“Christ, what were they?”
“Caterpillars. All bugs are a great source of protein. Frying them in oil destroys any poisonous acids.”
“Lovely. Can’t wait to try some.” I had the sense that we had just struck the tip of the iceberg and that we would uncover clues of all varieties as we continued to dig. I was cautiously optimistic. “I guess we’ll just keep searching.”
We continued to walk. The blocks in lower Manhattan pass very quickly. It wasn’t long before we were standing in front of City Hall. We were just steps away from the city’s main man. I could have thrown a stone and hit his window. Zugg looked like he needed to rest. I spotted a café with outside tables not far from a subway grating, so I sat down without asking. Zugg followed my lead. “Let me get you a snack.”
“You’re very considerate, Detective.” I could see Zugg’s body settle wearily onto his chair.
“No biggie, I’m pretty tired too. I’d say you’ve done really well.”
“For a man with cancer.”
“For anyone. You’re an amazing guy.”
I looked up and let the morning’s sun warm my face. “That feels good.”
“Come to think of it, I am hungry.”
After the fried fish, the Chinese food, the putrid eggs, and the conversation on bug munching, I was not planning to go anywhere near food, but I figured the least I could do was keep Zugg company while he nourished himself. “You never really explained this the other day; why do you think our perp discarded Kevin Lee’s skull? You said that it was discarded because it was imperfect—imperfect for what?”
“I haven’t quite gotten that far. Perhaps today’s evidence will shed additional light. What would you like?”
“Just coffee for me, thanks.” I had just finished a double espresso, but felt my body crying out for more caffeine. Zugg didn’t listen to me. He ordered pastries for two. Despite all of my complaining, I began picking the moment the pastries arrived. Where is my willpower these days?
The pastry was filled with chocolate. I wouldn’t have gone near it in the old days, but the new Chalice was an endorphin fiend, and chocolate had become one of my favorite vices. “I can’t believe I’m eating this, but it’s amazing.”
“I know I don’t know you very well, so don’t take offense, but you worry too much about your figure. I wouldn’t say anything if you were one of those nutrition freaks and were worried to death about your intake of free radicals and toxins. My sense is that you worry about food for all the wrong reasons. I’m a sick man. I can get away with saying that you have a beautiful figure. With genes like yours, you can afford a few indulgences. Life’s too short, live a little.”
I didn’t know how to respond to Zugg, so I repaid the compliment by finishing every crumb on my plate.
Despite the early hour, the location was very tranquil. I felt my body relaxing—exhaustion and endorphins in just the right combination can make you feel a little light-headed. It felt as if I was a step out of pace with the world, as if we were in different time zones. I was awake, but my mind was drifting away. Pedestrians seemed to walk by in slow motion and the sound of the street’s traffic seemed miles away. I found myself staring at the subway grating. I had seen them everyday, lining the street, but never thought about them much before except to make sure I didn’t catch my heel in one. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off this grating. The crossed metal construction seemed to hypnotize me, the contrast of silver metal above a darkened pit. And then the world shifted and I was back. I saw something moving on the subway grating. I really wasn’t sure what I had seen, but I had to satisfy my curiosity. I had a feeling in my gut about the case that quickly mushroomed into an overwhelming, half-baked idea I knew I had to pursue.
Zugg seemed to be enjoying his pastry.
“Say, Dr. Zugg, do you have another one of those vials?”
Perception had changed hands. This time it was Zugg that was looking at me as if I was crazy instead of the other way around. He shrugged, reached into his jacket pocket, and handed me one. “Any special reason why you need one?”
“Enjoy your breakfast, Dr. Zugg, I’ll be right back.”
Twenty-Nine
“I tell you, I’m not crazy.”
Lido and Ambler looked at each other. Reading their expressions, I could see that they were trying to decide whether I had had a really sensational premonition or had gone completely off the deep end. Honestly, I wasn’t sure myself, but as I’ve said in the past, my gut feelings usually panned out, and I was hoping that I had hit pay dirt again.
