Escape From New York

XV

150TH ST. MEMORIAL LIBRARY

17:10:19, 18, 17…

Plissken watched the streets as they drove. The cabbie droned without thought or meaning, talking in laborious detail about lube jobs and oil changes. The streets seemed infinite, caught as they were in the middle of their tangles. Twisting stone paths winding a petrified forest. An army, a hundred armies, could hide within those hollow trees.

They cut through a narrow alley, as scrawny rats fled the jabs of their headlights. Then, about halfway along the dark pathway, they stopped.

“Well, here we are,” the cabbie said.

“Where?”

“Here. Come on.”

The man creaked open his door and hefted his bulk out of a broken seat that had cradled him for those thirty long years. He looked up and down, hitched up his grease-stained pants and smiled.

“Can’t leave her on the street,” he said. “Usually don’t leave her at all. But you’re a special case, Snake.”

Plissken climbed cautiously out of the back seat and followed the cabbie down the length of the alley and out. They were moving toward a huge stone building that was relatively intact. Wide stone steps led up to the big, iron doors. Cement lions crouched by the steps, guarding this stone palace in the stone jungle. They started up the steps. It was a public building, a library.

“It’s okay. Snake,” the cabbie said. “Better neighborhood. You can relax.”

Plissken thought about the time bombs planted in his arteries. “No thanks,” he replied.

They got to the top of the steps and the cabbie banged on the iron door with the flat of his hand. It echoed hollowly, like knocking on a huge bell. He waited a few seconds, then did it again.

He smiled at Plissken, his eyes gleaming slits. “They got a great place here. Like a fortress.”

“They?” Plissken returned.

A voice from the other side, female, said, “Who is is?”

The cabbie rolled his eyes and cocked a thumb at the door. “It’s me!” he yelled, loud enough to wake up the dead-or at least the walking dead.

“Who’s me?” returned the muffled voice.

“Cabbie!”

“What do you want?”

“Somebody to see Brain,” he said officiously. “It’s important.”

“Go away,” the voice returned.

Plissken grimaced and started looking for accessible windows.

“It’s Snake Plissken,” the cabbie returned, then winked in the Snake’s direction.

There was a pause. The magic words, the passport to the asylum. Sounds, scratching sounds, came through the door. Locks slid, bolts scraped. The door opened a crack. An eye peered through.

“You’re Plissken?” came the voice connected to the eye.

“He wants to see Brain,” the cabbie said.

“Why?”

Plissken shoved the cabbie aside and got eye to eye through the door crack. “I want to meet the Duke.”

The eye stared, unblinking, at Plissken for a short time. It wiggled, looking up and down. Then the door closed softly and they could hear the rattling of chains. Then the big door slid quietly open.

Plissken stepped through and looked at the woman. She was clean, head to toe-clean face, clean clothes, clean fingernails. The clothes looked new, and fit her well-filled frame like they were made for it. She had dark hair, mid-thirties hair, but her eyes were younger. Plissken fell into those eyes. They were liquid and inquisitive and more than a little mischievous; and he couldn’t detect even a touch of madness in them. Well-maybe a touch.

She looked him over, too, and when she was finished, the corners of her mouth turned up a notch. Like a smile. Or maybe like a sneer.

She made a gesture with her arm toward some stairs that led down into the great hall of the place. Cabbie jerked his head and they started down, the woman staying behind to relock the door. The place was huge, a lifeless cavern. The ceilings were high enough to be swallowed up completely in the darkness. A few torches lit the walls, trying to warm the cold, bleak marble that gave the place its deathlike chill.

They got down the stairs and waited. Cabbie put an arm around Plissken’s shoulder. The Snake shrugged it off.

“Brain’s the greatest. Snake,” the man said. “Mister Fabulous. The Duke loves him.”

Plissken turned to the sound of footsteps. The woman was coming down the stairs, a torch throbbing in her hand. He watched the yellow light caress her body.

“Who’s that?” he whispered to the cabbie.

