He had not seen Gerald Vincent Gallagher, but he knew that Charley McFadden must have seen him, for Charley, moving with speed remarkable for his bulk, was now headed up the stairs to the subway station.
Two cars and a truck, going like the hammers of hell, delayed Officer Martinez's passage across Pratt Street by thirty seconds. By the time he made it across, Charley McFadden was nowhere in sight. All he could see was people with wide eyes wondering what the fuck was going on.
'Police! Police!' Officer Martinez shouted as he forced his way through a crowd of people trying to leave the station.
He jumped over the turnstile, and then was forced to make a choice between stairs leading to the tracks for trains arrivingfrom downtown and tracks for trains headed downtown. Deciding that it would be far more likely that McFadden and whoever it was he was chasing-almost certainly, Gerald Vincent Gallagher-would be on the downtown platform, he ran up those stairs.
Officer McFadden, who had lost sight of Gerald Vincent Gallagher as he ran up the stairs from Pratt Street, had made the same decision. Already starting to puff a little, he ran onto the platform. A downtown train had just pulled into the station; the platform was crowded with people in the process of boarding it.
Holding his pistol at the level of his head, muzzle pointed toward the sky, Charley McFadden ran down the train looking for Gallagher. He had reached the last car, and hadn't seen him, and had just about decided the little fucker was on the train, that he had missed him, and would have to start at the first car and work his way back through it when he did see him. Gallagher was in the middle of the tracks, the other tracks, the incoming from downtown tracks. As McFadden ran to the side of the center platform, Gerald Vincent Gallagher boosted himself up on the platform on the far side.
It had been his intention to run back down the stairs and get onto Frankford Avenue, where he could lose himself in the crowd. The narc, Gerald Vincent Gallagher reasoned, would not dare use his pistol because of all the fucking people on the lower level of the terminal and on Frankford Avenue.
But Gallagher had spotted him, and there was no way he could run back toward the station, because there were no people on that platform, and the goddamned narc would feel free to shoot at him. He turned, instead, and ran down the platform in the other direction, to the end, and jumped over a yellow painted barrier with a sign on it readingDANGER! KEEP OFF!
Beyond the barrier was a narrow workman's walkway. It ran as far as the next station, but Gerald Vincent Gallagher wasn't planning on running that far, just maybe two, three, blocks where he knew there was a stairway, more of a ladder, really, he could climb down to Frankford Avenue.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the fucking narc was doing what he had done, crossing the tracks and then boosting himself up onto the passenger platform. The big fat sonofabitch had trouble hauling all that lard onto the platform, and for a moment, the way the fucking narc was flailing around with his legs trying to get up on the platform, Gerald Vincent Gallagher thought he might get lucky and the narc's legs would touch the third rail, and the cocksucker would fry himself.
But that didn't happen.
Officer McFadden got first to his knees, and then stood up. Holding his pistol in both hands, he took aim at Gerald Vincent Gallagher.
But he didn't pull the trigger. Heaving and panting the way he was, there was little chance that he could hit the little sonofabitch as far away as he was, and Christ only knew where the bullet would go after he fired. Probably get some nun between the eyes.
'You little sonofabitch! I'm going to get your ass!' he screamed in fury, and started racing after him again.
Officer Jesus Martinez reached the center platform at this time. He knew from the direction people were looking where the action was, and ran down the center platform to the end.
He saw Officer McFadden first, and then, fifty, sixty yards ahead of him, a slight white male that almost certainly had to be Gerald Vincent Gallagher. They were running, carefully, along the walkway next to the rail.
The reason they were running carefully was that the walkway was over the third rail. The walkway was built of short lengths, about five feet long, of prefabricated pieces. Some of them, the real old ones, were heavy wooden planking. Some of the newer ones were pierced steel, and the most modern were of exposed aggregate cement. They provided a precarious perch in any event, and they were not designed to be footracing paths.
Officer Martinez made another snap decision. There was no way he could catch up with them, and even to try would mean that he would have to jump down and cross the tracks, and risk electrocuting himself on the third rail. But he could catch the departing train, ride to the next station, and then start walking back. That would put Gerald Vincent Gallagher between them.
He ran for the train and jumped inside, just as the doors closed.
He scared hell, with his pistol drawn, out of the people on the car, and they backed away from him as if he was on fire.
'I'm a police officer,' he said, not very loudly because he was out of breath. 'Nothing to worry about.'
When the train passed Charley McFadden and Gerald Vincent Gallagher, they were both still running very carefully, watching their feet.
Jesus Christ, Charley, shoot the sonofabitch!
The same thought had occurred to Charley McFadden at just about that moment, and even as he ran, he wondered why he didn't stop running, drop to his knees, and, using a two-handed hold, try to put Gerald Vincent Gallagher down.
There were several reasons, and they all came to him. For one thing, he wasn't at all sure that he could hit him. For another, he was worried about where the bullet, the bullets, plural, would go if he missed. People lived close to the tracks here. He didn't want to kill one of them.
And then he realized the real reason. He didn't want to kill Gerald Vincent Gallagher. The little shit might deserve it, and it might mean that Officer Charley McFadden didn't have the balls to be a cop, but the facts were that Gerald Vincent Gallagher didn't have a gun-if he had, the little shit would have used it, he had nothing to lose from a second charge of murder-and wasn't posing, right now, any real threat to anybody but himself, running down the tracks like this.
Hay-zus must have figured out what was going on by now, and got on the radio and called for help. In a couple of minutes, there would be cops responding from all over. All he had to do was keep Gerald Vincent Gallagher in sight, and keep him from hurting himself or somebody else, and everything would be all right.
Eighteen hundred and fifty-three feet (as was later measured with great care) south of the Bridge amp; Pratt Streets Terminal, Gerald Vincent Gallagher realized that he could not run another ten feet. His chest hurt so much he wanted to cry from the pain. And that big, fat, fucking narc was still on his tail.
Gerald Vincent Gallagher stopped running, and turned around and grabbed the railing beside the walkway, and dropped to his knees.
'I give up,' he said. 'For Christ's sake, don't shoot me!'
Officer Charley McFadden could understand what he said, even the way he said it puffing and out of breath.
Unable to speak himself, he walked up the walkway, heaving with the exertion.
And then he raised his arm, the left one, without the pistol, and pointed down the track, and tried to find his voice. What he wanted to say was 'Watch out, there's a train coming!'
He couldn't find his voice, but Gerald Vincent Gallagher took his meaning. He looked over his shoulder at the approaching train. And tried to get to his feet, so that he would be able to hold on to the railing good and tight as the train passed.
And he slipped.
And he fell onto the tracks.
And he put his hand out as a reflex motion, to break his fall, and his wrist found the third rail and Gerald Vincent Gallagher fried.
And then the train came, and all four cars rolled over him.
When Officer Jesus Martinez came down the walkway, he found Officer Charley McFadden bent over the railing, sick white in the face, and covered with vomitus.
