The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 23

The familiar beep of the answering machine in Jeff's apartment signaling a message waiting was so unexpected that both Keith and Heather stopped short at the door. Their eyes locked on the machine, the same thought crashing into both their heads.

Jeff!

He'd gotten out of the tunnels and was calling for help and-

And both of them hesitated before they'd taken more than a single step toward the machine. Why would Jeff call here? He couldn't know they were looking for him, let alone that his father was staying in his apartment. The red light continued to blink and the beep sounded again.

"No one knows I'm here," Keith said.

Where a moment ago both of them had been eager to listen to the message, they were now reluctant. Why would anyone call here?

"Probably my foreman," Keith said, but the lack of conviction in his voice told Heather he didn't really believe it. Finally, Heather went over and pressed the button.

"One new message," the impersonal voice of the machine intoned.

"Keith? Are you there? If you're there, you pick the phone up right now!" It was Mary's voice, and the edge on it told Keith his wife was on the verge of hysteria. There was a barely perceptible pause, and then she went on. "I know you're staying there-Vic DiMarco says he hasn't seen you since day before yesterday. You have to be at Jeff's. I don't see how you can stand it, with all his things around you-" She abruptly cut off her own words and Keith could almost hear her struggling to regain control of herself. Then she started over: "There's going to be a memorial mass for Jeff tomorrow. I was going to hold it out here at St. Barnabas, but then-well, I started thinking about how much Jeff loved the city, and how many friends he has there, and how much he loved St. Patrick's. So the mass is going to be there. At one o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I tried to call Heather, but she's not home. I'll keep trying…" Her voice trailed off, and now Keith had the distinct impression she was trying to think of more to say, if for no other reason than to avoid hanging up the telephone. Finally, she spoke again, and now her voice had a flat, defeated quality. "If you get this, please call me back, Keith."

There was a click, and then the computer-generated voice spoke again: "1:52 p.m."

As the machine fell silent, neither Keith nor Heather said anything. Keith reached out and pressed the button that activated the outgoing message on the machine, and Jeff's voice emerged from the tinny speaker. "Hi! You know what to do, so go ahead and do it. I'll call you back as soon as I can!"

They both listened to the message, then Keith shook his head. "I can't erase it. We kept it on all through the trial because we were sure he was coming home. And I'm still sure."

Heather chewed at her lower lip. "What about the memorial tomorrow?"

"What about it?" Keith asked, a note of stubbornness creeping into his voice that told Heather what he was thinking as clearly as any words could have.

"We have to go," Heather said.

"But he's not dead!" Keith's voice began to rise. "What are we supposed to do, sit there acting like he's dead when we don't believe it?"

"I think we need to be there anyway," Heather replied. "If neither one of us goes, how will it look? Everyone else thinks that Jeff is dead, and if we don't go to the mass-"

"I don't give a damn what anyone thinks," Keith cut in. "Going to that mass is like admitting he's dead. I'm damned if-"

Suddenly, all Heather's tension erupted in pure anger. "Why doesn't anyone matter except you?" she demanded. "Don't you care about how anyone but you feels? And it's not admitting he's dead!"

"The hell it isn't!" Keith shot back. "It's not just a mass- it's a funeral mass. It's praying for the dead."

Heather hardly let him finish. "Then don't say the prayers for the dead! Pray that we find him-pray that he's all right- pray for any damn thing you want!" Her eyes fixed on him. "And call Mary. Don't be the same kind of asshole my dad is to my mother!" Shocked by her own outburst, Heather clapped a hand over her mouth for a second, then shook her head almost violently. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. I mean-"

But now it was Keith shaking his head. "It's okay," he told her, his own anger draining away as quickly as hers. "You're right-no matter what problems Mary and I have, she shouldn't have to go through all this alone." For the first time since they'd come into Jeff's apartment, he smiled. "Actually, one of the main things we fought about was you- Mary always thought you were the best thing that ever happened to Jeff, and as I'm sure you know, I didn't agree. So I guess it turns out I was wrong about that." He picked up the phone and dialed Mary's number. "It's me," he said when she picked up. "You're right-I'm at Jeff's. I'm-well, if I told you what I'm doing, you'd only think I was crazier than you already do."

"You're right," Mary replied. "I don't want to know." There was a short silence. "Just be at the mass tomorrow, all right?"

Before Keith could reply, the phone went dead in his hand.

I still say it can't be this easy," Jeff said. The patch of daylight had been growing steadily, and now it seemed to be drawing them out of the grim shadows of the railroad tunnel like a magnet.

"Why not?" Jagger demanded, his eyes fixed on the expanse of blue sky ahead. "All they said was we had to get out-that if we could get out we'd be free." He took another step toward the bright beacon, but Jeff's fingers closed on his arm, holding him back.

