The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 32

When the woman first appeared, Jeff thought he must be hallucinating. He wasn't sure where he was, except in relation to the spot where he'd left Jagger.

Part of him had wanted to abandon Jagger, to disappear into the tunnels and never come back. Even now he felt a shiver go through him as he remembered the way Jagger sometimes looked at him. There was something about the man's gaze-

No! He was only imagining things.

Except that Jagger admitted he'd already killed two people-

Again Jeff turned away from the thought forming in his mind. Jagger had saved his life at least once, and no matter what he thought, he couldn't just take off by himself, leaving Jagger behind like a wounded animal.

Knowing he wouldn't, couldn't, just abandon Jagger, he'd kept careful track of every move he'd made, counting his paces, remembering every turn, every ladder. He'd done his best to avoid people, shrinking back into any alcove in the concrete tunnel walls, making himself invisible. After leaving Jagger, he'd gone deeper, clambering down the rusty rungs embedded in the walls of a shaft so narrow he'd barely been able to fit through. There were fewer people on the lower level, but one of the groups he glimpsed made his gut churn with a fear he'd never felt before. There were four of them, appearing out of the gloom like a pack of wolves, utterly silent. Something predatory about them told Jeff they were hunting; they moved with an animalistic furtiveness that momentarily paralyzed him, like a mouse freezes in terror before the flicking tongue of a coiled snake. As they came closer, he quelled his rising panic, backed away, and climbed the same ladder he'd descended only moments earlier. Peering downward into the near blackness below, he waited, his heart pounding. The four men slunk past the bottom of the shaft, none of them looking up.

A few minutes later he came to a subway tunnel and saw the brilliant white light of a station glowing from his right. He stayed where he was, listening, and heard the rumble of a train in the distance. The rumble grew louder, and he saw the headlight of an approaching train pierce the darkness and felt the track vibrate. Stepping back into the narrow passage from which he'd just emerged, he waited for the slowing train to pass, then edged closer to the station, concealed not only by the train, but by its shadow as well. Only when the train pulled out could he see the station's identification set in a mosaic inlaid in the wall: 53rd street.

Which station on Fifty-third? But what did it matter, really? If he could just get out, get help…

Help from whom? The police? As soon as he told them who he was, he'd be arrested. But if he lied, if he made up a name…

He raked the platform with his eyes, searching for any sign of the kind of men who had turned him away from every possible avenue of escape he'd stumbled upon before. Sure enough, there they were. Three of them, sprawled out at the end of the platform. He watched them for a few seconds, and when none of them were looking his way, he edged closer.

Then one of the men moved, his heading swiveling, and Jeff froze-too late. The surge of hope the mere presence of the station had instilled in him faded away as quickly as it had come as the three men rose to their feet and closed ranks, their eyes fixed on him. None of them spoke; none of them needed to.

The threat that hung before him was suddenly palpable.

That's when the unbelievable happened. A woman-a well-dressed woman-appeared between two of the men. She seemed to know them-Jeff was certain he saw two of them exchange a greeting with her.

She wasn't tall, but exuded an aura of authority, and she appeared utterly unafraid of the dangerous-looking men around her. Something about her looked familiar-he was sure he'd seen her before. And when she looked at him, he saw a flicker of recognition in her face.

Hope once more surged within him and he stepped toward her, raising his hand. "Please… help me-call the police… They won't let me out. They-"

The woman's eyes locked on his. He knew she could hear him; he could see the comprehension written clearly on her face.

But she said nothing-made not even the slightest gesture toward him.

Instead, she turned away.

She wasn't going to help!

But that wasn't possible-the woman wasn't like the men around her. She wasn't one of them-couldn't possibly be!

He opened his mouth to speak-to cry out-to beg her to help him, but it was already too late. She was gone, as quickly as she'd appeared.

The men who had flanked her closed ranks.

He stood as if rooted to the ground, staring at the three men who blocked the way to the platform. They made no move toward him, nor any threatening gestures. Yet their message was clear: he would not be allowed to pass.

