The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 29

"Why don't you just tell me, okay?" Jinx said, struggling not to turn away from the steely gaze of the man who was staring down at her with the hardest eyes she'd ever seen. She'd never had any trouble staring people down before, but this man, whom she'd never seen before and already hoped she'd never see again, was different. She wasn't sure how old he was; he could have been twenty, or could just as easily have been forty-maybe even forty-five. She'd found him in the Seventy-second Street subway station, lounging against the wall at the far end. She'd known right away he was one of the herders, even though he was doing his best to look like he didn't have anything better to do than hang out in the subway. But if he hadn't been a herder, he'd have been sprawled out on the platform, probably holding tight to the brown bag that sat between his feet-no wino Jinx had ever seen let the bottle leave his hand, much less sit unguarded on the floor while he was standing up. The knife had most clearly given him away. Jinx spotted it right off, clutched in his right hand, only partly hidden by the ragged denim vest that he wore over a dirty flannel shirt with torn-off sleeves. Once she pegged him as a herder, she'd walked right up to him and asked him if he'd seen the two guys in the hunt.

He'd just stared at her blankly, like he didn't know what she was talking about. She hadn't realized how big he was until she was right in front of him. Now he towered over her, the thick muscles of his tattoo-covered biceps rippling every time he flexed them, which she knew he was doing just to impress her. Well, screw him-she'd been on the streets way too long to be impressed with big muscles and small brains. She held her ground and her gaze never wavered. "Come on, what's the big deal?"

The man's lips pulled back to reveal his rotting teeth, and his glazed eyes told her he'd gotten hold of some drugs not very long ago. She wondered if Lester and Eddie were dealing again-if they were, Tillie'd kick their asses out for sure. But if the man was stoned, he was a lot more dangerous than he'd be if he was straight, or just drunk. His eyes finally shifted away from hers and raked over her body.

Sizing her up.

She saw him glance down the platform, checking out the crowd, and she steeled herself, knowing that if he was really junked up, he might try to rape her right there. Ready to spring away if he made a move toward her, she tried once more. "Look-all I'm supposed to do is find out if they tried to get out through here. So what do I say? That you were too fucked up to see?" The man tensed, and for a second Jinx thought she might have gone too far. But a second later the gamble paid off.

"One joint," the man snarled. "All's I had was one fuckin‘ joint." But even as he spoke, his right hand moved to cover the barely scabbed tracks on the inside of his left arm.

"So what about it?" she asked. "Did you see ‘em or not?"

"What the fuck business is it of yours?" the man countered, but the aggression in his voice had given way to a faint whine.

"You got your job, I got mine. So what's the big fuckin‘ deal?" Her confidence restored, Jinx's eyes locked onto the man again.

"I ain't seen ‘em," he said, his eyes shifting to the subway tunnel as if he expected them to come walking out of the darkness. Jinx was about to turn away when the man said, "But I heard they tried to get out over by the river yesterday."

The whine in his voice was more prominent, and then Jinx understood. He was scared of her now. He didn't know who she was or who she might be working for. But he knew exactly what would happen to him if he fucked up-the hunters would turn on him, and instead of having an easy source of the cash he needed for whatever he was shooting, he'd be running in the tunnels himself. She turned back to face him again. Suddenly, he didn't look nearly as big as he had a few moments ago, and the hard, empty glaze in his eyes had given way to a nervousness that told Jinx the junk was starting to wear off. The sweat that broke out on his forehead confirmed it.

"Like I care what happened yesterday," she said, seizing the opportunity. "What they want to know is where they are now."

The last of the man's junkie confidence crumbled. "I don't know-I'm tellin‘ you, I don't know nothin'." Then, as if searching for something, anything, that might make Jinx say something good about him to whomever she was working for, he said, "They found Crazy Harry this morning."

Crazy Harry? Who was he? She had never heard of him, but she said nothing, certain that her silence would be enough to keep the man talking. Sure enough, he started up again. "He was in his room, down near where Shine's bunch hangs out. Someone cut him last night." His voice dropped. "The guy that told me said it looked like they jammed a railroad spike in him." The man's head shook from side to side as if he could hardly believe what he'd heard. "Who'd do a thing like that? Shit, Harry was crazy, but he never hurt no one. Why'd anyone want to cut him up?"