Ambler’s phone rang. He spoke for a moment before shutting down. “MTA is sending someone down.”
“How long?”
“Just be patient. I told them it was one of Detective Chalice’s hot hunches and they said they’d send someone down by rocket sled.” He winked at me. “Just kidding, it won’t be long.”
Ambler was busting chops, but I could sense that deep down he was as eager as I was to see if something turned up.
Zugg was still at hand. He was looking at the two vials, comparing the beetle he had found in the apartment to the one I had procured as it walked merrily across the subway grating. “To the naked eye they’re the same, Dermestes Maculatus. You’ve got a very sharp eye, Detective. What made you look so closely? This is New York after all. Water bugs aren’t exactly uncommon. How did you know this wasn’t just another common roach?”
“I can’t tell you how I knew. Bugs and I aren’t exactly simpatico. Something just told me to check it out.”
“Bully for you. I was next to you and I didn’t see it.”
“I was sitting there, enjoying breakfast and it was so peaceful and quiet. And then I realized that it was just too quiet. I mean it’s the height of rush hour. I was sitting a few feet from a subway vent and it was dead quiet. At that hour, trains should have gone ripping through every few minutes.”
“That’s what made you curious?” Zugg asked.
“She’s a witch,” Lido said. “She’s got a sixth sense.” He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. “Still, you want to look around down there? What do you think we’ll find?”
Isn’t it every girl’s dream? “Sure, I can’t wait to crawl around in the subway tunnels—it’s on my list of the ten things I have to do before I die.”
“No, really,” Lido said.
“Dr. Zugg found beetles in the apartment and they’re crawling out of the subway just a few blocks away. Maybe they came from the same place—I don’t know. It’s worth a shot.”
“They’ve got twenty-foot alligators crawling around down there too,” Lido said in a silly voice.
“That’s the sewer system.”
“No difference as far as I’m concerned.”
I knew where Lido was coming from. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to a subterranean excursion through the New York City subway tunnels, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. “Alligators you say?” I was smiling. Still, it wasn’t as if Steve Irwin could come to our rescue. The poor Crocodile Hunter was wrestling alligators in heaven.
We didn’t wait very long. An MTA car pulled up in front of us and two transit cops got out. The guy that got out of the passenger seat held rank. He introduced himself as Sam Doyle. He looked like I imagine Dennis Leary would look like with a beer belly and a triple chin. The other transit cop was a brother. His name was Beaks. Beaks didn’t look quite awake. We made our introductions and got straight to it.
“What’s the hot interest in the subway tunnels?” Doyle asked.
“We want to pull the grating and have a look down here,” Ambler said.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Doyle said. “Not so fast. What’s down there?”
Zugg held the two vials up to Doyle’s face. “Dermestes beetles. They’re carrion feeders.”
Doyle jumped back. “Hey, Joe DiMaggio, put the bugs away.”
Zugg stuffed the vials back into his pocket. We were all a bit surprised at the
way Doyle overreacted.
“You’re kidding, right? You find a couple of cockroaches and you want to deploy valuable city resources to take a tour of the subway underground? Beaks, get back in the car. We’ve got real work to do.”
“As the man said, they’re carrion feeders. They eat rotting flesh and we have reason to believe this subway tunnel is linked to an important investigation.”
“Trust me, Jimmy Hoffa’s not down there.” Doyle looked around. No one was smiling. “Look, I’m not arguing with you, lady. Personally, I’d like nothing more than to give you a private subway tour, but you’re wasting everyone’s time. I’m sure there are all kinds of rotting carcasses down there: rats, cats, children…just kidding, but you get my point. The last thing a fine dame like you wants to do is crawl around in that sludge. Trust me, you don’t want to go down there. I don’t even know where that shaft leads. Some of these fucking things lead nowhere.”
“Nowhere?”
“Yes, really, nowhere—some of the tunnels are abandoned. Some have been sealed off. Some of the tunnels in this end of Manhattan are over a hundred years old. They’re fucking dangerous and that’s no joke.”
