Follow Me Down

by Gordon MacKinney

  I blinked hard, as though it would clear the image from my mind. Would Drax intentionally bring about the death of a worker? I imagined Dad painting in that pit, and me shouting a warning.

  Alfred was still talking. “The biggest public works project in Cincinnati history stuffed Drax pockets. The money they stole laid the financial foundation for the Drax that owns the city today.”

  “And it’ll be their undoing,” Smith proclaimed with bush-league bravado, despite a voice like a squeaky toy.

  Suddenly, the three of us seemed so ridiculous, so impotent. We were Alfred’s Avengers, including a washed-up photojournalist with delusions of a comeback, a monosyllabic propeller-head from the days of ciphering and slide rules, and a perpetual student with nothing certain in his future except a courtroom appearance. I wanted to laugh, or maybe cry.

  “What about statute of limitations?” I asked. “You can’t hold someone responsible today for a forty-year-old crime.”

  Alfred nodded his agreement. “True, and we worried about that. But a man just died because of that crime. The clock starts over, if we can prove fraud.”

  “And how, exactly, are we going to do that?”

  . . . . .

  “Measurements,” I said to Reuben’s confused expression. “That’s how Smith answered my question. One word—measurements. The guy’s verbally constipated.”

  “Unlike you.” Reuben forced a cough. “Measuring what?”

  That evening, after my meeting with Alfred and Smith, and after making sure Mom had taken her proper bedtime dosage, I had rendezvoused with Reuben at one of the first places we’d infiltrated, the forty-nine-story Carew Tower, a 1930s gem that inspired the design of New York’s Empire State Building.

  “According to Alfred and Smith,” I replied, “precise measurements taken at key points throughout the subway could be Drax’s Achilles’ heel.”

  . . . . .

  “Yes, measurements,” Alfred said. He stepped behind his desk, bent at the waist, and tapped the blueprint with his finger. “Mr. Smith here can explain the technical details later, but here’s the upshot. Your measurements, combined with Mr. Smith’s triangulations, will reveal fraud. At the least, the DA will launch an official investigation. But if we’re lucky, he’ll bring charges.”

  “You have reassurances?” I asked.

  “Yup,” said Smith.

  “From the DA?”

  “Yup,” said Smith again, looking too smug given the outlandishness of the conversation.

  I needed more. “Are you sure the calculations will prove fraud?” I glanced at Smith. If he said yup again, I might smack him.

  Alfred appeared to understand the importance of my question. We were heading down a dangerous path and couldn’t afford to hit a dead end. He met my eyes straight on. “Drax’s crimes are real, and your measurements will prove it.”

  . . . . .

  “Do you believe Alfred?” Reuben asked.

  We were perched on a greasy service platform with our feet dangling above forty-nine stories of elevator shaft. Above us, twin twenty-horsepower GE motors hummed and paused. Gear works clicked. My scalp tingled from subsonic vibration. Below, the elevator car approached and retreated, each stopping point a mystery except to the passenger who’d punched the button.

  I peered down at the latest ascent. “Yeah, I believed him. He drips information with an eyedropper, but he doesn’t lie.” The car continued to rise. I pointed into the shaft. “Think it’s headed for the penthouse?”

  Reuben squinted down, gauging. He nodded. “I smell money.”

  For the next few seconds, the elevator car consumed the floors below us with a rush of oily wind and a screech of cables. Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight… My ears popped from air pressure changes. Overhead, something pneumatic hissed and the bottoms of our sneakers settled in the car-top layer of gray dust, like boots on the moon. We exhaled involuntarily.

  “Penthouse,” we said as one, but it was a whisper. Elevator passengers tended to freak out when they heard voices in the ceiling.

  No matter how many times I’d experienced a fast-rising elevator threatening to smash us into hamburger, my cerebral brain always lost out to my limbic brain. I’d reassure myself the car would stop in time, but animal instinct forced me to lean back to save my worthless hide.

  Over the past few years, a deviant fringe of our weird hobby had begun riding elevator cars and subway trains like surfboards. I’d read of their grisly deaths in the idiot obituaries, Darwin’s cruel culling at work. I never understood the appeal. How could you enjoy the ambience of a place while whipping through it at breakneck speed?

  “Wait a minute,” Reuben said, puzzled again, as the elevator car dropped away. “The newspaper suspected fraud years before the subway was sealed, right?”

  “Right.”

  “If all they needed were measurements, why didn’t they squeeze past the gates and get the job done? Why wait forty years?”

  I grinned. “That’s exactly what I asked.”

  . . . . .

  “Technology,” Smith replied. Then he deferred to Alfred to fill in chasms of meaning.

  “Back then, usable measurements would’ve required an entire survey crew with chains and ropes and tripods,” Alfred said, “and it still might not have worked. The magnetics under the city are topsy-turvy. True North appears in three or four different directions. Without bearings, surveys aren’t worth a tinker’s damn.”

