The Art of Deception

Ancient Doors

The Second Presbyterian Church that hosted the Shelter in its basement labyrinth remained open from 6 A.M. to midnight seven days a week, hours the Shelter kept as well. Matthews led LaMoia back to the bottom of an extremely old stone staircase that they’d descended on their way in. A few thousand runaways had traveled this same route over the last year.

“After this we’re gonna want to take a lap around the block,”

he said, “looking for jimmied doors, storm drains, basement windows-something with access to whatever’s on the other side of these walls.” The walls had been constructed of large stone and whitewashed. “But even though we gotta do that, my money’s on the Blessed Virgin-or whatever the flock this particular set of bells is called-because with them leaving the doors open all hours, the bums have got all sorts of access. One door somewhere down here, a few loose stones is all it would take.”

“You’re a real poet, you know that?”

“Do we know where either of these doors lead?” They were heavy doors, old and of dark wood and cast-iron hardware. Me-dieval, like something from a castle dungeon. One sat at the end of a small dead-end hallway; the other was set into what appeared to be an exterior basement wall. Both doors were locked.

“We do not,” she answered, emphasizing their partnership.

“There’s a lot of history down here. A lot of mystery, too.”

He pointed out that both doors had locks that would likely open with skeleton keys.

She said, “Which speaks to the age of this place.”

“I was thinking more like how tough they’d be to pick,” he snapped sarcastically. He turned to face her. “We’ve got two choices here: We can talk to the holy roller, whoever’s in charge, or, it being midnight, I can do my thing and we can be through either of these doors in about three minutes.” He produced a Leatherman utility knife. “Don’t leave home without it.”

“As long as I’m involved, I’d appreciate it if we did things legally, as unsettling to you as that may be.”

“So now you’re going to reform me?”

She looked around at the rock walls, the Gothic arches overhead. “Seems as good a place to start as any.”

Fifteen minutes later, both doors hung open. The minister was a bald man with an oily complexion, a slight frame, and canti-levered eyebrows that looked sewn onto his forehead. He had a quiet but sunny disposition, as if being rousted at midnight was part and parcel of his job. Perhaps it was.

One of the doors led to storage, a massive masonry cave nearly rectangular in shape, lit by bare bulbs and strewn with cobwebs and layers of dust. Wooden chairs were stacked haphazardly; red velvet seat cushions, the fabric torn open by home-steading mice, leaned as unstable towers; a leather chair had its covering peeled back from the arms like skin from a bad burn.

There were candlesticks and file cabinets, steamer trunks and even an abandoned pulpit canted to one side so that its cup runneth over. Old rust-covered chains were bolted to the far wall. Matthews commented on the enormity of the space-it looked to be sixty feet deep or more. LaMoia strategically wormed his way inside, discovering a tunnel with a low ceiling that led to a former wine cellar, also long since abandoned. The dust alone announced that no bums had trodden here.

Matthews picked her way through the rubble, following him.

Together they faced a bricked-over stone arch. In a soft voice LaMoia said, “We want to be wherever that once led.”

The minister overheard his comment and informed them that to his knowledge any doorways and windows that had once communicated with what had then been a sidewalk, a hundred years earlier, had all been brick-and-mortared closed. “Permanently sealed” was how he put it.

A storyteller by nature, he held them captive with a tale about an old rum-running smugglers’ tunnel said to have run up Skid Row-now Yesler Way-leading from the waterfront and connecting to several churches and speakeasies that predated the Great Depression and Prohibition. “They connected the old smuggling tunnel to these underground sidewalks, where they had quite the black market going for themselves.”

LaMoia gave the man only half an ear, impatient to open the second door. When it was finally opened, the other door led to a long underground hallway, off of which was a music room, a small library with dehumidifiers running, a vestments closet, and several more stone-walled rooms dedicated to church administration and service utilities. They took their time to study each in turn, searching for hidden access to the Underground, which from the discovery of the peepholes, and the minister’s stories, seemed likely to exist.

While inside what amounted to an oversized custodial closet, a room filled with steel pipe and electric water heaters, LaMoia silenced Matthews and the minister-who, once started talking, proved hard to quiet-and pressed his ear to the cold, sweating stone. Leaning away from the wall, he motioned for Matthews to listen.

“Tell me what you hear,” he whispered.

Matthews pressed up against the damp chill, her face then approaching the color of the whitewashed stone. “Voices,” she muttered. “Men’s voices.”