerging into the chill of the deep shadows beneath a waterside bridge. The tarmac underfoot crunched and settled, smelling like car exhaust and old motor oil.
“This is a nice car,” the Zombie said. “We okay to leave it here?”
Phyllis patted the roof. “It’s stolen. A chop shop swapped plates and loaned it to me for a drive. Someone will pick it up in an hour, then take it back to be broken down.”
“Where is this place?” the Baron asked. Dingy stalls surrounded them, as if they’d been capturing all the pollution of the surrounding city like filter-feeding barnacles.
“It’s the Queensboro Flea Market, or what’s left of it.” Phyllis raised a hand and vaguely swept out the space from here to the river. “Before they finished building East River Drive, it stretched down to the waterfront. There’s not much left now.”
“I guess tradition keeps it going?” the Baron asked.
“It used to be a big deal when the full trolley service still ran. People went to Bridgemarket for food, then here for gewgaws.” Phyllis kneeled and slid the car key behind the left tire. She pointed to a two-story building at the base of the anchorage pier, just past the far end of the parking lot. Its small windows were covered in creosote-treated wood, which was bolted to the brickwork and painted with stencils that read City Property. “It used to be four lines of trolleys instead of two, with trains on the lower deck. This was the train and trolley station for those platforms. Before they tore out the train tracks.”
“Aren’t there still trolleys up there?” the Baron asked.
“Just two lines, mostly for service to Welfare Island.”
“I assume they’re checking passengers on those?”
“Yep,” Phyllis said brightly. “You usually board ‘em a few blocks west of here, back on the street. They’re actually using the stop to transport troops from one borough to the other.”
“Too bad. I’d love to take a ride.”
“Not so easy, not today.” Phyllis started toward the old station, waving them along. “Two of my people should already be inside. Come on.”
The front door to the station was unlocked. Hinges squealed, and they trespassed into a vast, dusty space, all stripped masonry and wooden cubbyholes that once held offices, counters, and shops. Now it was weakly lit by three aged incandescent bulbs in wall sconces, hiding most of the stripped geometry in the shadows of ruins.
A couple of young men in denim uniforms were loitering in the weakly pooled light. One was pacing to and fro, smoking a cigarette; the other was seated on the edge of a collapsed metal ladder while chewing on a toothpick.
“Ma’am,” said the smoker. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out, then hissed at the seated man and signaled up. The other man stood. “We’ll get you up to the roof.”
“Thanks ma’am,” said the chewer. “This is good pay. My momma thanks you.”
“You’re welcome.” Phyllis picked up a stack of three fiberglass hard hats from beside the ladder. “Here’s our costumes. For the next hour, we’re bridge inspectors. The boys know I’m with the union. Bee? Zee? You’re contractors from out of town, Paul Davila and Fred Chang.”
“Chang?” the Zombie asked with wide eyes, about to laugh.
Phyllis scowled. “Do you know a real Chinese name?”
“Try Vietnamese, Le. It’s easy to say.”
“Fine. You’re Fred Le.” She pushed a hardhat into the Zombie’s hands.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied, tossing it up into the air and catching it on his head with ease. “Oh! The weight helps.”
“I bet it does,” the Baron noted. “Like a ring toss.” He accepted the next hat and promptly put it on. Its canvas bands irritated his unshaven scalp, but he didn’t complain. He just adjusted the hat slowly, using the cloth inside to scratch his head.
The Zombie helped Phyllis’s boys set up the ladder in the middle of the vast room, beneath a suspended structure of old metal mountings and hanging poles—the remains of stairs. The ladder skipped the second floor, reaching up the dangling lip of an old hatch in the ceiling, which exited onto the roof. The toothpick chewer went first with a pair of bolt cutters and snipped a lock off the hatch while everyone else anchored the base of the ladder with their hands. He opened it, revealing the dark underside of the bridge above, and then pulled himself out onto the old access platform. “All clear!” he called down.
One-by-one, they climbed up after him, feeling the steel bars rattle underfoot until they reached the roof themselves. Phyllis, then the smoker, and the Baron third.
As d’Holbach emerged into the outdoors, he took a deep breath, squinting towards the daylit stretches beyond the building. After the dusty interior of the old station, it felt comfortable out here, standing on an old rubberized platform with a perimeter of sturdy metal railings.
He knew things would feel very different once they’d ascended to the underside of the bridge. Even now, they could hear the occasional rumble of vehicles passing overhead. Some of them were deep, slow, and heavy—diesel engines running like a growl.
“Half-tracks,” the Zombie guessed, emerging last onto the rooftop.
At the far end of the platform, there was a steep metal stairway with nearly solid railings hanging in space, climbing up the exterior of the anchorage pier. One of the boys took the bolt cutters and snipped a padlock over a metal gate that blocked access to the stairs.
