Clinton, largely powerless against the White House, noshed at ethnic festivals and taped TV commercials urging people from Utah and Ohio to come to the Big Apple, see Times Square and Chinatown, catch a Broadway show, spend a night under the stars at Shakespeare in the Park. Shakespeare in the Park was Clinton’s great escapade. Being a natural performer and big ham, he was invited to do cameos, the mellow dads of Shakespeare’s many female wits, the easygoing dukes of the mid-weight comedies. Clinton’s playing Shakespeare was a tourist magnet, not different in spirit from casting TV stars to do the Bard. President Rudy, hammy in a different way, dark instead of light, stewed and schemed, saying that the fact that he had never been invited to do Shakespeare in the Park showed that he had not been loved enough as mayor.

Driving out to Queens to meet Bill Clinton that day in July, I made slow progress through the heavy traffic. I had forgotten that it was the afternoon of the Olympic-marathon final. New York had won its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Holding the Olympics in the city may have seemed like a great idea when the bids were submitted in 2004, but as the mega-international spectacular drew closer, New Yorkers started having second thoughts. Hosting the Olympics would cost several hundred million dollars, and wasn’t this money better spent on—well, anything other than motel-style housing for Belgian power lifters? And what was the point? New York wasn’t Seoul or Salt Lake City. We didn’t need the Olympics to put our city on the map. New York was the one place on earth already bigger than the Olympics.

But New York had no choice—it would play host. A huge Olympic Village was constructed on empty bits of Rikers Island. The early rowing trials were conducted in the Hell Gate section of the upper East River until the tragic loss of the Dutch four-man skull. Skeet and riflery made an interesting addition to the streets of the South Bronx. The soccer matches happened in Prospect Park with Mexican guys’ T-shirts as the corner posts, just like any other weekend morning in that park. The whole extravaganza had come off reasonably well.

I was supposed to meet the BRT—the mayor’s private train—at the Jamaica stop on the A line, but Grand Central Parkway was shut down due to the women’s marathon. I took the side streets, arriving at the platform in Jamaica after three.

The BRT was my greatest contribution to the administration. In the past, mayors of New York had traveled modestly. But Clinton, big restless child that he was, traveled like a president, 15, 20, 25 events a day sometimes, at all times and corners of the city. An NYPD chopper would be the fastest means, of course, but the helicopter was a rotten symbol—aloof, imperial. Motorcades were slow in traffic. Police boats would be picturesque and fun but only practical for points along the waterfront.

I puzzled for a time before I hit upon the answer: trains. Trains mean power, movement, drive—Truman’s whistlestop in ’48, Lincoln’s body going home, something mystical and grand. Think of Elvis:

Train I ride
Sixteen coaches long

And then there is the subway, graffiti and hard seats, the crush of bodies. What could be more New York? Clinton loved the concept (the Elvis reference clinched it), and after that he roared around the city underground in a private subway train. This was Bill’s Rapid Transit, the BRT.

I caught the BRT in Jamaica along with a team to do debate prep. On the benches of the subway car, two sets of lawyers were engaging in a staring contest. The lawyers on the left were Clinton’s in-house people, my buddy Reed Blajasevic and his junior litigati. The lawyers on the right were either special prosecutors or ordinary ones. Looking at them, I found it hard to tell.

One prong of President Giuliani’s attack on His Billness was the time-tested method of death by subpoena. According to the many leaks, a secret federal grand jury in New York was focusing on two potential areas of wrongdoing. First was Clinton’s claim in Chapter 9 of My Life, his wildly successful 2004 autobiography, that he had never really wanted to mislead anyone during the Whitewater probe of the late 1990s. Second was the allegation that in 2005 and 2006 Clinton crossed state lines for purposes of cheating on his golf game. Like the old Ken Starr investigations, prosecutors had formed two investigatory teams. One team would attempt to establish that Clinton had lied in Chapter 9 about lying in the late 1990s when questioned about real-estate transactions from the 1970s. The second team would focus on his golf game.

I pushed into the next car, our dining car aboard the BRT. Halfway down, toward the middle set of doors, a Russian guy named Boris ran a true New York–style hot-dog cart. Boris swore he changed the water at least once a week.

He said, “What you want?”

I said, “Your so-called food disgusts me. One dog with mustard, please.”

Boris fished a dog out of the water, making vendoresque chitchat as he did. Like any good New Yorker, I ignored him.

“On weekend, I no work,” he said. “Sit home and watch the porno tape.”

I said, “Yeah, that’s great.”

I ate the dog in four bites and was immediately ill, just as I would have been if I bought the dog on 57th Street. I loved that last touch of authenticity.

I moved on to the last car, Bill Clinton’s private sanctum.