Night-Train

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Who is it?” asked Lya.

  “That’s my partner calling. We’re using an answering service for the Slasher case. If anybody comes up with anything, at any time, we can get in touch. Lya … I’m sorry about this, but I’ve got to find a telephone.”

  Before she could say anything, he left the table and approached the maître d’, who directed him to a booth near the entrance to the kitchen. Of all the goddamned times for that thing to go off! As he dropped in a coin and dialed the precinct, he was hoping that Provenza had a goddamned great reason for beeping him now.

  He was passed through the precinct switchboard to another line, which was immediately picked up.

  “Provenza here,” said a familiar voice.

  “John, it’s Corvino. What’s—”

  “Hey! Where you been, gumba? Did you see the news at 11?” Provenza’s voice was almost cracking with excitement.

  “Huh? No, I’m out on a date … what’re you talking about?” Corvino felt a fist grabbing at his insides, as he thought the unthinkable.

  “We got him, partner! We nailed the bastard!” Provenza spoke quickly, his Brooklyn accent mangling the language even worse than usual, giving Michael a rundown on the capture of the Slasher. Corvino felt his heart thudding in his chest and a feeling of disbelief in his mind that it was finally over. He didn’t know Bill Schleiser, the officer who had been killed, but he still felt a pang of loss—he always felt hollow and shitty when he heard about a cop buying the farm. It was sad business.

  “I can’t believe it, John,” he said numbly. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah, well, believe it, man. We’ve got him down in the hot room at the precinct right now. I figured you’d want to be in on the initial grilling, so I’ve been trying to get you. He’s a real nut case. Probably won’t get much out of him, but if you want to be in on it, get your ass down here muy pronto.”

  Corvino laughed. “Yeah, I’m on my way. See you in a few minutes.”

  He hung up the phone and turned toward the dining room, where he could see Lya sitting by the window in the glow of the candles. He didn’t want to cut the evening short, but he hoped she would understand—he knew she would. She was looking at him expectantly as he approached the table.

  “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” he said with a straight face.

  “Oh-oh. I’ve heard that one before. What happened?”

  He told her of the Slasher’s capture and the necessity that he get down to the precinct immediately. She nodded, smiled, and seemed to be taking it very well. He wondered how she would take it if she were a cop’s wife and had been down this road for a few years, but pushed the thought from his mind. Don’t worry about that kind of shit now, man.

  He paid the check and they left the restaurant. They walked over to First Avenue and hailed a cab; it was still early enough to find one without too much of a wait. “I hope you don’t mind the abrupt finish to the evening,” he said as they settled into the back seat.

  “Really, Michael, don’t worry about it. It’s perfectly understandable.” She smiled and kissed him to show that she was sincere.

  “Hey, buddy, where to, huh?” The cabbie did not seem interested in their conversation.

  Corvino gave him Lya’s address and then settled back into the seat with her. She was sitting close to him, almost snuggling, glowing with a buzz from the dinner wine and the champagne.

  “Does this mean you’ll have a little spare time now?” she asked, and he knew what she was hinting at.

  He smiled. “Oh, I’m sure the captain will find something for me to do, but, yeah, it looks like I might have some time to help you get started at least.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” said Lya and turned to kiss him again. She was smiling and even giggling occasionally; Corvino could see that he and the champagne had done their job well.

  The cab hurtled up First Avenue, reaching 46th Street very quickly. Corvino instructed the cabbie to wait until he returned and escorted Lya into Turtle Bay Towers. “I’d normally want to come in for a nightcap or some coffee or something, but—”

  “I’d like the ‘something’,” said Lya, giggling again. “But I know—you’ve got to take care of business, right?”

  He smiled and kissed her as they stood by the elevator. “You’ve got it. Business now, pleasure later, okay?”

  “We’ll see about that, Michael Corvino. But I want you to know that I had a wonderful time, and I hope I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “I’ll be getting in touch,” he said. “Good night, Lya.” He kissed her again, and he could feel her melting into him, teasing him with her tongue and sending a shock of desire through him. Wow, was that bad timing.

