The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 20

Whatever Jeff expected as he stepped through the door, it wasn't this. Not that he saw anything extraordinary-in fact, the objects that filled the chamber were utterly ordinary.

A stove-the back burner of which held the pot from which came the mouthwatering aroma of beef stew.

A refrigerator-its avocado green finish chipped, and parts of the worn-out gasket around its door missing. As if to prove it wasn't a mirage, it rattled to life at that moment, its compressor clattering grumpily before settling into a steady hum.

A table-a real table, with a Formica top and tubular metal legs, almost identical to the one in his own apartment. And around the table, half a dozen mismatched chairs. A couple of them were made of badly scarred oak, their finish all but worn off. The others, originally upholstered in various kinds of vinyl, were now mostly covered with duct tape.

Against the wall opposite the stove was the kind of sofa Jeff had seen many times on the streets of his neighborhood, dragged onto the street for the garbage men to haul away. This one looked to be of about the same vintage as the refrigerator. Its cheap pine frame was carved in an ugly Mediterranean style, and though the crushed-velvet upholstery was stained and torn, a bit of its original gold color still showed.

There were two easy chairs, one a recliner that was extended as far as its broken leg rest would allow. The damage didn't seem to bother the man sprawled out on it, sleeping noisily.

There were pictures on the windowless walls, but like everything else in the room, they looked as if they'd been cast off-some because the broken frames' contents weren't worth refraining, others because what they depicted could only have looked good in the tourist traps where they'd originally been sold. But all of them had one thing in common: they displayed some sort of landscape, as if the pictures were serving as windows to an imagined world on the surface. One showed a meadow in springtime with deer feeding on its lush grass. Another depicted a sylvan wood, foliage ablaze in autumnal glory, with a preternatural shaft of light piercing the forest's canopy as if God Himself were smiling down from the unseen sky.

In contrast to the fanciful pictures, the drab reality of the room was revealed by two old and crooked floor lamps, both in need of shades.

Most surprising was a television set, droning softly in the corner, tuned to CNN.

"You like my place?"

Jeff tore his eyes away from the TV screen.

The woman who was smiling at him looked to be in her sixties. Only a little more than five feet tall and heavy, her body was made to appear even larger than it was by the bulk of the clothes she wore. Her skirt was a paisley pattern in brilliant shades of scarlet, purple, and green. The bottom two inches dragged on the floor, causing the hem to be frayed and blackened with grime. Her blouse of deep burgundy velvet had rusty-looking streaks running through it, and a large, greasy-looking stain covered one side of her ample bosom. At least a dozen bracelets in as many styles jangled on her forearms, and countless necklaces and chains hung from her neck.

Her face was thickly coated with makeup that was caked in the deep crevices of her cheeks, and a blood-red shade of lipstick highlighted the wrinkles in her lips. A copper-colored wig couldn't quite contain the wisps of gray hair that curled over her forehead.

A tattered black shawl missing most of its fringe hung over her shoulders and trailed down below her waist. "Not bad, eh?" she asked, waving in an expansive gesture that took in the entire room. The long ash of her cigarette fell to the floor as she sucked in an enormous lungful of smoke.

"If the smoke don't get me, the cancer will," she cackled, her eyes twinkling as she gave Jeff a gap-toothed smile. Her gaze shifted from Jeff to Jagger, and her smile-along with the twinkle in her eye-faded. She stabbed her cigarette in his direction. "Don't remember invitin‘ you in."

Jagger's hand tightened on the rusty railroad spike.

"It's okay, Tillie," Creeper said quickly. "They won't be staying long."

"They won't stay at all if I say so," the woman retorted, her eyes still fixed on Jagger.

"Come on, Tillie," Creeper wheedled. "Didn't you just say they could have something to eat?"

"That was before I saw ‘em," Tillie snapped back. Her cigarette jabbed at Jagger again. "Now I've seen him, I don't want him. So get him out of here."

Jeff could feel the tension building in Jagger.

"Maybe I don't want to leave," the big man growled.

Tillie's eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips, smearing her lipstick even more. "I guess you can eat," she said. "Then we'll see." Her eyes shifted back to Jeff, and she jerked her head toward an opening in the far wall. "There's a place you can wash up back there," she said. "Just make sure you put the lid back on the can if you use it. Don't like to stink up the place."

With Jagger right behind him, Jeff made his way through the gap in the wall.

"What is this place?" Jagger muttered as he gazed around.

On a battered table sat a chipped enameled pan-exactly like one Jeff's family had used on the camping trips they'd taken when he was a little boy-and matching pitcher. A towel, not terribly dirty, hung from a bar that had been precariously mounted in the concrete of the wall.

A naked lightbulb, hanging from a cord strung along the ceiling, filled the room with light.