"It can't be that easy," he said. "They're not going to just let us walk out." Now he had an uneasy feeling that they weren't actually alone in the shadows, that somewhere in the darkness, someone was watching them. He glanced around, but his eyes had already been blinded by the brilliant daylight ahead, and in contrast, the shadows behind him were an impenetrable pitch-black.

If there were people behind them-and he thought he could almost feel them now-he and Jagger would be framed in perfect silhouette against the bright backdrop of the sky. He moved off the center of the track like a creature of the darkness reacting to the dangers of daylight.

But Jagger was already moving toward the light again. Not wanting to lose his companion, Jeff followed him. After another eighty paces or so they could see the mouth of the tunnel. Though there was still a roof over the tracks and a solid concrete wall to the east, the west side of the tracks was open to the Hudson River. To the north they could see the George Washington Bridge, and across the river the wooded bluffs of New Jersey.

"Holy fuck," Jagger whispered. "Will you look at that? We did it, man! We're out!"

Jeff recognized where they were. The southernmost end of Riverside Park was just above them. From what he could remember from the long walks he and Heather had taken through the park a lifetime ago, a high fence separated the tracks from the park itself. It was designed to keep people away from the tracks, and out of the tunnels. A fence that now served to hold them in. But the fence was hardly insurmountable. It wasn't as if they were on Rikers Island, where the prison buildings were surrounded by two fences and a no-man's-land filled with razor wire. Here, there was only a single obstacle, maybe eight or nine feet high. A few strands of barbed wire ran along its top, but he remembered watching a couple of kids slither over the fence one day to retrieve a model airplane that had lost power at the wrong moment. Though one of the kids' mothers had yelled bloody murder at her son, the boy ignored her, scaling the fence with the ease of a chimpanzee climbing the wall of an old cage in the Central Park Zoo. If those two boys could do it, so could he and Jagger.

Yet even as he told himself escape was possible, an instinct told him that something was wrong, that it couldn't be as easy as it looked. From the moment he had tried to help Cynthia Allen on that subway platform, nothing in his life had been easy.

They moved forward again, but Jagger seemed to have been infected by the same unease, and instead of rushing toward daylight, he also moved ahead more cautiously.

The view of the Hudson broadened, and they could smell fresh air from the river. Jeff drew it deep into his lungs, reveling in its sweetness. As the crisp air flushed some of the staleness of the tunnels out of his system, his sense of danger began to diminish.

Perhaps, after all, they were about to escape.

But escape to what? Even if they got out of the tunnels, the police would be searching for them. For him, at least. The guards taking him to Rikers surely would have witnessed his escape.

Unless…

What if both the driver and the guard riding shotgun had died when the van exploded?

But even if that happened, the police would have found the van's open back door. And they wouldn't have found his body. They'd know he escaped, and they'd be looking for him.

On the surface, away from the terrible darkness and claustrophobia of the maze that lay beneath the city, at least he'd have a chance. "Maybe we can do it," he whispered, not really meaning to speak out loud.

"Sure we can," Jagger replied. He threw his arm around Jeff's shoulders. "Over that fence, and we're outta here. Come on."

Moving forward, they edged closer and closer to the point where the west wall of the tunnel would end. Ten feet from their goal, Jeff cast one backward glance into the darkness- the darkness he hoped never to see again. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."

Quickening their pace, they emerged from the shadows into the late afternoon sunshine. The fence was right where Jeff remembered it. And on the other side, he saw the softball field, where he'd played a couple of times in pickup games.

Maybe thirty-five yards to the fence-fifty at most.

And then he heard a voice, low and menacing.

Mocking.

"Too bad, boys. Wrong exit."

Jeff spun around to see five derelicts indolently watching them. Their hair was shaggy and unkempt. They wore grease-stained shirts and pants and had moth-eaten knit caps on their heads.

One was sitting on the ground, leaning against a rock. Two more were lounging against the wall of the tunnel itself. Another pair were sitting in faded canvas director's chairs, one of which was missing an arm.

The man who had spoken was holding a gun-an ugly snub-nosed revolver-and pointing it at Jeff. The other four had their hands concealed in jacket pockets, and Jeff was certain that another gun was concealed in every one.

Instinctively, he looked the other way, only to see three more men, dressed as shabbily as the rest, and looking just as menacing.

The Softball field was empty, and he and Jagger were shielded from the view of any chance passerby. There was no one in sight except the eight homeless men.

Silently, Jeff and Jagger turned away from the fence and retraced their steps.

A few seconds later the darkness of the tunnel closed around them again.