The World Beneath

Chapter 25

Stalling, Joe fussed with his Wi-Fi booster under the blanket. He was comfortable breaking in to places electronically, but hated the idea of sneaking into an actual building. What if he got caught? Even if they didn’t arrest him, they’d most likely throw him into the street. But he didn’t see any other options. He’d just have to not get caught.

Edison sensed his disquiet and woke. He wagged his tail once (cyan) as if to check on him.

“I’m all good,” Joe lied.

The yellow fur ball snuggled closer to him. Joe tucked the blanket more securely around them both. They needed to stay hidden.

A quick search told Joe that the Office of Chief Medical Examiner for New York City was located at the corner of First Avenue and Thirtieth Street in Kips Bay, a neighborhood about a mile from his current location. If he could go outside, he’d be there in ten minutes, tops. He studied the modern square building — the Milton Helpern Institute of Forensic Medicine. It was blocky, a glass box rising several stories into the sky. Even looking at it made him nervous — too much exposure to the sky. He clenched his jaw. He’d have to go inside it.

Getting there was the challenge. A cab was out of the question.

If he couldn’t go outside, he’d have to make do with the underground. He pulled up an old map that he’d compiled from various scanned-in maps. It showed subway tunnels, train tunnels, steam tunnels, and sewage tunnels. They snaked under the city like a web of nerves sending signals throughout a vast brain.

To start, he could walk along the subway tunnel to the Thirty-Third Street Station (two threes flashed in his head — red and red again). After that, he’d have to switch to a different tunnel.

Sewage tunnels ran practically everywhere, hundreds of miles’ worth. The map showed a sewage outfall at the end of Thirtieth Street that pumped treated sewage straight into the East River. That tunnel ran right under his destination and was probably big enough to walk through. Not his first choice, but it might work.

He studied the network of steam tunnels that crisscrossed under the city. He’d read that the steam tunnels stretched more than one hundred miles. Built more than a century ago, some of those steam pipes still carried heat and power to New York homes and businesses. They had been built with walkable tunnels, because the active pipes needed regular servicing.

Tunnels ran back and forth like a maze, and the first few trails he traced ended in dead-ends. He’d best start at the end and work backward. He scrolled to the street corner that housed the Milton Helpern building.

He zoomed in on that city block until the tunnels dissolved into pixels, then back out, finally finding what he sought. A narrow tunnel ran right under the medical examiner’s building, and a bracket indicated that the tunnel exited inside, probably for maintenance. A quick scroll back showed that it was linked to the Thirty-Third Street station via two tunnels.

It just might be possible to get to the morgue. Breaking in was another story.

Joe hated to go. The tunnels were full of men searching for him, at least one of whom wanted to kill him. He was safe here.

A train thundered next to him. The tiny clock on the lower corner of the laptop screen told him that they had eight minutes before the next train was due.

“Come on, boy,” he said. “We need to get a move on.”

He stood and shook feeling back into his feet. Edison stretched.

Joe closed the laptop and dropped it into his backpack, adding his makeshift Wi-Fi dish. He folded the blanket so that it would be easy to shake out and tucked it under his arm. Slowly, he backed away from Platform 36 and the cop who served so patiently there.

A few minutes later, Joe and Edison reached the locked door at the end of the maintenance tunnel that connected Grand Central Terminal, the train station, with Grand Central Station, the subway station. He already knew which key to use, as he’d hiked through there several times on his nightly wanderings. Thanks again, Great-Grandfather Gallo.

Once he reached the subway station, he followed the tunnel for lines four (green), five (brown), and six (orange) heading south. He got practiced at sweeping the blanket over them and going into a crouch to hide from trains because they ran through here at intervals of five minutes, more or less. He sometimes walked only a few feet before he had to go into hiding. This was why he routinely didn’t start exploring until the middle of the night. Today he didn’t have that luxury.

Every time that he reached a subway platform, he got on all fours and crawled underneath it so that no one in the station could see him. His knees were black and blue by the time he reached the Thirty-Third Street Station. If he ever got another chance to pack an emergency bag, kneepads and gloves were going in it. Edison had no such problems.

At the Thirty-Third Street Station, he switched to an old Amtrak tunnel heading east, sweeping his flashlight along the wall every few feet, looking for the door that would lead to a steam tunnel but finding only neat rows of wires fastened to the wall.

He was almost on top of it when he realized that he could have found it without the light. The temperature in the tunnels usually stayed in the midfifties, chilly but comfortable with his hoodie, but the air felt much warmer here. At the warmest spot, his light illuminated a simple metal door.

Would his bundle of keys include the right one? Great-Grandpa Gallo had demanded full access to all parts of the subterranean world, but Joe worried that the various underground authorities hadn’t always bothered to send updated keys every time they changed a lock in the last century. He fished through his keys, trying first one, then another, and another. The fourth key did the trick. Sometimes, bureaucracy worked.

He pushed the door open with the toe of his sneaker, and a blast of hot air flowed across his face. Inside, it felt like a sauna. Sweat coated his body, and Edison began to pant. Joe put the temperature at around ninety degrees. A big change from the air outside, but bearable.

He peeled off his hoodie and looked around for a light switch. As expected, he found one, and lights flickered on down the tunnel. He clicked off his flashlight, glad to spare the batteries.

On his left ran rusty steam pipes with massive wheel-operated valves. He supposed they still worked, even if they looked rusted shut. Rust flakes littered the floor like decayed snow.

On his right was a long, whitewashed wall. Power cables hung on the ceiling that powered, probably among other things, the fluorescent lights. The tunnel stretched ahead in a straight line.

He stuffed his hoodie and the blanket into the backpack and shouldered it back on so that his hands were free. He didn’t expect trouble, but he had to be wary. He walked forward, Edison at his heels.

Steam rushed through nearby pipes with a rattling sound, like rain on a tin roof, and an occasional burble. Heat radiated off the metal. If even a pinhole opened up in one of these pipes, it would cook him and Edison like prawns.

He broke into a quick jog. Sweat poured off him, but he didn’t slow down. It wasn’t far, less than a half-mile, and he wanted to get through it as fast as he could. It gave him the creeps knowing that he could be cooked alive at any second.