“He works underground, man. Up under Park Avenue, the piecrust. He didn’t come in from his beat yesterday, and he didn’t show up at home last night either. His wife called the Health Department and they didn’t know anything. Didn’t show up this morning for work either. Nobody knows a thing.”
“Anybody working on it?” Corvino laid down his notebook, realizing that this might be another piece of the puzzle.
“I don’t know. The call went into one of the midtown precincts. I can make some calls if you want. You want to get in on this?”
“Hell, yeah, but how do we cover our asses?”
Provenza smiled. “I’ll think of something. Let me make a few calls first, okay?”
Corvino nodded and returned to his report while Provenza got back on the phone. He continued filling out the report on autopilot, using the stock phrases and jargon of the department. His mind was jumping ahead, trying to anticipate what was going on. There was too much evidence stacking up. Ever since he and Lya and Carter had discovered that missing train, there seemed to be more oddities coming up—and people were dying because of them. The sewer inspector, the barker from Times Square, the rum-bum in the steam tunnel, and now maybe a guy who ran around under the streets killing rats for a living. It was all circumstantial, of course, and they still had nothing that wouldn’t get them laughed out of the captain’s office, but Corvino felt a twisting in his gut that was telling him it was all relevant, that it was all happening for a reason, and that they were dealing with some very heavy shit here.
He sat staring off into the general confusion of the bull pen for a few minutes, his thoughts flashing from one subject to another. He didn’t know how many minutes had passed when Provenza tapped him on the arm, but he felt like he was waking up from a trance.
“Oh, sorry, I was thinking about something,” he said absently.
Provenza smirked. “No shit! You looked like you were doped out.”
“Did you get anything?” Corvino passed a hand over his eyes, trying to clear his head.
“Yeah, a few things. The case went into Chuck Ward’s precinct. He was one of the guys who was working with me on the decoy operation with the Slasher. Good man. I gave him a call, and he gave me some of the dope on it. I told him that Thompson was my ex-wife’s second cousin, and she had called me up because she was worried about him.”
“You think he’ll check up on that bullshit?”
“Nah, he’s up to his ass in alligators like the rest of us. He don’t have time for that kind of crapola.”
“So what’d he tell you?”
“The Health Department sent some of their rat-boys down to Thompson’s beat this morning. Said they covered it from top to bottom and didn’t find a trace of him. They want the cops to check things out.”
“Has Ward done anything yet?”
“No, he’s putting one of his people on it, but I don’t know if anything’s come down yet.”
Corvino looked down at the desk and started fooling with a loose paper clip. “I’ll bet he’s still down there,” he said slowly. “You want to go down and check it out?”
“Now? We don’t have any jurisdiction up there, you know.”
Corvino looked at his watch. “We don’t have to be at Carter’s till eight o’clock. We’ve got some time. I say let’s go down there. What’s the piecrust, anyway?”
“It’s a big open space under Park Avenue. Runs from Grand Central up into the nineties, I think. It’s all tunnels and rail lines. I saw it when I worked in the sewers a long time back.”
“Tunnels and rail lines? Subways?”
“I don’t know about that. All I know is they get a lot of rats down there. Always have to have guys down there rousting them out. So what’s going down? Are we going to check it out?”
“I say we have to, John. Let’s finish this bullshit tomorrow.” He gestured at the unfinished report.
Provenza smiled. “I’ll go down and sign out a car. Let’s get out of here.”
They drove up to Grand Central and went up to the stationmaster’s office, flashed their gold, and were immediately ushered downstairs, beneath the terminal, to a set of access tunnels that led into the area known as the piecrust. The simple mention of police business was usually enough to get a harried public official to comply without going into any lengthy explanations. Most people didn’t care what the police wanted as soon as they discovered that the cops didn’t want them for anything. They were always relieved, Corvino had long ago observed, to shuttle you along to someplace else.
The area they entered was called the loop. Provenza told him it once was used as a private access for special trains bringing dignitaries to one of the fancy hotels up on the street. There was practically no light down there except for dim red utility lamps every hundred yards or so, which were hung in wire-mesh cages. There was a musty, rankish smell in the air that clung like an old wet rag, and Corvino wondered how somebody could work in this kind of place eight hours a day, day after day.
“The Health Department people have already been through his regular beat—a stretch of open space and some adjoining tunnels all the way up Park Avenue,” said Provenza. “They didn’t find a thing. They also nosed around here, by the turnaround loop, and came up empty.”
“Good thing the trainmaster gave us flashlights,” said Corvino. “It’s dark as shit in here.”
“What do you say we work our way through here first, then go back up the avenue?” Provenza flashed his beam northward.
“This is all new to me, partner. Whatever you say.”
They moved out in opposite directions, each going to one end of the underground terminal, scanning the walls, and then doubling back. Corvino walked along slowly, looking for anything that might provide a clue to what had happened. He was surprised at how free of debris the area was. It was as though he were walking across a large, dark prairie, interrupted only by the rusting rails. Aside from the rat-guy, he and John were probably the only people who had been down here in a long time. It was amazing, really, how much stuff was buried beneath the streets of the city. He thought of all the people who swarmed across the sidewalks every day, never having any idea of what was mere inches beneath their feet.
