But the operator sitting in a Queens Midtown Tunnel booth this stormy morning, just after 8 A.M.--a retired NYC transit cop working part-time as a toll taker--hadn't seen any serious trouble in years and he was excited that something had happened to break the monotony: all the tollbooth operators in Manhattan had gotten a priority call from Port Authority headquarters about a ship that'd sunk off the coast of Long Island, one of those illegal immigrant ships. The word was that some of the Chinese on board were now headed into town, as was the smuggler himself. They were in a white van bearing the name of a church and in a red Honda. Some or all of them were reportedly armed.
There were several ways to get into the city from Long Island by surface transportation: bridges or tunnels. Some of these were free--no tolls were charged at the Queensboro or the Brooklyn bridges, for instance--but the most direct route from the end of Long Island was through the Queens Midtown Tunnel. The police and FBI had gotten permission to shut down all of the express pass and exact change lanes, so that the perps would have to go through a manned booth.
The ex-cop had never thought that he'd be the one to spot the immigrants.
But it looked like that was the way things were going to fall out. He was now wiping his sweaty palms on his slacks and watching a white van, some writing on the side, driven by a Chinese guy, easing toward his booth.
Ten cars away, nine . . .
He pulled his old service piece from its holster, a Smith & Wesson .357 with a four-inch barrel and rested the pistol on the far side of the cash
register, wondering how to handle the situation. He'd call it in but what if the guys in the van acted funny or evasive? He decided he'd draw down on them and order them out of the van.
But what if one of them reached under the dash or between the seats?
Hell, here he was in an exposed glass booth, no backup, with a vanload of Chinese gangsters heading toward him. They might even be armed with Russia's crowning contribution to small arms: AK-47 machine guns.
Fuck it, he'd shoot.
The operator ignored a woman complaining about the E-ZPass lanes' being closed and looked at the line of traffic. The van was three cars away.
He reached onto his belt and pulled off his Speed-loader, a metal ring holding six bullets, with which he could reload his Smittie in seconds. He rested this next to his pistol and wiped his shooting hand on his slacks once again. He debated for a moment, picked up the gun, cocked it and set it back on the counter. This was against regulations but then he was the one in the fishbowl, not the brass who wrote the regs.
*
At first Sam Chang had worried that the long line of cars meant a roadblock but then he saw the booths and decided this was some kind of a border crossing.
Passports, papers, visas . . . They had none of these.
In panic he looked for an exit but there was none--the road was surrounded by high walls.
But William said calmly, "We have to pay."
"Pay why?" Sam Chang asked the boy, their resident expert on American customs.
"It's a toll," he explained as if this were obvious. "I need some U.S. dollars. Three and a half."
In a moneybelt Chang had thousands of yuan--soggy and salty though they were--but hadn't dared change the money into U.S. dollars on the black markets of Fuzhou, which would've tipped off public security that they were about to flee the country. In a well beside the two front seats, though, they'd found a five-dollar bill.
The van crawled slowly forward. Two cars were in front of them.
Chang glanced up at the man in the booth and observed that he seemed very nervous. He kept looking at the van while appearing not to.
One car ahead of them in line now.
The man in the booth now studied them carefully from the corner of his eye. His tongue touched the side of his lip and he rocked from one foot to the other.
"I don't like this," William said. "He suspects something."
"There's nothing we can do," his father told him. "Go forward."
"I'll run it."
"No!" Chang muttered. "He may have a gun. He'll shoot us."
William eased the van to the booth and stopped. Would the boy, in his newfound rebellion, disregard Chang's order and speed through the gate?
The man in the booth swallowed and gripped something next to a large cash register. Was it a signal button of some kind? Chang wondered.