  Finally they parted and he walked across the lobby, turning to wave as he reached the double glass doors. She smiled and waved back as he departed to the street and the waiting cab.

  Time to get back to business, he thought reluctantly. Business and pleasure. It looked like they were both going to be interesting for a while.

  CHAPTER 16

  DUBOIS

  Jefferson Dubois worked for the Department of Sewers. He had been employed by that city division for almost thirty years, and he knew the under-the-concrete waterways of Manhattan probably better than anybody in the department. He had worked his way up through the job ranks over the years, and a decade earlier he had achieved the position of inspector. For a man with an eighth-grade education, he thought, he had done pretty well for himself. Now as he was nearing his retirement, he was the chief inspector of the department. It was mostly a gravy bucket, and he let his men do most of the actual work while he took care of the schedules, records, transfers, and all the other administrative work that went with the position.

  But since he knew the sewers so well, there was an emergency call every once in a while that nobody could handle except for him. That’s why he had gotten a call at 11:30 P.M. and was putting his work clothes on.

  Gloria was surprised when he gently nudged her awake. “Gotta go, honey.”

  “What you talkin’ about, Bones? Go where?” She was a big, sturdy woman, and the whole bed shook as she propped herself up on one elbow and stared at her tall, lean husband.

  “Department called just now—didn’t you hear the phone?”

  “No, I didn’t hear no phone, I was sleepin’!”

  “They got a problem at one of the restaurants down on Grand Street. Some kinda awful smell comin’ up through the drains and sinks in their kitchen. Say the smell’s so bad it’s drivin’ the people outta the joint!” Jefferson chuckled, displaying his bright white teeth, especially the incisor with the gold star filled into the front. “I got some of my men on the job, but they can’t find nothin’. Looks like it’s a job for ol’ Bones, honey.”

  Gloria sighed and dropped back onto the mattress. “All right, old man, but you be careful, you hear?”

  “Ain’t I always?” He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Go on back to sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Jefferson Dubois moved quietly out of the bedroom and down the hall to the stairs. He really loved that old gal, and he was glad she still loved him, despite all the bullshit that had gone down between them over the years. Any marriage had a lot of bullshit in it, Jefferson always thought, but the good ones had some happy times too. If you were lucky, things had a way of evening out.

  He drove up Union Street and headed west out of Brooklyn up to the Brooklyn Bridge. Once in Manhattan he cut across to Broadway and shot up to Grand Street, then east again into Little Italy. The traffic was heavy, despite the late hour and the rapidly cooling weather, in the restaurant district. Jefferson had lived in New York all his life and he’d never eaten in any of the fancy places in Little Italy, but enough people must like it, ‘cause it was always crowded. There was no place to park, but he had a city permit on his visor, so he just flapped it down into the window and left his Chrysler on the corner in a restricted zone.

&n
bsp; The name of the restaurant was Enzio’s. It was a very large place on the corner with lots of glass and brick and chianti bottles in the windows. The usual decor, right down to the checkered red-and-white tablecloths. The place was closed when he arrived, and one of the waiters tried to shoo him away from the front door before he flashed his Department of Sewers ID. As he entered the foyer, he could hear someone screaming in Italian near the back of the dining area. One of the waiters shouted something else in Italian, and a man dressed in a black tuxedo trimmed with blacker velvet burst out of the back. He was short and fat with a small slick-looking mustache. His double chin obscured his neck, which was little more than folds of flesh overflowing his tight collar.

  “Hey, you the man from-a the Sewers?! Hey, I’m-a gonna sue! I’m-a gonna sue! You gotta smell here, it’s-a bad! All-a my customas, you chase ‘em outta heah!”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” said Jefferson. “Are you the manager here?”

  “Manage-ah? I’m-a the ownah. I am Enzio! And I want-a you getta the stink outta my place!”

  “Let me take a look around, okay?”