His mind had been wandering, but his eyes and ears had been efficiently scanning the loop for clues. There was no trace of anything out of the ordinary in the loop area. He joined Provenza at the opposite end of the chamber from where he’d stalked and shook his head. “Nothing.” Provenza flashed his light around. “Okay. There’s the tunnel that leads up Park Avenue. Over here is the spur line that runs back to join the main line coming into Grand Central.” He directed the tight yellow beam into the yawning mouth of a railway tunnel.
“You think he might have gone down there?” Corvino did not want to think about walking the narrow confines of that tunnel.
“The Health Department guys said they’ve been up and down Park Avenue. Seems to me that this is the only place left. But if we draw a blank in here, then we’ve got to check the avenue again. What do you say?”
Corvino shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. We oughta check it, I guess.”
“Hey, paisan, you okay? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Corvino. “This place is giving me the creeps, that’s all.”
Provenza grinned and shook his head. “Hey, you think you got an exclusive license on that? I can’t stand it down here, but we gotta do what we gotta do, right?”
“Let’s get it over with,” said Corvino, and turned toward the tunnel.
They followed the rails and roadbed for about fifty yards up to a point where the tunnel began to curve away. Corvino could feel the pressure of the walls and the old ceiling supports against the still, musty air. He had the sensation of walking down the throat of a great beast, and the walls seemed to be pulsing with a subsonic force. He could feel his testicles drawing up close to his body.
Something flashed in the beam of his light. White-ish. Or was it ta
n or light brown?
“John … over here. Look.”
He advanced on the object, which was lying crumpled against the wall of the tunnel, his light illuminating it clearly.
“Looks like a backpack,” said Provenza, leaning down and examining it. “Yeah, it’s Thompson’s, all right. Full of traps and poison-baits. Christ, that shit stinks!”
“So he was in here,” said Corvino, walking deeper into the tunnel. “John … here’s more.”
About ten yards deeper in and toward the curve of the wall, he looked down at a sawed-off shotgun, some shreds of clothing, and a heavy-duty torchlamp, all scattered across the roadbed. He shone the light around the cinders and saw that some kind of liquid had stained a fairly large area a darker shade of gray. It looked like blood.
Provenza appeared at his side, surveyed the scene, and bent to examine the sawed-off shotgun. “Looks like a mean piece.” He opened the chamber. “One spent shell. He must have got off one shot at something. Look, up there on the wall … see the abrasions? That’s where the spray of the shot blistered the wall.”
“Yeah, but what happened to him? Where is he?”
“Got me. Let’s take a closer look around here. I’ll go down the tunnel and see what’s around the bend.”
“Take it easy, John. I don’t like this.”
“Hey, you think I do?!”
Corvino watched as Provenza unholstered his service revolver and walked cautiously into the shadows. Busying himself, Corvino splayed his light across the floor of the tunnel. Off the tracks and roadbed, there was a fine dusting of cinders on the floor right up to the wall itself, and it was there that he saw the footprints of heavy-duty work boots, and something else.
Some of the marks had been scuffed and obscured, as if there had been lots of movement, but just a couple yards from where he found the shotgun, there was a deep, perfectly formed imprint of … well, he wasn’t sure what.
Some kind of animal’s print. Something with damned big claws and a round pad the size of a Ping-Pong paddle. And it was something pretty heavy, judging from the depth of the impression. Corvino’s heart started hammering faster as he realized what this meant: they finally had some hard evidence to show the captain. He would have to—
The sound cut through him like an alarm and he spun around, reaching for his gun.
“Hey, you can relax, gumba! Just me.” Provenza chuckled nervously.
Corvino dropped his hand from his gun, relief washing through him. “Find anything?”
“Not a trace. What about you?”
Corvino showed him the almost perfect print in the cinders. “Holy Jesus! What the hell did it?”
“No idea, but I think we should get all the other crap out of here and call in the boys from the lab. I want to get a plaster impression of that thing so we’ll have something to show for what we’ve been doing.”
“You mean you want to flag the captain on all this business we’ve been sniffing around? You want to tell him everything?”
“Yeah, why not? This thing, I’ve got a feeling, is more than the four of us can handle.”
“That might be true, but how are you going to make this print tie in with all the other strange shit that’s been going down? I mean, what does this have to do with the bones they found? And we don’t have anybody’s word but mine that there was a guy hanging up on a rock with his guts eaten out!” His partner was right. Corvino knew that the captain was a pragmatic bastard, and the evidence they had gathered would not hold together yet. They needed that cast, though. “All right… but let’s get out of here and call the lab anyway.”
“And another thing, how’re we going to explain what we were doing down here? This isn’t in our precinct, you know.”
“We’ll let Chuck Ward take care of that. See if you can get him to cover for us, say that he had us out on special assignment, on loan or something.” Corvino wasn’t sure if he was making any sense, but he wanted to get a cast made of that print, no matter what the consequences. He also wanted to get out of the tunnel very quickly. He was getting a crawling sensation up the back of his neck, and he didn’t like the feeling.
