The World Beneath

Chapter 27

Joe passed a few locked doors before he found the one that led to 520 First Street. One of his master keys fit into the lock, and it turned easily. People kept these locks well oiled. He hoped that he didn’t run into them.

A cluster of pipes turned here — some went into the wall next to the door, and others curved down into the floor to another, deeper level. This juncture wasn’t on his maps. Someday he’d explore that level.

He entered the building’s sub-basement — a simple room with raw concrete walls. Gray metal lockers ran along one wall, a gray metal table and two chairs stood in the middle of the room, and a sink with a hotplate and an ancient coffeepot sat in the corner. The film of dust coating everything looked at least a decade old. Either someone was a very bad housekeeper, or no one had been in this room in a long time.

Joe opened the first locker and smiled. It contained a tattered orange safety vest with a blue and white Con Edison logo stuck on the left breast. It might as well have contained an invisibility cloak, and he quickly donned it.

He poked around the room and found a wooden clipboard with a five-year-old work order fastened to it, which he scooped up, too. A man wearing an electric-company vest and carrying a clipboard looked like he knew what he was doing. His days in the circus had taught him that people saw what they expected to see, and props set their expectations.

He could never explain a dog. A Con Edison worker with a psychiatric service dog was too memorable.

“Sorry, boy,” he said. “You’re going to have to stay here.”

He led Edison over to the far corner by the lockers, where the air was cooler, and he would be hidden behind the table. He filled the old coffeepot to the brim from a rusty metal faucet that had dripped a red blotch onto the dirty white sink under it.

“Water, boy,” he said, setting it down by the dog.

Edison lowered his head and drank greedily. Joe rinsed a thick white cup that he found sitting upside down in the sink and downed a few cups full of rusty-tasting water himself. The jog down the steam tunnels had dehydrated both of them.

“Stay,” he told the dog.

Edison cocked his head uncertainly. His job was to accompany Joe.

“Just for a little while,” Joe said. “Stay.”

Edison understood the tone and settled down, muzzle on his paws, to wait. Joe hated to leave him alone.

He glanced at his watch. Dinnertime. With luck, everyone would be gone home for the day and the building would be mostly empty. He might get through this without any problem.

If not, and he got arrested, he’d tell them where to find his dog. Edison was microchipped, and any vet who read it would return him to the service-dog headquarters. Edison would be fine.

Would Joe?