But Jinx had stopped listening.

A railroad spike. The guy with Jeff Converse-Jagger, that was his name-had carried a railroad spike.

"Where'd he live?" she asked.

"Who?" the man countered.

"Crazy Harry!" Jinx replied. "You said he lived down near Shine. Where's that?"

The man shook his head. "How do I know? Down below somewhere-down where all the crazies live."

"How do I get there?" Jinx asked.

Now the man's eyes changed again, turning suspicious. "Thought you just wanted to know about them guys the hunters are after."

He started to reach for her arm, but with instincts honed by years on the streets, Jinx spun away before his huge hand closed on her. Flipping him the bird, she darted toward the stairs and was halfway up to the surface before the man had even moved. By the time she got to the surface, she knew exactly where she would go next.

Sledge.

She'd known Sledge almost as long as she'd known Tillie, and if anyone would know where this guy called Shine lived, he would. Sledge talked to everyone, and everyone talked to him.

Emerging into the afternoon sunlight, she headed north, abandoning the tunnels, at least for a while.

The man called Sledge thought he was somewhere around seventy years old, though he wasn't quite sure and he didn't really care. His real name was Charles Price, but he hadn't used it for so long that if someone had spoken it, he probably wouldn't have responded at all. He'd grown up in West Virginia, and after a year in the coal mines had decided that there had to be more to life than breathing dust and dying young.

As it turned out, that wasn't quite true.

For a long time he drifted from one job to another, always managing to drink his way out of them. Finally the day came when there were no more jobs, and Sledge found himself on the streets. It wasn't much of a comedown, since the free flophouses and missions weren't much worse than the rooms he'd been paying for. Then one night someone tried to roll him in one of the missions-it was the third time-and Sledge decided he'd had it. That was when he started looking around for a better place to live, and discovered the tunnels.

He started out in a nest on one of the catwalks above the tracks under Grand Central, using the washrooms to clean up and doing some panhandling in the huge waiting room. But the transit cops kept giving him a hard time, and finally he migrated north. For a while he lived in a really weird place- a little forgotten subway station that he'd stumbled into one night when he was really drunk. He'd thought the walls were all paneled with wood, and it hadn't looked like any subway station he'd ever seen before. He'd passed out, of course, but when he awoke the next day it turned out he hadn't been hallucinating at all. There really was paneling on the walls, and a grand piano on the platform, and a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. If he'd kept his mouth shut about it, he might still be living there, but he told too many people, and one night some people from the surface showed up, and the next time he tried to get in, it was all locked up. He'd heard it was part of some kind of museum now, but wasn't sure and didn't care.

He just moved farther north.

He lived under the park now, in a railroad tunnel that was hardly used at all anymore. He'd started out in one of the cubbyholes dug into the walls, but when someone moved out of one of the work bunkers, he moved in. He'd added some worn carpet, a little furniture he'd found on the sidewalks- thrown out even though it wasn't in half bad condition-and hung some pictures on the walls. He'd found a barrel to use for a cooking fire, and stuck it under one of the big grates above the tracks-right outside his bunker-so he had skylights and ventilation, and most of the time it wasn't bad at all. When it turned out he was a pretty decent cook-folks said he could make track rabbit taste just like the real thing- other people started showing up, sometimes with food, sometimes not. If they had food, Sledge threw it on the barbecue, and if they didn't, he shared whatever he had on the grill. Now there were seven chairs around the barrel, and it seemed like people were coming and going all the time. Somewhere along the line Sledge had quit drinking-he hadn't thought about it, couldn't even remember when it happened.

Now, he was on his third or fourth barbecue barrel and thinking it might be getting time to start looking for a new one. On a day like today, with a brilliant blue sky overhead- far brighter than the sky over West Virginia had ever been when he was a boy-and sunlight streaming through the grated skylight overhead, Sledge thought life had turned out pretty good after all. He had lots of friends, and his friends knew they could count on him. He was always home, his fire was always lit, and pretty much anyone was invited to sit down and have a bite to eat. When he saw Jinx coming down the tracks, his smile widened. "Hey, young lady, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" He flipped over a piece of chicken that looked to be done just about right, transferred it to one of the mismatched but not too badly chipped plates that someone had just washed, and held it out to her. "Just in time for some hot lunch."