“There you go, ma’am,” said the man chewing a toothpick. “Access to the catwalks without going to the end of the line.”
“Thank you, boys,” Phyllis said. “Head on down, clean up. We’ll be fine from here.” As they left, she ventured onto the stairs first, hearing the hollow tap of hard rubber soles on thick steel. The stairway swayed slightly by design, moving gently with the bridge in the afternoon wind. She held onto the railings tightly until she was sure of her footing, then climbed up confidently. The Baron followed closely, and the Zombie bounded up and down the steps behind him, sprinting for fun on the rickety structure.
Phyllis was bothered by his hyperactivity first. “Will you do that on the whole walk?”
“No,” the Zombie said, “just while I can.”
“You make people feel like they’re going to fall,” the Baron reminded him.
The Zombie shrugged and kept his cycle, managing to climb up and down the stairs three more times before the Baron reached the closest connection to the catwalks. Each one was a meter-wide stretch of metal filled with drainage holes and coated with some kind of rough epoxy, strung out on the underside of the bridge’s curve. Ahead, it rose smoothly with the bridge’s rising slope, reaching the arch of the waterside pier about a hundred yards away.
A little to either side, the Baron could feel the empty air over the parking lot. It pulled at his instincts, warning him of peril, but he looked up and forward, shaking off the sensation of the void. When he was young, the open space underfoot would’ve crippled him with vertigo. Instead, he anchored his sense of place by the shadows of the heavy trusses and the thick layer of the roadway overhead. Then, and only then, he began walking forward.
Phyllis was moving ahead of him so quickly. She didn’t have much fear.
The Zombie jumped up and down behind the Baron.
d’Holbach refused to dignify his childish bouncing with discipline.
Beyond the overhead trusses, the lower deck sighed, drummed, rumbled, and roared with traffic. This wasn’t an isolated place. Even now, while checkpoints blocked easy the flow of these vehicular arteries, the secular world still moved. He kept that in mind; it’d be the best angle if anyone tried to stop them. Their “work” must continue.
Every fifty feet or so, there was a junction connecting the parallel walks, supported by more connections to the overhead trusses. The Baron eyed each one briefly, avoiding the crawling vision of the hard pavement multiple stories below.
Phyllis paused ahead and yelled back over the wind. “Remember, the waterside pillar has a room below the roadway!” She gestured back towards the spot where the catwalks wrapped around the outside of the waterside pier. “I still don’t see anyone outside, so my crew will be there! We’ll need to check in, or anyone watching will think we’re sneaks!”
“Are you sure?” the Baron called back.
“The walks are all open air!” she yelled to him. “No cover! We should try to get approval, or at least be sure nobody cares! Only run if we have to!”
“All right!” the Baron called. “Lead on!”
As they walked further out, the bluster of the breeze picked up higher and higher, and the last of the buildings disappeared far below. They weren’t over the East River yet, but there wasn’t much new development here. Only sad fields of gravel and weeds marched through the borderland beyond the last waterfront drive and the filthy water.
The warm smell of the polluted strait occasionally caught the Baron’s nose, motor oil and seaweed, and something bitter like coal ashes. Hopefully the wind blowing out of the northeast would bring clouds from the Atlantic and shade the filth from any more heating in the sun.
“I can tell you’re nervous!” the Zombie shouted behind the Baron.
“I am!” the Baron called. “But I’ll be fine!”
Phyllis reached the waterside pier first and waited close to its face, huddled against the wind, while the Baron and Zombie caught up to her.
On approach, the Baron could confirm that one slab of limestone cladding had been temporarily removed and taken in through the side, opening a narrow gap between the interior support pillars that formed the core of each pier.
He huddled up next to her, and a moment later, the Zombie joined them. With the wind shielded by their shoulders, he whispered the basics of a plan to Phyllis. “If there’s anyone in there, don’t vouch for us. Vouch for yourself and your workers, but stay separate. If we have to go violent, you need to stay safe.”
“Don’t go violent,” she replied forcefully.
“We won’t. We’ll bully and bluff our way onto the walks. I’ll take the lead, and the Zombie will follow. All right?”
“Fine,” Phyllis said. “Just do your best to keep the peace.”
“We will until we cannot,” the Zombie agreed.
Phyllis broke the huddle and waved them into the gap in the cladding, ducking through a narrow channel and entering into a service room once built for a bustling market by the water, now largely abandoned. Old trolley schedules were still bolted into place; their white-paint letters had yellowed over the decades, browned by an oxygen bath and stained with exhaust.
There were five men inside, standing at the bottom of a steel stairway that ran up to a narrow trolley platform, which spread across the center third of the bridge’s lower deck. Three of the men were dressed like laborers and wore hardhats, same as the one irritating the Baron’s scalp. Two were dressed in military uniforms and had clipboards—National Guardsmen.