The low rumbling of an approaching train broke the moment, and when he saw his own shadow cast ahead of him by the fast-approaching beam of the train's headlight, he turned away, stumbling back toward the dark refuge of the passage from which he'd emerged. As the train rushed by, he slumped against the wall.

He'd failed.

He'd found no water to slake his thirst or ease the pain of Jagger's burns, let alone a means of escape from the vast prison in which they were held.

Unconsciously obeying the demands of his stomach, his hand went to the pocket of his jacket and his fingers closed around one of the hot dogs he'd rescued from the slime beneath the grating. He didn't look at the wiener-tried not to think what might have been in the muck from which he'd plucked it. Wiping it as clean as he could, he held his breath, put it in his mouth, and bit a piece off.

A foul taste filled his mouth, and his stomach contracted violently. He struggled against his erupting gorge, and when his mouth filled with bile and acid, he refused to spit it out. Instead he made himself chew up the single bite of food and force it down his throat. Then he tried to eat a second bite, but this time his stomach won and he dropped the rest of the hot dog back into his pocket.

He wasn't dead yet, and he wasn't beaten. If it truly was a game he'd been thrown into, then there had to be a way to win. And if there was a way, he'd find it. Turning his back on the false hope the station had offered, he started back to where he'd left Jagger, all the turns he'd taken-and the number of steps between each turn-firmly etched in his mind.

He was about halfway to the alcove, moving through a utility tunnel, when he saw it. He'd barely even been aware that his eyes were scanning the floor of the tunnel, and if the object hadn't been white, it might not have caught his eye at all.

A discarded coffee cup, the paper kind that was so thin you burned your fingers if you picked it up when it was freshly filled.

He paused.

Why was it standing upright?

Next to it was a crumpled piece of paper-the kind in which a sandwich might once have been wrapped.

If a workman had been eating his lunch here and just walked away…

Squatting, his fingers trembling, Jeff reached for the cup, silently praying that this hope, too, would not instantly be ground to dust. His fingers closed on the cup and he lifted it up.

Not empty!

He stared into it, gazing at the quarter cup of dark liquid as if it were pure gold, then raised the cup to his lips and let a little of the cold, bitter fluid flow through his lips.

His mouth welcomed it as if it were a perfect wine, aged to perfection.

He was about to drink again, but didn't.

Jagger was every bit as thirsty as he.

His own thirst cried out to him, begged him to drain the cup. What if he couldn't find the alcove again?

What if Jagger was gone?

Almost of its own volition, his hand raised the cup to his lips again, but just as the paper touched his lips, he recalled a train hurtling toward him, and Jagger throwing them both out of its path only an instant before he would have been crushed.

He lowered the cup.

Straightening, he saw a flicker of movement a few yards down the passage, back toward the subway tunnel from which he'd just retreated. He froze, his eyes scanning the tunnel. He knew his eyes had not deceived him-something, or someone-was there, concealed among the pipes, or hidden behind one of the pilasters that supported the low ceiling of the tunnel.

One of the men from the subway platform?

Or one of the skulking predators from the lower depths?

He listened, but heard only the sound of a faraway train, its roar muted to a faint whisper. He held perfectly still, holding his breath as he searched the darkness and listened to the silence.

Two choices: he could either attempt to slip away in the darkness, and risk being followed, or confront whatever lay hidden behind him, and directly face whatever danger awaited. But there was really no choice, for he knew he could never elude whatever was following him, that it would only keep its distance, stalking him until the moment it chose to attack.

"I know you're there," he said, his voice echoing loudly in the darkness as he started toward the place from which the brief movement had caught his eye. "You might as well show yourself."

For a moment nothing happened, but just as Jeff was about to move closer, a small figure stepped out from behind one of the pilasters.

