Doubling Down on Life After a Glance at Terror

NEW YORK — Remember that computer analyst from New Jersey, marinating in rage over a lost job, who firebombed two subway cars in 1994 and badly hurt dozens of people? The name was Edward J. Leary, of Scotch Plains, and he stands as the author of the most successful terrorist attacks of modern times, and perhaps ever, in the New York transit system.

How about the mysterious man who stepped just inside the turnstiles at a 125th Street station one day in October 1988 with a pipe bomb under each arm, four small batteries and two flashcubes for triggers? The one under the left arm detonated and blew a hole into his body, which was never identified.

Leary, now of Sing Sing prison, and the unidentified man, now in potter’s field, don’t ring any bells?

Didn’t think so.

For most of us, a touch of amnesia permits a sane-ish existence. We outsource vigilance and keep the turnstiles spinning.

So there goes a guy in a homemade suicide vest near the Port Authority subway station on Monday morning. And here come the workweek legions, doubling down on the everyday.

Liberating one ear from his headphones, Jaefern Fernandez looked up from his seat on the C train, then glanced back to his phone. He was on his way from 145th Street in Manhattan to the multiplex movie theater on 42nd Street where he works.

“I’m just seeing about it,” Fernandez said, thumbing his screen. “It’s messed up.”

Overhearing this, another man frowned. “What? When did that happen?” he asked. Just before 7:30 in the morning, he was told. “I was asleep,” he explained.

Brought up to speed on the calamity that did not quite happen, neither man had the slightest intention of altering his route.

Louis Bernier knew about the bomber before he boarded the A train in Washington Heights, pushing a stroller with his son Oliver, age 2 1/2. Indeed, he quickly summoned an inventory of recent terrible events, the killing of eight people on a bike path in lower Manhattan this fall, and the derailment of an A train in June.

“Now that it’s over, I expect that it’s safe to travel,” Bernier said. “We cannot stop living. There was the event on the bike path last month. I tell you, I’m more concerned by the derailment on this line last summer. My son and I are on the train every day. He loves all kinds of transport.”

In principle, the power of all bombs depends on the rapid expansion of gas under pressure, compression being an essential condition. A line of black gunpowder sprinkled on the ground will flare out with little effect. Packed into a container like a bullet shell or a jar and ignited, it can produce killing force.

In the summer of 1997, acting on a tip, police raided an apartment on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn and found parts of five pipe bombs, apparently destined for the Atlantic Avenue subway station. Two men were shot in the raid.

Besides the containerized nature of subway cars and tunnels, the crowds amplify the risks, a reality also on congested streets. A former superintendent of subway stations alerted officials in 2008 that it was possible for an evildoer to padlock gates intended for escape.

The current estimated number of things that can go wrong is put at infinity.

“Does it look like people are staying out of the subway?” asked Carolina Selia, a voice coach. She had a point: At midmorning, it was standing-room-only on her A train.

“You have to be a tough breed to survive in this town,” she said, but she noted that it wasn’t just the locals who keep going. Clients are coming to the city from Nashville this weekend. “They are going to see shows, and I’m telling you, they are still very determined,” Selia said. “They’re going to be in Times Square.”

Most Monday mornings, Ronald Rojas, a subway singer, does not rush out of his bed in the Bronx. “Mondays are slow,” said Rojas, whose nom de D train is B_Ron_X. But he was out early this Monday after hearing news of the bomb.

“I figured, people are nervous already, they need someone who makes them feel a little better,” Rojas said, nominating himself. Plus, he acknowledged, police were probably too busy to give him a ticket. “I guess that is secretly also why I am out here,” he said.

Beneath a great cloud of curly hair, Rojas worked a harmonica rigged to his guitar when he wasn’t singing or grinning. Then he strolled through the D train as it pulled into 59th Street, getting a dollar here and there. “Have a great everyday,” he said, passing out fist bumps to one and all.