On the wall above the table hung a cracked mirror, and for the first time since he'd left his cell in the Tombs, Jeff was able to see his own reflection. As he gazed at the image reflected in the glass, he barely recognized himself.

His skin was streaked with grease and grime, and his hair hung lank, heavy with its own oil.

His eyes were bloodshot, and dark circles had formed beneath them.

His forehead had broken out with pimples, and a cut on his chin-a cut he hadn't even known was there-looked like it was starting to fester.

Still staring at his own image, Jeff finally answered Jagger's question. "It's their home," he said. "This is where they live."

In the mirror, Jeff could see Jagger glancing speculatively around. In yet another chamber beyond the one in which they stood, he could see a few mattresses scattered on the floor- one of them even seemed to have box springs under it, and all of them had blankets.

Blankets and sheets.

The exhaustion Jeff had been holding at bay as they'd made their way through the darkness of the tunnels until they'd stumbled across Creeper suddenly overwhelmed him, and all he wanted to do was disappear into that next room and collapse onto one of the beds.

"And now it's where we live," Jagger said. Then he winked at Jeff. "Beats the hell out of Rikers, huh?"

Jeff said nothing, looking in the mirror once more.

But what he saw was no longer a reflection of himself.

What he saw was a derelict.

The kind of person he'd long ago learned to simply ignore.

Or even turn away from, as if to deny their very existence.

Malcolm Baldridge, who had been known simply as "Baldridge" for so many years that few people except himself even remembered he had a first name, reached deep in his pocket for the single key that was never kept on the large ring that hung inside his private pantry.

His innate obsession with detail, the obsession that made him perfect for his job, caused him to check the door for any sign of tampering. As always, there was none. He slipped the key into the lock, turned it, pushed the door open, then closed it behind him before turning on the lights. One of the tubes in the overhead fixtures flickered a few times before settling in to join the others in flooding the room with a bright white light-a light that Baldridge had insisted be matched to that of sunlight.

It was a matter of aesthetics, and aesthetics were important to Baldridge.

Indeed, his sense of aesthetics was another of his prime qualifications for his job.

Before he did anything else besides pull on a pair of the thin latex gloves he always wore when he worked in this room, he went to one of the supply closets, took a replacement tube from the stock on the top shelf, and replaced the offending tube in the overhead fixture.

No sense being needlessly distracted from his work if the faulty tube began flickering again.

Then he set to work.

As always, the carcass was precisely where the team left it on nights when the hunt was successful: laid out on a gurney in the walk-in refrigerator. The refrigerator had been expensive, and the renovations required for its installation even more so, but Baldridge had insisted on it. "The odor can sometimes become offensive," he'd explained, "and far more quickly than you might think." Also in accordance with Baldridge's precise instructions, nothing at all had been done to the carcass. "Restoration is my job," he'd explained. "It's best left to experts." Baldridge's own expertise was unquestionable. He'd apprenticed under his uncle, who was still working up in New Hampshire, and gained further training in a funeral home in California, moving to New York at the same time his employer in California moved across the border to Arizona in hopes of escaping prosecution for certain irregularities, only a few of which had taken place in Baldridge's area of the operation.

Baldridge had been in his present position for nearly five years, and though few people ever saw the results of his work, he was content. Tonight he whistled softly as he removed the blankets that had been wrapped around the carcass to make it easier to transport from the site of the kill to the refrigerator.

Wheeling the gurney out of the refrigerator, he removed one tattered layer of blanketing after another, appreciating- not for the first time-the supple layer of latex that prevented him from soiling his fingers on the filthy material that always covered the carcasses. He carefully placed the blankets in a bag that would be removed to the incinerator before he left for the night, then turned his attention to the carcass itself.

A buck, perhaps twenty-five years old-certainly no older than thirty.

The carcass was in fair condition. Most of the teeth were intact, though the hide was defaced with three tattoos. One depicted a serpent, which was coiled around the left bicep, and another proclaimed love for Mother in ornate, Old English-style letters across the left breast. The third, looking exactly like a meat stamp, was stenciled across the right buttock, and identified the posterior to be us grade-a prime.

The blond hair was limp and greasy, but at least it wasn't matted into the kind of dreadlocks Baldridge found not only unsightly, but almost impossible to work with.

The carcass was clad in the usual array of clothing, and although all of Baldridge's aesthetic instincts told him to cut it away and dispose of it in the same manner as the blankets, he instead carefully removed it, piece by piece, and transferred it to another bag, which was destined for the laundry. After the clothes were washed and pressed, Baldridge himself would make the decision if they could be used in the final presentation. If it was only a matter of replacing a few buttons, or re-sewing a hem, he would perform the repairs himself. If the damage or wear proved too extensive, however, he would take them to a discreet seamstress just off Seventh Avenue down in the Thirties and have them copied.