“Listen, Doyle, I appreciate your concern, I really do. I’m not gonna lease space down there. I just want to take a look around. So please get on the horn and call someone who can yank this grating.”
“Not on your authority, girlie.”
“Girlie?” I raised an incensed eyebrow.
“Don’t get bent out of shape.” He turned to his partner. “Get back in the car, Beaks.” Beaks still didn’t look sure of anything. He held his spot. “I said get back in the car.” Doyle walked back toward the car. “I’ll pull the tunnel maps to see what’s down there, Detective. Meanwhile, you want to look around where you got no business? Fine, call your CO and have him make an official request.” He turned to Beaks who had finally gotten behind the wheel, but was still looking confused. “Go,” he said impatiently. “It’s a fucking car, drive it.”
I watched them drive off.
“Shit, you need Shearson again,” Ambler said. “Too bad.”
I wasn’t worried about Shearson. I had learned how to motivate her from our prior conversation. I knew what it took to push her buttons. She had lots of interest in this case and with the potential promotion she saw coming along with its successful resolve. All I had to do was keep her in the loop and salt the mine, as it were, until she was sure it was going to make her rich. “Not a problem.”
In my years on the job, I’d learned that it was a blessing to have a sixth sense, that ability to sense aspects of the case and reach for conclusions mere mortals could not. I’d also learned that it was a mistake to go off half cocked and make commitments in the name of the New York Police Department and your commanding officer that might prove fruitless and utterly embarrassing. I wasn’t going to take a chance on wasting time and resources. Furthermore, I needed to prove that Doyle was wrong. I hate that guy. Now usually, this being modern times, a cop’s first move would be to hit the computer and Google your way to the answer, but I knew of a resource that might prove more valuable at a time like this, a resource that might very well hold the answer I wouldn’t find on a modern day computer. So while my colleagues waited for the MTA to arrive, I set off to confirm my suspicions.
Thirty
It was a little past 6:00 p.m. when I met Zugg, Lido, and Ambler back on the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, the site of the infamous subway grating. Lido looked refreshed and Ambler…well what can I say, he looked like business as usual. Zugg looked pretty good—perhaps it was the fading light of day that masked his appearance.
“I assume you got Shearson’s buy in on this?” Ambler said. “You know there’s no way the MTA is letting us down there without her request, especially after making such a warm impression on MTA dickhead, Doyle.”
“We’re good to go, my friend. Shearson is behind this operation, one hundred percent. She’s already contacted the MTA. They should be here as soon as they can round up the equipment and personnel.”
“She must smell a promotion in the air,” Ambler quipped.
“What’d you find?” Lido asked.
I had a stack of photocopies in a folder under my arm. “You are going to love this.”
“Look at the expression on her face,” Ambler said. “Why you cocky broad, you think you’ve got this all figured out, don’t you?”
“I prefer to remain humble.”
Ambler couldn’t hold back any longer. He flipped me the bird.
Lido looked smug and happy, ready to share in my excitement. I sensed Ambler was withholding judgment.
“It all starts at 260 Broadway.”
“The crime scene?” Zugg said.
“Right, it all starts at The Nine Circles Restaurant and what’s beneath it.”
Ambler looked a bit impatient. “Come on, Chalice, spill it. What’s beneath the restaurant, and don’t give us some riddle with a reference to Dante’s Inferno—I’m not getting any younger.”
The Municipal Archives contained some surprisingly good period photographs and detailed records. I made copies of every one of them. The top page of the stack was an official authorization from the New York State Legislature. It was dated 1868. “Gentlemen, I give you Beach Pneumatic Transit.”
“The hell is that, Chalice?” Ambler asked.
“1868, Alfred Ely Beach received permission and funding to build pneumatic tubes beneath the city to transport mail and packages from the city’s main post office over on Broadway and Cedar Street.”
“So?”
