Strega

'Not a chance, Mole. It won't give us enough time. It's the Man, brother, not the mob. We can't outrun a fucking radio. Go!'

'What're you going to do?' asked the Prof.

'Time,' I told him.

The Prof looked back for a second, squeezed my arm hard, and hit the tunnel, the Mole right behind. That left Max. I pointed into the tunnel, patted my back to show he had to protect the others, and Max touched his chest, made a motion like he was tearing out his heart, and put his fist in my open palm. He didn't have to tell me-I knew.

I turned in the direction of the bullhorn. 'I'm not going back to jail!' I screamed at them. 'I'll hold court right here, you understand!' I'd been waiting to use that line since I got out of reform school the first time.

'Give it up, buddy!' came back the cop's voice. 'You got no place to go.'

'Any of you guys ever been in ' Nam?' I yelled down the tunnel shaft, buying time with every word.

Silence. I could hear mutters, but no words. They'd move in soon.

Finally a hard voice came back down the tunnel to me. 'I have, friend. Eighty- seventh Infantry, Charlie Company. Want me to come back there alone?'

'Yeah!' I shouted back. 'I want you to tell your cop friends what this is!' I pulled the metal baseball out of my pocket-a fragmentation grenade with the pin still in-and lobbed it down the tunnel in their direction. I listened to it bounce around the walls and then everything went quiet. It must have fallen onto the tracks.

'What was that, friend?' my Vietnam buddy wanted to know.

'Shine your light and see for yourself,' I told him. 'But don't worry-the pin's still in!'

The place went as quiet as a tomb-because that's what they all thought it had turned into. I saw flashlights bounce off the dripping walls of the tunnel, but none of them came closer to me from either side. Then I heard 'Holy shit!' and I knew they'd found it.

'You know what that is?' I called out to them.

'Yeah,' came back the infantryman's weary voice, 'I seen enough of the fucking things.'

'You want to see more, just come on back,' I invited him. 'I got a whole crate of them just sitting here.'

More silence.

'What do you want?' he called down to me.

'I want you guys to clear out of this tunnel, okay? And I want a car full of gas at the curb on Canal Street. And a ride to J.F.K. And I want a plane to Cuba. You got it? Otherwise, the Number Six Train's going to have a major fucking detour for the next ten years.

Another cop yelled back to me. 'I want to talk to you, okay? I want to talk about what you want. Let me walk toward you. Slow…okay? My hands in the air. I can't talk to you about this and scream down this tunnel. Okay?'

'Let me think about it,' I told him, 'but no fucking tricks!'

'No tricks. Just take it easy, okay?'

I didn't answer him, wondering where the Prof was by now.

I stretched it out as long as I could. Then I called down to the cop, my voice shaking more than I wanted. 'Just one cop, okay? I want the soldier. Tell him to come alone, you understand-and slow!'

I heard the soldier's footsteps before I saw him. He rounded the bend in the tunnel from the east, shirt unbuttoned, hands over his head. He was short, built solid and close to the ground. I couldn't make out his features in the dim light.

'Stop!' I barked at him.

'Okay, friend. Just be easy, okay? No problems, nothing to worry about. All we're going to do is talk.'

'I want to show you something first,' I told him. I held another grenade in my right hand, high up, where he could see it. Then I palmed one of the spare pull-pins I had with me in my left. I reached over to the grenade and pulled hard; my left hand came away with the extra pin. I flicked it backhand at the cop, listening to it skim down the tunnel, like a kid skipping stones on a lake. 'Pick it up,' I told him.

I watched him bend down, grope around until he had it.

'Fuck!' he said-not loud, but clear enough.

'Now you got the picture,' I told him. 'I'm sitting on a couple dozen of these little bastards and I pulled the pin on the one I'm holding, okay? You get one of your fucking sharpshooters to drop me with a night-scope and the whole tunnel goes into orbit. Now, what about my plane?'

'Those things take time, friend. We can't just make a phone call and set things up.'

'All it took was a phone call to set this thing up, right?'

'Look, friend, I just do my job. Like I did overseas. Like you did too, right? I understand what you're feeling…'

'No, you don't,' I told him. 'Where'd you see combat?' I asked him.

'Brother, for all I know, I was in fucking Cambodia. They sent us into the jungle and some of us came back. You know how it is.'

'Yeah, I know how it is. But I did my stretch in prison, not ' Nam. Too many times. And I'm not going again. I'm going to Cuba or we're all going to hell.'

'Hold up!' he barked at me. 'Give us a chance to work this out. I didn't say we couldn't do it…just that it takes a bit of time, all right? I have to walk back down and talk to the Captain, let him use the radio, call outside, you know?'

'Take all the time you want,' I said to him, the most truthful words I ever spoke to a cop in my life. I watched him back down the tunnel.

A few more minutes passed. I was looking around, checking to make sure there was nothing left in the tunnel to add to my sentence, when I heard his voice again.

'Can I come back down?' he shouted.

'Come ahead!' I yelled back.

When he got back to where he'd been standing before, he was talking in a calm, quiet voice, like you'd use on a crazy person. Good. 'It's all in the works, my friend. We've got the process started, but it's going to take some time, you understand?'

'No problem,' I told him.

'Man, this might take hours,' he said. 'You don't want to sit and hold that thing without the pin for that long.'

'I got no choice,' I replied.

'Sure you do,' he said reasonably. 'Just put the pin back in. You can sit right by the grenades. You hear anyone coming or anything at all, you just pull it again. Okay?'

I said nothing.

'Come on, friend. Use your head. You're going to get what you want-we're doing it for you-we're cooperating. No point in blowing yourself up when you're winning, right?'

'How…how do I do that?' I said, my voice trembling badly. 'You have the pin.'

'I'll give it back to you, friend. Okay? I'll walk nice and slow toward you, okay? Nice and easy. We got a piece of wire-I'll wrap it around the pin and tie it to my holster belt, okay? I'll throw the whole thing down to you. Nice and easy.'

'You won't try anything?' I asked, distrust all over my voice.