Thug One shifted his feet and my cringe was Pavlovian. Words, give ’em words, I told myself. I dredged up more facts. They’d sound good.
“I compared Dr. Anders’ notes with existing equipment like biofeedback equipment, the Accommotrac for instance.”
Two pairs of eyes stared at me blankly. Somebody had the smarts to send them along with some basic questions and a tape recorder.
“Dr. Joseph Trachtman,” I added helpfully. “He’s a behavioral optometrist in Brooklyn. He used special equipment.” Just to fill dead air, I threw in some technicalities. “There was an infrared optometer. Dr. Trachtman reported an increase in unaided visual acuity––you know, someone could see clearly without glasses.”
This information had been around for years but the thugs didn’t know that.
Thug One looked at his slip of paper. “What about the process as the prototypes were assembled? How long did it take?”
He read the query in a monotone, like a kid called on to read in school and unhappy about it. His accent was not quite Brooklyn, perhaps the lower East Side, that undertone of middle Europe. He was heavy and strong and had enjoyed hurting me. Not a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. I couldn’t see faces or hair because of the ski masks but it struck me that their build and their voices might help me identify these two later. That thought made me hopeful.
“I don’t know. Dr. Anders was the person in touch with the manufacturer about that. I was on my way to see him the day he got back from the manufacturer but he was….”
My voice trailed off as I thought about the day Fred had been found dead. I still missed Fred Anders, hated that he was gone.
“Describe one of the prototypes and how long it took to manufacture.”
Yikes, someone had inside information but needed the dots connected. Or was there some problem with the manufacturer? For sure I didn’t know anything about that.
“One unit measures the focusing of the eyes. Also, there’s a thermal infrared imager that views the blood flow of the face and monitors temperature. And microwave imaging records gait and breathing. But I don’t know anything about how long that or any of the units took to manufacture.”
The thugs’ questions might dance around but the aim clearly was about the manufacturing schedule. The tape recorder whirred on softly and the two thugs looked at me, faces blank, waiting. I dredged up another useless tidbit, trying to look helpful.
“Dr. Anders told me the first stage of development was like the original Model T Ford but the next stage was more 21st century, like when a photo-sensor is connected to a computer. He ran into a snag when the hard drive crashed and he had to upgrade.”
“Yeah?”
Tensely, I watched the two men. Thug Two stepped close to me and suddenly pushed me hard so that I sprawled sideways on to the floor.
“Get up. Talk. You better stop lying. When will the prototypes be ready?”
Bingo. I was right, that had to be the prime question. My eyes were level with feet, big feet in big black sneakers, Reeboks. I scrambled up to my knees and started talking.
“I’m not lying,” I said quietly. “Everything I’ve told you is true. I don’t know when the prototypes will be ready.” Then I added, my voice deliberately helpful, knowing it was useless information and knowing the thugs didn’t––only the bastard who’d sent them would know it was useless, “What is done is my computer scan of published research. I’m going over the juvie files now.”
“Juvie?”
“Juvenile delinquents.”
“Why them?”
“Studies of delinquents in prison have shown they benefited from optometric vision therapy. Part of what I did was to analyze the equipment used on those prisoners.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this twosome had juvie files some place. I sucked in air. I was running out of details, useless or otherwise.
A cell phone chirped, startling me and distracting my bullies. Thug One pulled a miniscule unit out of his pocket.
“Yeah?” His tone was downright pleasant.
“Okay.” He flipped the cell close. “Come on,” he growled.
I started to get up and he casually pushed me back.
“Not you.”
The two snickered as I went sprawling in the dust.
Two sets of feet walked beyond my range of vision. Cautiously I raised my head. The tall thug was talking on the cell phone but I couldn’t catch what he was saying. They reached the door and left. A key grated as the door was locked. Was this a hideous dream? I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them slowly. I was still on a floor littered with fallen plaster, near a dusty bench in a cavernous, cobwebbed room. And my thumb still hurt. If this was a nightmare, it was a touchie-feelie Disney would envy.
I almost jumped out of my skin when the tape recorder on the bench clicked off. They’d left it behind because they planned to return. I sat on the floor and thought some more about the person intent on finding out about Anders’ work. Gus Forkiotis had written a paper about the use of doubles for Saddam Hussein when Hussein was in power. If security analysts were monitoring a foreign leader and trying to understand behavior, they could retrieve the refractive state and eye coordination from a distance and get a handle on how the individual was likely to react. It was all about the way the subject perceived space and time. The prototypes Fred Anders had created were quantum leaps ahead of any current equipment. If they were used in surveillance, an incredible amount of valuable information could be gathered. It was obvious now that my suspicions that the prototypes had been the key to the bizarre happenings of the last few weeks had been on target.
It was hellishly frustrating. Finally, I had confirmation and a cause of what Mary Sakamoto warned about, although how she fit in to the puzzle I still could not fathom, but right now I was in a dangerous situation. Why, I wondered, had the muscle been called away? What would happen when they came back? They hadn’t tied me up. They didn’t feel threatened. I don’t do push-ups and my weight hovers around a hundred and twenty-five pounds but the two who’d bamboozled me into the car had to weigh a good two hundred and fifty pounds each unless they’d cunningly bulked up with bubble wrap under their clothes. No, they wouldn’t consider me a threat.