“Okay, okay. If you think we can pull this off, I’m with you,” Provenza was saying.
“What time you got?” asked Corvino, shining the flashlight on his watch. “Is it really seven already? Jesus, we’ve got to pick up Lya and get over to Carter’s place. C’mon, we’ll radio the lab from the car.”
As they cleared the tunnel and moved out under the dark vault of the loop, he began to feel more at ease. He had been getting very definite vibes back there, and they were anything but comforting.
After they reached the car and radioed in, Provenza agreed to wait at Grand Central until the lab truck arrived. Corvino told him that he would meet him later on in the evening at Carter’s apartment, then drove off to pick up Lya. He hadn’t been planning to use a precinct car, but since they already had signed it out, he figured what the hell.
There was a gray pall settling over the city as twilight crept into the streets. No spectacular sunsets in Manhattan, not unless you lived in a penthouse up on the Upper West Side. Down here in the streets, it just got gray and then dark. And as he weaved through the traffic along 46th Street, heading east, he could not keep from thinking about the place where the daylight never came, where a rat exterminator named Clifford Thompson had met up with some claws and had simply disappeared.
The thought passed through his mind that it was only beginning, and that there was more to come. A lot more.
CHAPTER 30
CARTER
He sat before his small band—only two strong, since Lieutenant Provenza would be late in arriving—of conspirator-investigators, wondering how to begin. They had settled into chairs with cups of coffee, finishing with the small talk and preparing to get down to serious business. From the way both Corvino and Lya were looking at him, it was apparent that they wished for him to begin.
Where to begin? he thought to himself. How could he tell them that, in the vernacular of his students, he was scared shitless?
As he thought silently, sipping his coffee, impressions and ideas whirled in his head. All the things that the people of the city were thinking about right now, all the concerns and fears and desires, all their dreams and even their nightmares, could not compare to what might be happening in their midst. Some have written that the greatest fear is of death, but Lane Carter would have amended it slightly to read that the greatest fear should be of death without knowledge, to have been blotted out of existence without understanding the mechanics of the universe that removed you from its greater scheme of things. Who was it who had said that an unexamined life is not worth living? Socrates, of course; but that did not matter now.
What mattered was that Lane Carter was scared. Terrified, actually. Not for himself; it was the pressure of knowledge, the curse of awareness, that terrified him so. But no matter how he wished that fate had not thrown him headlong into this present state of affairs, he could not make it go away. There was nothing to do but press on, and try to gather the courage to accept whatever it was that lay in wait for them.
Detective Corvino spoke finally, interrupting his rambling collage of thoughts. “Did you say something? Are you all right, Lane?”
He looked at them through his horn-rimmed glasses, bringing the dark young man and the petite, pretty woman into focus. He could sense the growing fear in them—a fear of the unknown, which is always worse than a fear of what is understood. He owed them an explanation.
“Oh, yes, I am all right. For the time being, anyway. You must forgive me; I’ve been keeping insane hours, and I fear that it’s catching up with me. And sometimes I get hung up on a singular thought, and I lose track of things.”
“Shouldn’t we be getting started?” asked Lya.
“Yes, I suppose we should,” said Carter. He caught the glances exchanged by Corvino and Lya, and he knew instantly that they had become lovers. He had seen it in
others so many times; the glow in their faces was unmistakable. Good, he thought. Let them have fun while they can. He envied the young detective, who now had something to divert his attention from the daily horrors he attended, and from the new one Carter was about to reveal. “Let me get something I’ve prepared,” he said as he stood ceremoniously and moved toward the back of his apartment where he kept a large oak desk.
He returned with a map of Manhattan taped to a large sheet of corrugated cardboard. It was covered with colored tack-pins.
“I’ve put this together since I received that computer printout on all the crimes and whatnot,” he said slowly.
“You read all of them?” asked Corvino, shaking his head.
“Yes,” said Lane, “and while I found that perhaps forty percent of the material was inconsequential, explainable, or simply not germane, around sixty percent of the cases were admissible. Surprising in itself, I thought. And so I started sifting out the incidents that were incriminating, and charting their locations on the map with red pins. I haven’t finished charting them because I ran out of pins, and also because many of the incidents occurred at the same locations. For every spot where there were five or more incidents, I used a green pin; for ten or more, I used a yellow pin; and for more than twenty, a black pin. Now, look at the patterns that emerged.”
Lane Carter pointed at the map and the array of colored pins. Although there was a smattering of colored tacks all over the length and breadth of the island, there were relatively few above 42nd Street. The pins generally formed a series of concentric rings, each ring located closer to the center being thicker and of more varied colors of pins, meaning more incidents and more of them at the same location. The center of the series of rings was a mass of black and yellow pins, covering an area bordered by 4th Street on the north, Canal Street on the south, Broadway to the west, and Allen Street to the east.
“Now, what this indicates is rather obvious, isn’t it?” asked Carter, looking from Corvino to Lya. “What does this mean to you, Lieutenant?”
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