The larger of the two soldiers was copying down names from New York driver’s licenses. Worst case scenario, they were taking their sweet time and making sure everyone checked in.
Phyllis smiled easily, and the Baron and the Zombie followed her in and greeted the three morose looking union workers with waves and sighs of relaxation.
She patted one of the boys on the shoulder. “Good news. I’ve been showing the inspectors our handiwork down by the old station.”
“Good enough, eh?” the man asked. He was of Irish ancestry, but his accent was clearly native New York. “We’ve been dangling by our balls for days.”
“Coverage is good,” the Baron said sourly, as if unwilling to court satisfaction, “no critical corrosion that I could find. We’ll need to schedule another visit from the engineers first.”
The Irishman smiled. “Fuckin’ hardass.”
“Tsch, tell me it’s okay to play it loose after a bridge collapse.”
The large Guardsman finished copying down the driver’s license and handed it back to a young black man, who had the sharpest look of the lot. The young man seemed to recognize the boss of this job at a glance. “Ma’am,” he said, “the guards are writing down names before they’re allowed out on the walks. It’s a real hassle. Slowing us down.”
Phyllis grudgingly pulled a wallet out from her pants. “Here,” she said, drawing out her license and offering it to the smaller Guardsman. “What’s the big deal anyways? Thinking you’ll spot pinkos in my crew? They’re too sharp to believe that labor party crap.”
“They’re union workers, ma’am,” the Guardsman said.
“They’re fucking kids who hang under a bridge like bats.” Phyllis’s griping was drawing their attention. Their eyes were wide. Maybe they’d never heard cussing from a lady’s mouth. “You think they have time to wait for you to play Poirot?”
“Who?” asked the large guardsman.
“Hercule Poirot?” Phyllis asked, as if the name were Frank Sinatra.
“Don’t know him.”
“The little inspector? Agatha Christie? A limp and a moustache?”
The guardsmen were shaking their heads.
“Do you even read?” Phyllis asked.
While they were distracted from even checking her ID, the young black man spread his arms and gently herded the Baron and Zombie away from the Guardsmen. The room was large, stretching most of the distance across the arch, and it was easy to get out of earshot. “Mind if I have a word?” he asked in a whisper.
“Please,” the Baron said.
“I figure she’s the dock boss, and we’re smuggling you boys?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you have a New York ID?”
“Massachusetts, under a fake name, and probably on their watch list.” The Baron nodded slightly at the guards. “We’ll bully them into letting us go.”
“I’ll kill them if they won’t,” the Zombie whispered.
“No, no, I don’t need dead white folk anywhere near me.” He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “You ain’t passing through here. We might have to scratch this plan and send you back.”
“We can’t go back,” the Baron said.
“Yeah, well, you can’t fight the National Guard either.”
“I can,” the Zombie said.
The young man scowled briefly. “Don’t start nothing here.”
“I won’t,” the Zombie said calmly. “Not here. Not until you can walk away.”
“Enough chatter. It’s about to be our turn,” the Baron whispered.
The National Guardsmen were tired of losing to Phyllis’s verbal jousting and were actively ignoring her while they finished copying down her license information.
“Sirs?” the small guardsman called to the Baron and Zombie. “We’re done with the lady.”
Phyllis snatched the offered license and crammed it back in her wallet. She turned to the Zombie, who was approaching quickly, arms loose. “Do you have your ID?”
“It’s in the car,” the Zombie said, shrugging.
“This is a headache,” the Baron added, striding past his friend and offering a hand to the larger of the two guardsmen. “I’m Bridge Inspector Paul Davila. The tall boy here is Fred Le, a mechanical engineer. What’s your name, sir?”
“Sergeant Yearwood,” replied the man, shaking the Baron’s hand.
“And your friend?” the Baron asked, nodding towards the smaller soldier.
“Private Clark.”
“Sergeant, Private.” The Baron offered his hand to Clark, who shook it in turn. “Glad to meet you. We’ve been shuffling around Manhattan since five this morning, stopping at every checkpoint, and it’s well past two. We don’t have our IDs on us, and at half of the stops, we get held up, double-checking that we’re supposed to be here.”
“It’s slow,” the Zombie added.
“You don’t have your IDs?” Yearwood asked.
“We kept them in the car, where we thought we’d need ‘em.” The Baron kept talking, immediately speaking over the next response from Yearwood. “Listen—could you skip the rigamarole, just take down our names?” Before Yearwood could answer that, he continued with even more force, “We have to finish the inspection today, you see, while there’s still light, and there’s over a mile of this bridge left to go.”
Yearwood frowned as the conversation was finally ceded to him. “Where’s your car?”
The Baron felt a twinge of worry, but he answered promptly, “Where we parked it,” as if the question were stupid. This gave him a few more seconds to invent a real answer. If they’d been in Manhattan or Queens, it’s arguable that they would’ve gone back to their vehicle for the relevant IDs—at least after running into the first checkpoint. So wherever the car was, it had to be hard to reach, far from where they’d slept yesterday.
