The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 31

Mary Converse got out of a cab at the corner of Broadway and 109th, crossed the street and hurried down the block toward Jeff's building, looking up at the brick structure's grimy facade. She'd never liked the building, even though Jeff had insisted that it was perfect-close to Columbia, and in a safe neighborhood, at least by New York City standards. But the steep staircase and narrow, badly lit halls had given her the creeps. She'd always asked Jeff to come downstairs to let her in, and take her upstairs himself.

But now Jeff was gone, and…

And nothing, Mary told herself. You came here for a reason, so get on with it! Unconsciously squaring her shoulders, she mounted the steps, went into the vestibule, and pressed the button next to Jeff's name.

After a long wait, the buzzer sounded, and Mary pushed the inner door open and went inside. Nothing about the building had changed-the lights were still dim, the hallway narrow, the carpet threadbare, and a musty odor still hung in the air. She climbed the stairs to the third floor, went to the end of the hall, and knocked sharply at Jeff's door.

"If you think you're-" Keith was already saying as he opened the door, but his words died abruptly when he realized it wasn't Heather Randall. Taking a half step backward, he eyed Mary warily. "I-I thought you were at the mass," he began.

Mary shook her head. "There's not going to be a mass," she said. As Keith's brow knit into an uncertain frown, she reached toward the door. "May I come in?"

After hesitating a second, Keith nodded, pulled the door wide and stepped back. As Mary stepped inside and saw Keith in the full daylight flooding through the window, her eyes widened in shock.

His face was unshaven and his uncombed hair looked as if it hadn't been washed in three days. Then, seeing his bloodshot eyes, she thought she understood: he'd been drinking.

"I know how I look," he said. "And I know you think I'm crazy."

She recalled the words of the Virgin that had come to her.

Believe…

"Maybe not," she said. "Or maybe I'm crazy, too."

Keith's frown deepened, and she could see the suspicion in his eyes. "What is it, Mary?" he asked. "Has something happened?"

"I-I'm not sure," Mary stammered. "I was praying, and-" She faltered, and then, her head bowed as if she were ashamed, told him everything that had happened, starting with the broken, static-filled phone call she'd gotten that morning and finishing with the strange experience in the cathedral. "Suddenly I couldn't do it," she finished. "I couldn't listen to the mass for him."

"You were right," he said. Taking his wife's chin gently in his hand, he tipped her face up so she was forced to look directly into his eyes. "I know where he is, Mary," he said. "He's in the tunnels. The tunnels under the city."

Mary gasped, but before she could say anything, Heather Randall burst through the front door. "You're still-" she began, then saw Mary and took in the ashen look on the older woman's face. "What is it?" she asked. "What's going on? Why aren't you at the-"

"Jeff called her," Keith told her. "She could barely hear him, and at first she didn't really believe it was him."

"But it was," Mary breathed, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible. "He's alive, Heather. He's still alive."

Instinctively, Heather put her arms around Mary, but even as she embraced Jeff's mother, her eyes met Keith's. "I'm going with you," she said. Keith was about to object, but she shook her head and released Mary from her embrace, taking a step backward, as if preparing to do battle. "Don't argue with me, Keith. Either I go with you or I'll go in by myself."

Mary's eyes flicked from Keith to Heather, then back to Keith. Until now, she'd rarely heard them exchange more than a word or two, and what words they'd spoken had involved only the barest civility. "Go where?" she asked, even as she took in the way her husband was dressed and recalled what he'd said about the tunnels. Heather's words quickly confirmed her thoughts.

"We think Jeff is in the tunnels under the city," she said. "I know it sounds crazy, but we heard something, and we've been talking to some people, and-"

"It's more than that, Heather," Keith said.

As she listened to him recount his conversation with Jinx, her heart began to race. "You're sure it was the same girl we saw with Tillie?"

