Richard Bowes - From the Files of the Time Rangers

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From the Files of the Time Rangers
by Richard Bowes
PART ONE
THE SWITCHYARD MASSACRE
Autumn dawn broke over a Hudson River. A tugboat
maneuvered a string of barges up to a West Side
pier. The cabin door of a barge opened. Out stepped
a man in overalls and pea coat, a watchcap pulled
over his red hair.
He looked around then locked the cabin behind
him. His approach to this city had started in 1745
in Galway on a boat full of recruits bound for France
and the Wild Geese regiments. At sea he'd hooked
onto one of Napoleon's frigates sailing toward the
Horn. Off her, he caught a steamer bound for
Buenos Aires in 1900, then jumped far into the new
century in a turbine freighter putting into Hoboken,
where he signed on as a barge captain.
As he crossed the deck and climbed the ladder to
the pier, he sang under his breath:
Through the Long Dark into dawning,
Out of Time and into day.
He signed the name Jack Stanley on the list of those
going ashore, walked down the wharf and into the
city. Above an elevated highway, a Technicolor
billboard displayed what looked like a scowling bank
clerk. The Commander-in-Chief in full uniform
glared defiance at the world.
Not even dictatorship and the threat of war could
still the harbor. Longshoremen headed for the
shape-up. trucks and freight trains got unloaded
and loaded. On the tenement-lined streets of
Chelsea, a corner building had a sign: ROOMS BY THE
WEEK OR MONTH. The ground-floor shop sold
newspapers, tobacco, sandwiches.
A skinny kid in his mid-teens swept the sidewalk. He
glanced up as the barge captain crossed the street.
For the space of an eye-flash, the man had in his
open palm a spiral badge the color and size of a
quarter.
The man entered the store. The kid finished
sweeping and carried the broom inside. A woman,
obviously his mother, was behind the cash register
ringing up purchases. "T. R., show him the
third-floor back before you go to school," she said.
The boy gestured toward a door which led to a
stairwell. When they were alone, he turned to the
man and flashed a copper spiral. "I knew you'd
come!" he whispered. The man held a finger to his
lips. "It's right up here," the kid said loud enough to
be overheard. Captain Roger Deveraux nodded and
followed him up the stairs.
From "Pride of the Rangers" by Daniel Ignace, Galaxy
Magazine, July 1960.
1.
A few years up the Timestream from now, late in the
afternoon of a drizzly April Thursday, a white guy in
a windbreaker and a black guy in a suit stand at
Tenth Avenue and Thirty-Second Street. Inside the
gate of the West Side Consolidated Storage Yards, a
silver and blue New Jersey Transit train, its lights up,
is set to roll east to Pennsylvania Station.
The man in the windbreaker is stocky and
white-haired. He glances a couple of blocks
downtown at the abandoned elevated railway tracks
jutting out onto the Avenue. A kid skateboards
around the steel pillars. The man looks familiar,
though TV might not be your guess as to where
you'd seen Robert Logue.
The black man is big, with a shaved skull. Louis
Jackson says, "Most people, Robert, do not get to
choose who in city law enforcement they're going to
do business with. You, however, decide on an
Assistant DA in the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit," he
indicates himself, "and everyone is happy. Grateful,
even. I get pulled off my regular assignments to
follow you around."
"Cops don't get stripped, killed, and mutilated
either," says Logue. "But forty-plus years ago,
about where that train is now, that's how officers
Dennis Burke and James LaRocca were found. The
Switchyard Massacre. Still unsolved. A major blot on
the NYPD record. You weren't born when it
happened, Jax."
"I feel like I should be hearing your voice dubbed
over a long, lingering camera pan at the start of
Buried Murder," says Jackson.
"Luckily, Americans love murders. Even old,
forgotten ones. Uncover a crime, give it a name like
Reverend Bluebeard or The Noonday Witch, and
you've got an audience," Logue tells him. "The
Switchyard Massacre is a natural."
"Yeah, I noticed the events of February sixth, 1963
are popular reading all of a sudden," says Jax. "This
morning I saw the files. Besides the cops, a certain
Ted Benez and Sally Dere, described as police
informers, were also murdered."
