The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 19

The night seemed to have grown darker when Heather and Keith emerged from the subway station. A few cabs were cruising on Broadway and a smattering of people dotted the sidewalks, but as they started up the long block toward Jeff's building, the noise of the traffic on Broadway died away, and the street was unusually deserted.

As they came to Jeff's building, Keith turned to face Heather. "This is all nuts, isn't it? I mean, what are we doing, following crazy old women down into the subway?"

Heather looked up at him. Though she hadn't seen a strong resemblance between Jeff and Keith until earlier that night, in the apartment, now, in the glow of the streetlight and the shadows that lay over his features, she clearly recognized the son in the father. Maybe it was something in his voice, or his posture, or even the line of his jaw, but whatever it was, she suddenly felt she was standing with Jeff himself, hearing all the uncertainty in his voice when he'd talked about the future, about the pain he was going to inflict on his father when he finally told Keith that he had no intention of going back to Bridgehampton when he finished school.

That pain, Heather knew, would have been nowhere near as terrible as the pain she could see Keith suffering right now.

"I'd better go home, and you should get some sleep," she said. She started to turn away, but Keith reached out and took her arm.

"Tell me I'm not nuts," he said softly. "Tell me I'm right."

"I don't know if you're right," Heather said. "But I know we heard something. I'm not sure what it was-it doesn't seem possible it could have been Jeff, but-" She gently pulled herself loose from his grip. "If you're crazy, then I guess I am, too." She started quickly back toward Broadway, but then turned to face him again, and this time met his eyes directly. "Tomorrow," she said. "We'll start looking again tomorrow."

"I'll wait for you," he said.

This time Heather didn't look back, but could feel Keith's eyes on her as she hurried down 109th Street toward the lights and noise of Broadway.

"Spare change?"

The phrase was so familiar to Heather that she almost didn't hear it at all, but as she raised her hand to signal to the cab that was still two blocks up Broadway, she heard it again.

"Come on, lady-don'cha even have a quarter?"

Still waving at the cab, Heather glanced at the source of the voice out of the corner of her eye. A boy, maybe ten years old, certainly no older. He was dressed in the typical clothing of the homeless: pants that were little more than rags and a grubby shirt whose tails were hanging out in back. His skin was pale and his unkempt blond hair hung in a tangle over his forehead.

It was his eyes that shocked her. They weren't those of a ten-year-old at all.

They were more like the eyes of an animal.

As he looked up at her, she could see them flicking first in one direction, then another, scanning the street for unseen danger.

She glanced at her watch. It was nearly midnight. What was he doing there? Was he a runaway?

She thought of the old woman she'd seen disappearing into the darkness of the tunnels.

The woman who probably had no more family than this boy.

The woman who had finally grown so fearful she wouldn't even speak to someone like her, preferring to disappear into the darkness and filth that lay beneath the streets.

She reflected that in a few more years, maybe even months, that's what this boy might be like.

As the cab pulled up, Heather burrowed deep into her purse until her fingers closed on a bill. Pulling it out-not even looking at it-she offered it to the boy. As he snatched the bill out of her hand like a squirrel snatching a nut from an old man in Central Park, Heather got in the cab. She pulled the door shut and gave the driver her address.

Why did I do that? she wondered as the cab pulled away. Giving them money only encourages them.

She twisted around to peer out the back window, but the boy was gone.

By the time she got home, she knew exactly why she'd given money to the boy.

He was no longer just another one of the faceless mass of homeless people who lived all around her.

Now he was someone-if she could ever find him again- who might be able to help her.

Help her, and help Keith.

Help them find Jeff.

"Time to go," Creeper said.

Jeff had been dozing fitfully, resting his back against the hard concrete. His stomach, which had been churning violently against the meal Creeper served them, was only now starting to settle down, and what little sleep he'd gotten had done nothing to ease the soreness in his muscles. A small groan escaped his lips as he unfolded his legs, which he had drawn up to his chest in an almost fetal position.

Jagger's huge hand closed on his own. "Gonna be okay, buddy," he said, pulling Jeff to his feet. The fire in the barrel had burned low, and the corners of the alcove had disappeared back into darkness. Jagger's eyes darted toward Creeper, who was already on the abandoned tracks, then he nodded toward his other hand. In the fading glow of the firelight, Jeff could see that he held a large railroad spike, the tapered end clutched in Jagger's fist, the head forming a heavy club with a hooked end. Jagger tilted his head toward Creeper. "Soon's we get somewhere where we can see a way out-"

He spoke in the lowest whisper possible, but it didn't seem to matter.

"You're gonna need that thing for track rabbit," Creeper said, not even bothering to glance in their direction. "Whack me with it, and you'll never get outta here." He started down the track, moving in the opposite direction from which they'd come.

