The Getaway - By Tom Barber Page 0,15

waiting for him outside a restaurant across the street, pretending to read a paper. He was sloppy, and had picked a bad spot for surveillance. It was a 50/50 chance that Archer would come this way and not head up Steinway. But then again, there was probably someone else waiting for him up there doing the same thing. The guy been almost directly in Archer’s line of sight, an amateur mistake, and behind his sunglasses Archer had seen the man rise from his chair and start to move down the hill the opposite side, watching his mark.

Right on cue, he saw the guy appear, running up the steps, out of breath, and moving forward to just make it inside the carriage next door, jamming his arm in the sliding doors as they closed and then pulling them open and dragging himself inside. Archer examined him quickly before the guy relocated him. He was one of the men from the group at the bar last night.

Not Farrell.

Not the man with longer hair.

The third guy, shaved head and tattoos on his forearms, the one who had been the first to spot the six guys coming down the street. He saw him looking around, trying to relocate his mark, and Archer turned his back, feeling the man’s gaze fall on him. He didn’t move. There was no point trying to lose him yet. The trip into the city would take about twenty minutes and he didn’t want to alert the guy that he knew he was there.

The train moved off towards the next stop, the streets rolling past down below through the windows. The carriage Archer was standing in was busy, full of people headed to the office, crossing off another day, another step closer to the weekend. People were sitting and standing everywhere, listening to music through headphones, reading newspapers, sipping coffees and tapping into cell-phones or just looking out of the window, lost in thought. Archer wasn’t impressed to see a number of seats occupied by men as women in heels stood nearby, clutching the rail, some of them fighting to keep their balance. None of the guys on the benches seemed to care though, and he swallowed down his irritation. A small thing, but something that always pissed him off when he saw it. Unlike him, he guessed some guys just didn’t give a shit when it came to stuff like that.

The train slowed and came to a halt at the next stop, Broadway. Archer realised the guy next door had no idea where he was getting off. He contemplated deceiving him by stepping outside then back in at the last moment, but decided against it. The guy didn’t know he’d been made. It would make it easier to lose him when they got to Manhattan, and would avoid a confrontation that Archer could do without. The doors closed and the train pushed on, stopping twice more at 36 and 39 Avenue before swinging a right hook and approaching Queensborough Plaza, the eastern side of Manhattan coming into view up ahead across the East River.

Looking around the carriage to pass the time, he saw a young boy sitting on one of the blue benches, his father standing over him, both in jeans and polo shirts. The kid was no older than five or six but they were already the spitting image of each other, and the boy looked excited as if they had something fun planned for the day, an outing or maybe just a chance to spend time with his father. Archer watched him. His shoelaces were untied, and they swung back and forth in the air as the train moved and slowed, the plastic tips occasionally brushing the ground. His father realised, and knelt down, tying them up, keeping his balance as the train started to slow. Archer smiled, then swallowed and averted his gaze.

There were more people waiting on the platform here, as there always were. Queensborough Plaza was where the N and Q line met the 7 train, the line that ran through all the other neighbourhoods in Queens. The doors opened and everyone on the platform moved inside, the carriage becoming even more crowded, everyone packed in together, the carriage full. Eventually, the doors closed again and the train rolled on. He saw people making last minute texts or ending calls on cell phones. They were about to go into the tunnel, under the river, heading towards 59 Street and Manhattan, and all cellular service