COLUMN ONE : The Lowest Crime in New York : Lawyer, courier, porter, pauper--’fare-beaters’ all. In the sweaty subway they jump turnstiles, enter via exits and worse, much worse. Deep down, this is what the city is like.

There they go, great gusts of people, some numb as sleepwalkers and others growling like curs, a sweaty herd of humanity entering the dank underground that is America’s biggest subway.

Down the steps they descend into the morning rush, toward the deafening screech of the trains, toward the stomach-turning smell of the electric sewer, toward the annoying shuffle of the long, god-awful lines.

They stop. Commuters must first buy a token at a booth and then place it in one of the old mechanical turnstiles. The unwieldy $1.15 fare creates a puzzle of arithmetic with every multiple purchase. Things move slowly.

And there is larceny. In a city of startling extremes, the $1.15 is simply too much for the many too poor to pay, and the line is too long for the many too impatient to wait. On average, one in 13 riders sneaks in--in a ceaseless march of petty crime that costs New York an estimated $80 million a year.

The cheaters are known as fare-beaters. They enter through the exit gates. They shimmy through the turnstiles. They vault over, they limbo under. Imagine this: They stuff the coin slots with paper, then suck out the jammed tokens, their lips a pump atop cold metal that has been touched by a million fingers.

“Won’t take long,” says Capt. Francis M. O’Hare of the Transit Police, on a routine “sweep” for beaters, ready to arrest the first 10 who come by. He is in plainclothes, as are the six officers with him, blending in.

And he is right. It does not take long. The station at 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, on the Upper East Side, offers a mix from the cultural strata. The cops nab nine people who are currently males and one transsexual who used to be.

An 11th suspect is released. He is only 14, a skinny kid with sad, rheumy eyes. The papers in his pocket confirm that he is in a hurry to get to court on a robbery charge. “I don’t think he should miss that,” the captain says.

Other excuses get only polite nods: tell it to the judge. One of the first with a breathless alibi is wearing a fine blue suit. He is Thomas McArdle, 28, an attorney for the city’s Department of Social Services.

They cuff his hands behind his back and lead him into a hot, grimy women’s bathroom taken over as a holding area. He is told to stand near one of the two toilet stalls. Anger turns his face the color of borscht.

“I was in line for 15 damn minutes,” McArdle says, his voice all huff and fire, trying to clear himself some moral elbow room. “They got two lousy clerks and only one is working, the other doing whatever it is they do instead.

“So I give up and go to the automatic (token) machines. They got three, and two of the damn things are busted. I try to put my $10 in the one that’s left. It won’t take it.

“People behind me are telling me to get screwed, you know: ‘Give it up, buddy!’ Finally, I just did what anyone fed up with the system would do. Out of frustration I went through the gate.”

One by one, he is joined in the tiny room by the others. It gets cramped fast. There is Richard Cendo, 26, a sharp dresser in a gray plaid suit. The police stand him next to the yellow-stained sink. He has $83.10 in his pants.

Cendo has shown the cops a hopefully clout-laden ID from the New York Times (the former newsroom clerk left the paper in 1989). It did him no good.

“Listen to this,” the arresting officer says. “He told me he paid once, over the weekend, and the train didn’t come, so he figured he was entitled to even up today.”

The rest are lined up against the walls. There is Edgar Velez, an express courier. There is Tyrone Slade, 18, a high school student earning a few bucks delivering flowers. There is Joseph Hagar, 72, a retired porter on his way home from the bank with $239. “This is a bunch of raggedy crap,” he says.

There are four paupers--ages 26, 35, 50 and 53--their pockets empty of a single penny or identification or any other latchkey to the social order. There is the transsexual, Demetrice Haywood, a homeless panhandler.

“Constellations are against me, entire revelations to be classified,” she mumbles to herself in a mad, disjointed rap. Her clothes are filthy, her hair matted, her skin leprous with mange. They let her go with a citation.

Capt. O’Hare explains: “She’s a token-sucker, but not a bad one; she doesn’t give the people in the fare booths much trouble. Besides, if we take her in, we’ve got to spray everything for lice.”

Ah, New York. They say this is the city that never sleeps, but that’s just because the garbage trucks and ambulances make noise all night long. This is urban America to the nth degree. It has a great and horrible subway.

At its best, the system is all rumble and blur, the trains speeding beneath the traffic-clogged streets 24 hours a day--every day--only a few minutes apart during rush hour. They stop near almost everything, a marvel of convenience.

Some 3.7 million people ride them on weekdays. The routes feed into each other like arteries on an anatomy chart. They cover 236 miles, second only to the London subway. New York spends $130 million a year just for the electricity.

At its worst, the system is an octogenarian geezer that goes out more often than a trick knee. Uncertainty prevails. A crackly voice on the station loudspeaker making some unintelligible announcement is the dreaded omen of 30 minutes shot to hell.

