The Skeleton's knee

27

The landing was brutal-and not in slow motion. It was a chaotic, painful jumble of hurt and terror, compounded by the sick last-second realization of just how big an idiot I’d been to try it. My head stayed well protected, with my arms locked tightly in place, but the rest of me took a high toll in bruises, twists, abrasions, and cuts. I rolled, tumbled, crashed, and finally came to a stop spread-eagled on my face, surrounded by broken safety glass, too stunned and racked by pain to move.

The raucous noise of the train was quickly sucked into the far end of the tunnel, and I was left on the platform, wet, bleeding, stunned, and alone. I was only about five feet shy of the station’s far wall.

I rolled painfully onto my side and surveyed my surroundings. I was resting on the platform of a large tile-covered vaulted room with two tracks, a platform on either side, and a single concrete wall running lengthwise down the middle, holding up the ceiling. The wall had openings in it every twelve feet or so-three-foot gaps that allowed me to see the station’s northbound side. The whole place was dark and quiet, lit only by exit lights and a few odd bare bulbs.

Shattuck was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well for me. Had he been here, waiting, I now recognized ruefully, it would have been a simple matter to put an executioner’s bullet through my head.

I carefully straightened to a sitting position. The fact that he was not here either meant he was lying dead on the tracks out of sight or he’d assumed no sane man would jump out of the train after him.

I got to my feet gingerly, half-surprised to find my gun still clenched in my bloody fist, and moved quietly on the balls of my feet toward the north end of the station. I kept my eyes on the three-foot gaps in the wall next to the tracks, watching the narrow views they afforded of the platform parallel to mine.

Shattuck had known this station was coming up, he’d known the train wouldn’t stop, and he’d seemed quite comfortable straddling that window-as if he’d done it before. Also, he wasn’t in the station-I was sure of that by now. It all suggested the possibility that he’d had this place in mind from the start.

I continued softly to the end of the platform and stood just by the wall, out of sight from the dark, dank-smelling tunnel, listening.

There was a less appealing explanation, of course, albeit a little farfetched: Shattuck had poised himself on the window ledge, taken a shot at me to make me duck, and then had dropped to the floor of the car and let me assume he’d jumped, hoping I’d oblige him by following suit.

A single small sound, as of someone stumbling in the dark, settled the issue for me. I slipped quietly off the edge of the platform and began walking as quickly and silently as possible away from the station, painfully aware that its lights, as feeble as they were, still made it easy for others to see me.

Now inside the tunnel, where each sound reverberated off the cement walls, I could plainly hear someone walking ahead of me-which meant the reverse would hold true if I wasn’t careful. I discovered the only way I could avoid crunching the gravel rail bed underfoot was to straddle the outermost rail and step cautiously from cross tie to cross tie.

The concentration this took, however, especially in my present battered state, made me inattentive to the slow and gradual approach of another southbound train, just beginning to hit the outer reaches of the long curve that led into the station. By the time I looked up, aware of the growing noise and searching out a hiding spot among the indentations in the wall, I suddenly realized I was visible in the subway’s single bright headlamp, as was the distant figure of Robert Shattuck, ahead and away on the other side of the tracks.

I jumped away from the rails, no longer worried about any sound I might make, but as I did, Shattuck turned toward me, as if drawn by my own panic. I saw the shock register on his distant face, and finally, just as the train was about to come between us, his gun flew up and spat a flame in my direction, its explosion muffled by the screaming of the subway’s wheels. A chunk of cement splattered to the left of me as I ducked into an alcove and the train blew by in a deafening, shrieking roar.

I readied my own weapon, steadying my arm against the edge of the shallow alcove, and was sighting where Shattuck had last been when the train pulled clear. But the tracks were empty.

I stayed where I was, straining to regain my night vision, trying to hear anything at all over the receding rumble of the cars. What I heard, or thought I heard, was the rhythmic pounding of feet running away from me.

I separated from my shelter and began jogging along the track, bent low, moving as fast as I could, no longer worrying about the crunch of gravel. Coming abreast of where I’d seen Shattuck, I slowed, crossed the tracks quietly, and began tracing his steps north. Both the noise of the train and the sound of Shattuck’s footfalls had vanished. Sweat began to trickle down my sides.

I came to an opening in the curved wall-a small secondary tunnel with a cement floor-obviously the source of the running sounds I’d heard earlier. It went straight for some one hundred feet and then turned out of sight to the left. A single anemic light was suspended from the domed eight-foot ceiling. The walls were smooth and bare, free of any hiding places-a shooting gallery custom-made for an ambush.

I opened the cylinder of my revolver, extracted the three spent shells, and replaced them with the extras from my pocket, leaving me one in reserve.

In a calmer, more rational setting, logic and caution would have dictated the obvious course to take. By all rights, I should have stayed there, bottling up the exit, waiting for Norm’s backup to arrive, which they were bound to do once they found the train with the shattered window and the debris I’d left behind on the platform. But if, as I suspected, this tunnel was merely the front door to a hideaway that Shattuck had harbored for some time, then it undoubtedly had a back door. That didn’t leave me much of an alternative, at least not a sane one.

