Mind the Gap

by Christopher Golden

Page 16

  "Hes gone," Stevie said. "We should go too. But were not going straight back down. "

  "Were not?" Jazz asked. But she already knew that. Stevie still had not let go of her waist.

  Stevie shook his head. "I know a place where we can talk. "

  They left the square as they had entered an hour before, holding hands and smiling. The smile still felt false, but now Jazz was sure the holding of hands had meaning. It was hot, her palm was sweaty, but she did not want to let go.

  ****

  Music blasted from the speakers at about a million decibels, so loud that Jazz felt her stomach and chest rippling in time with the beat. It produced a wall of noise she thought she could probably climb. She didnt know who the band was, but the song screamed about rock and roll, drinking, and doing the horizontal dance. At least two of the three were actively being pursued in here.

  Though it was still early morning, the cafe was packed. The front portion of the shop consisted of a secondhand record-and-CD dealership, but at the back there was a sur-prisingly well-appointed coffee counter selling coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and a selection of cakes and snacks. A few peo-ple had brought their potential purchases here to mull them over while having a drink, but most of the dozen tables were taken by obvious regulars. They sprawled casually across the chairs, drinking something from large mugs that most defi-nitely did not resemble coffee. It did not steam, for a start.

  But though the music was loud and the clientele all seemed to know one another, Jazz felt completely comfort-able. Part of it was the anonymity, she guessed, but she also felt as though this was somewhere people came to get lost. Everyone here was doing their own thing, laughing and talk-ing with friends of a similar bent, and there was no hint of tension or exclusivity in the air. It certainly was not the sort of place where shoppers popped in for a quiet coffee before their cab home.

  "I thought you said wed come here to talk!" Jazz said into Stevies ear.

  He smiled and shrugged, and leaned close to her. "At least we wont be overheard. "

  They were both drinking coffee, and Stevie had bought a selection of small cakes, which sat on a plate before them. Jazz didnt feel at all hungry, but she felt obliged to take a nibble. She chose a caramel shortbread and it was gorgeous, obvi-ously homemade, rich, and sweet. She smiled in appreciation.

  "So he was one of the guys who murdered your mum?" Stevie asked.

  Jazz stopped chewing and felt instantly queasy. She lowered the cake and closed her eyes, nodding slowly. "How did you know?"

  "Pretty obvious," Stevie said. "Your reaction. You were terrified. "

  "He was there," she said. "The day I went home and found Mum. . . He was there. In my room, watching for me. "

  Stevie frowned and drank more coffee. He looked around the cafe, up at the concert posters on the walls, down at the scratched table —anywhere but at her.

  "And now were going to do his house," she said.

  "We are?" He looked at her, the expression of surprise honest and open.

  "Bloody right we are!"

  "But. . . you said they were still looking for you. You were scared to come up here for the first few weeks. "

  Jazz nodded. Yes, hes right. I was scared and I still am. But theres something more here, something far beyond what I know.

  "And now you want to go and do his house?"

  "Harry chose the place," Jazz said. "Its got something to do with Mayor Bromwell, and hes the one responsible for Cadge, so theres no way Ill pull out. Not now. And as Harry keeps telling me, without me it cant be done. "

  Stevie smiled at that, nodded. "Hes not far wrong. Youre fucking good. "

  At Stevies words, Jazz felt a flush of pride —and the heat of something else entirely. Without making it too obvious, she picked up another cake and slid sideways as she started eating, leaning against Stevie. He did not move away. She took that as a good sign.

  "Are we going to tell Harry?" Stevie asked.

  "No. No need for him to know. " And I want to get inside, she thought. She was confused, she couldnt find the big pic-ture, but there was something behind and beyond all this that connected things.

  Dont believe in chance, her mum had always told her. Dont trust in coincidences. They do exist, but theyre best held in suspicion. Things happen for a reason, life has a pattern, and sometimes that pattern is cruel. So watch out, and see meaning in everything.

  "What if youre caught?" Stevie asked. His concern was very real, even though he managed to maintain his cool ex-pression, and Jazz felt so grateful for that. Cadges death had done something to all of them; it wasnt weakness but a closer tie among the kingdom members that put more emphasis on danger.

