“Of course you do.” Alfred bore into me with an intensity I’d rarely seen. “But I’m talking about that fire in your belly.” He jabbed a bony finger at my midsection. “The real reason you smacked that young Drax in the kisser, and called his grandfather a Nazi. The real reason you’d rather be thrown on the ground and humiliated by those flatfoots than give one inch.”
I tried to respond but found no words, only memories from my childhood—the coppery taste of blood, my fists tight but small, feeling helpless.
“They cost your father his life. They blamed him. They treated your mother cruelly, and look how they treat you, saying river rat as if people like you have no place in their world.”
Alfred was telling me exactly what I wanted to hear, the oil-tongued bastard, but he was right. All my life, people like Tony had been demanding an apology for my presence, as if I’d tracked dog shit across their Persian rug. I’d fantasized a hundred withering, razor-sharp retorts, my dad bearing witness. As I’d stood over Tony, his face blossoming rosy from my fist, I’d imagined my father viewing the whole spectacle from far above, proud of me for standing strong.
“You saw him call me that?” I asked.
“I’ve been called worse.”
I recalled the stiff greeting between Alfred and Walther. Something had happened way back when.
Alfred retrieved an oversized magnifying glass from a desk drawer and handed it to me. He then reached down, flipped open the manila folder and lifted its only contents, an eight-by-ten photo sheet comprised of thirty-six separate images from a single roll of film, with each photo the size of two postage stamps. He handed it to me. “Take a look.”
I positioned the magnifying glass and chose a row at random. The first photo showed a long hallway—a school or an office building, the image too small for me to make out. The next photo was closer in, showing Reuben pressing his eye to the crack between double doors. I didn’t understand.
I dropped down two rows and shifted the glass right. Then I gasped, glanced up at Alfred and dropped my head again. I was seeing the Cincinnati Union Terminal’s grand rotunda photographed at night, the walls painted by splashes of white light, my light. I felt a rush of excitement in my chest. I jerked the magnifying glass to the next image, and then the next. They were all there.
Even without the detail of an enlargement, I could discern that my gambles had paid off. Floor-level recesses balanced each other on the left and right. Arched shadows mimicked scalloped stonework. Gorgeous.
I let out a breath and looked up. “How? Tony destroyed the film.”
Alfred kept his eyes on mine. “He destroyed film, that’s true.”
“He destroyed the film you took from the camera. I saw it.”
“No, he destroyed the film he thinks I took from the camera.”
Alfred plucked one of the film canisters from the desktop and held it at eye level. “What kind?”
I knew well the purple accent against Kodak yellow, but grabbed the cartridge anyway to read from the label. “Plus-X. One twenty-five ASA black-and-white.”
“Good,” Alfred said. “Hand it over but pay attention. I don’t want you to think I’m reaching into my pocket or any silly thing like that.” He took the film from my outstretched hand, held it in the air for a moment, and returned it to my palm.
Instead of purple on yellow, the film canister was now green on yellow. I gasped again. “Tri-X. Four hundred ASA.” Flawless sleight-of-hand. “You’re some kind of magician?”
The old man chuckled. “No, I’m some kind of photojournalist. It’s a survival tactic. We take the pictures people don’t want taken. They get mad, manhandle you, sometimes clobber you. If they don’t smash your equipment, they demand your film. You oblige, acting afraid for your life as you fumble around and hand over a blank roll you’ve tucked in your palm. Sometimes you plead to get it back, just for show. That’s how we took down Max Langdon.”
The name sounded familiar.
“State senator. I snapped him pocketing a fat envelope from a corrupt businessman.”
I glanced back at the contact sheet in my hand, making sure it still existed.
Alfred went on. “At the wedding reshoot for Miss Angelica, I asked what film you’d used.”
I remembered. “Panatomic-X. That’s what I told you. But I don’t get—”
“I had to be ready with the same type. Couldn’t risk someone noticing the cartridge changing color.”
“You had a plan, even back then?” The scheming, brilliant old man. Never does anything without a good reason.
Alfred shrugged. “Only lining up options. You never know how things will go.”
I replayed those last minutes in Drax Headquarters and what I’d witnessed from the floor, my limbs pinned. “But Tony tried to get the camera open. What if he’d popped the back before rewinding and exposed the film? What if he’d refused to let you touch the camera?”
“Then your work would’ve been lost. We got lucky.”
I wanted to hug him. “We got lucky? I’d say I got lucky. Why’d you do this for me?”
Alfred turned, hooked his blazer with an index finger, threw it over his shoulder, and walked toward the door. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. Let’s call it tactical advantage.”
“What?”
He faced me from the doorway, his gaze searing. “The negatives are mine, locked in my safe. Help me turn my tactical advantage over Drax into a strategic advantage and you can have them back, maybe get them published and poke Tony in the eye.” Then he pointed an index finger at me like a pistol. “I’ve got one more chance before I die. If you shoot off your mouth again, Mr. Tremaine, and cost me that chance, I’ll burn those negatives and get you thrown back in jail, and that’s just for starters.”
