The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 14

Keith and Eve Harris were sitting in a tavern- Mike's, or Jimmy's, or something like that-at a tiny table covered with a red-checkered tablecloth. A real linen tablecloth with the stains to prove it. Every table in the place was filled, and people were three deep at the bar that ran the full length of the far wall. Curtains partially blocked the view of the sidewalk outside, giving the illusion that a steady stream of bodiless heads were drifting by. The buzz of conversation was loud enough that Keith had to strain to hear Eve Harris, but that same buzz gave them a degree of privacy they might not have had at a quieter restaurant.

Keith's gaze had flipped back and forth between the woman and her business card at least half a dozen times in the five minutes since she'd led him into the tavern, ordered a glass of merlot to his scotch on the rocks, and handed him her card. "This is real?" he'd asked as he read the title beneath her name.

"It's real," the waiter had said. "Nice to see you again, Ms. Harris."

"Nice to see you, too, Justin. Everything going all right?"

"I'm still working, aren't I?" the waiter countered, then turned to Keith. "If it weren't for Ms. Harris, I'd probably be dead by now. You don't even want to know how I was living before I met her. Be back in a minute with the drinks."

A minute was exactly what it had been, and in that minute Eve Harris told him that she hadn't done much for the waiter-she'd just gotten to know him when he was panhandling in Foley Square, and after talking to him almost every day for a month, asked him what he wanted to do with his life. "He said he just wanted to get himself cleaned up enough to get a real job. So all I did was take him shopping. We got him new clothes and a haircut, and I rented him a room. Then I sent him in here to talk to Jimmy, and he's been working ever since." Then Justin reappeared with their drinks, and Eve Harris glared at him mischievously. "Of course, if he screws up, he'll be the best bartender living in a box on Foley Square."

"Don't worry, I'm not screwing up," Justin assured her, grinning.

Now that they were alone again, Keith said, "I don't get why you're even interested in this." He could feel Eve Harris studying him with as much concentration as he'd been studying her before answering.

She took a sip of her merlot, seemed to come to some kind of decision, then leaned forward in her chair. "I'm aware of who your son is, what he did, and what happened to him," she said. "But I'm also aware that Perry Randall's daughter doesn't think he was guilty, and was planning to marry him. What I don't understand is what you were doing in the subway, asking people if they'd seen your son. He's dead, isn't he?"

As briefly as he could, Keith told her what he'd seen at the Medical Examiner's office, and what the drunk over on Bowery had told him.

"And you believed him?" Eve asked.

"Why shouldn't I?" Keith challenged, a note of belligerence in his voice.

She shook her head almost sadly. "Mr. Converse, there are basically three kinds of people living on the streets of this city: the addicts, the crazies, and the houseless." She smiled thinly at the puzzled look on Keith's face. " ‘Houseless' is their term, not mine. Some of the people consider the streets their home, so they aren't homeless, at least according to them. Houseless, but not homeless. But a lot of the groups tend to overlap-most of the addicts and crazies are homeless, but not all the homeless are addicts or crazies." She tilted her head toward Justin, who was busily wiping down a table that had been momentarily vacated. "A lot of the homeless just need a break. But some of the rest of them…" She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I wish I could say they're all just down on their luck, but I've lived here too long and seen way too much. And I've learned that the addicts will tell you anything they think you might be willing to pay for." She fixed him with a look that told him she would know if he didn't tell her the exact truth. "So how much did you pay him?"

Keith felt utterly stupid. "Five dollars,"he admitted.

"Tell me what he looked like. And be specific-shabby clothes and gray hair isn't going to cut it. That's half the derelicts I know."

Keith cast his mind back to when he'd talked to the drunk that morning, and began describing everything he remembered. When he was finished, Eve Harris nodded grimly.

"Al Kelly," she sighed. "Well, at least now I know what happened to him." She took a deep breath. "Mr. Converse, let me tell you a few things about this city…" She talked steadily, and when she was done, Keith's hands were clenched around his now empty glass.

"You're saying it was my fault Al Kelly died?" he asked, signaling Justin for a refill. "You're saying if I hadn't given him the five dollars, he wouldn't be dead?"

Eve shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. But I do know better than to give money to addicts. Drunks and junkies-they're all the same-they'll lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. And it sounds like you bought Al's lie for five dollars. Some other people saw the money change hands, and a few minutes later Al's dead. You add it up."