  Alfred prompted Smith with a dip of the head. Smith reached behind the desk and hoisted a box about the size of a lawyer’s briefcase. Screwed together from unfinished plywood, it looked too much like a science fair project from junior high.

  Smith placed the box on the desk, snapped open a latch and withdrew a foot-long metallic gadget, cylindrical, about three inches in diameter, and painted flat black. A rectangular plate ran its length containing a series of carpenter’s levels with their characteristic liquid-filled glass tubes and sliding bubbles. Smith beamed proudly, as if he’d built it himself.

  . . . . .

  “He built it himself?” Reuben asked.

  “Nah,” I replied. “Borrowed it from an old colleague at Ohio State. Helluva favor too. Those things cost big bucks.”

  “What things?”

  “An experimental laser.”

  Reuben looked at me as if I’d grown tusks. Lasers were fantasy weapons from comic books and sci-fi movies. “Okay, I get it. You’ll blast your way into the subway.”

  “Hang on. The laser’s pinpoint of light never spreads out. You place it flat against a wall, ceiling, length of track, anywhere, and it paints a perfect dot on another surface, and that could be a foot, a hundred feet, or even a mile away.”

  Reuben oozed skepticism. “Until you turn off the laser. Don’t you still have to measure around the dot the old-fashioned way, with a measuring tape?”

  “Not if you take a picture of it. You following this?” I grinned. “Smith will do his calculations based on where the laser dot appears in photos—my photos.”

  Understanding spread on Reuben’s face like sunrise across a landscape. Alfred chose me for good reason: I could infiltrate places and I could wield a camera. And lucky for Alfred, five grand of debt and the threat of a return to jail put me firmly under his thumb.

  “Smith worked it all out,” I went on. “The blueprint shows a couple dozen spots throughout the tunnels where measurements have to be taken. The steps are easy. One guy levels the laser against a wall and fires the beam at a distant surface, a quarter-mile away in a couple of places. Try that with a tape measure. The other guy photographs where the beam hits and recor
ds—”

  “Other guy?”

  “Um, yeah. I forgot to mention. You’re part of this.”

  . . . . .

  Smith and Alfred watched me, waiting for some kind of decision.

  “I can’t do this alone,” I said.

  “Of course,” Alfred said. “Reuben?”

  I nodded.

  “Can he be trusted?”

  The question raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “Can you be trusted?”

  . . . . .

  “Can we trust him?” Reuben asked, and then answered his own question with a head shake. “He threatened to get you thrown back in jail, and he’s holding your property hostage.”

  I was glad to hear the word we, even though Reuben hadn’t officially signed on. I peered down the shaft. The elevator car was a distant piston, pumping in slow motion.

  Reuben kept talking. “What if we’re caught? He could deny any knowledge and hang us out to dry.”

  “He won’t get the subway negatives until we’re free and clear, and he really wants them.”

  A few wordless moments passed, the machinery whirring and clacking around us.

  Reuben spoke up. “Why does Alfred give a crap about some filed-away investigation at the Enquirer? He hasn’t worked at the paper for ages.”

  Good question. Drax had been a business bully for decades, hurting others far more than Alfred Blumenfeld. But the old man was hell-bent on exposing Walther and his Machiavellian progeny.

  “I don’t know why. But I’ve got to find out.”

  CHAPTER 10

  On the bus ride home, I made a quick detour to Xavier’s main library, business publications section. I spent five minutes thumbing through trade rags, found what I’d come for, and headed home.

  I ambled from the bus stop toward our house under dim light from streetlamps, stepping around dented garbage cans placed at the end of driveways. Instead of a curb, the street’s edge was a ragged strip separating the cracked asphalt from the weed farms we called lawns. Flies swarmed at my approach and I found the source on the ground: a dead rat, his gray body curled into a comma, his front paws hooked like a begging dog’s. His eyes were swollen and black, licked dry by the flies.

  A river rat. Like all residents of the floodplain, the creature was one of too many, grinding through his days, venturing forth from necessity with no choice but to accept the risk.

  I tweezered the carcass between two sticks and laid it on a pile of leaves under a shrub, a better resting place than the gutter. To see me at that moment, the neighbors would’ve thought me off my nut. They might’ve been right.

  Our house came into view. I noticed a familiar vehicle parked in front, Alfred’s Oldsmobile, the high beams painting my path, bugs swirling in the stretched cones of light. He waited behind the wheel.

  While surprised at the sight, I was glad to see him in our neighborhood. Maybe he’d take a long look at our two-bedroom matchbox house with its sagging gutter, peeling paint, and yard the size of a Mount Adams powder room. Maybe he’d believe me the next time I argued for an extra dime of hourly pay.

  As I came close, Alfred killed the engine, labored out, and steadied himself with one hand on the car. This surprised me, since he rarely exhibited his age. I tried to read his mood. He’d issued my marching orders back at the office and I’d complied without protest, so all should’ve been arranged. But I couldn’t be sure. He could barricade his true feelings behind a smile, as he’d done with Miss Angelica.