Stunned, I stood there looking like an idiot, my mouth open. Eventually I said, “Chance to do what?”
“We get started tomorrow at nine in the morning. Don’t be late.” Then he left.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning, I passed through Tricia’s shop on the way to Alfred’s office. She stood at a wall shelf, assaulting cans of Dektol developer with a price sticker gun. She’d chosen one of her tighter white blouses.
She caught me with my eyes aimed chest high. “Don’t you have enough trouble?”
“Do you know the combination to Alfred’s wall safe?”
She laid down the price gun and rolled her eyes to the ceiling tiles. “You ignored my advice.”
“No, I listened,” I said. “I listened to him treat me like a criminal—”
“Which, technically, you are.”
“—and refuse to give back my negatives.”
“Which he salvaged.” She grabbed a can from a Kodak shipping carton and slapped on a price.
“What’s he up to?”
“He’s sending you into the subway,” she said, shelving the can with a clunk, her back to me. “Don’t ask me why.”
“Really?” I’d fantasized a thousand times about taking virgin steps, leaving footprints on ancient dust, like the explorers of King Tut’s tomb. “Where the excavator fell through?”
“Too late for that.” She gave the next can a deft one-handed flip to rotate the label. “There’s a utility portal no one knows about. Just one, locked tight, but somehow he knows got the access code. He knows everybody and his brother.”
Subways had long carried utilities—water, gas, phone, and power, running along ceilings and walls. But once Cincinnati ran out of money and a little girl died belowground, the city voted to seal everything off. Utilities were yanked out and rerouted. “A portal?” I said. �
��Why does Alfred tell you all this stuff and I’m left guessing?”
Tricia met my eyes once again. “He tells me squat.”
“Then how’d you find out?”
“I listen.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s two minutes after nine. You’re already late.”
. . . . .
As I wove toward Alfred’s office, I wondered if an opportunity or a setup lay ahead. I didn’t trust him, but he hadn’t exactly lied, only withheld the truth.
Now he wanted me to trespass in the most forbidden zone in the greater Cincinnati area. Why?
He’d spoken about winning “this war with Drax,” but maybe he was toying with me. He knew about my family’s relationship with Drax. Maybe I was just another Miss Angelica to him, someone to manipulate with words, and Alfred always knew the right words.
He had a guest in his office. They stood alongside the big desk, now covered by a jumbo blueprint of the subway system. I’d recognize it from across a basketball court.
Alfred said, “This is Mr. Smith.” The newcomer smiled awkwardly at Alfred and then blinked at me through thick glasses, each blink like the closing and opening of a mechanical aperture. Then the man’s gaze dropped too quickly to the floor.
“Pardon my asking,” I said, “but is Smith your real name?”
Smith was around Alfred’s age, seventy plus, and pint-sized. Except for a few white wisps like weeds popping through a parking lot, his head was bald and pasty, with a cropped fringe horseshoeing the back of his head from one ear to the other.
Smith joined his hands under a volleyball of a belly and deferred to Alfred to address my question. “Mr. Smith agreed to help us under terms of anonymity,” Alfred replied.
“Help us how?” I asked.
“He’s a master-level structural engineer, the best in the business, and I’ve known plenty.”
The man threw Alfred a silent nod of appreciation for the endorsement. His lips seemed misaligned so his mouth resembled a squashed W.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“To bring down Drax Enterprises,” Alfred replied with the seriousness of divorce court.
I snorted. “Is that all? Then why do we need all three of us?”
Alfred frowned. “Mr. Tremaine, this will go a lot smoother without your sarcasm.” He took charge of the agenda. “Drax’s business model is simple. Bid high, do low-quality work, and buy the protection of the lowest politicians. Same model as far back as the Depression, but we could never prove it.”
“Who’s we?” I asked.
Alfred said, “The newspaper, interested parties—some of them long dead by now. We’re doing this for them too.”
Smith acknowledged this with a reverent dip of the head. Did this guy speak?
“So you’re sending me into the subway through a utility access portal,” I said. “Sounds risky.”
Alfred glanced at me with suspicion. “How do you know about the portal?”
I shrugged, stepped up to the blueprint, and scanned it. “Seems most likely. That’s how Reuben and I got into the Rochester subway. But why not use the hole where the excavator broke through?”
Alfred remained wary. “No longer an option. They sealed it off immediately. Classic Drax—put the kibosh on further investigation.”
Smith cleared his throat. “Two hundred cubic yards of control density fill,” he said, his voice more high-pitched wind than sound. He stared at me without waver, like a cat peering down a dark alley.
“You mean dirt?” I said.
Smith nodded.
Why do some people need to complicate things? “Still, I thought all access portals were welded shut in the forties after that girl died.” In a flash, I imagined her choking with hysteria, crawling like an infant, each direction a dead end in that miles-long black labyrinth.