Keith nodded. "I'm sure." He glanced at his watch. "And I know where she was twenty minutes ago. If I can find her…"

A strange sensation of cold had spread through Mary as she tried to follow the conversation between Heather and Keith, but the same words kept flowing through her mind: He's not dead… Jeff's not dead… But then more words- Keith's and Heather's words-broke through.

"… tunnels… hunters…"

"… the girl we saw with Tillie…"

The coldness tightened its grip, and a wave of dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. No! she told herself. Not now! Get a grip on yourself, and start doing what you can to help! " ‘Hunters,' " she finally said, determined not to give in to her roiling emotions. "What was she talking about?"

"I don't know," Keith said grimly. "But the only way I'm going to find out-or find Jeff-is by going in there myself."

Mary's first impulse was to argue with him. There had to be a better way! She opened her mouth, about to speak, but restrained herself. Hadn't she been doing nothing but arguing with Keith for the last three months? She steeled herself, not speaking until she was certain she could betray none of the fears she was feeling. "What can I do?" she asked.

Keith glanced at Heather, who was pulling clothes from the bag she'd brought with her, and realized it was senseless to argue with her. As Heather headed to the bathroom to peel off the dress she'd intended to wear to the mass, he shrugged at Mary. "I'm not sure," he began.

"Food," Mary said. "What have you got?" When Keith made no reply, she turned toward the door. "I'll get some sandwiches," she said. Then her eyes met Keith's. "You leave before I get back, and I swear I'll go in after you, too." She left without waiting for an answer.

Ten minutes later they were ready. Heather wore a pair of torn jeans and a baggy sweatshirt that made her look younger than she was and covered the grip of the gun she'd tucked into the waistband of her jeans. It was a 9mm HS 2000, a Croatian weapon with four different safety devices. She had three extra magazines stashed in her pockets. Keith checked over the Colt.38 Vic DiMarco had brought in from Bridgehampton, and Mary packed the sandwiches she'd bought at a deli on Broadway into the pockets of Keith's pea jacket, which he'd deliberately smeared with enough grease and dirt to make it look as if he'd extracted it from a Dumpster rather than bought it at a thrift shop that morning.

"How long will you be gone?" Mary asked after Heather left and Keith was at the door.

"As long as it takes," he replied. He started toward the stairs, then came back, pulled Mary close, and kissed her. "Love you," he whispered in her ear.

"Love you, too," she whispered back. She waited until they'd disappeared down the stairs, and as she closed the door, realized how deeply she'd meant the three words she just uttered. "Love you, too," she repeated, though there was no one there to hear her.

Five minutes later Keith and Heather were on the subway platform, and ten minutes after that they got off a train in Columbus Circle. At the far end of the platform he saw the men he'd encountered earlier-the men to whom he'd shown the photograph of Jeff. With Heather following him, he turned and went the other way, down the two flights of stairs to the lower platform. Two derelicts at the far end of the platform barely looked at them as they approached, and this time Keith didn't make the mistake of showing them the photo of Jeff.

"Lookin‘ for Jinx," he said. "You seen her?"

One of the men shrugged. "Not for a while." He nodded toward the tunnel into which Keith had seen the girl disappear earlier. "Last I saw her, she was headin‘ downtown. Unless a train hit her," he added, nothing in either his expression or his voice indicating that he cared if such a thing had happened.

Nodding curtly, Keith gazed up the tracks. There was no sign of a train coming.

Nor did he see any transit cops on the platform.

"Come on," he said to Heather. "Let's go find her."

Jumping off the platform, doing his best to look as if he'd done it hundreds of times before, he headed into the maw of the tunnel.

A moment later Heather leaped off the platform as well, and took a last look at the bright light of the white-tiled station.

Then she followed Keith into the darkness.

Eve Harris was running even later than usual. Like most Saturdays, she was as busy as on any weekday, but on Saturdays, no matter what else she did, she always made time for the person who mattered most in her life.

