The World Beneath

Chapter 16

Joe woke to utter darkness. For a second, he wasn’t sure if he’d opened his eyes. His back ached, and his right arm was asleep. Edison’s relaxed breathing was the only sound. He smelled dog and mold.

Slowly, it came to him. He wasn’t home. He was in a maintenance closet somewhere in the subway tunnel system — he wasn’t sure where. He wasn’t lost, but he wasn’t found, either.

No point in dwelling on that. He turned on his laptop to check the time: 7:30 a.m. Late enough to give up on getting more sleep and time to figure out how to get breakfast for himself and Edison without being arrested.

With cracks and pops, he stood. His back told him that it had not enjoyed sleeping on cold tiles all night long, and that it never wanted to do so again. Even Edison made a grunting noise when he got up, as if he’d missed his dog bed.

It took only a minute to turn on the light and gather up his belongings. The blanket, he bunched in his arms. He’d need it for cover in the tunnels.

“Let’s go, Edison.” His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the tiny room, and he lowered it. “Let’s go on a mission for food and Internet, the staffs of life.”

The dog shook himself and walked to the door.

“Heel.” Joe didn’t know what they would face out there, but it would be easier if Edison stuck close. “And stay there.”

He reached up and flicked off the light before opening the door. He didn’t want to be visible to anyone outside. After giving his eyes time to adjust to the darkness, he walked out the door and down the tunnel. A set of stairs ran up to a metal grate. Shoes walked across over his head, dropping dirt and water down on his hair. Shoes on the feet of people walking down the sidewalk, as he used to do.

He hurried past the grate, keeping to the side of the tracks, searching for side tunnels.

A train neared, white headlights a beacon in the tunnel. Joe pulled Edison in front of him and curled against the wall, wrapping the blanket around their bodies so that nothing showed. He hoped that no one would notice a dark hump against the wall, nearly as much as a man with a dog.

The blanket trick seemed to work, because he made it almost all the way to Grand Central without incident. Almost.

A policeman stood at the tunnel entrance to Platforms 9 (scarlet) and 10 (cyan, then black). Joe shrank back in the tunnel and tried Platforms 7 (slate) and 8 (purple) with the same results. Looked like they’d staked out all the platforms. Hard to believe the cops would expend that kind of manpower for a simple murder investigation.

He ran back toward the track that led to Platforms 16 (cyan, orange) and 17 (cyan, slate), Edison loping between him and the side of the tunnel. He had a chance to get in, but he had only a narrow window of time. Even then, it was risky.

Jogging, he formulated a plan. A quirk in MTA’s schedule meant that one train halted in the tunnel for about two minutes every morning at 8:03 (a purple, black, and red ribbon flashed in his head) while the train in front of it finished loading at the platform. He’d seen the train sitting there one morning on a walk with Edison and had checked the schedule to see why. The tunnel system was his backyard, and he wanted to know why a train would be loitering there.

Maybe today his curiosity would help him out.

He arrived with less than a minute to spare and hunched against a pillar near where he hoped the last car of the train would come to a stop. He held the blanket ready to cover them. The train clattered up close, and he hid them under the blanket. Edison tensed in his arms but didn’t panic. Joe fingered one of the keys from his massive key ring, hoping.

He felt more than heard the train stop and pulled off the blanket, standing and running toward the back. He hoped that the engineer wasn’t looking. He couldn’t do anything about the passengers, but most people kept their eyes focused inside the train, ignoring the subterranean world beyond their metal and glass walls.

In a few strides, he reached the train’s back door. The narrow entrance was too high to reach, but he was ready for that. He vaulted onto the coupling, teetered, then caught hold of the metal door handle with one hand. A quick turn of his key, and he was inside. Step one was successful.

Edison whined. He turned back to the open door and the tracks behind him.

“Jump, boy!” He calculated that they had fifteen (cyan, brown) seconds left. If Edison didn’t jump soon, he’d have to climb down himself and figure out another way. He’d never seen the dog jump more than a couple of feet high. Had he ever jumped so high before? Could he?

Edison was not one to be left behind.

The dog got a running start, then hurtled up and into the car. Joe put his hands out to catch him before he hit the back of the small compartment that separated them from the main car. Edison lunged to the side as he landed, sliding forward and against Joe’s hands, redirecting his momentum. Smart dog.

Joe slammed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. They were committed now.

“Good boy.” He picked up Edison’s leash and opened the door that separated them from the rest of the train car. His plan wouldn’t work unless he got further forward in the train.

He walked straight through the car, as if he belonged, hip inches from blue fabric seats. Most people didn’t look up from their newspapers, books, and phones, but a woman in her forties eyed him suspiciously. He walked on. Even if she called the police, the call probably wouldn’t be routed to the police at the platforms within the two minutes left before the train arrived at the station. He hoped.