"It's okay," a girl's voice said. "It's just me." The figure stepped forward, and enough light from one of the dim bulbs overhead fell on her face for Jeff to recognize her as the girl at Tillie's. "I've been looking for you," Jinx said. "I-" She faltered, then went on. "I know you didn't do anything to Cindy Allen."

The words hung in the air. What could Jinx possibly know about that? Jeff wondered. How did she even know Cindy Allen's name?

A trick. That was it-it had to be some kind of a trick.

"How do you know?" he asked, his voice cold.

"Because I was there that night," Jinx replied. Then, as Jeff listened mutely, she recounted to him everything that had happened that night in the 110th Street station.

Recounted it exactly as he remembered it himself.

When she finished, there was a long silence, which Jeff finally broke. "How did you find me?" he asked.

"The herders in the Fifty-third Street station. They told me which way you went."

"Herders?" Jeff echoed.

Jinx nodded. "They work for the hunters. It's their job to keep you in the tunnels until the hunters can track you down."

Jeff's eyes narrowed. "And what's your job?"

"Sort of a messenger. Sometimes I pick up the money the herders get paid with, and sometimes 1 pass it out. Sometimes I just spread the word that a hunt is on."

She made no move either to come closer or to run away, and Jeff could sense that she wasn't afraid of him, but was waiting to see what he would do. "Who are the hunters?" he finally asked.

"Men from outside," Jinx replied. "They're only supposed to hunt for criminals. But you didn't do anything."

"So you're not going to tell them you found me?"

Jinx shook her head. "I'm going to help you get out."

Heather flattened herself against the hard concrete, turned her head away, and instinctively clamped her eyes shut. But she could still hear the train thundering past no more than twelve inches from her face, feel the rush of filthy air. That was the first thing she'd noticed after she followed Keith Converse off the platform and into the subway tunnel itself-not the darkness that stretched ahead of her, but the fetid odor that seemed to seep directly into her pores. Though they'd been in the tunnels for only half an hour, she already felt saturated with grime. Her skin itched, her eyes stung, and though her sense of smell had finally become somewhat accustomed to the foul odors that permeated the tunnel, her stomach had not. It wasn't just the air that was making her nauseous, but the terror that tightened its grip on her as she proceeded in the tunnel.

The first time they had seen a train coming, she was certain she would die. There was only a single track, with concrete walls rising on both sides. As the beam of the train struck her, she froze like a deer caught in an automobile's headlights. If it hadn't been for Keith, she knew that in fact she would have died, right there, the hurtling subway train mangling her body in an instant. But she'd felt him tugging at her, and heard him yelling.

"There's a catwalk!" A moment later he picked her up, swung her onto the catwalk, and rolled onto it himself. As that first train rushed by, she lay quivering, and when it was over-so quickly it almost seemed it couldn't have happened at all-she lay there trembling, her breath coming in gasps. "You okay?" Keith asked as he gently drew her to her feet. She nodded, unwilling to admit how terrified she'd been until Keith grinned and said, "Then you're a better man than me- I thought I was going to mess my pants."

"Actually, I thought I was going to die," Heather admitted as they gingerly climbed off the catwalk and back onto the track.

Now, as the fourth train thundered by, Heather knew she wasn't going to die, at least not by being crushed by a subway car. Silently cursing her own cowardice, she forced herself to open her eyes and turn her head so she was looking directly at the speeding train. A wave of dizziness struck her, but she steeled herself against it, pressing even harder against the concrete. After the last car raced by, she jumped back down to the tracks and gazed after it, reading the identifying letter on the back of the last car: D.

Before the train had come thundering up behind them, they'd seen that the tunnel ahead spread wider, and more tracks were becoming visible. Now, as she watched the speeding train, it banked around to the left, and she knew exactly where they were.

Fifty-third Street.