“Maggie,” he answered. “Brain’s squeeze.”

She was almost down the steps. The cabbie leaned close so she wouldn’t hear him. “The Duke gave her to Brain, just to keep him happy.”

That Plissken could understand. The woman walked up to them. She used the torchlight to look him over again, and this time, the look in her eyes was all mischief.

“I heard you were dead,” she told him.

He frowned. Maybe everybody else knew something that he didn’t.

She led them down the hall. They went through an ornate archway to enter a large room lit to semi-light by well-placed, flickering lanterns.

Hooking the torch on a holder by the arch, Maggie led them into the room. It was the reading room of the library, shelves stuffed with books, stacks of them everywhere, piled high. They were all covered with a thick layer of gray-white dust.

There was a sound, a generator noise that got louder as they walked farther into the room. They came around a row of shelves and Plissken saw the source of the noise. A generator stood right in the center of the room. It ran a belt drive system that operated a pump, and the shaft of the pump was plunging up and down into a hole cut right through the floor-their own oil well, probably sucking gas or crude oil right out of an old underground storage tank somewhere.

Plissken was looking the well over when his good eye caught something else. On a near wall was tacked a large map of Manhattan. A figure stood before the map, well-dressed, like Maggie. He turned around. He was thin and brooding, but obviously well-fed. He wore a long, shaggy beard that covered a laughable, baby face. He stared at Plissken, then flicked out a thin tongue to lick dry lips.

“Brought someone to see you, Brain,” the cabbie said.

Plissken took in the man, studied him in the dim light. His bad eye was twisting the nerves under the patch, trying to get his attention. He mentally removed the man’s beard, and a tight-lipped smile stretched across his teeth.

“Harold Hellman,” he hissed, low and menacing.

The man’s eyes got wider. “Snake?”

“Harold?” Maggie squeaked.

Plissken eased his hand back on the rifle, back toward the trigger guard. “How have you been, Harold?” he asked. “It’s been a long time.”

“You never told me you knew Snake Plissken,” Maggie said, obviously impressed. Plissken wondered what it was he did that people thought was so special.

The cabbie was laughing again, having a ball. “Isn’t this great!” he said loudly, slapping his hands together. Then, “You know, Brain. If you could spare some more gas. I’m getting kind of low and…”

In a flash, Plissken had crossed the distance to Brain. He shoved the rifle’s barrel right into the man’s mouth. He started gagging around the thing. Maggie came forward to defend her man.

“Don’t move or I’ll spray the map with him,” he said, never taking his eyes from his prey.

The woman stopped, muscles tensed. The cabbie sputtered behind him, undoubtedly wondering where his next gas was going to come from. Plissken moved his face to within inches of Hellman’s.

“I’m glad you remember me, Harold,” he said in that low voice. “A man should remember his past, don’t you think? Remember Kansas City? Four years ago? Hmmm?” He shoved the gun in a little farther, choking the man with it “You ran out on me. You left me sitting there.”

He pulled the gun out of Hellman’s mouth and directed him to a chair with it. Fear overflowed the man’s eyes like a horn of plenty. He sat.

“We were buddies, Harold,” Plissken said. “You, me and Fresno Bob. You know what they did to Bob?”

The boiler threatened to explode in Plissken’s gut. Life was a war, and Hellman was a traitor. He raised his foot and planted it on the man’s chest. Kicking out, he knocked the chair back, banging it against the map. Hellman went to the floor with a grunt, sprawling there.

“Don’t kill me. Snake,” he whimpered from the cold marble.

“Where is he?” Plissken snapped.

“Who?”

“Don’t play with me!”

Hellman rolled over, lips trembling, beard bobbing with the vibrations. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Jesus, Snake. Come on!”

Plissken crouched down, getting in his face. “Where is he?”

The man’s eyes were pleading, talking to a stone wall. “Why? Why do you want to know?”

“I want him, Harold.”