Jinx took the plate, and when she told him she was trying to find out where Shine lived, his smile faded. "You don't want to be goin‘ anywhere near those folks."

"I'm lookin‘ for someone," Jinx replied.

"You're lookin‘ for trouble if you go lookin' for Shine. How come you want to find him?"

"It's not him-it's one of the guys the hunters are after."

The last of Sledge's smile faded. "You ain't messin‘ in that, are you?" He glanced around, but even though they seemed to be alone, he still dropped his voice. "Them guys the hunters go after are even worse'n Shine's crowd."

"But one of the guys they're after didn't do nothing," Jinx protested.

Sledge's brows arched. He'd never met anyone in the tunnels who didn't have some kind of hard luck story about how they got there, and not one of them ever admitted it might be their own damned fault. With the young kids, there was probably some truth to their tales, but he figured the rest of them were just making up excuses. "Bet he told you that himself, didn't he?" Jinx shook her head and told him what had happened. "So what happened to this Bobby Gomez guy?" he asked when she was finished.

Jinx spread her hands dismissively. "Gone."

"Well, if I was you, that's what I'd be, too. Gone out of here, gettin‘ myself a job, and gettin' my ass back in school. And I sure wouldn't be messin‘ in nobody's business except my own, especially the hunters'."

"All's I was askin‘ was where Shine-"

"Don't you be pushin‘ me, young lady," Sledge said. "I ain't tellin' you nothin‘ at all, you hear?"

"I was just-" Jinx began again, but before she could say anything else, a new voice called out.

"Hey, Sledge. You hear about Crazy Harry?"

Jinx turned to see two men coming down the tracks. One of them was a Puerto Rican tagger who spent most of his time spraying murals on the walls of the tunnels. She didn't recognize the other man.

"What about him?" Sledge asked as the tagger dropped a bag on one of the chairs and started pulling out groceries.

"Got himself killed last night down under the Circle."

The men kept talking, but Jinx had already stopped listening. The Circle had to be Columbus Circle. All kinds of subways came together around there, which meant there were bound to be a lot of herders. If she was careful and asked the right questions…

As Sledge and the two other guys kept talking, Jinx finished her piece of chicken, left the empty plate on the table, and slipped away. She headed south down the tracks, then made her way through a maze of utility tunnels and passages until she came to a shaft Robby had found that came up behind a utility building in the park. Leaving the park, she headed to Cathedral Parkway and the MTA station.

As she rode south a few minutes later, she glanced around the car, sizing up the crowd for an easy lift. But it was the wrong time of day-rush hour was best, when the cars were so crowded that even if someone felt her trying to pick a wallet out of a pocket or a purse, they wouldn't be quite certain who'd done it. The arrival of a transit cop in the car put an end to her reconnaissance, and she settled onto a seat.

The cop, recognizing Jinx, decided to stay in the car, too.

As the train rattled through the tunnel and pulled into the station at 103rd Street, Jinx waited for the cop to get up and move toward the door.

He didn't.

At Ninety-sixth Street Jinx stood up, and so did the cop.

Neither of them got off.

At Seventy-second Street, Jinx got off the car, then got back on.

So did the cop.

Jinx moved to the next car, the cop following her.

From his own seat a few yards away, Keith Converse-on his way to the memorial mass at St. Patrick's-watched the interplay between the cop and the girl. As far as he could tell, the girl hadn't done anything wrong.

She didn't look like a prostitute, and she didn't look like a juvenile delinquent. She just looked…

Homeless.

Homeless, and vaguely familiar.

Or was it that she looked like so many other girls he'd seen in the city, not only here in the subway, but downtown as well? He must have seen dozens of girls who looked just like this one during the months when he'd visited Jeff in jail. A lot of them had been there for the same reason he was: visiting someone.

Sometimes, rarely, it was a brother or a father.

Far more often it was a boyfriend or a pimp.