“Not all portals,” Alfred said. “One remains, and that’s our golden ticket.”
“To do what?”
Alfred began pacing, hands behind his back like an academic, head hung like he was drawing inspiration from the carpet. “Drax welcomed the panic after that child died. Go ahead, seal it up. Their invoices had been paid in full, and they had plenty worth hiding under tons of soil.”
“But their subway work would never be used,” I said. “Terrible for the image.”
“Worth it,” Smith said, his magnified gaze unrelenting.
Alfred stopped pacing. “We studied Drax’s original bid for the subway project, all in the public record.” He held up a thumb and index finger an inch apart. “From the table of contents to the closing summary, it was a work of fiction.”
My skepticism was rising like the temperature in the office. “None of us are authorities on public works projects.”
Alfred glared at me. “Just like you’re no authority on saving old train stations. Now will you please listen?”
I gave a half nod.
Alfred continued strolling. “We talked to people who worked on the project. Distances, thicknesses, weight-bearing characteristics, piling depths, materials—all fudged, and all with inflated price tags. Drax could pull it off because of bribes and bid rigging.”
“If the bid was such fantasy,” I said, “expose it. Get your old friends at the newspaper to publish it.”
Alfred shook his head. “No data. We need hard figures that compare what they built to what they bid. For now, we have no documented evidence of fraud, just hearsay, and no district attorney will lift a finger on gossip, especially in this town.”
I held up a hand classroom style. “Why didn’t the city order an independent audit? Every big city expenditure has procurement oversight.”
Smith and Alfred exchanged glances like seasoned cops watching the rookie fumble a pair of handcuffs. “Independent?” Alfred chuckled. “There is no independent when the entire system is corrupt. Auditors were on the take just like the politicians.”
“Ready for the good one?” Smith said, his eyebrows bouncing.
I was ready for something to counter my growing doubt.
Alfred explained. “The Drax proposal promised overhead reinforcement to prevent breakthroughs from above.”
Smith said, “Ironic.”
Yes, the irony was sickening. “Doesn’t the excavator breakthrough prove crappy work?”
Alfred and Smith again exchanged all-knowing smiles. I was growing weary of being the tagalong. Alfred reached into his briefcase, produced a section of newspaper and handed it to me. It was the business section of that morning’s printing, a small article circled in ballpoint pen.
I scanned and got the gist in a hurry. Rudolph Drax, company president, blamed Turkel’s death on two factors: the excavator operator who “became confused about the proper route to the construction site,” and “the effect of decades and moisture on the subway structure.” He went on, “even our best public works projects require ongoing maintenance.”
Drax had begun the process of blaming anything and anyone—blaming time, blaming Mother Nature, and of course, blaming its own employee.
“Why won’t someone challenge him?” I asked, expecting no answer.
“City Hall won’t,” Smith said.
“Keep going,” Alfred said, wagging a bent finger at the newsprint in my hands. “The best is yet to come.”
I read on. Rudolph concluded the interview with a declaration. “The safety of the good people of Cincinnati cannot be assured if they continue to drive, walk, and live above the aging underground system. Our engineers have studied the situation carefully and have reached a unanimous recommendation. The tunnels must be filled in. We
encourage our elected officials to take action before another family suffers as the Turkel family has suffered.”
I looked up. Smith gawked at me as if I had a hundred dollar bill taped to my nose. “Their goal is to fill in the subway?” I asked.
Alfred stopped pacing with a scuff of a wingtip shoe. “Dandy way to bury their crimes.”
I took a deep breath. Too much had happened too fast, including Turkel’s death just days before. “What a stroke of luck for Drax,” I said, “the horrors of not filling in the subway, played out in broad daylight for the city to witness, as if the underworld is waiting to swallow up their babies.”
Smith turned up the corners of his mouth, but his eyes remained flat. “Maybe not luck.”
I tilted my head and regarded the strange little man. “You mean they forced the breakthrough intentionally?”
Smith balked. “Speculating. It’s just… everything about Drax seems intentional. Guess who’s going to win the fill-in project.”
I stepped to the window and considered his words for a moment before speaking. “So Drax bids a puffed-up project forty years ago, builds hazardous tunnels on the cheap, pockets a pile of public money, thanks their lucky stars when the Depression mothballs the tunnels, and now stands to make another pile of money covering up their own fraud?”
“Yup,” Smith said. I turned to see him rocking back on his heels.
“How much fraud?”
Alfred scratched his scalp. “By our estimations, Drax overbilled by threefold—minus a few kickback payments.”
“Gotta grease the moving parts,” Smith said.
But my mind wasn’t on city finances or public safety. It was on the Turkel family. Sympathetic relatives would be with them, keeping them fed, trying to fill the silence. But soon, visitors would return to their lives, leaving the widow and children alone. The slow shock of what they’d lost would settle around them like nighttime fog. They’d cling to what he left behind—the smell of his clothes, the memory of his voice—but those things would fade, leaving only the grief.
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