  I halted with the open door between us like a shield, not that Alfred presented a physical threat. He only threatened my art, my livelihood, and my freedom. Maybe I wasn’t glad to see him in our neighborhood after all.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” I said, resting both hands on the top of the door. “And if Reuben doesn’t come to his senses first, he’ll help. So what’s the problem?”

  Alfred spoke as if an eavesdropper lurked on the deserted street. “I need a favor.”

  “Why not? Friends do favors for each other.”

  Alfred ignored my sarcasm. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Smith.”

  “His name’s not Smith. It’s Angelo Russo. Are you ready to treat me like a partner instead of the help?”

  Alfred stared at me in silence for a moment, less surprised than contemplative. “He goes by Angie. How’d you find out?”

  “How many master-level structural engineers do you think work in southern Ohio?”

  “Not many.”

  “That’s right. A tight club. So when this club gets together every year for their award dinner, everyone fits in the group photo for the regional trade publication.” I crossed my arms. “His name was in the caption.”

  Alfred’s eyes softened. “He’s extremely valuable to this project, and he’s extremely nervous. Drax crushes its enemies. Smith has more to lose.”

  “Compared to whom?” I was tired of feeling like the chimpanzee NASA sent into orbit, an asset as long as I pushed the right buttons to dispense my peanuts. Safe return to earth optional.

  “Please continue to call him Smith, okay?”

  “Why does he stare at me like I have two heads?”

  “Because he sees a kindred spirit.”

  “Say that again?”

  In the glow from a fluorescent streetlight, Alfred’s cheeks looked sunken, his skin fish-belly white. “He lost someone too. His only child. Years ago in a car accident. He knows what you’ve suffered, but he doesn’t know how to say so.”

  Alfred stopped talking to allow the weight of his words to slam full-on into my chest, leaving reverberations. I uncrossed my arms, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m sorry. We can call him Frank Lloyd Wright if you want.”

  “Then why’d you look up his real name?”

  “To make a point. If fabricating a name is your idea of protection, we’re all doomed. I identified Russo—”

  “Smith.”

  “Sorry. Smith. I found him in five minutes, and I’m a guppy compared to the Drax sharks swimming all over this town, on the payroll and on the take. If we’re going to protect ourselves and our families—” I jabbed a thumb toward the house “—we’ve got to do better than phony names. I learned it the hard way. Drax stops at nothing to identify their enemies and destroy them.”

  Alfred’s eyes flared with a primitive fire. “Think twice, young man, before lecturing me on the extreme measures Drax will take to win. Understand?”

  His reaction surprised me, but I refused to look away. “What did they do to you?”

  “Lucas?” It was my mother’s voice, and she sounded afraid. I turned to see her upper body silhouetted behind a window screen.

  I waved and raised my voice. “I’ll be there in a moment. Will you make sure the cat has water? I forgot this morning.” Her shadow disappeared into the house. The day settled on my shoulders like wet canvas. “What’s the favor?” I said to Alfred. “I’ll do it.”

  “There’s a subway spur.”

  I knew about spurs—dead-end tunnels. Some were intentional, for parking unused train cars. Some were accidental, an abandoned route or an insurmountable construction challenge. “Only one? I counted four on the maps.”

  “Well, there might be five. But I need you to find out.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “But we’ve got the blueprints. They show four.”

  “Rule number one. Believe nothing you see, read, or hear, even on official documents. The subway was not only a Drax project, it was highly controversial and political. Powerful people had ample reason to disguise the truth, and they still do.”

 
“Sure, they might pad their invoices, but why hide a cul-de-sac?”

  Alfred skirted my question. “Midway between Adolphus Avenue and Ptarmigan. If it’s there, it’s on the west side.”

  “What do I do with it—if it’s there?”

  “Nothing. It’ll be gated off. Take pictures through the gate. Multiple angles. Now…” He aimed his index finger at my nose. “Do I have your full attention?”

  I tried to appear unimpressed. “A hundred percent.”

  “Don’t go past the gate.” He relaxed a touch. “You probably won’t be able to anyway.”

  I angled my head and raised my eyebrows. Gates didn’t stop urban adventurers, but I left it alone.

  Alfred continued. “If it’s there, then I’ll tell you why I’m interested.”

  “And if it’s not there?”

  “Then you and I didn’t have this conversation.” He reached into the breast pocket of his sport jacket and produced a folded piece of paper. “You’ll need this.”

  I took the note and kept my eyes on his, awaiting an explanation.

  “It’s a map to the utility access portal, and the combination to two locking mechanisms. Memorize everything and then destroy the note.”

  “Like on Mission Impossible?” But Alfred didn’t get it. “It’s a TV show.”

  “I don’t have a TV.”

  Reuben had asked whether Alfred could be trusted if we ran into trouble. “The show always starts with a famous line,” I said, “Should you be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

  Would Alfred disavow us? I waited for him to offer a hint of reassurance, but he didn’t. Instead, his gaze drifted past me and up toward the smoggy, starless sky. Then, with one hand on the door and another on the steering wheel, he grimaced himself into the seat.