The ones who weren't dressed in the miniskirts and tight blouses that were the uniform of the prostitute had usually been wearing the same kind of worn shirt and jeans the girl on the subway wore today. If not for the strange interplay between her and the transit cop, Keith might not have noticed her at all.

At first, he'd assumed that the cop was going to arrest her. But when nothing happened, and the cop simply countered every one of the girl's moves with one of his own, Keith began to suspect that the girl hadn't done anything at all.

That the cop was just hassling her.

Why? Simply because he could?

He began paying more attention, and by the Seventy-second Street stop, he was sure he was right. If the cop had been intending to arrest the girl, he would have done it by now.

When he glanced around the car and saw that no one else was paying any attention to what was going on, he told himself that the other people were right, that it was none of his business, and that he was probably wrong anyway-maybe the girl was a criminal and the cop knew her.

A criminal? he repeated to himself. What am I thinking? She can't be more than fifteen, for God's sake! He took a closer look at her and realized she didn't much resemble the dozens of other down-on-their-luck kids he'd seen. For one thing, her eyes didn't have the glazed look of a junkie, and there was nothing about her to suggest she was a prostitute.

And he was almost certain he'd seen her before.

Then it started to fall into place.

She'd gotten on at 110th Street, where he'd gotten on.

Only a block away from Riverside Park, where Eve Harris had introduced him to the homeless woman on the bench yesterday.

There'd been a girl there. A girl wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, who'd asked Tillie if he and Heather had been messin‘ with her. The homeless woman had given her money and told her to go away.

Preoccupied with Tillie, he hadn't paid attention to the girl. But now, studying her face, he was almost certain this was the same person.

When the girl moved to the next car and the cop immediately followed, Keith moved to the back of his own car so he could watch them through the windows. Though he'd intended to ride the train on down to Fiftieth Street, he got off at Columbus Circle, following the cop and the girl.

He walked toward the stairs, certain that the girl would hurry out of the station, but instead she stayed on the platform, moving across toward the uptown side, peering down the tracks as if looking for a train. The cop lounged against a pillar, his eyes still on the girl.

A few people milled around on the platform, some taking the stairs toward the surface, just as many coming down to the platform.

The girl seemed utterly disinterested in anything except the tracks. A couple of minutes later an uptown train came in. The doors opened and the girl stepped on.

So did the cop.

Keith glanced at his watch. He still had an hour before the mass was supposed to begin, plenty of time to walk over to Fifth and down to St. Patrick's, or even catch the next train down to Fiftieth. But if he headed back uptown…

The mass could happen without him, he decided. Right now it was more important to talk to the girl. He dashed toward the train, but was still a few yards away when the doors started to close. He broke into a sprint and was about to thrust his arm between the closing doors when the girl suddenly slipped back out onto the platform.

The doors finished closing and the train pulled away.

The girl flipped her middle finger at the cop, who was now glaring at her from the departing train and talking into his radio. Then she turned and almost bumped into Keith.

"Jeez!" she said. "Can'tcha watch where you're goin‘?" She started to push past Keith, but he put out a hand and held her arm. Her eyes locked on his. "Don't fuck with me, mister," she warned.

"I just want to talk to you for a second," Keith said, speaking so fast his words almost ran together. "I saw you in the park yesterday. With a woman named Tillie?"

The girl frowned, then nodded. "Yeah. You were with a girl. Kinda young for you, isn't she?"

"She's not-" Keith began, then shrugged. "Way too young," he agreed. He reached into his pocket and dug out his wallet, flipping it open. The girl recoiled.

"Shit! You're not a cop, are you?"

"God no! I'm-look, just take a look at this picture and tell me if you've ever seen this guy, okay?"

"Why should I?"

Keith pulled out a five dollar bill. "Will this help?"

The girl hesitated, then took the five dollars and glanced at the photograph. Her eyes widened. "How come you know him?" she asked. "You don't look like one of them."

"One of who?"

The girl hesitated. "Tell me how you know him."

Keith took a deep breath. "I'm his father," he said. "The police told me he's dead, but I don't believe it. I've heard he's in the tunnels." His voice broke, pleading. "All I'm asking is if you've seen him."

