Chapter 1

I have to confess that I am not a native New Yorker and that I actually grew up in one of those far-away Red States that still had values resembling those of our forebears in a time when the importance of keeping your word was the sure sign of a real man.

I had been forced by the necessity of paying the rent on time to accept a ludicrous job at the further borders of Brooklyn that meant I would be punching out on the ancient time clock at the ridiculous hour of two AM in the wee hours of the morning. My only mode of transportation like most residents of the city was the mass transit system and the subway from point A to point B was the most preferred solution at that time of the night. The bus service was sporadic at best and somewhat unreliable from that part of the city proper.

At least I didn't have any classes until the following afternoon so I would have plenty of time to catch up on my sleep just as soon as my two noisy room-mates slammed the front door behind them on the way to their destinations.

At that time of the morning, the subway train was fairly empty and the rush hour would not begin for at least another three to four hours. There was a pair of uniformed transit police on the car that I entered and I was happy to see their presence even though I felt I could pretty much take care of myself in most situations. Probably there were only about dozen riders on the entire train but that was normal considering the time and the day.

It was about a forty minute ride into the center of town to where my shared apartment was located. Tom, Dick and I shared all the expenses and that made a lot of sense in this economic roller coaster that made your income shrink and your expenses rise without any chance for promotion or pay raise. I would be graduating from the business school downtown in a few months and I already had my eye on a slot in an upstate Law School that allowed me to use my GI Bill for the tuition.

The subway train was rocking and swaying with a sort of gentle motion that caused my eyelids to droop dangerously down almost totally shut. I fought the need to sleep because I had been treated by my troublemaking room-mates to tales of dire happenings to people unwise enough to fall asleep in the subway. I think it was the fact that there was a pair of transit cops in my car that relaxed me enough to slide off to la-la land with the motion of the train.

This train was one of the older models that still had the straight bench design and had little closets at each end for passengers to stand in the darkness. I avoided them because I didn't want to be accused of being a pervert feeling up the girl's pretty backsides in the unlighted spaces out of sight from the less amorous passengers. The girls that went into those unlighted areas were hard core naughty not nice and they usually pretended to be totally unaware of what the nasty men were doing in those regions below their waistline. I was surprised to be riding home one day from school and seeing my science teacher Mrs. Hopscotch standing in one of those disreputable corners surrounded by a ring of busily working hands from every angle around her defenseless body. I had always considered her to be a solid conservative woman with little regard for the nonsense of hedonistic pursuits. Watching her standing there being fondled by a half-dozen pairs of hands wearing an innocent smile on her pretty face was a real eye-opener to reality and the hard cold fact that women are hard to figure out.

Anyway when I opened my eyes, I was shocked to see daylight and I knew for a fact that this line was entirely underground right up to the last stop.

A look out the dirty window confirmed that we were indeed on an elevated portion of the track and I was well aware that there were several lines with combination subway and elevated portions of route but this particular line was one that had been completely underground for decades after a large part of the elevated tracks were torn down to aid with surface transportation.

The street sign on the lamp-post less than twenty feet from my eyes told me that I was in a section of the city that had seen the elevated track demolished prior to World War II and shipped off to Japan for them to send it all back to us in artillery rounds and bombs starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The irony of that fact never failed to elude me as I was an avid reader of history.

I noted that the car that I was sitting in was completely empty except for me and I wondered if the other passengers and the pair of transit cops had exited before we made the astonishing transition to above ground transport.

Knowing where I was made me feel a little bit better but I knew something was definitely out of whack. I knew for a certainty, there was no way I could be standing where I was because it didn't exist. I noticed the smell of coal burning that was never present in present day New York City unless you were next to some building that was so old that they had not made the conversion to oil or electricity.

I saw a cop out on the platform and I went out to ask him what was going on.

"Excuse me officer, what part of the subway line are we at here?"

The tall man in the strange police uniform looked at me like I was some sort of crazy person and just shook his head muttering,

"Foreigners, all we got are foreigners these days."

Since I was speaking perfectly good English, I assumed he was referring to my clothes which strangely seemed a bit odd when I looked at the people walking on the sidewalk below.