"Why don't you come with me and we'll talk?" The cat began to growl.
"Come on…" As Rosemary reached toward Bagabond, the cat sprang. Rosemary jumped back, tripping over the handbag she'd set on the ground. Lying on her back, she could see eye to eye with the very angry feline.
"Nice kitty. Stay right there." As she started to get up, the black cat was joined by a slightly smaller calico cat.
"Okay. I'll see you another time." Rosemary grabbed her bag and the file and retreated.
Her father never understood why she wanted to deal with the poor of the city, the "filth," as he called them. Tonight she was going to have to suffer through another chaperoned evening with her parents and her fiance. An arranged marriage, in this day and age. She wished it was easier to stand up to her father and say no. Her family was a creature of tradition. She just did not fit in.
Rosemary had her own apartment which, until recently, she had shared with C.C. Ryder. C.C. was a vocal hippie. Rosemary had made sure that her father and C.C. never met.
The consequences were too horrible to consider. Keeping her two lives separate was essential.
It was a line of thought that took her too close to the pain. C.C. was gone. She had disappeared into the city. Rosemary was frightened for C.C. and for herself, for what it meant about the city.
Rosemary looked up from the park bench where she had collapsed. It was time to get the file back to the office and head for Columbia and class.
"What a terrific night." Lombardo "Lucky Lummy" Lucchese was feeling great, just great. After two whole years of working numbers and small-time protection, he had at last made it into the foremost of the Five Families. They knew talent and he had plenty. Walking down 81st toward the park with his three friends, he was on top of the world.
He had to go pay his respects to his fiancee, Maria. What a mouse! But a mouse who was the only child of Don Carlo Gambione could be very valuable in the years to come. Later he would celebrate with his buddies. Now he had to get some cash so he could buy mousy Maria some nice flowers to show his devotion. Maybe carnations.
"I'm gonna go downstairs. Pick up some money," Lummy said.
"Want some company?" Joey "No-Nose" Manzone asked. "Nah. You kiddin'? After next week, I'll be in the big money. I just wanna do one more job. For old time's sake. See ya later."
Splashing through oil-iridescent puddles, Lummy whistled as he swung along toward the illuminated globe marking the stairs to the 81st Street subway station. Nothing could bring him down tonight.
What a perfectly dreadful evening, Sarah Jarvis thought. The sixty-eight-year-old woman had never in her life expected to be invited to an Amway party. The very thought. It had taken hours for her friend and her to leave. Of course, it was raining by that time and, of course, there was not an on-duty cab to be found. Her friend lived in the next building. Sarah had to go all the way uptown to Washington Heights.
Sarah hated the subway. That stale smell always nauseated her. She disliked the noisy parts of the city anyway, and the subway was among the loudest. Tonight, though, everything was quiet. Alone on the platform, Sarah shivered under her twee jacket.
Peering over the edge of the platform and along the tunnel, she thought she saw the light of the uptown AA local. Something was there, but it seemed to move so slowly. Sarah turned away and looked at the advertising placards. She examined the poster calling for the reelection of that nice Mr. Nixon. In the adjacent newspaper vending machines, the headlines told of burglars breaking into a Washington hotel and apartment house. Watergate? What a funny name for a building, she thought. The Daily News led with a story about the so-called Subway Vigilante. The police were attributing five slayings over the past week to the mysterious killer. The victims had all been drug dealers and other criminals. The murders had all taken place in the subways. Sarah shuddered. The city was quite different than it had been in her childhood.
First she heard the steps, clattering down the stairs and past the deserted token booth. Then whistling, a peculiar tuneless drone, as the person entered the station. Despite herself, she was caught between apprehension and relief. Somewhat ashamed of her reaction, she decided she wouldn't mind a little human company.
As soon as she saw him, she was not so sure. Sarah had never been all that fond of black leather jackets, particularly those worn by slightly greasy, smirking young men. She turned her back firmly and focused on the wall across the tracks.
As the old woman turned her back, Lucky Lummy grinned broadly and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip.
"Hey, lady, got a light?"
"No."
One corner of Lummy's mouth twitched as he moved toward her back. "Come on, lady, be nice."
He missed the tension gathering in her shoulders as Sarah remembered that self-defense class she had attended last winter.
"Just give me the purse, lad-aiee!" He screamed as Sarah turned and crushed his instep with her sensible but sophisticated beige pump. Lummy jerked back and aimed a punch at her face. Sarah evaded him by stepping backward and slipping on something slimy. Lummy grinned and started toward her.
Wind rushed past them from the tunnel as the AA train approached the station.
Neither noticed that a dozen people had all managed to get to the subway entrance simultaneously. Most of the crowd had attended a late showing of The Godfather and were continuing an animated discussion of whether or not Coppola had exaggerated the Mafia's role in modern crime. Someone who hadn't been at the screening was a transit worker who had had a long and trying day. He just wanted to go home and get dinner, not necessarily in that order. The newspapers had been pushing again; even that joker Rights stuff couldn't keep them occupied all the time. The transit man had been pulled off his regular track-checking duties to spend eighteen hours searching vainly for alligators in sewers and subway tunnels, conduit shafts, and deep utility holes. He mentally cursed his employers for kowtowing to the sensationalist press, and especially cursed the bird-dogging reporters he'd finally ditched.
The transit worker hung back a little, trying to stay out of the melee as the group fumbled for tokens and started through the gates. The moviegoers chattered as they went.
With a roar and braking screech of metal on metal, the AA local burst out of the tunnel.
On the platform, all manner of people confronted each other. Swearing in Italian, Lummy let go of his victim and looked around for a bolt-hole.
The first two couples had entered and were staring at the scene in front of them. One of the men moved toward Lucky Lummy as the other man grabbed his date and tried to retreat.
The doors of the local hissed open. At this time of night, there were few passengers on the train and no one got of. "There's never a transit cop when you need one," said the would-be rescuer. Momentarily, Lummy considered leaping for the punk and punching out his lights. Instead he feinted at the man, then half-limped, half-ran into the last car. The doors snapped closed and the train began to move. It might have been the light, but the bright grafitti on the sides seemed to change.
From inside the car, Lucky Lummy laughed and gestured obscenely at Sarah, who was feeling for bruises and trying to rearrange her soiled clothing. Lummy aimed a second gesture at the woman's inadvertent rescuers as the entire group converged on Sarah.
Abruptly Lummy's face contorted with fear and then outright terror as he began beating on the doors. The man who had tried to stop Lummy caught one last glimpse of him clawing at the rear door of the car as the train sped into darkness.
"What a creep!" said the date of the would-be rescuer. "Was he one of those jokers?"
"Naw," said his friend. "Just a garden-variety asshole." Everyone froze as they heard the screams from the uptown tunnel. Over the diminishing roar of the local, they could hear Lummy's hopeless, agonized cries. The train vanished. But the screams lasted until at least 83rd Street. The transit worker moved toward the downtown tunnel as the hero of the hour was congratulated by the mostly unharmed Sarah, as well as by the rest of the onlookers. Another transit employee came down the steps at the other end of the platform.