CHAPTER FOUROne thing about Cletus Berry. He hadn’t talked about his private life but he talked about New York. He wasn’t a native, he’d revealed that much, but he’d taken to the city like a native, and over drinks at SPUDS conferences he’d told stories about New York with obvious pride in his voice.
His favorite was the story of the Second Avenue Subway. The city had planned a whole new line to serve the East Side, got a referendum past the voters and floated a multi-billion-dollar bond issue to pay for it. They’d torn down the elevated rail line that served that part of the city, the famous Third Avenue El. They even broke ground for the new subway line, but when it came time to start serious work they looked at their bank account and discovered that billions of dollars had somehow disa