“The Man sent him in here. Brain,” Maggie said, and her voice was sharp, a razor blade.

Hellman tried to compose himself, tried to sit up. “Yeah,” he said. “Working with the Man now?”

“Wait a minute,” the cabbie said defensively, since he had his own axes to grind. “Snake don’t work for the Man…”

“Tell me, Harold!”

Hellman got into a crouch, then stood up slowly, his back sliding up the wall. “No,” he returned, using the woman’s strength of conviction. “And if you kill me, you’ll never find out.”

The Snake smiled again. “Too thin, Harold. Even for you.” He turned to glance quickly at Maggie. The sharp edge of her words was nothing like the homicide in her stare. He would have winked at her, but he didn’t have enough eyes. “I’ll just beat it out of your squeeze,” he said, and watched her face twist with hatred.

Hellman was talking faster now, selling his point. “Maggie doesn’t know exactly where he is, and if you don’t know exactly, precisely where he is, you’ll never find him.”

That made sense to Plissken. He’d already taken a look at the city. Maybe it was time to deal. He lowered the rifle.

“Is he still alive?”

The cabbie laughed loudly, brightening immediately. “Alive and kicking.”

“Shut up,” Hellman snapped.

Plissken walked to a chair and sat down. The others stood rigid, staring for a few seconds, then they sat also. “Okay,” he said. “Here it is. I’ll take you out of here. I’ve got a jet glider. It’s not far from here. You just get him to me.”

Maggie and Brain looked at each other. The hate began draining from her eyes. She was thinking, revolving the possibilities.

The cabbie was out of his chair, pacing excitedly. He looked at Plissken and wiped a palm across his weathered face. “No kidding?” he said quickly. “On the level? You take me, too?”

Plissken gave him a why not look. What difference did it make? He only had room in the glider for two anyway.

Hellman looked hard at Plissken. “We got a deal somewhere else,” he said, still not understanding the man’s desperation.

The internal boiler started stoking again. “No glider,” he said.

“We got the President,” Maggie said, face as flat as Hellman’s words. “And the Duke’s taking everybody out of here.”

“It’ll never happen,” Plissken returned. He sat up straight, leaning forward. “I know something you and the Duke don’t know. You only got so long before Mister President don’t mean a whole lot to anybody.”

“Bull,” Hellman shot back. Then, his eyes narrowed. “How long?”

Plissken laid his rifle across his lap and put his hands behind his head. “You ready to work something out?”

“You’re lying,” Brain said.

Maggie looked at Snake, and her face was at war with itself. She was a survivor, too. “Maybe he’s not,” she said.

Hellman stood up and waved Plissken off. “I know him,” he said, turning his back to look at the map. “Look at his face, he’s lying.”

Somehow, that was all okay with Snake. He needed to take Hellman out anyway. The penalty for treason was execution. He raised the rifle and aimed at the man’s leg. If he was going to do it, he may as well do it slow enough to get some enjoyment out of it. “Guess I’ll just kill you and keep looking myself.”

Hellman turned, his beard bobbing again. “Christ, Snake. Come on. Come on!”

Snake Plissken put his finger on the trigger and hugged the rifle up snug against his cheek. He began squeezing, very gently.

“Brain!” Maggie yelled.

“Talk to him, baby,” Plissken whispered, and squeezed a little more.

“He’s gonna kill us both if you don’t tell him.”

“You gotta tell him. Brain,” the cabbie said, high and fervent. “You gotta!”

Brain Hellman looked deeply into Plissken’s good eye and believed. He withered under the heat of the look. He made the decision, and he knew it was the wrong one. Turning back to the map, he bashed it with a fist. “All right,” he said, nearly a whisper. Then louder. “All right!”

Plissken, almost sadly, took his finger off the trigger and lowered the rifle. The pain in his eye eased somewhat. “Always knew you were smart, Harold.”

Hellman flared around angrily to him. “One thing right now,” he said, with as much vehemence as he could muster. “Don’t call me Harold.”