A few paces farther and the two of them were in the far wider section of tunnel that provided the space for the trains to turn, and they began to see the glow of the station far ahead. But before they were close enough that the light spilling from the station would allow them to be seen emerging from the darkness, Keith stopped. Wordlessly, Heather followed his lead, and they stood silently for a moment. In the distance they could hear the faint sound of a train moving away from them, but that sound faded away and a silence fell over the tunnel. But still Keith neither moved nor spoke, and when Heather finally turned to him, he raised his arm and pointed. Then she saw them: two men at the near end of the platform, staring into the tunnel.

Staring, as if looking for something.

Or someone.

"Just like the guys at every other station I've been to," Keith whispered, leaning closer so he could speak directly into her ear. "Except all the others were acting like they were just hanging out. These guys are looking for something."

"Us?" Heather whispered back.

Keith shook his head. "How would they even know we're here?"

"Someone who saw us jump off the platform at Columbus Circle could have taken a train and told them. The trains are full of homeless people."

"Or they could be looking for Jinx," Keith suggested.

"Or Jeff."

Her words hung between them, and Keith said, "You want to know something, the best thing to do is go ask, right? Wait here."

He started forward. Heather, ignoring his last words, kept pace with him. When he stopped and turned as if to say something, she shook her head, and there was a look about her that told him it would be useless to argue. She said, "If there's any trouble-"

"If there's any trouble," Keith repeated, cutting her off, "you just stay down." He pulled the gun out of his waistband, showed it to her, then shoved it and the hand that held it deep into the outer pocket of his pea jacket.

Heather's own hand tightened on the grip of the pistol she'd taken from her father's gun cabinet, which was now deep in the folds of her own coat, a badly worn bomber jacket that she'd tried to convince Jeff to get rid of more than a year ago.

"Let me do the talking," Keith said. "Act like a junkie."

They moved forward, Keith letting his body slump into the defeated slouch of the derelicts he'd seen in the streets, parks, and subways over the past two days. Heather shuffled beside him, her head down, her hair hanging limply so her face was only partly visible. When they came to the platform, Keith climbed up, then pulled Heather after him. "Fuckin‘ bitch," he muttered. "I oughta-"

Heather jerked her arm loose. "Keep your fuckin‘ hands offa me, asshole." As she turned sullenly away from him, he shrugged helplessly to one of the two men, who gave him a gap-toothed grin and winked.

"Shit, man-whyn't you dump her?"

Keith spread his hands. "She'll be okay. Seen Jinx?"

The man's grin faded. "What you lookin‘ for her for?"

Keith's mind raced, then he remembered the wad of cash Tillie had shoved into the girl's hands yesterday. He jerked his head meaningfully toward Heather, whose back was still to him. "Heard she's got some money."

The gap-toothed man shook his head. "You crazy, motha-fuck? You roll Jinx, you be dead. Hunters go after you soon's they finish off the fuckers they're after right now!"

Keith spat out the kind of profanity that never failed to grab the attention of his work construction crew. "Any idea where they are?"

The second man nodded farther down the track. "Heard they was down three, and three workin‘ east, the rest comin' this way. If you ain't herdin‘ I'd get my ass outta here."

"Shit," Keith said. He grabbed Heather, tugging at her arm until she turned around. "Time to go."

She acted like she wanted to pull away from him. "Fuck you-why don't ya just leave me alone!"

"Maybe I will, bitch!" Keith dropped her arm and started down the platform as an eastbound train pulled into the station. "Who the fuck needs you anyway?"

"Don't you leave me here!" Heather screamed, running to catch up to him just as he stepped onto one of the cars. The doors slid shut behind her, and Keith winked.

"You're good," he said as the train pulled out of the station.

"For a second I thought you were actually trying to get away from me."

"I figured I could count on you not to let that happen. Come on."

They made their way back to the last car, and when the train pulled into the Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street station, they got off.

They were back on the tracks before the train had pulled away, scurrying into the darkness like rats into a sewer.

"He said the hunters were ‘down three'-got any idea what that means?"

Heather nodded. "Jeff took a class in urban architecture last year. There are all kinds of tunnels under the city, and they go deep. ‘Down three' must mean three levels down from here." She peered into the darkness. "But how do we get there?"