In the next car, nobody looked askance at him. They must have assumed that he’d come from the car behind them. A few smiled at Edison absently. He walked until he reached the middle of the train. Here, he would hide amongst the crowd. The sheer volume of commuters might be enough to keep the police at the platform ends from seeing the dog or recognizing Joe.

When the train pulled in, Joe hung back to let a few people by. He couldn’t go first. He needed a critical mass of people on the platform before he exited the train. When he judged there were enough people there, he pushed to the door and out. He didn’t dare to be the last one off the train, either.

He kept Edison close and let the crowd draw them along the platform toward the exit. He couldn’t see the policemen and hoped that he wasn’t visible to them, either. As for Edison, all those many legs on the platform would conceal him. With luck, the policemen weren’t watching the departing crowd too closely. If they spotted him, he still had a good chance of getting away before they worked their way through the crowd.

Joe and Edison reached the main floor without incident. Joe led the way up the stairs to the west balcony. From on high he took a quick look at the people moving through the giant room below. None seemed to notice him and wouldn’t even see Edison from down there. Good.

He headed over toward the elevator by The Campbell Apartment. He hated taking the elevator, with its camera, but he didn’t think that anyone would be monitoring that camera. They probably hadn’t expected him to get past the platforms. He made it safely to the elevator and pressed the button to go to the floor of the Vanderbilt Tennis and Fitness Club, his workout facility.

Once he got into the gym, Joe felt safer. Inside, it looked like any other gym — a counter at the front to sign in and receive a towel and locker rooms to the right for men and left for women. Across from those were the weight room and tennis courts.

The young man at the desk, Brandon, recognized him. Nothing in his greeting seemed different from any other day. Brandon looked like Joe — the same height and build with the same short dark hair and blue eyes. Brandon, too, was a programmer, working his way through college, and Joe had arranged an internship for him at Pellucid the following summer. He wore a bright blue Pellucid baseball cap to work every day.

“You’re up early, Mr. Tesla.” His accent was pure Bronx.

“I’m busy later,” Joe said. “I thought I’d better get a workout in while I can.”

Brandon nodded. Joe normally kept strange hours, dropping in at any time from when they opened at six a.m. to when they closed at one a.m. He was grateful for that now. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

On the desk next to the sign-in sheet rested Brandon’s phone. It was the same brand as Joe’s, but without a cover. If Joe could switch their phones undetected, the phone might inadvertently trick the police into following Brandon. Joe rejected the idea. The switch might get the young man into trouble, and the police would know about Joe’s connection to the health club.

“Could you do me a favor?” Joe asked.

“Always, Mr. Tesla.”

Joe slid two twenties across the desk. “Get me a bagel and coffee for breakfast and get Edison a steak from Ceriello? You can keep the change.”

Not that there would be much change. Ceriello steaks were expensive.

Brandon put a “back in a minute” sign on the desk and headed out.

Joe made for the locker room, dropping the towel over his shoulder. He unlocked his locker and took out shampoo, shaving cream, and a razor. He lingered longer than he probably should have under the water, loving how it washed away the smells of night on the floor with the dog and how the hot water relaxed his tense muscles. Plus, under the shower he could pretend that this was just another ordinary day.

After he got out and dried off, he had to face the reality that, among other things, he had no clean clothes. He sniffed his workout shirt and then the shirt he’d been wearing all night. No contest. The workout shirt smelled better. He pulled it over his head, wishing for clean clothes. No luck there, but what the gym had, which was better than clean, was Wi-Fi. After all, the fully connected businessman had to be able to access the Internet between sets.

Clean and dry, he sat on the wooden bench in the locker room and logged into the Wi-Fi with Edison curled on the tile floor at his feet. He’d gotten through a couple of computers to hide his location by the time Brandon came back with breakfast. He even brought a plate for the steak and a bowl of water for Edison. A good kid.

In a few minutes he had hacked into the Grand Central video surveillance archive. This time he wasn’t searching for Vivian Torres’s embarrassing rescue. He was searching for Rebar, trying to figure out when he’d come through the terminal, or if he’d come through the terminal at all on his way down to the tunnels. There were hundreds of other entry points — old access doors, the platforms at the subway stations, and who knew where else? Still, it was a place to start.

Joe could download surveillance footage before the approximate time that he’d seen Rebar and then work back in hourly increments to look for a man who’d climbed off one of the platforms and into the tunnels. With forty-four platforms (double greens), it was a lot of footage, but he could automate most of that work.

He started it up, then let it run in the background while he searched for news of himself. Nothing. It was hard to believe that they’d blanketed the place with police without explaining anything to the public.

His stomach tightened. Whatever they wanted him for, it must be important and top secret. What secrets had Rebar uncovered?

Joe carried the laptop into the weight room and watched a couple of businessmen play tennis while he tried to think. The men ran across the blue court, each returning the ball with a grim concentration that said it was more war than game. He felt like that right now himself. With a sigh, he went back to the locker room and reclaimed his spot on the bench and searched for news on Rebar’s murder.