Now it was Keith who fell into a long silence. Out the window, it was starting to get dark, and cold-looking rain had begun to fall. The bar itself was so packed now that the waiter was barely able to get through with his drink. Keith pictured the subway platform again, and recalled the roar of the trains that streamed through the station every few minutes all through the long afternoon as he'd shown Jeff's photograph to anyone who would look. Most of the people-the well-dressed ones who had things to do and places to go-barely even glanced at the photo. Most of them turned their back on him, or refused to acknowledge his existence at all.

Only the bums-the ragged men and women who had nothing better to do-had been willing to talk to him.

And now Eve Harris was telling him that most of them would just as soon lie to him as tell him the truth.

Like Al Kelly had lied. And gotten killed for a lousy few bucks.

And even if Kelly hadn't lied, how was he supposed to find Jeff? he wondered. If his son had made it into the subway station, he could have gotten on any one of the trains and gone anywhere.

Maybe Eve Harris was right-maybe he should just give it up and go back home. But then he remembered there was still one more possibility. "Do you know a lot of them?" he asked. "The people on the streets?"

"Everybody in the city knows them," Eve replied. "I just take the time to talk to some of them." She smiled wryly. "I guess I sort of think of myself as their voice on the council- Lord knows they don't have another one, and if I don't stick up for them, no one will."

"So have you ever run into someone named Scratch?"

Eve shook her head. "I don't think so. Who is he?"

"The man Al Kelly said led my son down into the subway," he said.

"I suspect he's no more real than anything else Al Kelly told you he saw." She glanced at her watch, finished her merlot, and stood up. "I don't have any way of knowing whether your son was guilty or not, but I think I can understand how much you're hurting right now. So let me talk to a couple of people, and at least maybe we can find out if anyone else has ever heard of this ‘Scratch' person. Call me tomorrow?"

Keith stood up. "Are you saying you believe me? That Jeff might be alive?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe," Eve said. "It's what you believe that's making you hurt. The only way you're going to stop hurting is by knowing for sure."

Then she was gone.

None of the men spoke; they didn't have to.

They all knew why they were there, what they had to do, what they were going to do…

Silently, they stripped off the clothes they'd worn when they arrived, then just as silently began pulling on the clothes they would wear for the evening's adventure. First came the socks and gloves. The socks were thick to keep their feet warm inside the thin and flexible shoes they would wear. The gloves were thin, to allow their fingers maximum flexibility.

Both the socks and gloves were black.

Next came the insulated nylon coveralls, so the men would be protected against the chill of the tunnel.

Then the shoes and the smudges of makeup, as black as the gloves and the coveralls.

Only when they were completely dressed, when every inch of their skin was covered in a dull and nonreflective black material, did they begin equipping themselves.

Each of them carried a knife, strapped to the lower leg, where it could be easily reached from a crouch.

Most of the guns were Steyr Mannlichers, SSG-PI models, chosen for their combination of accuracy, a short barrel, and the option to add either a flash hider or a suppressor. Fully loaded and equipped with second generation rifle scopes that could take advantage of any available light or provide their own infrared illumination, the guns still weighed barely ten pounds.

A couple of the hunters carried far less complicated but usually just as effective M-14A1s, the favored sniper rifle of the Marines.

For communication, they carried Ericsson-GE two-way radios, though by now they rarely needed them.

As silently as he'd dressed, each man now nodded an acknowledgment that he was ready.

Only then did the leader-who looked no different from the others-unlock the heavy door set into the room's back wall. He swung the door open and stepped to one side. "I am Hawk," he said. Then, as each man passed, he whispered a code name. Tonight, all the names happened to be avian.

"Eagle."

"Falcon."

"Osprey."

"Harrier."

"Kite."

Beyond the heavy door, which the leader closed and locked behind him, was a wide tunnel filled with steam pipes. Dim lights-bare bulbs protected by heavy metal grilles-cast pools of illumination every hundred feet, and even the areas between the bulbs weren't quite dark. "Level Four, Second Sector," the leader said. "Teams of two. Eagle and Osprey. Falcon and Harrier. Kite with me."

The men quickly set off toward the north, darting from one shadowy area to the next, scurrying through the pools of light like cockroaches escaping into the shelter of darkness. Soon, they turned toward the west, and now the tunnel was narrower, its ceiling lower, its lights more distantly spaced. The men, though, were almost as familiar with the tunnels beneath the streets as they were with the streets themselves, and they slowed not at all as they moved deeper and deeper into the maze. So far they hadn't needed to speak at all, for each of them knew exactly where they were. The real challenge wouldn't come for another half hour, when they descended to a level none of them had visited before.

With luck, one member of the party would bag the trophy tonight.