Eunice Harris still lived in the apartment in which she'd raised Eve, steadfastly refusing to move no matter how much Eve argued with her. "I know this neighborhood, and I know my neighbors," Eunice insisted every time Eve reminded her that it was one of the most dangerous areas in the city. "Every place is dangerous if you're a stranger, and everyone around here knows me. And they know you, too. Who'd want to hurt me?"

And she was right-everyone in the neighborhood did know her, and looked after her. But that didn't change the fact that the neighborhood wasn't getting any better, nor was Eunice Harris getting any younger. But every time Eve suggested that it might be time to think about moving, her mother only fixed her with the indomitable gaze that Eve herself often used in council meetings. "I've been taking care of myself for eighty years. I think I can manage for a few more."

Eve had been intending to raise the issue again this morning, but changed her mind after she got the call from Perry Randall, requesting-no, ordering-her to appear at a meeting that afternoon. He'd made no effort to conceal his anger, and though he hadn't told Eve what he was angry about, he made it clear that her attendance was not optional. So she'd juggled her schedule and called one of the downtown missions to notify them that she wasn't going to be there for an afternoon meeting after all. But she hadn't even considered dropping her mother off her schedule, despite the fact that her mother, as always, had seemed surprised to see her.

"Well, isn't this nice," Eunice said as she opened the triple-locked front door to let Eve in. "I wasn't expecting you at all!" Eve knew it wasn't true, but also knew it was her mother's way of letting her know that if she hadn't been able to come, there would have been no recriminations. She'd sat with her mother for almost two hours, doing her best to look as if she had nothing else on her mind. She hadn't fooled her mother for even a minute, and when she finally tried to take her leave, she found herself unable to avoid her mother's penetrating gaze. "Is there something you want to talk about, child?" the old woman asked. Eve shook her head, but her eyes involuntarily went to the picture of her daughter, which stood alone on the table next to her mother's favorite chair.

Eunice's gaze followed Eve's, and she thought she understood. "It never gets easier, does it?" she sighed. "I-"

Eve shook her head. "That's not it, Mama," she said. "It's not about Rachelle." But of course it was about Rachelle. In the end, everything in Eve's life was about Rachelle.

Eunice seemed to understand. "Some things a mother never gets over. If it had been you, I know I wouldn't ever have stopped hurting."

Eve hugged her mother, glancing one last time at the picture of Rachelle that stood on the table, then hurried out onto the street, turning toward the subway station.

The same subway station where her sixteen-year-old daughter had been attacked more than twenty years ago. Rachelle had been on her way back from visiting her grandmother that day, but she hadn't even made it onto the train.

Instead she'd been raped, beaten, and left for dead.

And unlike Cindy Allen, who had been attacked just two stations farther south and a few blocks west, Rachelle had died on the way to the hospital.

As she waited for the train, Eve gazed at the spot where it had happened, at the far end of the platform. Back then, the station's walls had been covered with graffiti, just like the train cars themselves, but everything had changed now. The graffiti was gone, and the station looked cleaner and brighter- and safer-than it had before. But it wasn't safe. None of them were, as Cindy Allen had found out.

It was no safer than it had been for Rachelle all those years ago.

The train rattled to a stop, and Eve Harris got on, glancing at her watch one more time. She was going to be late, but it didn't really matter. As the doors closed, her eyes remained on the spot where Rachelle had been raped, and the part of her that had never recovered from her daughter's brutal death throbbed with a pain that hadn't been eased by the passage of years, nor by any of the good works she had done to honor her daughter's memory.

The pain-the anger-burned as intensely today as on the day she'd looked down on her daughter's unrecognizably battered face and made a silent vow.

It won't end, she had sworn. I ‘ll do something. I'll do something to make it right.

That was the moment when Eve Harris became the woman she was today, the moment when her life had irrevocably changed.

From that moment on, her life would exist only to serve her daughter's memory.