"Kids. Seventeen or so. Hell, LaRocca and Burke
were still in their twenties. They'd seem like kids to
me now." Logue starts walking to the corner. "That's
enough. I just need to get the feel of the scene."
Louis Jackson nods. They cross Tenth Avenue and
head East on Thirty-Third Street. Mail trucks line the
curbs around the Postal Annex. Workers sit in the
cabs and on the tailgates, tabloids in hand, staring
at the cop cars and news crews up the block.
Robert points to a New York Post headline:
KID COP BUTCHERED
Under it is a picture of a bareheaded cadet in a police
academy uniform. "A handsome young woman,
Mirabel Gonzalez. You saw how the Times headline
tied her death in with Olney's? By tomorrow they'll
be writing about the Switchyard Massacre. TV may
be there before then."
On the southwest corner of Thirty-Third and Ninth is
a parking lot. It's empty today of all but official
vehicles and a line of official gawkers at the chain link
fence along its back side. New York 1 scans the
twenty-foot drop and the dozen sets of railway
tracks. Just below that fence, Cadet Gonzalez's
mutilated corpse was discovered in time for last
night's news.
Robert and Jax look down on cops combing the area
inside the yellow crime scene tape, on an Eyewitness
News reporter interviewing a Deputy Inspector. The
Jersey Transit train they just saw in the yards
emerges from the tunnel under Tenth Avenue. It
glows silver in the dull light before disappearing
beneath the old Main Post Office building.
Robert stares at the wall on the far side of the
railway cut. Jax follows his gaze. On the dark gray
stone is a faded graffiti, a spiral. A later, brighter red
X is spray-painted over it.
"Logue." A large, red-faced cop as big as Jax walks
their way. "My favorite TV detective."
"Lieutenant Crawford. One of my favorite detectives
in any medium," says Robert.
"You need to get down there?" asks the cop. Robert
Logue shakes his head. "Any ideas about the
corkscrew on the wall?"
"A reminder of an older and less orderly New York,"
says Robert.
"You ever meet her?" Crawford jerks his head
toward the murder site.
"Briefly. She was Olney's friend. Right now, I need to
talk with Jax."
2.
A few minutes later, Robert and Jax are in a booth
at the diner across the street, sipping Greek coffee.
Jax drinks it straight. Robert has spiked his cup
from a flask. The TV is on with the sound off. Cadet
Gonzalez's face appears, then the railway tracks.
Robert stares out the window at a bunch of teens
just sprung from school. Uniform ties are off, white
shirttails hang out. Blazers are draped over their
shoulders, skirts are hiked high, pants are rolled up
to the knees. All their faces are painted with tiger
stripes.
"War paint. The latest fashion trend," Jax says.
"That stuff washes off," says Robert. "They have to
be scrubbed and back in uniform tomorrow morning.
Tattoos and body piercing are illegal for kids. Not like
when you grew up and anything went. I was their
age circa 1960 and I kind of sympathize."
He produces a manila envelope and spreads New
York Post clippings on the table. They show Brian
Olney as a bright kid in a high school graduation
photo, wearing a tuxedo at a brother's wedding, in a
Police Academy uniform, in a body bag being carried
off a West Side pier a few weeks earlier.
On top of these, Robert places a police photo of a
corpse lying in the glare of lights. Three bullet holes
are drilled in Olney's chest. His clothes are gone
except for a blood-saturated T-shirt pulled over his
head. It conceals the missing eyes. Invisible, unless
one knows it's there, is the tiny spiral tattoo over
the right bicep.
"A kid starved for adventure. A pre-med at NYU who
went out of his way to audit a Buried New York
course I gave at the New School last fall. Halfway
through the semester, he disappears. At finals time
he shows up in a police cadet uniform. Looking like
the hero of a Boy's Own Adventure book."
Robert brings out an old police photo taken in the
train yards. In the background is a baggage car and
a signal light. In the foreground are the white of
bare arms and legs, the black of the back of a head,
of empty sockets. One victim is facedown. Another's
mouth is open to the sky. Like she was killed in
mid-scream.
Next is a shot dated 2/6/63. It shows a newsstand
with the full array of seven New York City dailies.
Even the Times features the murders.
"In those days, all the news did not get printed,"
says Robert. "But everyone in the city had a hot
rumor or clever theory about what had happened.