Societal rot is here in all its awful vaudeville. Hundreds of the homeless inhabit the tunnels. Pickpockets let their hands browse amid the crowds. Ads on the trains themselves are a mosaic of personal misadventure: drug treatment, victim hot lines, laser therapy for anal warts.

The transit cops on subterranean patrol make up the sixth largest police force in the nation. The job is formidable. Besides muggers, drunks and gangs, there is the bloody debris of the pushed and fallen.

Two riders died on May 17 alone. One tripped while lurching for the Uptown No. 4. Another hit a concrete overhang as he hoisted himself for a thrilling look from atop the Downtown 6. A third rider lost a hand while hopping between cars on the Uptown 5. Service was disrupted for an hour as workers searched for a missing finger.

Then there are those fare-beaters. No other U.S. transit system reports even a fraction of the problem of New York. It is embedded in the municipal culture, as visible a part of subway life as derelicts taking a snooze.

Scams are abundant. Thieves get keys to out-of-use entrances, open up and collect fares from those who mistakenly follow. In 1987 and 1988, $4 million in tokens was stolen right out of the turnstiles until the collection bins were replaced with heavy steel vaults.

“Here at 116th Street hardly nobody pays,” said Levi Bell, an occasional token-sucker indiscreetly working the B and C lines. He uses matchbooks to jam the coin slots. He sells the stolen fares on the street for 75 cents apiece.

“Yes, I know it’s unsanitary,” he says of his craft. He is a tall, older man with red lines in his eyes like the squiggles on a polygraph. “Hard times makes you do it. Anyways, I’ve kissed women that’s worse.”

The fare-beaters’ best pals are the turnstiles themselves. Most are about 40 years old, mechanical sentries long obsolete against modern wile.

The transit authority has proposed to buy a $670-million fare collection system from Cubic Corp. in San Diego. Cards would replace tokens. Passageways would be narrowed at the bottom to inhibit crawlers, inclined at the sides to stop leapers. A light would flash when the machines were stuffed with paper.

“Yes, I’ve heard something about that,” the token-sucker says. “It will be a challenge, yes. But you wait. This is New York. People will find a way.”

The transit police have converted buses into mobile booking centers. Right on the street, the accused are checked for priors, their fingerprints taken, their photographs shot, their addresses verified.

Forms are completed: desk appearance tickets, arraignment cards, court availability schedules, prearraignment notification sheets, supporting depositions, field investigation workups, on-line booking arrest reports.

Four hours of processing await the alleged fare beaters. And there they go, out of the women’s room and up the stairs onto the sidewalk, led in manacles two by two toward the bus. The crowds wonder just what kind of criminals the cops have got here: Hey, look--they’ve busted two guys in suits and ties!

Once inside the portable jail, most of the arrested men remain quiet. For them, this is just another hitch in a long run of woe. But the two in ties are different. They still can’t believe it.

They protest. “Let’s talk morals,” says Richard Cendo, the sharp dresser with the outdated New York Times ID.

“OK, let’s talk morals,” says Capt. O’Hare.

“You’re supposed to be providing a service. I can’t count the times the trains have broken down on me. In the aggregate, the system owes me money.”

“Listen, we handle an enormous volume of people. We handle 250,000 a day just coming through Grand Central Station.”

“That means you have a larger economy of scale. You ought to be able to do better than other transit systems. But you don’t. Look at Washington, D.C. There’s never a line in Washington, D.C.”

The captain considers this. He is likable and talkative, a heavyset man, 27 years on the force. “But the important thing about your situation is that you took something without paying,” he says earnestly.

That is logic that appalls the attorney, Thomas McArdle: “Not pay. Not pay! Eighty per cent of this system is federally and state subsidized. I pay taxes. I pay a lot of taxes!”

“Yes, but you didn’t pay the fare today,” Capt. O’Hare answers.

“The line was so long it was going up the stairs. You picked the busiest time of the day on one of the busiest days of the year to make your arrests. Some would consider that entrapment.”

“It wasn’t entrapment.”

“It was enticement.”

The captain shakes his head no. Can’t they understand it? The case is open and shut, airtight as a coffee can. These guys know the law. They got caught.

Every year, some 28,000 fare beaters get summonses; they are allowed to mail in the $60 fine. Others--about 1,600 a month--get caught in “arrest sweeps.” They are given a court date and usually end up paying a fine or performing community service, scraping the crud off the subway station floors.

“Why don’t you just buy your tokens in ten packs?” O’Hare suggests amiably. “That way you’ve always got one.

But Cendo wants to talk morals again. “Is cheating the city out of $1.15 really worth all this?” he asked. His right hand is cuffed to the metal handgrip of the bus seat. “If I was speeding in a school zone, endangering children’s lives, all I’d get is a traffic ticket. Is this justice?”

The captain rubs his chin. He wants to select just the proper response.

“Let me ask you,” he says finally. “Will you ever do this again?”

“No.”

“There you are. There you are.”