I listened but couldn’t hear sounds to signal the men’s return. I looked around the huge space, it was a building from another era with its high ceiling. Nearby were rows of massive walnut benches, pushed together in uneven rows. The rest of the room was bare. Several simple light fixtures hung at crazy angles, broken chains dangling. On the height of a second-floor level, a balcony ran on three sides of the space. The dingy white walls were stained by water leaks. Grimed but graceful Palladian windows ran almost the full height of the room, easily thirty feet.
Why did I have a feeling of déjà vu? Then it dawned on me. This place was a duplicate of the Fifteenth Street Quaker Meeting House on Rutherford Place, facing Stuyvesant Square. It couldn’t be the Fifteenth Street place. Granted it was a few months since I’d been there to a Sunday meeting for worship but that building couldn’t have been abandoned since then. Quakers take time to come to consensus on weighty matters like closing one of their buildings. Besides, I often walked by the Fifteenth Street building and knew it was open. This place had been empty a long, long time.
Small differences were obvious. The Fifteenth Street meeting didn’t have walnut benches and the support pillars there had the benches built around them. Here the pillars soaring to the balcony were freestanding. Yet the sense of space and justness of proportion were true to the simplicity that is the beauty of many old Quaker buildings. New Jersey has some venerable Quaker Meeting Houses but my sixth sense insisted I was still in Manhattan. Slowly, I got up, intending to look out of a window. The din of a fire truck speeding by came and went, the siren wail muted by the massive masonry walls. New York was as active as ever. I was the one immobilized temporarily.
Quietly, not wanting to make any noise that might bring the bullies back, I walked
to the closest window. Below was a neglected courtyard, bereft of trees, plants or grass. Gray earth had silted over uneven flagstones. A sliver of a narrow street was visible to the left. No parked cars, which was unusual in Manhattan. A Jack Russell on a long leash came into view, followed by a woman hurrying to keep up with her feisty pet. I smacked my hand against the window. The noise didn’t travel. Recklessly, I made a fist and pounded. The dog trotted on and its owner disappeared from view.
Frustrated, I leaned my head against the cool of the glass. A taxi drove down the street, followed by several cars, probably a traffic light changing a block away. By craning my neck, I could just make out a small slice of the building on the other side of the street. Its slabs of dark red stone were puzzling familiar. Recognition danced elusively on the edge of understanding. Trashcans were lined at the side of the road. I was turning away when the significance of the number painted on one of the trashcans hit me.
“Thirty-four,” I breathed.
Unbelievable. The two men had taken me to the empty Friends Meeting House on Gramercy Park. The building on the other side of the street was 34 Gramercy Park where Lanny lived. I was digesting the amazing fact that I was in familiar territory when I heard steps approaching.
The thugs were returning. More questions. Not willing to play passive victim, I scanned the room frantically to see where I could hide. The end bench on the third row of the mass of benches was angled out past its neighbors. Tiptoeing over, I ducked down and scrabbled my way underneath the seat then tugged at it so the bench slanted in, blocking a straight look at my makeshift hiding space. Huddled under the bench, I waited, feeling vulnerable. The key turned in the lock.
“Where’d she go, what the…?” Expletives poured out in a dazzling flow. Feet scrunched on the floor debris as the men walked close to where they’d left me.
“Check the doors. I’ll look over there.”
Over there had to be in my direction, close to where they’d left me. Steps came near. I pressed myself to the floor, shrinking down, my breathing shallow, listening as the men talked back and forth, complaining and threatening in equal doses.
“Nope, she ain’t here.”
Heavy steps echoed as one of the bullies went up to search the balcony and made a discovery that enraged them both. One of the doors on the balcony was unlocked.
“You said you tried all the doors,” Thug One said furiously.
I listened in uncomfortable fascination as the two argued, baffled by my disappearance.
“I did.” The answer was irritated. “This one’s warped real bad, must of stuck. I thought it was locked.”
The grumbling went on but the news had me thinking that escape was possible. I’d been maneuvered and manipulated and now it sounded as if I had a shot at putting a stop to that.
“How’d she leave the building?” It was Thug One.
“Maybe another door or window ain’t locked. There’s keys in the office.”
More helpful news.
“Yeah? How come we didn’t see her?” The bully answered his own question. “She could of hid in one of the rooms on the way down and we passed her coming up.”
“What do we tell the big guy?”
A grunt was the answer to that question.
My ears tingled. Big guy? The boss?
The men left noisily. Did they really think I’d escaped? I heard the door being locked, apparently not considered redundant even though a balcony door was unlocked. I counted up to a hundred. No sound of footsteps returning. It took an eternity to inch my stiff body out from under the bench. I waited some more, flexing my arms and legs, gazing up at the moon, watching heavy storm clouds that promised rain sail past the window.