Finally, the carcass lay naked on the gurney, and it was time to transfer it to the worktable. He slid the carcass onto the table and began preparing for the real work.

His knives, all honed razor sharp, were kept in a velvet-lined drawer that slid out from beneath the worktable's granite surface.

He placed several large cardboard cartons-manufactured for the ice cream trade, but perfect for Baldridge's use-in a specially constructed trough running completely around the edges of the table's surface.

Using a digital camera, Baldridge photographed the carcass from every angle, then took careful note of all the pertinent measurements: not merely the girth of the breast, waist, and hips, though these were noted to within a quarter of an inch, but also the upper arms, lower arms, thighs, and calves.

Finally satisfied, he turned the carcass over so it lay face down, and carefully made an incision from just behind the crown of the head all the way down to the base of the spine. Then, using a variety of knives-most of which were of his own design-he began working the hide away from the carcass, his fingers wielding the knives quickly but expertly, never penetrating the hide but leaving nearly nothing of either the fatty tissue or the muscle that separated the hide from the bones and soft tissues.

The back was relatively easy-flat planes, a broad expanse of hide, and plenty of room to work. Peeling the hide away from the back of the skull was just as easy, though it had taken Baldridge several months to master the ears, the trick being to cut deeply enough so that no incision would show in the final product. After that it was relatively simple to peel everything away except the lips and nostrils. The eyelids simply lifted off once the membranes around the eye sockets themselves were cut away. The nostrils and lips were merely a repeat of the ears-cut deeply enough inside those orifices so the loose edges would disappear completely when the remounting process was finished.

Once the hide was completely removed from the skull and face, it was nothing more than a careful stripping process, no more difficult than removing opera-length gloves from the arms or pantry hose from the legs. A little care around the anus-more around the genitals-but that was really more for Baldridge's own sense of pride in his work than out of necessity, since those areas would not be visible in the end product.

When the hide, still in a single, nearly unblemished piece, was finally separated from the carcass, Baldridge inspected it once more, noting with a certain degree of satisfaction that the only repair that would be necessary was the small hole in the forehead where the bullet had entered. His own work had left not even the tiniest of cuts or nicks. He then transferred the hide to the first of the vats in the row of tanning tanks that lined the opposite wall, and turned his attention to the remainder of the carcass.

Baldridge worked even more quickly now, for most of what still lay on the worktable was nothing more than garbage. Within twenty minutes all the muscles, organs, ligaments, and other soft tissue had been stripped away from the skeleton and deposited in the large ice cream cartons. Finally, he pulled the head away from the spine, carefully using one of his favorite knives to separate vertebrae from brain.

Abandoning the skeleton for a moment, he opened the glass top of a large box-seven feet long and two feet wide- that appeared to rest directly on the floor against the back wall. The box's bottom was covered with a coarse screen, and it was upon this screen that Baldridge laid the skeleton. Closing the top of the box, he peered down through the glass until he saw the first of the ants scurry up through the mesh, confirm what they'd found, and hurry back down to communicate their discovery to the rest of the huge colony that lived beneath the floor of the laboratory. Satisfied that the formicans had busily begun their work and that by morning they would have eaten the cartilage away while leaving the bones intact, he turned his full attention to the skull.

Though he knew it was perfectly permissible to cut the skull open with a surgical saw, once again his sense of aesthetics stopped him. Though no trace of this surgery would show in the end, he himself would know the imperfection was there, and it would bother him. Thus, even though it would take him at least a full extra hour, he set to work, cutting the brain away through the foramen magnum, using a variety of knives, spoons, and scrapers to clean as much of the tissue away from the bone as possible.

The tongue and eyeballs joined the brain matter in one of the handy ice cream cartons.

After Baldridge had examined the bullet hole in the forehead and determined that the damage to the bone itself was minimal, the skull was placed in its own ant box. It, too, would be ready by morning.

The hide, however, would require several days of preparation.

Only then, when both skeleton and hide were perfectly preserved, would Baldridge begin his true work. When he was done, the man who had died in the tunnels that night would undoubtedly look better than he'd ever looked before.

By the time Baldridge left the workroom an hour later, nothing remained of the waste materials: the full ice cream cartons had been placed in the incinerator, and even the small bit of residue left when the fires had burned out had been washed down the drain.

The granite tabletop was spotless, as was the drainage trough.

The gurney had been scrubbed down and disinfected, the latex gloves consumed by the fire that destroyed the waste tissues.

Taking the bag containing the worn-out fluorescent light with him, Baldridge inspected his workroom one last time.

All was as it should be.

In a few more days, tonight's trophy would be ready for display.

And tomorrow, another hunt would begin.