More likely, tonight would be nothing more than reconnaissance, as it usually was whenever they began the exploration of a new territory. The teams would split up, each team mapping the passages they explored, searching the byways and shafts, familiarizing themselves with the terrain.

For many, the reconnaissance was nearly as satisfying as the bagging of the trophy itself, although in the end the kill would always be the ultimate prize.

So how the fuck do we get out of here?"

Jeff could hear the fear behind Jagger's angry words-the same fear that had been burning away his own sense of hope.

Up!

That's all they had to do-get up to the surface. But as he tried to remember how he'd arrived at the airless room in the first place, tried to recall the twists and turns as he'd been led through the tunnels under the city, he realized it was impossible. He had no idea where they might be-no idea of how far he'd come from the subway station. Jagger had said they brought him down from the hospital, which Jeff assumed was Bellevue, but who knew how far from the hospital Jagger might have been taken?

What's more, he had no idea how deep beneath the city they might be.

Since the shot-and the scream that immediately followed it-had dictated the direction of their initial flight, they'd kept moving straight ahead. The tunnel, just tall enough so Jeff could walk upright, seemed to have been hacked out of the native rock itself. Pipes ran along the floor, large pipes that Jeff was certain were water mains. He was also fairly certain that they must be moving either north or south, under one of the avenues.

Not Park-the commuter trains from Grand Central ran under Park.

Unless they were south of the station. The trains to the suburbs all ran north, didn't they? He wracked his brain, trying to remember. But there were so many trains running in and out of the city all day-not just from Grand Central, but from Penn Station as well.

And the subways.

How many were there?

Dozens.

And aside from the subway tunnels, how many others were there under the city?

Hundreds.

A dim memory came back to him, of a class he'd taken last fall. It seemed like another life-had been another life. Evenings with Heather Randall in his tiny apartment on 109th Street, just west of Broadway. A life that now seemed so far removed that even the memories seemed to belong to someone else. But then the memory of the class-a semester on urban infrastructure-came into sharper focus, and he could almost hear the professor's voice.

"No one really knows what's under the streets of Manhattan anymore. A lot of people know parts of it-there are maps of the water system, maps of the gas mains, and maps of the trains and the subway systems and the electrical grid. But there is no map of all of it."

As they'd followed the flashlight beam, which already seemed to be weakening, Jeff had tried to keep his eyes trained upward, looking for a shaft that would take them to the surface.

Now they'd found one. Directly above his head rose a narrow shaft with a rusting ladder anchored in rotting concrete.

"One of us goes up that shaft and sees where it leads," he said.

Jagger shook his head. "I ain't goin‘. Could be anything up there."

"So what do you want to do, just keep walking? We're going to have to go up sooner or later."

Jagger peered up at the hole. "Doesn't look like it goes anywhere."

"It's got to go somewhere-if it doesn't, then why's it there?" He reached up and grasped the lowest rung of the ladder. "Give me a boost." As if he weighed no more than a child, Jagger raised him up until he was high enough to get a foot onto the bottom rung. "Shut off your light," he said as he switched on his own. "No use wasting the batteries."

"What if you don't come back?" Jagger asked.

"I'll be back," Jeff told him. "You think I want to be down here by myself? Just stay here and I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

He started climbing, creeping up the corroded ladder. Though he knew it had to be his imagination, the shaft seemed to be growing narrower, tightening around him until he felt he couldn't breathe. Panic welled up in him. If he got stuck-

You won't, he told himself.

But the higher he climbed, the worse the claustrophobia got. His skin was clammy now, his heart pounding, and his chest felt as if it were being squeezed by a boa constrictor.

Steeling himself against his rising panic, he kept climbing.

Then, above him, he sensed something.

Something was there, in the darkness above him.

He shined the light upward.

Two red eyes glinted.

It was a rat, no more than three feet above him!

He shied away from the rodent, his body jerking reflexively. His back slammed against the wall of the shaft behind him as one knee smashed into a rung of the ladder. The rat, baring its teeth and hissing at him, suddenly disappeared, and for a moment Jeff succumbed to the panic that had been building inside him since he'd begun climbing the shaft.

Where had it gone? Where could it have gone?

Down! It was coming down at him! He flashed the light around desperately, searching for the rat, but it had vanished. Then, as his panic subsided, he saw another passage going off to the side, three feet above his head. The hope that had been nearly extinguished by the claustrophobia and panic surged back, and he scrambled upward until he could see down the new passage.

Far in the distance he saw something that dissipated the terror of a moment before.

Light. Far away, barely visible, but utterly undeniable.

A way out.