“No, where did you park it?” Yearwood insisted.
“On Welfare Island,” the Baron said. “Under the bridge.”
Yearwood and Clark both seemed confused by the answer, glancing at each other.
“Why Welfare Island?” Private Clark asked.
The Baron scoffed, as if that question was doubly stupid. “It was cheap! We took the ferry on Saturday, parked it for free in a city maintenance lot.”
“And you left it there?” Yearwood asked, taking back the yoke of the conversation.
The Baron gestured towards the roadway above. “Of course, we took the trolley back to Manhattan. Easy ride.”
“Staying at the Biltmore,” the Zombie added.
The Baron continued to press before anyone could question: “We wake up today, the whole city is in lockdown. We’ve hit ten checkpoints, and five made us wait while they called it in, even though we have a whole crew on this job, and they’ve got IDs. So please, Sergeant, we’re busy men. This is the only day we’ve got to get it done. Let us work.”
Sergeant Yearwood pursed his lips and took a deep breath, rumbling thoughtfully as he exhaled. “Ma’am, you’re the manager on this job, yes?”
Phyllis stepped forward. “Yes, sir.”
“Can you vouch for the identity of these inspectors?”
She smirked. “Of course not. They’re contractors. I met them down by Sutton half an hour ago.”
“But they’re legitimate?” Yearwood asked.
She tipped her hard hat towards him. “If they’re foolin’ me, it’s perfect, and the city is paying for them.”
Yearwood glanced over the Baron and Zombie. “How are you tracking your inspections?”
The Irishman raised a clipboard with a pad of paper clasped to it. “That’s me, sir! I’ve been workin’ this inspection for months. They’re just signing the papers, saying I’m right.”
“That’s why we only have to be here for a day,” the Baron said.
Private Clark spoke up. “Your IDs are on Welfare Island?”
“Yes, sir,” the Baron answered.
He tossed his clipboard onto a rucksack piled against the wall, unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt, and depressed the call button. “Captain Spence? This is Private Clark, requesting permission. Over.”
The radio crackled the instant before a tired man’s voice emerged: “I’m listening, Private. What’s your request, over?”
Clark sniffed. “Sergeant Yearwood and I have a couple of city contractors who left their IDs down on Welfare Island. They’ve been stuck at every checkpoint between Manhattan and Queens, so I’d like to walk them down to Welfare Island to collect their papers. Over.”
“Go ahead, Private. I’ll send Warren down to cover your post. Over and out.”
“Thank you, Captain. Over and out.” Private Clark lowered the radio and clipped it back onto his belt. Then he smiled at the Baron, far too friendly for the pressure in the room, and he said, “Figured I’d cut through the bullshit for you, Inspector. Make things real simple.”
Sergeant Yearwood stared down Clark for a moment. He clearly didn’t like a man below him, skipping a level of command, but he could appraise Clark’s mood and see the serious suspicion in the smaller man’s smile. “All right, Private.” He added his clipboard to the makeshift pile. “A good idea is a good idea.” He turned back to face the Baron, resting the palm of his hand on the service revolver at his waist. “You boys mind taking a quick walk to Welfare Island? We’ll sort this out, send you on your way.”
Private Clark was dangerous. The Baron could tell. He regarded d’Holbach’s bullying as a threat, so he cut through any and all complications as soon as possible. The Baron could aim to complicate things in turn, insisting on starting the work here and now, but that palm on Yearwood’s revolver suggested that they were just shy of an arrest.
No. Anything other than immediate and complete thanks would sink them, despite the overwhelming support of Phyllis’s very real work crew.
“Thank you,” the Baron said with a smile. “I’m tired of fussing.” To Phyllis, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I know it’s a headache and a half.”
“Nothing a lil’ aspirin won’t cure.” She pointed towards Clark, doing the very necessary work to protect herself from this snarled scenario. “You have my thanks, Private. We’ll get this shit sorted out and leave before dinner.”
The Zombie smiled with joy at their new escorts. “Good. This is good. I hate heights, you know? I keep thinking someone will fall. It scares me to no end. I just want to get this done, you know? Then we can all get down to ground level, lickety-split. Mm?”
The Baron grimaced internally at the Zombie’s vaguely threatening wordplay, but he didn’t show any frustration. The Zombie’s very real cheer showed through, belying the similarly real potential for violence. If this went badly, he’d toss those Guardsmen to crash upon the sour waters or bitter earth, and right now, it was hard to imagine how it could end any other way.
But the Baron would do his best to alter that sad fate, even if Private Clark’s suspicion was to blame. For everyone’s sake, he’d try to keep the peace.
Author’s Note:
I love this arc.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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