Page 356 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
pour, could only inch along the remainder of 57th and then creep down Park, while my heart was palpitating. Steiger, you might recall, ended up hanging on a meat hook after his cab ride, but I concluded, after three more blocks of inching southward, that I wouldn’t accept that fate. Accordingly, I thrust a five-dollar bill over the front seat (no divid- ers in 1970), yelled, “Keep the change” (after all, it was the client’s money), and bolted for the subway, which I knew could be picked up at 51st Street.
I ran down the slippery steps, slammed a token into the turnstile slot (I had one and I’d be reimbursed for that as well), sprinted for the platform, jumped through the closing doors of an about-to-depart southbound IRT local (what luck!) that immediately intersected with an express at Grand Central (even more luck!), and negotiated its doors as well. Safely aboard and still quite wet, I finally caught my breath and considered how lucky I was to have caught the train and how stupid I was for not thinking of taking one in the first place.
That thought lasted for about forty-five seconds, for midway between 42nd Street and the next platform the wheels screeched, the train stopped, and the lights went out. And then, nothing. This gave me time to note that while my suit was wet from the rain, my shirt was soaked with perspiration, perspiration that only increased as I looked at my watch for the eighth time since my race had begun. My watch told me that the Clerk of the Court was already calling the calendar while the engineer was presumably doing nothing—other than, maybe, call- ing his wife. At that point I could just about make out the loudspeaker squawking, “We’ve been stopped ’causeatrouble [sic] ahead. We’ll let ya know when we’ll be movin’ again.” I thought, “You’ve got no idea of what trouble lies ahead,” and started to believe that my career was in ashes.
A minute or two later, though, we were slowly—oh, so slowly— moving, and we continued at half speed until we finally reached Foley Square. I bolted, surfaced, and was delighted to find that the rain had stopped. But I was now faced with a problem that real lawyers don’t have to contend with: I did not know which of the Tammany Hall–con- structed, Greek-columned facades that were glowering down at me was
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