The train slowed to a stop and she got off. The usual knot of derelicts was clustered there, but instead of being sprawled out on the platform, they were all on their feet, peering into the darkness beyond the station's boundary. Veering away from the stairs, she strode down the platform. One of the men heard her footsteps, turned toward her, then nudged the man next to him. As the third man noticed her, too, they spread apart far enough to allow her to step through the gap.

"Miz Harris," one of the men said, his head bobbing respectfully.

Eve Harris nodded an acknowledgment of his greeting, but her eyes were searching the darkness for whatever had attracted their attention. Then she saw it-there was someone standing just off the tracks, close to the wall. A moment later she could make out a face peering out of the darkness.

A face that was young-but not as young as the man who had raped and killed Rachelle.

A face that fueled the hatred inside her.

A face that she recognized as soon as she saw it.

The face was pale with fear and exhaustion, but as Eve emerged from behind the group of men who surrounded her to look at him more closely, she saw a bright flash of hope light his eyes, and he took a lurching step closer.

Eve felt the men around her tense.

"Please," Jeff Converse said, lifting his hand as if to reach out toward her. "Help me-Call the police…" His eyes darted among the hard faces around Eve. "They won't let me out. They-"

But Eve Harris had already turned away, stepping back through the gap from which she had just emerged. The men closed the gap the moment she passed through, and though she could hear Jeff Converse's cries as she started once more toward the stairs, she knew she would no longer have been able to see him if she had turned around again.

At the stairs, she paused, scanning the sparse crowd on the subway platform. There were perhaps thirty people waiting for trains, most alone, some in groups of two or three. Some were talking on cellular phones as they waited, some were reading, a few chatting with their friends. All of them must have heard Jeff Converse's pleading voice as he called out after her, but not one of them gave any sign of it.

Just as no one had heard Rachelle the night she cried out against the man who had raped and killed her.

Satisfied that at least some things in the city never changed, Eve continued on her way.

Minutes later she walked through the front door of the 100 Club. Thatcher, who seemed not to have moved from his post since the first time Eve's husband had brought her here ten years earlier, nodded respectfully.

"Downstairs," he murmured.

Eve descended the same two flights that Perry Randall had taken earlier that day.

She rapped twice, and Malcolm Baldridge immediately opened the door to The Manhattan Hunt Club. As she stepped through, the first thing she noticed was that the new trophy had been put on display. She recognized the man at once, for it hadn't been long since he'd made the mistake of trying to snatch the wallet from her purse as she waited for a subway train. It had taken her no time at all to find his name-or at least the name he went by in the tunnels-and the word had gone out.

It hadn't been much of a hunt, but it set an example.

Eve Harris was certain that when the next crime statistics came out, the incidence of purse-snatching and pickpocketing- like the incidence of every other crime she and the others would no longer tolerate-would show a significant drop.

"Excellent job, Mr. Baldridge," she commented as she gazed into the extraordinarily lifelike face.

"The members did an excellent job," Malcolm Baldridge respectfully replied. "There was very little damage."

Eve continued to the next room, where Perry Randall and the rest of the Hunt Club were waiting for her. She listened quietly as Randall told her about the message left on his answering machine that morning. When he was finished, his cold eyes fixed on Eve. "I warned you that something like this could happen, and you assured me that your people could see to it that none of them would ever get their hands on a cell phone. If he was able to call Heather, he undoubtedly called someone else. And if he called someone else, we have a problem."

Eve regarded Perry Randall with no more warmth than he was offering her. "There is no problem, Perry," she said. Her eyes drilled into each man in the room one by one: the Assistant District Attorney, the Deputy Police Commissioner, the Monsignor of the Church, the Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and the Chief of Police. "I just saw Jeff Converse trying to escape into the station at Fifty-third and

Lexington, but my people were there, doing their jobs. Now," she finished, her voice as cold as her eyes, "I suggest that it is time for you to do yours."