Sanity, of course, is in the mind of the beholder, and what I was beginning to formulate didn’t seem too far off-the-wall. The tunnel’s blandness, as I saw it, cut two ways. It did expose me to fire, but it also allowed an ambush from a single spot only-the distant inside curve to the left. It was the only cover available, and was as easily assailable by me as I was from it.

I wiped my hand on my pants, took a firm grip on my gun, and bolted from my hiding place, running as fast as I could in a zigzag pattern directly toward the curve in the tunnel. I was startled to hear, echoing all around me and mixing with the pounding of my feet, the sound of my own voice shouting.

About halfway there, I saw a flash of movement from the inside corner, a glimmer of something metallic. I fired, still running for all I was worth, my aches and pains temporarily replaced by a frantic, pounding euphoria.

The gamble paid off. The glimpse of face and arm I’d shot at vanished, and I poured on more speed for the remaining fifty feet.

At the corner, I paused, poked my head around quickly, and saw a large dark room filled with ventilation machinery and odd pieces of track-repair equipment-squat, ugly, gloomily vague. At the far side was another entrance, animated ever so briefly by the blur of a pale shadow disappearing. I ran through the equipment room, almost without pause, risking exposure so I could keep up the pressure.

That was a mistake. The adrenaline that had served me well during the hundred-foot dash of moments earlier now made me careless. I entered the far exit too fast, sliding past the corner that might have given me protection, and was met by the eruption of a point-blank muzzle flash. Momentarily blinded, deafened, and feeling the sear of burning gunpowder along the right side of my head, I plunged on, hoping pure physical momentum might stifle a second, more accurate shot.

I crashed headlong into Bob Shattuck’s chest, sending him staggering backward. His gun, with which he tried to fracture my skull in a crossward blow, almost missed, its front sight slicing a furrow over both my eyes. It was bad enough, however, to send me reeling to the floor, dazed, my eyesight clouded by my own blood. I fired two shots in his direction, hoping to get lucky. There was a startled shout, a wild shot in return that whacked into the floor harmlessly, and the clang of a heavy metal door.

I lay there panting for a full minute, my gun arm still outstretched, my eyes half-blinking away the warm oozing from the gash just above them.

I rose to a sitting position, found the wall with my back, pulled out my handkerchief, and wrapped it around my head to staunch the bleeding. Then, like an old and stubborn dog with only one purpose in life, I got to all fours, then to one knee, and finally rose to my feet again, as determined as ever to see this through to the end.

I wasn’t driven by the image of Shilly’s mutilated body or the humiliation of having been duped by Shattuck. I kept going because I saw no other option. Only in Korea, decades ago, had I experienced such a seeming loss of choices, when, cold, starving, exhausted, and shell-shocked, I and dozens like me had held on to positions that could easily have been abandoned. Then, as now, retreat-or even common sense-hadn’t appeared as an alternative.

The heavy clang I’d heard had not come from a door but from a large hatchway in the floor. I pulled it open by a ring mounted to a bracket and was thrown off balance by how easily it came away. It was counterbalanced by a weight below and stayed in whatever position I left it, which explained how Shattuck had vanished so quickly. He had already opened it before trying to blow my head off at the entrance, planning a quick escape.

Below me was yet another passageway, lined by dozens of thick, insulated electrical cables. It was narrow, cramped, and as black as night. I cautiously climbed down the short steel ladder at the edge of the hole and looked around. The tunnel was just six feet in circumference but was actually very cramped due to the bundles of cable. It extended in opposite directions, but whether for eight feet or eight miles, I couldn’t tell in the dark. I did hear some noise straight ahead, however, along with a distant, reflected glimmer of light that died almost as soon as I’d noticed it.

I quickly looked around, hoping the absence of light was something the subway work crews were equipped to overcome, and found not a master switch or fuse box but six large flashlights strung together through their handles by a busted chain mounted to the wall, presumably some more of Shattuck’s handiwork.

I took one of the lights, switched it on, and began to trot in the direction of the distant flicker I’d seen.

My momentum didn’t last long. At the first corner, I came to an opening halfway up the wall of a large junction area, square, high-ceilinged, and fed by a dozen or so tunnels similar to the one I was in. A second steel ladder led down to the floor of this chamber. It was anyone’s guess where that flicker of light had vanished to.

Dispirited, drained by the thought that all the effort I’d expended-not to mention the blood-had been for nothing, I climbed down the ladder for a last look around. It was unlikely, I knew, but maybe in his haste, Shattuck had left some sign indicating which tunnel he’d used.

The entrances weren’t all at the same level. Some were flush with the chamber’s floor; others were located atop high ladders near the ceiling. I checked them in order, working counterclockwise, flashing my light down each one, listening carefully, until I got to the tallest of the ladders, about fifteen feet up.

By this time, I’d lost whatever edge my nerves had been keeping sharp. The roller-coaster plane ride, the drenching walk through the storm, the street sign totaling Norm’s car, the near-suicidal jump off the train, the hunt-and-go-seek with guns, all had pretty much done me in. I’d been battered, bruised, kicked, scraped, cut open, and shot at. I was beginning to feel like hell.