He started with the New York Post’s web site. It didn’t skimp on coverage of bizarre murders. The web site featured a brief piece about a body found deep under Grand Central, but it mentioned neither the presidential train car nor the other skeletons. So, the police must not have released those details to the press. If they had, the Post would have shouted it far and wide. It was too strange not to, but the reporter made little of the murder — hinting that it was a homeless man probably bludgeoned by another homeless man, identity of both unknown. That meant that the media didn’t have the juicy details.

The site gave its biggest headlines to the story of a policeman killed by a train while investigating an incident in the train tunnels. Rebar’s murder, perhaps? The police called it “a tragic accident.” The dead man left behind a wife and six-month-old baby, poor guy. Maybe it was murder, and committed by the man who had almost shot Joe. It was too easy to get paranoid.

A bong from his computer drew his attention to the Pellucid window. He tabbed over. The video showed a tall man in a camouflage jacket climbing off the end of Platform 23. A crush of people filled the platform behind him, but no one seemed to notice his actions. No one threw him a curious glance. The anonymity of the big city had worked to Rebar’s advantage.

Joe moved his legs to let a tennis player walk by to the showers. He looked out of place working in the locker room, but he hoped that big-city indifference might help him, too.

It didn’t. The man glared at him. Though Joe ignored him, a seed of worry started. What if the guy complained about him or, after reading the news, mentioned the weird guy with a dog and a laptop at the gym?

Probably nothing to worry about. He was just being paranoid, but Joe worked faster anyway. He went back to the picture of Rebar. He couldn’t see his face in the shot. He painstakingly backed the video up from that point and switched through other cameras in the station, hoping to find Rebar captured in one of them.

Bingo. He tilted his laptop’s screen forward to get a better view. Edison cocked an ear in his direction, sensing his excitement, but didn’t lift his head.

Joe moved the video forward a frame at a time. A man in a camouflage jacket entered the concourse with determined long strides, a shadow indicating stubble on his chin. What looked like crumpled papers overflowed from the pockets of his jacket. He walked with the erect posture of the man Joe had met in the tunnel. It might be the same man, but he couldn’t get a positive ID unless he could see at least part of his face.

The man pointedly angled his face away from the camera as he crossed the concourse and headed down to the platforms without a glance at the arrivals and departures boards. A man who knew where he was going — and where the cameras were placed.

The entrance to Platform 23 had a camera. When Joe switched to it, he was rewarded by a view of Rebar looking directly into the surveillance camera. A determined expression crossed his face as he stuffed papers deeper into his pocket. Joe didn’t remember seeing those papers when he’d filmed the crime scene. Maybe the murderer had taken them, or maybe Rebar had lost them or stashed them on his way to the train car.

He had to stay focused on the identification. He took a screen shot of the facial image and ran it through tools to enhance it. He made a few guesses to clean it up and then started running the picture through Pellucid, starting with military databases because of the jacket, posture, and how he’d called Joe “sir.”

Edison sat patiently next to him. The man came out of the shower and glared at the dog.

“Psychiatric service animal,” Joe said. “You can ask at the front desk.”

“Some of us are here to play tennis.”

“I’m waiting on my court time,” Joe lied.

“Surely you can find somewhere more comfortable than that.”

“You’d be surprised.” Joe went back to his screen.

He’d gotten a hit on Rebar’s picture. He brought up the window and scrolled down. Rebar’s real name was Ronald Raines. He was in the Navy and had been stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Currently listed as AWOL. Who went AWOL from Cuba? It wasn’t a war zone.

Edison lay down, blissfully unconcerned about these questions.

Even though he had his own accounts with official access to the databases he needed, he used CIA Agent Bister’s login and password. He’d cracked Bister’s password the first time he’d logged in next to him because Bister typed with two fingers at about the speed of your average chimpanzee. His password, not surprisingly, was hulksm@sh.

Joe always masked the IP address of his computer and this morning, for all the Internet knew, he was Agent Bister logging in from Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Redwood City, California, where Bister liked to hang out, probably because the woman behind the counter had big breasts and a TV smile. Sunil had often teased Joe for being paranoid, but knowing as much as he did about how data were collected and used, he considered his precautions barely adequate.

Once in, he settled down to read about Ronald Raines, the man who’d introduced himself as Rebar in the tunnel. Before the man had gone missing, he’d worked in interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Cuba. Did that mean that he’d asked clever questions, or did it mean that he’d tortured people to obtain information? The files had no answer. Had he gone AWOL because of something he’d uncovered in an interrogation? Had a prisoner bribed him?

The files listed extra combat training. Otherwise, nothing unusual. He memorized Rebar’s parents’ names and phone number. No other personal contacts were listed. The file said that he was single, with no children, so at least there were no kids growing up without a father.

The man must have known something important to have a killer sent after him. And what could be so important that they would blanket the tunnels under New York after his death?