“Beach didn’t build mail tubes, he built a subway, and used Devlin’s Clothing Store at 260 Broadway as a secret vantage point to access the tunnel. He worked at night, removing rocks and debris and bringing in construction materials. Today Devlin’s is The Nine Circles Restaurant, the home of our horny little friend, Mr. Pakpao.”
“Why did he have to work on the QT, Chalice?” Lido asked.
“Because, Gus, he didn’t have permission to build a subway. Beach was following his own agenda and had to keep his activities secret from Boss Tweed and the political power barons of Tammany Hall. He built a fan-propelled pneumatic subway that ran three hundred feet.” I had to go to my notes in order to continue. “Says here that the tunnel started at Warren and Broadway, directly across from City Hall. It ran under the south side of Warren Street to Broadway before curving south to Broadway and Murray Streets. It goes on to say that Beach decorated the lobby with frescoes, fine paintings, and a goldfish fountain, in order to gain popular support after it opened—the man had style.”
Zugg was beaming. “You’re an intelligent and persistent young woman. So what you’re saying is that the Beach Subway tunnel runs from our crime scene to the ventilation grating just inches from where we’re standing now?”
“It’s a fact.”
Ambler looked dubious. “And you think the tunnel’s still down there? That was almost a hundred and fifty years ago. It’s certainly been destroyed by now.”
“Maybe not. The last account which was written in 1912, states that they found remnants of Beach’s wooden train while they were building the BMT subway lines.”
“This is too much.” Ambler walked over to a parked car and shifted his bulk onto its fender. It took a moment and then I could see acceptance winning him over. “I think the whole thing’s crazy, but Chalice’s been right about crazier shit than this. I say we go for it.”
“We already are.” I saw an MTA truck with a winch rolling toward us. It was time to take our act south of the border.
Thirty-One
Bennett was meeting his date for the first time and had chosen The Nine Circles Restaurant for the rendezvous. “So, what convinced you to register at sugardaddy.com?”
“You’ve got money, I don’t—It’s just easier to be up front about these things—we’re both adults, aren’t we?”
Bennett was a personal injury attorney and Paola was
an aspiring pop star, emphasis on the word aspiring. As so many before them, they had been brought together via the magic and mayhem of the Internet. Bennett was fifty, but warranted in his online profile that he was only forty-five. He was a Sephardic Jew with a tanning salon tan from Rockland County. She was a twenty-three year old Latina, hoping to be the next Shakira. It was a match made in heaven, or perhaps and more appropriately, the island resort of Hedonism.
Sugardaddy.com was a website that existed to…well, I’m sure you can figure it out.
“Are you married?”
“Do you care?” Bennett had a wife, three kids, three dogs, and a mortgage payment large enough to choke a horse, but he had just settled a three million dollar lawsuit, the largest of his career, and was now flush with coin of the realm, flush enough to add a little long sought spice to his life.
Paola liked sex and didn’t mind putting out for money so long as she didn’t get labeled a whore for doing so. “No, not really, I’m struggling and you seem nice. Let’s have dinner and see if we enjoy each other’s company.” Paola had worn her Miracle Bra and a low cut tee to make sure Bennett enjoyed her company.
For Bennett, “Enjoy each other’s company,” was a euphemism for private fuck buddy. “So you’re a dancer. You’ll have to dance for me.”
Paola winked at him. “If you play your cards right.”
“Great, let’s order. You like oysters?” Bennett signaled for the waiter to come over.
The restaurant was crowded despite the police barricade in front of the next door apartment. The house drink was the Grey Goose Blue Elephant, which Pakpao had premixed with Puerto Rican vodka—yes, Puerto Rican vodka does actually exist. At twelve dollars a pop, he was cleaning up; more than enough money to replace the upstairs office door the boys in blue had reduced to toothpicks. Yes of course the city would go through the motions of paying the tab, but as we all know, the records would most likely be lost by an underpaid clerk and Pakpao would never see a nickel of remuneration—such is life.
The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) Page 13