Jinx looked up into Keith's face, marked with obvious signs of tension and worry.

She could see the same strong line in this man's jaw that she'd seen in Jeff Converse's yesterday morning. Scanning the platform without seeing anyone who looked like a herder, she finally nodded. "I've seen him," she said. "He's down here. They're after him."

Keith stared at her. "After him? You mean the police?"

Jinx shook her head. "The hunters. They-" Abruptly, she fell silent. Two transit cops were coming down the stairs, taking them two at a time. "Shit," she muttered. "That asshole called his buddies." Whirling away from Keith, she dashed down a short flight of stairs. Keith followed her, only to see her take a second flight, deeper into the station. By the time he reached the lower platform, she seemed to have vanished, but a moment later he spotted her. She was on the tracks to the right of the platform, and as Keith watched, she headed toward the mouth of the tunnel. In the distance he could hear a train coming.

"Wait!" he shouted. "What's your name?"

For a second he wasn't sure she'd heard him, but then she turned. "Jinx!" she called. As the roar of the train grew louder, she darted into the tunnel. The cops arrived just as the train sped into the station. A few people got off and on. The doors closed again, and the train began moving, gathering speed as it lumbered into the same tunnel that had swallowed Jinx a moment ago.

"Which way'd she go?" one of the cops demanded. "The kid in the jeans and flannel shirt?"

Without even thinking about it, Keith shrugged. "Don't know," he said. "By the time I got down here, she was gone."

The cops grunted and headed back toward the stairs, but Keith stayed where he was, staring into the tunnel. The train had vanished, its rumble fading away.

What about Jinx? he wondered. Had the train crushed her as it raced down the tracks? No, if it had hit her, surely it would have stopped, so she must have survived, must somehow have gotten out of its way. His first impulse was to jump down onto the tracks himself and follow her into the darkness. Then he remembered how he was dressed.

And that the gun Vic DiMarco had brought in from Bridgehampton was still sitting on the drawing board in Jeff's apartment.

Swearing silently at himself for having agreed to go to the mass in the first place, he climbed the stairs back to the upper platform, punching Heather's cell-phone number into his phone as he went. "Tell Mary I couldn't make it to the mass," he said through the static when Heather answered. "I-" He hesitated, then decided that Heather, at least, had the right to know what he was going to do. "I'm going home to change my clothes," he said. "Then I'm going to find Jeff."

Giving her no chance to argue, he cut the connection and jumped aboard an uptown train.

Heather had been at Fifty-ninth Street when she received Keith's call. Instead of crossing the street, she turned around and ran the seven short blocks back to her building. Less than five minutes after telling the doorman to get her a cab, she was back in the lobby, clutching a paper sack full of the items she thought she'd need-or at least what she had been able to grab in the two minutes she was inside the apartment. Getting into the back of the waiting cab, she gave the driver Jeff's address, then prayed she wouldn't be too late.

As usual, Perry Randall paused across the street from the 100 Club, taking a few seconds to admire the building. From the outside, of course, there was nothing to reveal the power of its members, power they wielded not only in New York City, but far beyond. They whispered into the ears of the chairmen of the huge financial conglomerates that had swallowed up the small banks that had once been the nation's- and the world's-banking system. They stood behind the heads of the oil cartels that controlled the energy industry and the media giants that controlled the communications empires.

The Hundred was composed of those whose faces might not often appear in newspapers or on television, but whose influence exceeded that of senators or presidents.

These were the people who gave politicians their instructions, subtly and politely.

Perry Randall remembered the first time he had stood across the street from The Hundred, before crossing Fifty-third Street, mounting the short flight of limestone steps, and letting himself in the front door. No doorman stood in front of the building to greet members, open the door for them, or hail them a cab. He'd already known there wouldn't be a bell to ring or a knocker to lift, for the door to The Hundred-at least the outer door-was never locked.

That, at least, was the legend, and on that first day, he had found no reason to doubt it. Despite the momentous occasion, his nerves that evening had been as steady as they had been the week before, when a heavy, cream-colored envelope had arrived on his desk. His name and address were written on the face of the envelope by a calligrapher. He'd assumed it was a wedding invitation until he flipped the envelope over and saw the return address discreetly engraved on the flap:

100 WEST FIFTY-THIRD STREET

There had been no identification of the city-certainly no zip code-but Perry Randall knew there was no necessity for one.