"If there's a way down, then we'll find it," Keith said. "Come on."

Perry Randall felt the familiar thrill run through him as he moved through the semidarkness of the utility tunnel. Behind him, Frisk McGuire-who, like the rest of The Hundred, never brought his honorific through the anonymous door on West Fifty-third, leaving Monsignor Terrence McGuire on the street outside-was on his left, while Carey Atkinson watched the right. The formation wasn't necessary yet, of course, for they weren't nearly deep enough to be in any real danger. Yet at the same time you couldn't be too careful-the jungle beneath the streets could be far more dangerous than the African bush. Only two years ago they'd lost one of their members when the tribe that lived on the lowest level of the tunnels had set up an ambush that even the best of the club's gamekeepers hadn't heard anything about.

But that was what made the hunt thrilling. It wasn't as if there was danger only to the prey-nothing like the hunting farm he'd visited in Zimbabwe, where the sense of adventure was primarily an illusion. Here, beneath the streets of the most civilized city in the world, the risks were as real for the hunters themselves as for the quarry they tracked. Indeed, Perry could still remember the first hunt, after he and Linc Cosgrove had organized the Manhattan Hunt Club within the walls of The Hundred. When Eve had told him what she wished the club to do, it was obvious she already had her husband's support, and that if Perry didn't agree to what she proposed, Linc would simply find another member who would. Linc, after all, had nothing to lose-the heart problems that killed him on the Jamaican beach a few months later had already been diagnosed.

"The man who raped and killed my daughter was released from prison today," Eve had said, her dark eyes smoldering, her voice ice cold. "My daughter is dead, and now he's a free man." Until that moment, Perry Randall hadn't been aware that Eve Harris had ever had a child, let alone that the child had been murdered. But Eve anticipated the question before Randall could voice it. "My daughter didn't count," she said. "I was just another unwed mother, and she was just another black girl with no father. If my daughter had been white, the bastard would have been executed." Her eyes moved over the white faces surrounding her, daring any of them to argue. They all looked uncomfortable, but none of them spoke. "But she was my child," Eve went on. "And now he's back on the streets, going on with his life." Her voice dropped another notch. "You know as well as I do that he's already looking for his next victim."

Still Perry Randall said nothing, and then it was Linc Cosgrove who spoke. "It's not just my wife's daughter," he said. "It's the tenor of the times we live in. No one is being held accountable for their own actions. Everything is someone else's fault." He passed a photograph to Randall, and the Assistant District Attorney found himself looking at a man of about twenty-five, with narrow-set eyes, a weak chin, and a shock of dirty blond hair falling over a sloping forehead. The man's name was Leon Nelson. "I've read the transcript of his trial," he went on. "They didn't try him-they tried Eve's daughter instead. When they were through, they gave this man fifteen years." Linc Cosgrove's heavy brow arched and his voice took on an edge of sarcasm. "It was a murder, after all-they had to do something, didn't they? But the prisons are overcrowded, and apparently he has behaved himself. So he is now out, and, as Eve says, undoubtedly looking for his next victim."

Perry Randall's gaze shifted back to Eve, his unspoken question hanging in the air.

"I want justice," Eve said. "But not just for my daughter. I want justice for every powerless victim in this city." She'd outlined her proposal then, in the same dispassionate tones with which she now discussed whatever proposal lay before the City Council, to which she'd been elected three years after that first meeting. "I think of it as a club within the club," she'd said. "A club of fair-minded people who have the greater good of the city and its citizens at heart." What she proposed was not a lynch mob. Rather, it was an orderly system in which the worst elements of the city would be identified and dealt with. "Each of them will have a fair chance," Eve explained. "There will be a time limit-a statute of limitations, if you will. And should any of them prove themselves capable of finding their way out of the maze that exists under our city, then they shall have truly won their freedom. But it must be won-we have been giving too many people too much for too long. It's time people began earning their lives again."