Enough time went by for me to feel I could risk moving. I crept up the balcony stairs, freezing in place whenever floorboards creaked. The side of a small door near the two main doors was curved slightly away from the doorframe and I managed to yank it open after a series of tugs. The sound reverberated loudly, sending my pulse vaulting into the stratosphere. Tensely, I waited but no one came running, no shouts floated up the stairs. The hall up here was empty. Shadows were motionless in the moonlight from the tall windows.
I stepped out onto the landing and looked around. The stairs lay unguarded and inviting. Straining to catch sounds of movement inside the building I heard only outside noises––truck and car engines, horns and sirens that sang of safety if I could reach the street. Cautiously, I went down the stairs, pausing now and then to listen for my captors. I reached street level and was tiptoeing across the lobby when I heard voices outside the huge double doors. Were they coming back? No time to retreat across the lobby and up the stairs without being seen. The key grated in the lock.
I lunged for a door to the side of the front door and ducked inside a small room. It was dark and the narrow window set high up on the wall let in little light. I could just make out a narrow wooden desk against one wall and a chair near it. The desk was questionable security but I was a clear target where I stood. Ducking under the desk, I pulled the chair in front of it and wriggled back against the wall, which was paneled. It was more cover than I’d had under the bench and that hiding place had worked. If the two men gave the room a casual glance from the door, if they didn’t come all the way in they might not spot me.
I wedged myself firmly against the wall and was settling down to an anxious wait when I heard a soft click behind me. I stiffened in surprise as the click became a muffled, whirring sound. The wall behind me gave way and I tumbled back into cobwebs and darkness. Before I could move, the paneling started to slide back into position until it hit my legs and stopped. Rolling farther into the dark, I jerked my legs towards me and the paneling slid into place, closing off the outside room.
I lay straining to make sense of what was happening. My heart was thudding like a Con Ed pile driver and my tailbone was protesting—mild enough problems, given that I’d been propelled into relative security away from the two bullies. I couldn’t hear any noise on the other side of the paneling. Come to that, I couldn’t see anything much of where I was, either.
Carefully I stood. So far, so good. I raised my hand slowly and it grazed rough stone. OK, that had to be a low ceiling, well under six feet high. I started to pat along the wall to the left and felt uneven stone slabs like the ceiling. I counted as I went. Two rough but dry walls later I reached another opening, the size of a narrow door, roughly opposite the paneling I’d fallen through. I retraced my steps to the paneling and started to feel along the wall to the right. Two more walls and I ended up at the other opening again. My hidey-hole was roughly eight feet square.
My vision adjusted and I distinguished a dim glowing line some three feet off the ground opposite me where the other opening was. The line stretched off a short distance then disappeared. Puzzled, I made my way around to where it started and ran my fingers along its faint glimmer. The stone of the wall didn’t feel any different. Some sort of phosphorescence had been applied and let off enough of a low glow so that the darkness wasn’t total.
I moved forward tentatively, hoping I was going away from problems, not towards them. I could touch both sides of the passageway, which was mildly reassuring. The glowing line didn’t end but took me round a corner where the line’s dim light stretched off in the distance. Here there were glowing horizontal bands on the floor that turned out to be markers for steps. Cautiously I made my way down the steps, running my hands lightly along the rough walls for security. Who, I wondered, had made access to this tunnel? And why?
Some years back, the neighborhood had been up in arms when a developer wanted to demolish the old Meeting House and erect a thirty-story apartment complex in its place. Lanny had been in the thick of it so I’d heard plenty about the Friends Meeting House on Gramercy Square. For years, the building had sat forlorn and empty. A sign in the front courtyard explained that in its first century, the building had been part of the Underground Railroad. The room behind the paneling in th
e office—the hidey-hole I’d backed into by blind luck—might have been used to hide people fleeing slavery. I’d been to places in Pennsylvania and seen similar rooms. The nape of my neck tingled. How many beside me had sought refuge in that room? Tunnels were usually not part of the Underground Railroad, although I’d read about the home of Julia and John Putnam in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where a tunnel led from a hidden cellar room to nearby train tracks.
Manhattan has a staggering number of tunnels under the city streets, many are deep ones like those under Grand Central Station that had sheltered the homeless. Someone had broken through from the Meeting House and connected with part of the city’s underground warrens. I shuffled along, wondering where the tunnel would end. Now and then, the glowing line would end and re-start a few feet on. My exploring hands found openings and it was obvious from the difference in the air flow that these were entrances to other tunnels. I didn’t risk a side trip. Whoever had marked this route had done so for a reason, the logical one being that this route led to an exit.
How long since I’d been snatched off the street a few feet from my apartment? I rarely wear a watch, the clock radio in my kitchen and a wall clock in the office are enough sight of time for me. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t even hungry, more like numb. Major plus, I’d given the bullies the slip. The sooner I found the end of this tunnel, the sooner I’d be free. I was considering this when I bumped into a wall. I ran my hands over the surface. It wasn’t the rough stone material of the tunnel, it felt like planks; they reached up to the ceiling. Did this wooden wall mean there was an exit to the outside world on the other side? I felt around, from bottom to top, tapping, pressing. I pushed and pressed repeatedly, methodically testing every angle. Nothing happened.
“Jumping Judas priest,” I muttered.
Eye Sleuth Page 20
