Officer Miller Vance took my brown envelope and slapped it twice against his thigh before slipping it inside his duty vest.
"Consider it a safety tax, Frank," he said.
He backed toward the tiled stairs of the deserted Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway platform, his hand resting casually over his holster.
"A seventy-year-old with bad knees shouldn't carry three thousand dollars in cashier’s withdrawals past midnight. Not down here. Not with the kinds of people who follow men like you off the train."
I did not reach for him.
I kept both hands resting flat on the wooden bench, exactly where they had stayed since he cornered me against the peeling tile.
My right knee was stiff, throbbing through the cheap wool of my slacks, but my breathing stayed slow.
I had spent two years watching Vance work this station, shaking down third-shift transit cleaners, concession stockers, and elderly pensioners who took the late local back toward East New York.
Every man who complained to the precinct ended up with a summons for disorderly conduct or a cracked rib in an unmonitored stairwell.
"You took my whole deposit, Vance," I said.
My voice did not shake.
"That was for the property tax installment on the house."
"Then you should have paid it by mail, old man," he answered with a thin, sharp smirk.
His eyes flicked to the dark tunnel mouth where the next train wasn't due for another twenty-two minutes.
He took another step backward, his boots scraping the salt-crusted concrete.
"File a complaint if you don't like the escort. See whose name is on the log at five in the morning."
He turned his shoulder, ready to climb toward the turnstiles, confident the empty platform belonged entirely to his uniform.
I reached up with my left hand and unbuttoned the top two buttons of my flannel collar.
The dull brass clasp of my lapel pinned back.
Tucked against the hollow of my throat was not an audio bug, but a dull black magnetic lapel pickup wired directly into the heavy Motorola shoulder rig sitting half-hidden in the canvas shopping tote beside my ankles.
A tiny green diode blinked three times against my collarbone.
"Target has the marked transit-authority payroll packet in his left chest carrier," I spoke clearly toward the floor.
"Six fifties, twenty-seven hundreds. Series 2017 New York Reserve."
Vance stopped on the third concrete step.
The sneer didn't leave his mouth immediately; it merely hardened into a confused, vicious line as he looked down at me.
"What did you just say into your shirt, Frank?"
Before he could reach the zipper of his jacket, the heavy duty radio clipped to his left collarbone burst open with high-gain feedback.
The dispatcher’s voice cut through the damp underground chill, flat and deafening: "All sector units, Hoyt-Schermerhorn. Signal 10-13, internal hold. Suspect is in possession of documented transit voucher funds bearing registered series prefix Bravo-Nine. Lock down all street-level turnstiles immediately."
Vance froze, his boot caught between two steps.
His hand jerked away from his vest as if the nylon had caught fire.
The radio on his chest wasn't broadcasting from the borough net; it was keyed into the closed regional transit-enforcement channel, and the voice calling out the serial numbers belonged to Captain Rourke from the Fourteenth Street security detachment.
"You set me up," Vance whispered, the blood leaving his face until the stubble along his jaw stood out like iron shavings.