Autumn dawn broke over a Hudson River. A tugboat maneuvered a string of barges up to a West Side pier. The cabin door of a barge opened. Out stepped a man in overalls and pea coat, a watchcap pulled over his red hair.

He looked around then locked the cabin behind him. His approach to this city had started in 1745 in Galway on a boat full of recruits bound for France and the Wild Geese regiments. At sea he'd hooked onto one of Napoleon's frigates sailing toward the Horn. Off her, he caught a steamer bound for Buenos Aires in 1900, then jumped far into the new century in a turbine freighter putting into Hoboken, where he signed on as a barge captain.

As he crossed the deck and climbed the ladder to the pier, he sang under his breath:

Through the Long Dark into dawning,
Out of Time and into day.

He signed the name Jack Stanley on the list of those going ashore, walked down the wharf and into the city. Above an elevated highway, a Technicolor billboard displayed what looked like a scowling bank clerk. The Commander-in-Chief in full uniform glared defiance at the world.

Not even dictatorship and the threat of war could still the harbor. Longshoremen headed for the shape-up. trucks and freight trains got unloaded and loaded. On the tenement-lined streets of Chelsea, a corner building had a sign: ROOMS BY THE WEEK OR MONTH. The ground-floor shop sold newspapers, tobacco, sandwiches.

A skinny kid in his mid-teens swept the sidewalk. He glanced up as the barge captain crossed the street. For the space of an eye-flash, the man had in his open palm a spiral badge the color and size of a quarter.

The man entered the store. The kid finished sweeping and carried the broom inside. A woman, obviously his mother, was behind the cash register ringing up purchases. "T. R., show him the third-floor back before you go to school," she said.

The boy gestured toward a door which led to a stairwell. When they were alone, he turned to the man and flashed a copper spiral. "I knew you'd come!" he whispered. The man held a finger to his lips. "It's right up here," the kid said loud enough to be overheard. Captain Roger Deveraux nodded and followed him up the stairs.

From "Pride of the Rangers" by Daniel Ignace, Galaxy Magazine, July 1960.

A few years up the Timestream from now, late in the afternoon of a drizzly April Thursday, a white guy in a windbreaker and a black guy in a suit stand at Tenth Avenue and Thirty-Second Street. Inside the gate of the West Side Consolidated Storage Yards, a silver and blue New Jersey Transit train, its lights up, is set to roll east to Pennsylvania Station.

The man in the windbreaker is stocky and white-haired. He glances a couple of blocks downtown at the abandoned elevated railway tracks jutting out onto the Avenue. A kid skateboards around the steel pillars. The man looks familiar, though TV might not be your guess as to where you'd seen Robert Logue.

The black man is big, with a shaved skull. Louis Jackson says, "Most people, Robert, do not get to choose who in city law enforcement they're going to do business with. You, however, decide on an Assistant DA in the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit," he indicates himself, "and everyone is happy. Grateful, even. I get pulled off my regular assignments to follow you around."

"Cops don't get stripped, killed, and mutilated either," says Logue. "But forty-plus years ago, about where that train is now, that's how officers Dennis Burke and James LaRocca were found. The Switchyard Massacre. Still unsolved. A major blot on the NYPD record. You weren't born when it happened, Jax."

"I feel like I should be hearing your voice dubbed over a long, lingering camera pan at the start of Buried Murder," says Jackson.

"Luckily, Americans love murders. Even old, forgotten ones. Uncover a crime, give it a name like Reverend Bluebeard or The Noonday Witch, and you've got an audience," Logue tells him. "The Switchyard Massacre is a natural."

"Yeah, I noticed the events of February sixth, 1963 are popular reading all of a sudden," says Jax. "This morning I saw the files. Besides the cops, a certain Ted Benez and Sally Dere, described as police informers, were also murdered."

"Kids. Seventeen or so. Hell, LaRocca and Burke were still in their twenties. They'd seem like kids to me now." Logue starts walking to the corner. "That's enough. I just need to get the feel of the scene."

Louis Jackson nods. They cross Tenth Avenue and head East on Thirty-Third Street. Mail trucks line the curbs around the Postal Annex. Workers sit in the cabs and on the tailgates, tabloids in hand, staring at the cop cars and news crews up the block.

Robert points to a New York Post headline:

KID COP BUTCHERED

Under it is a picture of a bareheaded cadet in a police academy uniform. "A handsome young woman, Mirabel Gonzalez. You saw how the Times headline tied her death in with Olney's? By tomorrow they'll be writing about the Switchyard Massacre. TV may be there before then."

On the southwest corner of Thirty-Third and Ninth is a parking lot. It's empty today of all but official vehicles and a line of official gawkers at the chain link fence along its back side. New York 1 scans the twenty-foot drop and the dozen sets of railway tracks. Just below that fence, Cadet Gonzalez's mutilated corpse was discovered in time for last night's news.

Robert and Jax look down on cops combing the area inside the yellow crime scene tape, on an Eyewitness News reporter interviewing a Deputy Inspector. The Jersey Transit train they just saw in the yards emerges from the tunnel under Tenth Avenue. It glows silver in the dull light before disappearing beneath the old Main Post Office building.

Robert stares at the wall on the far side of the railway cut. Jax follows his gaze. On the dark gray stone is a faded graffiti, a spiral. A later, brighter red X is spray-painted over it.

"Logue." A large, red-faced cop as big as Jax walks their way. "My favorite TV detective."

"Lieutenant Crawford. One of my favorite detectives in any medium," says Robert.

