Ramos looked at me, his weathered face showing a flicker of understanding beneath his uniform cap. "The commuter line out of Rensselaer leaves in forty minutes. You sure you don't want an escort to the platform?"
"I've had enough escorts for one morning, Sergeant," I said, offering my hand.
Ramos took it, his grip calloused and solid. "Take care of yourself, Cole. If you ever fly through Gate 14 again, check your ticket at the counter before you go through the metal detectors."
"I don't think I'll be flying through Gate 14 for a long time," I said.
I turned to Marcus, reaching into my coat pocket to pull out the folded, torn boarding stub that had started the entire morning. The pale blue paper was crumpled along the center crease, the thermal ink around SEAT 1A slightly smudged from the humidity of the jet bridge and the dampness of the basement baggage room.
"Keep it," Marcus said, raising his hand to stop me before I could hand it across. "I don't need another ticket stub to remind me what happened down in that tunnel. I saw enough on that line printer to last me twenty years."
"It's not a souvenir, Marcus," I said, tucking the blue paper back into my inner pocket, right beside my worn state investigator badge. "It's just paper. That’s all any of this ever was until someone decided they could buy the ink."
I turned away from the curb and walked down the wide granite stairs leading toward State Street.
The wind blowing off the Hudson River was sharp, cutting through the wool of my overcoat and carrying the smell of river ice and coal dust from the freight yards across the channel. Downtown Albany was moving at its ordinary noon pace: paralegals in heavy coats carrying brown paper lunch sacks, state clerks crossing against the light with lanyards tucked into their collars, and delivery trucks backing into alleyways with the steady, dull beep of their warning horns. None of them knew that thirty miles south, a private regional jet was sitting idle on a remote de-icing pad with its luggage hatches wide open, or that three filing cabinets of fraudulent bridge ledgers were being transferred into federal evidence lockers under armed guard.
At the corner of Eagle Street, I stopped in front of a small corner diner with a steamed glass window and a faded neon sign advertising hot soup and counter service. My reflection in the plate glass was tired, the dark circles under my eyes permanent, the graying hair over my ears uncombed from the rush through the security checkpoint six hours ago.
I didn't look like an investigator who had just broken open a three-year procurement conspiracy. I looked like an ordinary middle-aged man who had been pushed out of an aisle by an arrogant man in expensive wool, carrying an old canvas bag with frayed seams and salt stains along the bottom edge.
I pushed open the heavy brass-trimmed door of the diner. The bell above the lintel gave a clear, cheerful ring that cut through the low murmur of the lunch crowd. The warmth inside smelled of griddled onions, dark coffee, and wet wool drying over radiator pipes.
"Single?" the waitress asked, pulling a plastic-coated menu from the slot beside the cash register without looking up from her ticket pad.
"Just a booth in the corner," I said. "And whatever soup you have on the stove."
She led me back to a small laminate table tucked against the wood-paneled wall near the kitchen doors. I slid into the cracked vinyl seat, feeling the tension finally release from the tendons in my neck and shoulders.
I placed my canvas briefcase on the seat opposite me, right where another person would have sat if I hadn't been traveling alone. Then I reached into my coat, pulled out the pale blue boarding pass, smoothed the crumpled corners flat with the side of my thumb, and laid it face down on the clean formica table between the salt shaker and the paper napkins.
Outside the window, a city bus hissed to a stop at the curb, its pneumatic doors swinging open to let off a dozen people heading to their afternoon shifts. They walked with their heads down against the wind, their collars pulled high, their boots splashing through the brown slush at the edge of the gutter. None of them had priority codes. None of them had corporate accounts to clear the way ahead of them. They just showed their passes, stepped through the narrow doors, and took whatever seat was left open in the aisle.
FINAL THANK-YOU NOTE
Thank you for making room for these pages today.