  Dubois entered the kitchen and his nostrils were immediately assaulted by the odor. It was a sharp, stinging smell that burned his inner nose tissues like an acid mist. It pervaded the kitchen like a presence, heavy and damp. It smelled like death, like decay and decomposition. Two of Dubois’s men— younger inspectors—approached him and filled him in on the details. They had traced the odor to the drains in the kitchen, and had tracked them down under Grand Street through a feeder trough that serviced the whole side of the street, gradually widening into a main service duct, which emptied into the East River. One of the men had opened a main at the corner of Grand Street nearest Enzio’s restaurant, and had descended into the murky depths.

  The smell was overpowering down there and he had been forced to wear a respirator, but had been unable to trace the smell to the source of the lethal concentration. He reported this to Dubois in a matter-of-fact fashion.

  “Did you check any of the small feeds from the perpendiculars?”

  The younger man nodded, pulling out a waterproof map, folded to show the affected area. “Yeah, a couple of them. C-27 through -31. Right here, see? I couldn’t find a damn thing.”

  “Well, something’s down there. This is the worst I ever smelled it,” said Dubois. “I guess I better go down and have a look-see. Go get me a respirator and a full tank from the truck.”

  Dubois had been working down in the sewers for so long that he rarely needed a map to work his way around in the subterranean world. He felt a special closeness to his work, a pride in knowing his job so well, which he didn’t see in the younger men in the department. They didn’t seem to care as much about the sewers. Sometimes he thought he was the odd one, getting so wrapped up and worried about what happened to the city’s sewers. Why would anybody want to feel close to the sewers?

  It was a good question, thought Dubois as he was handed the face mask and tubing of the respirator. He fitted the mouthpiece between his teeth while the subordinate strapped the tank over his back, then went out through the deserted dining area and into the street. The main was still open, with its standard sawhorses keeping the errant pedestrian away. Jefferson waved to the second sewer inspector and climbed down into the darkness.

  His lantern’s beam splayed out against the damp walls as he headed back toward the feeder trough under the restaurant. He knew that there were traps, or grates, placed at strategic points along all the tributary ducts, and that was probably where the problem would be located. Every once in a while a dead animal of a fairly good size would wash down a drain and become caught in one of the grates, where it would quickly be broken down into more basic biological components. A big, decomposing dog could send up a pretty awful stench.

  He located the smaller feed on a perpendicular with Grand Street, and traced it to the drains of the restaurant kitchens. Whatever was fouling the air was coming through here. He would have to follow the small feed until he came to a trap—that was where he figured he would solve the mystery. The small feed ducts were only about five feet high, and Dubois had to bend over to trek down its dark length, playing his light out ahead of him. There was very little dampness in the duct, due to the absence of rain in the last two weeks. He didn’t remember ever being down this particular passage, but he had walked in thousands like it, and he had worked the Bowery on and off over the years. But as he moved along, maybe half a block, he began to have an odd feeling, some crazy thoughts.

  For one, there was something about this duct that didn’t look right. At first he wasn’t able to pin it down, but the not-rightness about it kept gnawing at the edge of his mind. He stopped in the tunnel and looked around, lifting his mask and mouthpiece to test the air. If anything, the stench was stronger and more deadly than up in the kitchen. He was on the right track, all right. He looked at the brick face of the passageway, and it was then that he realized what was wrong.

  The walls of the sewer drain were smooth and totally dry. Now, that was very strange, because the walls of the small tunnels were never totally dry, even if it hadn’t rained for a month. There was always a thin film of organic life—algae and bacteria clinging to the stone and mortar—or even a heavy mineral deposit inside the sewers. But these walls, thought Dubois, were very different. They were clean, man. Like somebody came along with a vacuum cleaner and then a scrub bucket and scoured them clean and rubbed them dry.

  He’d never seen anything like it, and he’d tramped around in a lot of sewers. It didn’t make any sense to Dubois, so he tried to put it out of his mind. He had to concentrate on his first priority—find out what was stinking the hell out of the kitchens topside. His light revealed a slight bend to the right and he knew that he was approaching the grate.

