The Sixth Station(21)

As we were divvying up the moo shu chicken and fried rice, we were astonished to see our delivery man already on TV, and every other outlet, standing terrified outside the gates of Mary’s Garden, saying to hundreds of crazed reporters, “Nobody! I have paper! Legal! Nobody inside. Priest! Fathah! That all!”

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “How the hell are we ever going to get out of here?”

“There’s a tunnel,” Sadowski said calmly.

“A what?” Brunhilda, whom I’d found out was named Sergeant Carol Clements, said. “Why in hell, excuse me, Father, for my language, but why is there a tunnel, and where does it go?”

“I think it led to a bunch of old storehouses for the riverboats that delivered along the river.”

We knew he was lying. Why he’d lie about such a thing, I couldn’t say—then—but I knew why we thought he was lying. We were all New Yorkers and, worse, reporters and cops, so we naturally assumed most people were lying about most things most of the time. After all, in our businesses we generally only asked questions of people who had something to hide.

“Or whatever,” Sadowski continued. “Anyway, there is a tunnel that comes out in back of the Family School next door, and into the back of Forty-eighth Street.”

It was oddly quiet.

“Where do you live?” he asked me. Why did I have the feeling he somehow already knew?

“Right on the corner there—that white building.”

Carol née Brunhilda informed us, “That’s why it’s closed off to pedestrians except for those with ID who actually live on the street and need to get home.”

I was astonished. Clearly they knew where I lived and so had closed off my street.

“Look! Here we are,” Dona broke in, glued to Sadowski’s giant flat screen, excited to see her interview with me not just on Fox 5 but on Fox News.

“I look fat,” I said. Nobody answered.

“Good, then,” Carol said. “When you’re ready we’ll get you home. We’ll have some officers outside your building and outside your door tonight—”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, really—”

“Yeah. It is,” was all she said.

Concerned that I hadn’t heard back from Dickie or anyone since I’d filed my story, I made one last call to the newsroom before we packed up our stuff.

“News desk,” one of the copy kids answered.

“Hey, it’s Russo. Is Smalls around?”

He put me on hold, then came back on the line. “Dickie said you’re good to go.” That’s it? I thought at least I’d hear “Good job” or “Rewrite” or something. “Good to go?” That could mean “it’s edited and in”—or that they were spiking the story.

“So I’m okay?”

“I guess,” answered the kid.

I hung up uneasily. Sadowski stood and walked us across the well-appointed rectory, through a door, and down a flight of stairs to the basement, which held what looked like a wine cellar worthy of the Franciscan brothers in Assisi. “Come back on a less-crazy day and we’ll talk about God and mobs over wine,” the good father quipped.

A door at the back of the wine cellar led to a tunnel—or more like a passageway—which was illuminated with fluorescents when Sadowski flicked the wall switch.

“It’s straight,” he joked. “Can’t get lost.”

We—that would be Dona, four cops, and me—walked the hundred feet or so and came to another stairwell. Ten steps up to another door, and sure enough we were in the back of the adjacent school. It was literally just a stone’s throw through a new construction site to Forty-eighth Street.

Meantime, the crazed mob, trying to get a “get” with Dona or me, was on Forty-seventh, completely surrounding the church and Mary’s Garden.

Forty-eighth between First and Second Avenues was fairly quiet—mostly just sanitation trucks and crews noisily running overtime trying to clean up the masses of flyers, candy and gum wrappers, napkins, half-eaten hot dogs, pieces of bready NYC-style pretzels, cans, and debris that the protestors had heedlessly left behind.

Crossing the cordoned-off avenue with a bunch of cops was a breeze, and within a minute I was back at my building and Dona was in a patrol car on her way—home? Who knew with her.

George, the doorman, usually the one with a joke, a bit of gossip, and an inappropriate question, was on duty. He was uncomfortably quiet as I passed through the lobby with just a head nod his way as three cops led me to the elevator and to my apartment door.

I walked in, flicked on the lights. The cops did a cursory search to make sure no one was lurking, ready to spring out from behind the curtains for an ambush interview.