The NYPD went crazy, hauled every ex-con and
current pervert in the Greater New York area in for
questioning. They couldn't raise a lead. The Feds got
called in. If they found out anything, they weren't
telling.
"Fortunately for everyone's reputations, that fall
Kennedy died in Dallas, made the Massacre look
almost quaint. But we're in quiet, peaceful times.
Again. The public is ready to be thrilled and horrified.
The tabloids are champing at the bit for serial killers.
The NYPD doesn't want a repeat of 1963. Getting
caught between the Post and the FBI is real painful."
Robert drains his cup. "The only worthwhile thing to
come out of the Olney murder was the possible
sex-crime angle. That got you assigned to the case.
Now, with Gonzalez dead, Crawford and company
want to lean on me. It means they have no
worthwhile leads. I have a couple of angles I'm
working on. But if you want answers, you have to
lay off. I'm a consultant, not a suspect."
Jax smiles. "Understand this, Robert. Most people
don't get to decide who their contact is. But nobody
gets to decide whether or not the cops trust them.
What are you offering?"
"Olney and Gonzalez's killer. And maybe a lot more.
If you give me two weeks."
"Two days," Jax says. "Time's tight. As you pointed
out."
Robert says, "Four. Monday morning." He's staring
over the other man's head. When Jax looks,
everybody in the place is watching the TV. On screen
is a live shot of the West Side Yard. The sound gets
turned up. "… two blocks from the site of the
infamous Switchyard Massacre." When Jax turns
back, there's a ten on the table and Robert is gone.
3.
Half an hour later, Louis Jackson stands under the
huge glass dome at the center of the old Main Post
Office. A big chunk of the interior of this massive
building has been refurbished and turned into an
approximation of a 1900s railroad cathedral. The
Post Office itself was built to complement the original
Penn Station. Now, it will contain within itself Penn
Station Three.
Above the new train gates hang huge blow-up
photos of the first Station at its opening in 1909.
Pearly light falls on the Waiting Room where people
are dark specks, ticket windows mouse holes. The
glass and steel of the old Concourse ceiling is like a
web. The Arcade's shops glitter.
Without taking his eyes off the photos, Jackson tells
Lieutenant Crawford, "He claims you're cramping his
style."
"His style!" Crawford says. "Unusual parlay,
consultant and suspect. He was hanging around this
neighborhood weeks before the Olney murder took
place. Any idea where he was last night?"
Jax nods, still looking up. "At a family dinner in
Westchester. I know because I was there. Anything
new on Gonzalez?"
"Indications that she didn't die on the site where she
was found. No sign of how she got there. Just like
Olney. Unlike him, though, it seems she was stripped
and blinded after she was shot.
"One other thing. This is a copy of a snapshot we
found in her locker at the Police Academy." Jax sees
five males, three in their late teens, two a bit older,
facing the camera. Clothes and hair place this in the
early '60s. Behind them are twisted steel beams, the
smashed statue of an eagle.
"The original's authentic as far as we can tell. The
two adults are officers LaRocca and Burke. We don't
have any ID on the kids."
Jax sees a snotty preppy, an amused young tough,
and a jumpy-looking kid in a dorky crewcut who
seems oddly familiar. Jax looks again. Only because
he has spent the better part of the last twenty-four
hours with Robert Logue does he recognize the face.
He hands the photo back and says nothing.
PART TWO
THE SONG OF THE TROLL
One Friday afternoon in mid-December, a merchant
seaman in pea coat and watchcap walked up
Seventh Avenue to Penn Station. He carried a duffel
bag over his shoulder. Up the wide stairs and past
the huge pillars he went. A Federal Police
guardhouse lay just inside the front door.
Not even the glorious Commander-in-Chief in the
twentieth year of his Perpetual Administration could
totally dampen the holidays. Police lounged at their
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FromtheFilesoftheTimeRangersbyRichardBowesPARTONETHESWITCHYARDMASSACREAutumndawnbrokeoveraHudsonRiver.AtugboatmaneuveredastringofbargesuptoaWestSidepier.Thecabindoorofabargeopened.Outsteppedamaninoverallsandpeacoat,awatchcappulledoverhisredhair.Helookedaroundthenlockedthecabinbehindhim.Hisapproachto...

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