Perry Randall had long understood that the coddling of the criminal element had to stop, and that the established system was unlikely to correct its own dangerous drift.

That was why The 100 Club had originally been established: to allow for society's elite to do what was necessary in private, without the necessity of convincing a seemingly uneducable public to find the spine to do the right thing.

Thus was the Manhattan Hunt Club born.

He and Linc Cosgrove had selected the original members themselves, and he could still remember that night when he, Linc, Frisk McGuire, and Carey Atkinson had first gone into the tunnels in search of the man who had murdered Eve Harris's daughter. Eve herself had organized the people living in the tunnels, those who had become the gamekeepers for the hunt, funneling money to them in payment for their work.

Carey Atkinson's people had discovered where the killer was living, and some of Eve's people escorted him into the tunnels, explained to him what was about to happen, and why, and had given him certain provisions.

Then they released him.

What Perry hadn't expected was the excitement that had run through him as he and the others moved through the special door that had been cut through from The 100 Club's subbasement-now the headquarters of the Manhattan Hunt Club-and began exploring the tunnels. That first hunt lasted nearly a week, as he and his team began mapping the tunnels, learning where there were hidden passages, and which passages led to dead ends. Eventually, they had trapped their prey in a storm drain on the fourth level down, backed up against a grating that opened onto the Hudson. Perry himself had shot Nelson, placing the red dot of his laser sight in the precise center of the man's forehead as he was silhouetted against the grate. The thrill he had felt as he squeezed the trigger, and the satisfaction of seeing Nelson's body slump into the muck covering the bottom of the culvert, had been better even than the sexual gymnastics Carolyn had taught him.

The thrill of the hunt had never waned for Perry Randall, and as he began tonight's adventure, he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He'd been anticipating this moment for months. From the moment Jeff Converse was arrested, Perry knew that sooner or later the young man who thought he might someday marry his daughter would become part of the hunt.

After the sentencing-the mere slap on the wrist the judge had inflicted-he knew the time had come. When Eve Harris called him to convene a meeting of the special committee that she herself chaired, he was prepared. Of course, Eve herself was going to have to be disciplined; it was inexcusable that Converse had been allowed to get his hands on a cell phone. But that could be dealt with later, after the hunt was over.

After Jeff Converse had been placed among the other trophies that lined the walls of the Hunt Club.

With senses made sharper by the adrenaline flowing through his body, his fingers tightened on the strap that held his rifle to his back. The gun was one of the Steyr SSG-PIs, to which he'd fitted a day-night scope with an infrared beam.

As he came to a place where a locked door led from the utility tunnel into the Fifty-third Street subway tunnel, he reached into his pocket and took out one of the numerous keys that had been supplied to the members of the hunt by one of their own, whose public responsibilities included overseeing most of the city's utilities. Randall fumbled with the lock as the key stuck, but then it turned and the door opened.

He glanced to his left and saw nothing but the distant glow of the subway station.

To his right, barely visible in the distance, a couple of derelicts-a man and a woman, judging by their size-were shambling off into the darkness.

By the time the rest of Perry Randall's team had come through the door and relocked it, the two figures had vanished.

Heather Randall's fingers closed on Keith Converse's arm. when he turned to look at her, he could barely make out her finger pressed to her lips in warning. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. "I heard something-like a door closing."

Keith frowned in the darkness. They'd passed a door only a few minutes ago. He'd tried the handle, anxious to get away from the subway tunnel, but it had been locked.

He couldn't recall seeing another.

But he had found a shaft, a narrow one, leading downward, with iron rungs embedded in its walls. Until Heather's whispered warning, he'd been undecided about whether to take the shaft or not. Now his mind was made up, and with no hesitation at all he climbed down into the darkness.

A second later, Heather followed.

And less than a minute after that, Perry Randall and his fellow hunters came to the top of the shaft.

After conferring among themselves, they, too, began climbing down the rungs of the ladder.