  With one of their number killed, everyone else had realized how fraught their existence really was.

  "I wont be," Jazz said. "I can do this. "

  Stevie nodded, frowning.

  "Dont tell Harry," she said. "Please. Afterward Ill tell him, talk to him. Ask him whats going on. But if you tell him now, hell stop whats happening, and. . . "

  "And theres stuff you need to know," Stevie said.

  Jazz nodded. Yeah, she thought. And you understand that, dont you?

  "You ever think about later?" she asked.

  "Later?"

  "The future, I mean. I suppose its all right for Harry. Hes on in years, isnt he? But dyou really think youll spend your whole life underground?"

  Stevie frowned at that, but then his expression softened. "Were not all hiding from killers, Jazz, but were all hiding from something. Not sayin I havent thought about it, though. I owe Harry a lot. For now thats enough. But I dont think Ill be down there forever, no. Got to make a life, havent I?"

  As though realizing hed said too much, his gaze sharp-ened and he studied her. "You wont say nothing, will you?"

  Jazz shook her head. "Course not. "

  He hesitated a moment, and she had the feeling he was weighing whether or not he could really trust her. Then he nodded, smiling at her in a way that gave her a pleasant squirm.

  They finished their coffee and cakes without saying any-thing more, and when they left, nobody turned to watch them go. Outside, they split up, both of them heading back below-ground. Stevie left Jazz and headed for an alternate station. He seemed reticent about letting her travel on her own, but she nodded and smiled and said that shed be fine. In truth shed have preferred if he had traveled with her, but Harry would have questions about that, because he drummed cau-tion into them all the time. And right now she didnt want Harry suspicious.

  Besides, he was still on the mend. She didnt want him to worry. The mayors men had done a good job on him, broken several ribs and cracked his wrist. For a day or two after the attack, hed been coughing up blood, though only Hattie, Stevie, and Jazz had known about it. A rib had scraped his lung, he said, and however much they begged, he refused to go aboveground to find a doctor. It was almost as if, once he depended on someone other than himself again, his time down here would be finished.

  Jazz descended out of the sunlight and into the station. She moved far along the platform and waited beside one of the chocolate vending machines that no one ever seemed to use, and when the train arrived she dashed on first. She was lucky to find a seat, and she stared down at her shoes as they rattled away into the tunnels.

  As she traveled, she thought about what she had seen. Had that really been Mort? She had already decided it was, but there was always the possibility that shed been mistaken. Her mothers words about coincidence and chance came back to her, but her mother was dead, and it was up to Jazz now to translate events. If it was Mort, then he was connected to Mayor Bromwell somehow, and that meant the Uncles were as well. What that meant. . . she was not sure. But Harry had chosen this house —the third posh place theyd have hit in as many weeks—for a reason: revenge.

  Maybe the time had come to double up on vengeance.

  When
she got off the train, she stood on the platform for a minute, fumbling in her pockets for change and pretending to use the chocolate machine. When the platform was empty, she dashed to the end, slipped over its edge, and headed into the tunnel.

  The first time shed come this way after the United Kingdom had moved, the first thirty yards had scared the crap out of her. She was very conscious of the train tracks close to her left foot, and she knew that if a train came along shed be done for. Even if there was just room for her to press against the wall, the suction of the trains passing would pull her into it, and shed be battered between train and wall before being deposited on the tracks. Maybe people would see her, maybe they wouldnt, but either way theyd never reach her before the next train came along to finish her off.

  Timing, Switch had said. He never spoke much, and after almost three months this was the first thing hed said directly to Jazz. Off the train, down, thirty yards to the door. Find it, get in, youre okay. Miss it, youre fucked. Hed stared at her, grubby face revealed by ghostly torchlight. Dont miss it.

  She walked quickly, running her right hand along the wall and counting her steps. She heard a sound in the distance, a screech and squeal, and for a second she feared it was the Hour of Screams coming in again. But then she remembered how close she was to the surface. The Hour only swept through the lower, more remote levels. Places, Marco had told her, where living people shouldnt be.