  That’s when he thought he heard something.

  It was a sloshing sound. Something wet and plopping. That’s what he thought he heard. Stopping, Dubois held his breath and pulled the mask and mouthpiece away from his head, listening. There it was again! He did heir something. But more distinct now. Not exactly a plopping sound, more of a slurping, sucking sound. Real fast-like. Now, what the hell-and-damnation was that?

  He replaced the mask and refitted the mouthpiece, exhaled and sucked in some sweet oxygen. Something funny was going on. For the first time that evening he felt an inkling of fear. The short hairs on the back of his neck started to stiffen up and he could feel the collar of his jacket brushing against them. The air coming through the respirator started to dry his throat out and he tried to work up some spit to swallow, but there wasn’t any coming.

  Slowly he inched forward, taking it one step at a time until he came to the bend in the drain. The sounds were louder now. Definitely slurping and sucking sounds, and real fast like something very hungry was working over something soft and messy. Jeezuz, what the hell was going on?

  Dubois took in a deep breath as he reached the bend and slowly poked his head around the edge of the hard dry wall to his right, playing the beam of his lamp tentatively. It bounced around in the darkness for an instant before it touched on the grate and what lay beyond it. Dubois blinked, at first not recognizing what he saw. When the eye-brain matrix first focuses on something so unexpected, so alien, it takes an instant for the images to make sense, to come together and form a familiar configuration. And that’s what was happening to Jefferson Dubois: his mind did not want to accept what he was seeing in the white heat of the light.

  The grate stood in the drain perhaps ten feet ahead—an array of steel bars like a cell door with a fine-mesh screen about a foot high across the bottom. Entangled in the bars was a corpse, or rather, what was left of a corpse. In a flash, Dubois assumed the most probable: a rum-bum or a derelict had cashed in his chips and received a decent burial from his cronies by getting tossed into the nearest sewer. His body had been carried down the feeder duct to be hung up in the grate, where decomposition started its quick work and sent up the
stench through the nearest part of the system.

  That part of the analysis made sense. It was the rest of the grisly scene that was pushing Dubois to the brink of his rationality. The corpse was almost down to the skeleton, with pieces of tissue hanging limply off the bones in dark green chunks. And scampering over the remains were countless … things. They were shapeless mounds of quivering gelatin the color of pearls, a kind of milky white. They were blobs of movement sticking to the bones and obscenely humping and convulsing, sucking the last pieces of flesh away.

  Dubois stepped back, holding the mouthpiece of the respirator tightly between his teeth. He felt a thick column of heat rising in his throat, and he fought back the urge to puke. Jezzuz-God-help-me! The white things were moving so fast that even as he stared blankly at their feast, they had almost finished sucking the remnants of flesh from the bones. Then, suddenly, they seemed to notice his presence, to be aware of the light boiling over their pulsating bodies.

  In that moment when they paused in their furious feeding, Dubois understood why the walls of the sewer were so clean and dry. He also knew that he had to get the fuck out of there as fast as his old legs would carry him. He turned and bolted around the bend of the passageway, chancing one last glance in the direction of the blob-things. And in that last look back, he saw that they were squeezing shapelessly through the bars, slithering forward.

  Hunched over, keeping his head low so as not to scrape it on the low ceiling, Dubois could not stretch out and run. Instead he was forced to lope along, scuttling like a gorilla with his arms dangling close to the earth. He could see the ladder ahead of him in the bouncing spot of his lamp. Just another ten feet and he would be up and away from them.

  As he reached the ladder, grabbing it with his free hand, something grabbed his ankle. Not so much grabbed it as enveloped it, foot and everything. It was like sticking your foot into a big bowl of bread dough, only there was a furious rush of pain along with it—a burning, paralyzing pain that froze Dubois as he hung on the first rungs of the ladder. His foot and ankle felt like they were being pierced by a million tiny needles, each one heated to a temperature of a thousand degrees. He tried to scream but his tongue became tangled under the mouthpiece of the respirator and it came out as a weak gargling sound.