So I was unprepared, three-quarters of the way up the last ladder, gripping the railings with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, to see Shattuck pop out above me like some evil jack-in-the-box, complete with a sinister grin, and jam his pistol square in the middle of my bandaged forehead.

“Hi there.” His voice was flat and quiet-a serpent’s hiss.

I was sitting at the foot of the ladder, my back against the rungs, my hands tied to the rails, my feet sticking out ahead of me. Shattuck rested cross-legged on my shins, his weight crushing my calves and causing my knees to spasm in agony. He played with his revolver-a brushed steel.357 Magnum-with a practiced nonchalance.

“It was Joe, right? Vermont Joe. You’re not looking too good. You do put up a hell of a fight, though, for a man your age.” He tipped my head toward the dim light to examine the burns left behind by his earlier muzzle flash.

“Nasty. What makes you so persistent?”

I didn’t answer, nor had I said a single word since he’d caught me.

“Is it Shilly? Did it bother you what I did to him? He was a hypocritical prick. I knew about him from the old days-big on bringing medicine to the people, saying the Establishment was ripe for burning. He was just killing time, figuring out how he could cash in, especially after he got thrown out of the hospital.

He shook his head in wonder. “What a mind fuck, you know? Tracking me down after all those years, looking for a name for your skeleton… Like a babe in the woods. You smarter now?”

I remained silent.

A furrow appeared between his eyes, and he leaned forward slightly, causing me to clamp my teeth against the jolt from my partly inverted knees. “I need to know what you’ve learned, Joe.”

Through the pain and the fear, I knew he was telling me the truth. Norm had shaken him off on our way to visit Penny Nivens at her fancy school, and the mobsters that interviewed her later obviously hadn’t communicated their findings to Shattuck, which confirmed he was working alone and beginning to feel left out.

For all his seeming confidence, he hadn’t gained any ground since he’d kidnapped Shilly. Which made me his one reluctant ally.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to answer his question, or reveal how little I knew. “What do you want after all this time? The money?”

His face tightened with emotion. “Don’t sell money short, Joe. Money is power, when you use it right. And I want those who betrayed me-all of them. They stole my future with that money, and the hopes of everyone I would have saved. And when I find them, you’ll think Kevin Shilly died a peaceful death.”

I watched the swollen vein pulsing on his temple and the hard glitter in his eye. The intensity of his anger made me think of Alfredo Bonatto-his interest barely perceptible beneath a demure, discreet, almost bland exterior-the exact opposite of the firecracker facing me. I wondered whether I could get the two of them to keep one another off my back. Given my position, it was as realistic a notion as any, and perhaps a good way to keep Shattuck off balance.

“You may not get your chance. You and I aren’t the only ones interested in this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Shilly told you what he did for Pendergast, didn’t he?”

“You mean putting in the metal knee?”

“Because the real one had been blown off by a mobster named Tommy Salierno.”

Unconsciously, Shattuck leaned back slightly, easing the pressure on my knees. He sat there thinking for a while. Finally, he rocked forward, bringing his face close to mine and the pain to new heights. I couldn’t swallow the groan that gargled in my throat.

“So the Outfit’s in on it. Tell me, Vermont Joe, you think this buys you some slack?”

It wasn’t the question I wanted to hear, but the leering quality he dressed it in cut through my fear. I was angered that he thought somehow he’d be able to walk away from all this-untouched and a winner. “I think it puts you in a worse position than I am.”

The gun settled in his right hand and his index finger slipped around the trigger. “Yeah?”

He straightened slightly, slipping the pistol between us, so that our eyes met just over the front sight. The only light came from the flashlight lying on the floor, which dimly caught the gleam of sweat on one of Shattuck’s hollow cheeks, his wide, unnaturally bright eyes, and the dull gray glow from the revolver’s burnished barrel.

“You don’t know shit about me. I’m the bear who’s been hibernating for damn near twenty-five years, and now that I’m out, I don’t give a rat’s ass who gets in my way-you, or the Outfit, or the fucking National Guard. I’m real hungry, and the last thing anyone wants to do is to get between a pissed-off, hungry bear and his food.”

His voice was a whisper, a farewell sigh, and I knew then that I’d miscalculated, that I’d allowed him to count me out of his plans. The pain from my legs melted away, along with the hope I’d been collecting and hoarding. I watched those dark, gleaming, too-wide eyes and felt nothing but weariness. He wouldn’t survive in the long run-that was a given-but I knew now I wouldn’t be a witness to his end.

Shattuck’s thumb pulled back the hammer. I could see the vague outline of his mouth, still locked in its smile-friendly, comforting, supportive, or so I worked to make it, to remind me of the sweet things in life-a little something to take with me.

His index finger tightened slowly on the trigger, like a good shooter’s should. The barrel didn’t waver. His eyes narrowed slightly in anticipation of the explosion.

I closed my eyes.

And the hammer fell.

There was a sharp, brittle click, like the sound of teeth snapping shut, but louder and more painful.

Shattuck lowered the gun as my eyes reopened. The smile widened but the voice remained a whisper-barely audible. “Shucks-must’ve forgot to reload.”

And then he left me alone in the dark.