  She found the steel hatch, grabbed its edge, and pulled. Once through the gap in the wall, she closed the hatch and breathed out.

  Away from the station, away from the line, she still had a long way to go. Their new home was deeper than before. She only hoped it would be safer.

  The clank of metal doors, the dust of abandoned tunnels, the flicker of uncertain lights, scampering rats and the tickle of spiders, damp walls and leaking domed brick ceilings —all were becoming familiar to Jazz. Worst were the cockroaches, which always seemed to scuttle just at the edges of any light. Once shed stepped into a nest of them; shed become more careful since. The United Kingdom kept several torches hid-den in an alcove close to the surface, and she took one now and made her way back down to their new shelter. It had been built for royalty, and so theyd started calling it the Palace.

  As long as Jazz didnt have to call it home, any name was fine with her.

  The Palace was more comfortable than Deep Level Shelter 7-K, and sometimes when the air was right they could hear faint, unidentifiable music coming in from somewhere high above, down pipes perhaps, or through a fault in the ground.

  But she was distracting herself. She was almost there, and she knew that soon she would have to pass the wall.

  It wasnt that it spooked her. Not really. But she was still getting used to the Underground, the nooks and crannies, and the idea of miles of abandoned tunnels and places never seen by anyone alive. The United Kingdom had made some of these places their homes and haunting grounds, and there were plenty of other people living under London, the home-less and disenfranchised and mad. They kept away from oth-ers as much as possible, keeping their own location secret to avoid the theft of food or supplies. When Jazz passed others in the Underground, she usually ignored them the way Harry had taught her, but sometimes she couldnt help giving a smile or a wave or a quick hello, just to let those lost people know there were those who hadnt forgotten them, who still saw them and acknowledged their existence.

  They were harmless, mostly. But Harry often alluded to other, less normal inhabitants beneath the city. One night around a fire hed told them all the story about a tribe of peo-ple who had lived down here since the 1800s, and how their descendants were born down here and had never seen day-light. Hear a scratch, hed said, see a face at the bottom of some un-plumbed pit, and its likely one of them. Shed asked him afterward whether hed said it to scare them, and hed paused for a while, looking at her. Then hed smiled and nodded. Of course, Jazz girl, hed said.

  Shed believed him then because she needed to, but now she was not so sure.

  She walked on, along a narrow access tunnel between a subterranean room and a shaft that housed an old metal lad-der. She checked the shaft before descending — (no pale face down there staring up with milky, sightless eyes) —and then carefully lowered herself down.

  And here it was. The bottom of the shaft widened in a bell shape, and its base was a dozen steps across. One quarter of it opened onto an old brick-lined cavern, its use long since lost to time. But opposite this opening was the bricked-in doorway.

  Something back there, Jazz thought. Something not dead. It was the same notion shed had the very first time theyd come this way, all of them following Harry in those painful, con-fused hours after giving Cadge to the river. Then shed not had time to pause but had turned away from the old opening and walked on. Now, as every time since, she stopped to look.

  She remembered what Cadge had said about that other metal door that had held her fascination.

  Never know what you re gonna find behind a door down here. Well, once there had been a doorway here, and somebody had seen fit to brick it up. They had brought all those materials down here —bricks, sand, cement—and worked in these cramped, uncomfortable conditions to fill the opening perfectly.

  Jazz felt as if she could walk straight through the bricks. She tried, but they were solid and damp.

  Something scurried away up the wall, its many-limbed escape scratching at her hearing.

  She turned her back on the wall and walked away. It wasnt easy. Maybe it was just because it was a mystery, and sometimes mysteries can exert a powerful influence.

  Jazz went on, leaving that strange place behind.

  Ten minutes later she found the room of alcoves. It was a long, thin room, the ceiling blank concrete instead of the usual vaulted brick, and along the wall to her left were five al-coves. The door she wanted —the one that led to the back en-trance of the Palace—was in the middle one.

  It was open, of course. Harry and the others were ex-pecting her and Stevie, eager to hear their report. If all was good —and she would make sure it was—there was a job for them to pull in less than twenty-four hours.