Jagger watched him suspiciously. "Maybe we don't need him at all."

Jeff tried to see into the tunnel from which they'd arrived. If anything, the blackness seemed to have deepened. It was only a trick of his mind, he realized-the few short hours he'd spent in the glow of the firelight had deepened his reluctance to return to the pitch-darkness of the tunnels.

He switched on his flashlight, but the bulb barely lit at all, and rapidly dimmed to a small glowing pinpoint.

He remembered the voice-his father's voice?-drifting out of the blackness. Nothing more than a hallucination.

But then he thought of the very real voices they'd heard, and the shot.

"Better go with Creeper," he finally said. "At least he's got a light."

Jagger's eyes narrowed. "I could take that away from him."

"Even if you do, what do we do when the battery runs out?"

"Maybe we'd have found a way out of here by then."

"And maybe we wouldn't," Jeff replied. He jumped down onto the tracks. "You coming?"

Jagger still hesitated, but finally nodded. "I'm with you."

Creeper was already a dozen yards ahead of them, and as they started after him, he glanced back over his shoulder. "I'm shuttin‘ off the light," he said. "Just keep following me." The bright beam of the halogen torch went out, and as the blackness closed around Jeff, sharp-taloned fingers of panic began to rip at his nerves. He tried to move through the darkness, tripped over a rail, yelped with pain as his ankle twisted, then instinctively threw out a hand to steady himself. By pure luck his hand found the wall and he didn't fall. Instantly, the flashlight came back on.

"Fuckin‘ idiot," Creeper said. "Just keep touchin' the wall and you'll be okay."

The light went back out, and Jeff could hear him moving again.

A few seconds later the light flashed on again, then almost immediately went out yet again. Ahead of them Jeff could hear Creeper's footsteps echoing, and even before the light went on again, he knew the other man was moving much faster than he and Jagger.

"Fucker's tryin‘ to lose us," Jagger muttered the next time the light came on and they discovered they'd fallen nearly fifty yards behind.

"He can't lose us if we don't let him," Jeff said. Reaching out with his right hand, he felt the rough concrete of the wall. Somehow, just touching the wall steadied the vertigo induced by the darkness, and he stepped up his pace, ignoring the burning in his injured ankle.

The next time the light flicked on, Creeper was once again only a few yards ahead of them.

A few yards farther on, Creeper stopped and waited for them to catch up.

"How far are we going?" Jeff asked.

"No farther," Creeper told him. "Now we go up." He shined his light on the wall of the tunnel. There was another alcove here-far smaller than the one where they'd eaten and rested-but in this alcove, iron steps had been mounted in the concrete to form a ladder into a narrow shaft that led straight up. "There's another tunnel up above. Water mains." Without another word, he started scrambling up the ladder.

With no other choice than being left in the darkness, Jeff and Jagger followed.

After walking another ten minutes-or maybe half an hour, or even an hour-they'd climbed two more ladders and were in a third tunnel.

Far ahead, Jeff saw light.

Not the flickering, bobbing movement of flashlights, but the steady glow of electric lights mounted on the tunnel's wall.

Creeper, putting the halogen light out for the last time, picked up his pace. The throbbing in Jeff's ankle seemed to ease as a goal finally came into sight. They were in a utility tunnel-cables, pipes, and conduits ran along both walls and hung from the ceiling. Ahead, Jeff could see the first of a series of dim bulbs, each encased in glass and protected by a heavy metal cage, mounted in the ceiling.

As they came to the first one, Creeper stopped and turned to face them. "Welcome to the condos," he said with the same grin he'd offered them hours ago, when he showed them their dinner. "Manhattan's cheapest housing, all utilities included." He stepped through a door in the wall.

Jeff and Jagger hesitated. Jagger glanced at the door, then shifted his gaze to the dimly lit tunnel that stretched ahead of them. "I think maybe we oughta keep goin‘."

Jeff, too, eyed the lights strung along the tunnel like lamps over a pathway. Creeper's voice came from inside the door.

"We got company."

"Anyone we know?" It was a woman's voice, and Jeff thought he heard a note of humor in it.

"Not me. Found ‘em two flights down."

"Well, bring ‘em on in-lucky they didn't die down there. And we got plenty of food-real food, not that track rabbit some people eat."

Creeper reappeared at the door, and along with him came a scent that filled Jeff's nostrils, started his mouth watering and sent pangs of hunger twisting through his belly.

Stew.

Not the thin, flavorless stew that was all they'd been fed when they'd been locked in the room somewhere down in the utter darkness below. This smelled like the stew his mother used to make, pungent with herbs.

"You guys coming in or not?" Creeper asked.

It was the aroma of the stew that ended whatever doubts Jeff might have had. As he stepped through the door, he saw the last thing he would have expected to find in this place.