"You need to get down there?" asks the cop. Robert Logue shakes his head. "Any ideas about the corkscrew on the wall?"

"A reminder of an older and less orderly New York," says Robert.

"You ever meet her?" Crawford jerks his head toward the murder site.

"Briefly. She was Olney's friend. Right now, I need to talk with Jax."

A few minutes later, Robert and Jax are in a booth at the diner across the street, sipping Greek coffee. Jax drinks it straight. Robert has spiked his cup from a flask. The TV is on with the sound off. Cadet Gonzalez's face appears, then the railway tracks.

Robert stares out the window at a bunch of teens just sprung from school. Uniform ties are off, white shirttails hang out. Blazers are draped over their shoulders, skirts are hiked high, pants are rolled up to the knees. All their faces are painted with tiger stripes.

"War paint. The latest fashion trend," Jax says.

"That stuff washes off," says Robert. "They have to be scrubbed and back in uniform tomorrow morning. Tattoos and body piercing are illegal for kids. Not like when you grew up and anything went. I was their age circa 1960 and I kind of sympathize."

He produces a manila envelope and spreads New York Post clippings on the table. They show Brian Olney as a bright kid in a high school graduation photo, wearing a tuxedo at a brother's wedding, in a Police Academy uniform, in a body bag being carried off a West Side pier a few weeks earlier.

On top of these, Robert places a police photo of a corpse lying in the glare of lights. Three bullet holes are drilled in Olney's chest. His clothes are gone except for a blood-saturated T-shirt pulled over his head. It conceals the missing eyes. Invisible, unless one knows it's there, is the tiny spiral tattoo over the right bicep.

"A kid starved for adventure. A pre-med at NYU who went out of his way to audit a Buried New York course I gave at the New School last fall. Halfway through the semester, he disappears. At finals time he shows up in a police cadet uniform. Looking like the hero of a Boy's Own Adventure book."

Robert brings out an old police photo taken in the train yards. In the background is a baggage car and a signal light. In the foreground are the white of bare arms and legs, the black of the back of a head, of empty sockets. One victim is facedown. Another's mouth is open to the sky. Like she was killed in mid-scream.

Next is a shot dated 2/6/63. It shows a newsstand with the full array of seven New York City dailies. Even the Times features the murders.

"In those days, all the news did not get printed," says Robert. "But everyone in the city had a hot rumor or clever theory about what had happened. The NYPD went crazy, hauled every ex-con and current pervert in the Greater New York area in for questioning. They couldn't raise a lead. The Feds got called in. If they found out anything, they weren't telling.

"Fortunately for everyone's reputations, that fall Kennedy died in Dallas, made the Massacre look almost quaint. But we're in quiet, peaceful times. Again. The public is ready to be thrilled and horrified. The tabloids are champing at the bit for serial killers. The NYPD doesn't want a repeat of 1963. Getting caught between the Post and the FBI is real painful."

Robert drains his cup. "The only worthwhile thing to come out of the Olney murder was the possible sex-crime angle. That got you assigned to the case. Now, with Gonzalez dead, Crawford and company want to lean on me. It means they have no worthwhile leads. I have a couple of angles I'm working on. But if you want answers, you have to lay off. I'm a consultant, not a suspect."

Jax smiles. "Understand this, Robert. Most people don't get to decide who their contact is. But nobody gets to decide whether or not the cops trust them. What are you offering?"

"Olney and Gonzalez's killer. And maybe a lot more. If you give me two weeks."

"Two days," Jax says. "Time's tight. As you pointed out."

Robert says, "Four. Monday morning." He's staring over the other man's head. When Jax looks, everybody in the place is watching the TV. On screen is a live shot of the West Side Yard. The sound gets turned up. "… two blocks from the site of the infamous Switchyard Massacre." When Jax turns back, there's a ten on the table and Robert is gone.

Half an hour later, Louis Jackson stands under the huge glass dome at the center of the old Main Post Office. A big chunk of the interior of this massive building has been refurbished and turned into an approximation of a 1900s railroad cathedral. The Post Office itself was built to complement the original Penn Station. Now, it will contain within itself Penn Station Three.

Above the new train gates hang huge blow-up photos of the first Station at its opening in 1909. Pearly light falls on the Waiting Room where people are dark specks, ticket windows mouse holes. The glass and steel of the old Concourse ceiling is like a web. The Arcade's shops glitter.

Without taking his eyes off the photos, Jackson tells Lieutenant Crawford, "He claims you're cramping his style."

"His style!" Crawford says. "Unusual parlay, consultant and suspect. He was hanging around this neighborhood weeks before the Olney murder took place. Any idea where he was last night?"

Jax nods, still looking up. "At a family dinner in Westchester. I know because I was there. Anything new on Gonzalez?"

"Indications that she didn't die on the site where she was found. No sign of how she got there. Just like Olney. Unlike him, though, it seems she was stripped and blinded after she was shot.

"One other thing. This is a copy of a snapshot we found in her locker at the Police Academy." Jax sees five males, three in their late teens, two a bit older, facing the camera. Clothes and hair place this in the early '60s. Behind them are twisted steel beams, the smashed statue of an eagle.

"The original's authentic as far as we can tell. The two adults are officers LaRocca and Burke. We don't have any ID on the kids."

Jax sees a snotty preppy, an amused young tough, and a jumpy-looking kid in a dorky crewcut who seems oddly familiar. Jax looks again. Only because he has spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours with Robert Logue does he recognize the face. He hands the photo back and says nothing.