Harrison tried to concentrate on the show, wanting to keep track of the storyline so he would have something to say about it to Rosetta. Who was the character with the beard? The captain? A mad scientist? Jesus, it was no good, he was lost. A lushly melodramatic chord swelled from the orchestra pit, and one of the actors broke into song. The lyrics mentioned something about a ship of dreams. Harrison listened for a minute, but then faded back into his reverie, as if he were a radio moving beyond the broadcast range of a particular station.
His eyes staring at the stage without seeing anything on it, he thought again of the plan he wanted to look over before going to bed. He’d been calling it Operation 2000, which had the sort of nice, official-sounding ring that would inspire confidence in City Hall.
Over the past month, he had been conferring on an almost daily basis with his chief deputies, as well as commanders from the Transit Police, the Emergency Services Unit, and the NYPD-FBI Counter-Terrorism Task Force, about the problems they would face trying to safeguard the multitude of celebrants who would be crowding Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Even in an ordinary year, the job was a major pain in the ass — and this year was far from ordinary. This time around they were looking at December 31, 1999. The turn of the century. A once-in-a-lifetime Event, capital E, ladies and germs.
And while Harrison and his team of planners had been laboring to draw out a sound logistical blueprint for a situation that unquestionably defied logistics, what had the mayor been doing? Why, hitting the media in pursuit of visitor dollars, of course! He had been on every local news program frothing about the city’s plans for the big countdown. He had been plugging away on Letterman and Conan O’Brien. He had even been on radio shows like Imus in the Morning and Howard Stern, billing the triangle formed by the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway, and Forty-second Street as the “center of the world,” all but popping open a champagne bottle over the airwaves as he invited listeners to join the millennial bash.
Harrison’s mind filled with an odd blend of worry and resignation. From every indication, people were responding to the mayor’s pitch in droves. Based on the massive volume of tourist inquiries, polling data, and the record number of hotel and restaurant reservations in the midtown area, it had been estimated that two million revelers would be thronging Times Square to watch the ball drop. Add to that three or four million more spectators scattered throughout Battery Park, the South Street Seaport, and the entire Brooklyn shoreline to watch the fireworks over New York Harbor, and the police force would be stretched far beyond its capacity to maintain anything close to an adequate presence. And for what? There were some who believed an age of miracles was approaching, and others who were expecting the end of existence. Harrison just kind of figured that, come January 1, the world would be the same orbiting lunatic asylum it had always been — minus a somewhat higher than usual number of holiday fatalities.
He sighed without being aware of it. In his more nervous moments, he had fantasized about giving up, taking a hike, escaping the whole damn chocolate mess so it could fall where it belonged, which was right on the mayor’s lap. Maybe he’d get a job working security in Stonehenge, or Mount Fuji, where the crowds of millennialists were bound to be thinner. Or how about Egypt? He’d heard that ten grand would buy admission to a gala some tour organizer was throwing at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Surely a seasoned big city police commissioner could be of help keeping things orderly over there. If Hizzoner wanted to be an impresario, ringmaster of the greatest show on earth, fine, more power to him. But what right did he have to drive anybody else crazy with it?
Harrison heard a crash of applause and studied the stage. The curtain had gone down. The houselights slowly brightened. What was going on? A glance at his watch revealed that it was only nine-thirty, too early for the show to have ended. Besides, he hadn’t seen the Titanic sink yet.
Intermission, then. It had to be intermission.
Rosetta was nudging him with her elbow.
“So, what do you think of the show?” she asked. Sounding, well, buoyant.
It’s hackneyed and tiresome and I can’t wait to go home, he thought.
“Love it,” he said. “Especially that song about the ship of dreams.”
Rosetta nodded in agreement and smiled. “Can’t wait to see how things work out for Ida and Isidor. Should we go to the bar and have a drink?”
He took hold of her hand.
As they rose, brushed past the couple sitting at the end of their row, and began moving up the aisle toward the lobby, Harrison mused that Ida and Isidor, whoever they were, really didn’t have too many options. Either they’d squeeze into one of the lifeboats and be rescued by the Carpathia, or they’d sink with captain and crew. But he didn’t comment on that to Rosetta.
Whatever lay ahead, he sure as hell didn’t want to be the one to spoil things for her.
TWELVE
Minutes before his death, Julius Agosten was rolling his vender’s stand out of the parking lot on Twenty-third Street and trying to imagine what he would do if he hit the lottery.
The first thing on his list, he thought, would be to turn his stand over to his brother-in-law, vender’s license, garage space, and all. Stefan was still young enough to tolerate the long hours out on the street, leaving the house at four o’clock in the morning, getting home after eight at night, sometimes after midnight on weekends, summer and winter, rain or shine. What with Rene and Stefan having had the baby recently, the stand would give them a chance to make some decent money, maybe even put away a few dollars for the little girl’s future.
There were only a limited number of vender licenses available in the city, and even fewer locations as busy as the one Julius had staked out for himself, Forty-second Street and Broadway, the heart of midtown. During the week you had the professional people, men with briefcases, women in stylish outfits, thousands of them jamming the sidewalks, pouring from the subways, rushing this way and that out there on Times Square, stopping for coffee and something to eat — a Danish, roll, whatever — as they hurried to their jobs. And then you had the cabbies, the cops, the shop clerks — everybody, really. Who had time for breakfast at home nowadays?
Julius pushed the stand down the block toward his waiting van, its metal casters rattling on the pavement, the noise very loud in the predawn hush. In three hours the city would awaken, but now the insurance gates were still drawn over the storefronts, and no one was pushing through the revolving doors of the office buildings, and the only traffic was an occasional newspaper truck or taxi swishing by under the dim throw of the street lamps. Thankfully. Because if the street got crowded, the traffic cops would come out in force, and he’d be fined for illegally parking the van while he got his stand out of the lot. But what else was he supposed to do? Wheel it all the way uptown on foot, twenty blocks, which was a long walk even in decent weather, and seemed a lot longer in December?
Forty million bucks, he thought, remembering the Lotto ticket in his pocket again. If he won, he would retire and head someplace warm. Buy a big house, a mansion, one with acres of lawn and a curving gravel driveway behind high iron gates. Maybe it would have an ocean view on one side — Gerty, God rest her soul, had always loved the ocean. There would be no more leaving the wagon overnight in the parking garage, no more paying two hundred a month for the privilege of keeping it safe from vandals and thieves. No more dragging himself out of bed at three A.M. so he could drive to the wholesaler in Queens for his rolls and pastries, then get the wagon out of the lot, and be set up on his corner by the start of the rush hour.