None of these particular cream-colored envelopes had ever been sent beyond the confines of Manhattan, or entrusted to the postal service. And none ever would be.

The following Thursday night, he had arrived at The Hundred as an elected member.

There was nothing extraordinary about the building, really. It could have been almost anything-a private home, a consulate, even the office of a small law firm. The ground floor facade was dominated by two large Palladian windows, discreetly shuttered. Between them was a large door carved out of a single slab of mahogany.

No knocker.

No bell.

Simply the number 100 engraved on a perfectly polished, small silver plaque.

The Hundred neither wanted nor received any publicity.

The people who passed it on the street never gave it a second glance.

Today it looked as it always had, and its simple façade gave Perry Randall the same feeling that had filled him the first time he had studied its understated grace.

The proper people were in charge; the world was under perfect control.

Or, he reminded himself, it had been under perfect control until Jeff Converse had left a message on his answering machine that morning.

Taking a deep breath of the spring air, Randall strode across the street, mounted the steps, and pushed open the great mahogany door. He paused in the small foyer between the outer door and the inner door, allowing the first to swing closed before opening the mahogany-framed glass panel that led to the club's main lobby.

In keeping with the façade, the lobby could have been the entrance hall of any well-to-do Edwardian family home. It bore none of the pretensions of the Vanderbilt or Rockefeller monstrosities farther uptown, all of which boasted entry halls of such grand vulgarity that only their owners could have admired them. Here at The Hundred the main lobby contained a discreet desk behind which the club manager usually sat, a large closet in which the members hung their own coats, a board upon which each member's name appeared, along with a peg to designate him or her "In" or "Out," and a small board commemorating the handful of members who had died before failing to be reelected.

Perry Randall's deepest, most secret wish was that his name would one day be added to that list.

Hanging up his coat, he went directly into the members' reading room. The men he had telephoned that morning were all present.

Arch Cranston leaned against the mantel, swirling a brandy that Perry Randall knew would eventually be left somewhere in the club, untasted. If Cranston's mind would be dulled by anything, it wouldn't be alcohol, but he'd long ago discovered the advantage to be gained by inducing others to have a drink or two.

Carey Atkinson, whose outstanding work heading the police department seemed unimpeachable by anyone, was chatting with Monsignor Terrence McGuire, who was not only in charge of Montrose House, but kept files on far more than half of the Vatican's College of Cardinals as well. In the current pontiff's failing years, McGuire had devoted considerable time to discussions with The Hundred about which cardinal might best serve as the next head of the Catholic Church.

The others in the room were of less visible influence than Cranston, Atkinson, and McGuire, but were no less important to the functioning of the club.

When Perry Randall walked into the room, the level of conversation diminished. Approaching the group, he wasted no time with greetings or preambles.

"Jeff Converse has gotten his hands on a cellular phone," he said, his baleful eye falling on Cranston, who held a controlling interest in one of the largest of the wireless networks.

Arch Cranston didn't bother to respond directly. Instead he merely lifted an eyebrow. "Perhaps we should go downstairs."

Less than two minutes later the entire group had descended two staircases, taking them deep beneath the portion of the brownstone that the membership usually visited. At the bottom of the stairs there was another door, cut from the same slab of mahogany as the building's front door. But here, the three engraved numbers of the front door had been replaced with three letters:

MHC

Perry Randall rapped three times on the door, and in seconds it swung wide open. Malcolm Baldridge stepped back, and bowed.

As they filed through the door, each member of The Hundred's truly elite admired the new trophy that Baldridge had mounted on the wall.

The eyes were bright-far brighter than they'd ever been during life.

The cheeks were ruddy-the picture of good health.

The smile was far more genuine than any offered in the years before he met the men who were now gathered around him.

Perry Randall gazed up at the perfect example of the taxidermist's art that was exhibited in their latest specimen. "Excellent work, Baldridge," he said warmly.

The Manhattan Hunt Club was now in session.