Catacombs

by Mary Anna Evans

  Ben handed him another photo and Cully’s face softened as he stared at it. “She was so very lovely. Such a beautiful mother. And that baby’s near as big as her.”

  Ben’s face softened, too. “That’s me. I was born in December of 1962.”

  The photos went to the floor again. “1962? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “She didn’t even tell me who my daddy was until she saw that article in the paper last week, saying that you were coming to town. She thought it might finally be time to tell you everything. She knew she was pregnant when you ran away from the school, but the two of you only got as far as Oklahoma City before she knew that she’d never get much farther. She was bad into heroin.”

  “I knew it. That’s why I was trying to get her away from the people what sold it to her.”

  “Yeah, but neither of you knew how bad withdrawal would be. Especially with her being pregnant. She was in a bad way, but she didn’t want to go home to that bastard of a stepfather. And she didn’t want to slow you down. She told me that the time came when she just had to run.”

  Cully took a long, deep breath. “Yeah. That’s exactly what she did.”

  “She found a homeless shelter and they found her some help, helped her start over. When I was just a baby, she married the man I thought was my father.” Answering the question on Cully’s face, he said softly. “He was a good man. They were happy together.”

  Cully made a quiet sound like a stifled sob.

  “She didn’t know where you were for years. When she started seeing you in the movies, she held her peace. Her life was good. Your life was good. I was a happy kid. Why stir up trouble?”

  “Maybe because I’ve lost fifty-some years with my only child?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Faye saw Jakob lean forward, ready to come to Cully’s aid if needed, because in movies of the old West, that was the job of the hero’s sidekick.

  “We’ve got some years left, don’t you think?” Ben said, sticking out a hand to shake Cully’s. Cully ignored the hand and seized his son with both hands.

  Enveloped in his father’s arms, Ben asked, “Do you want to see my mother?”

  “More than anything. But only if she wants to see me.”

  “She said to bring you to dinner tomorrow. That’s what’s in the other envelope. A letter from her and an invitation.”

  Cully tried with shaking hands to get the letter out of its envelope without tearing the wet paper. He finally gave up and said, “I’ll dry it out in the sauna and read it tonight. Please tell her that I would be honored to come to dinner.”

  “I don’t know what else she’s making, but she says you always did love her fry bread.”

  Faye leaned against the well-padded back of the couch, her son on her lap and her daughter standing behind her, draped over her shoulders. Encircled by her children, she listened to the sound of five male voices trying to outtalk each other. Any single Mantooth man had enough personality to fill a room. Cully, Sly, Ben, Joe, and little Michael possessed enough personality, cumulatively, to fill a penthouse and then some.

  Ahua walked over, perched on the coffee table in front of her, and said, “Guess where Cathy is?”

  “With Stacy?”

  “Yep. She’ll be sitting in that hospital room until the doctors decide to let Stacy go. She needed a few stitches and that concussion’s going to slow her down for a while, but she’ll be fine. Liu tells me that she’s taking Stacy to her favorite restaurant as soon as she’s able to go, deep in the Asian District where the chefs know how it’s done in the old country.”

  “Dinner date?”

  “Dinner date.” She thought his joyful smile might crack his face right open.

  “Does Liu still have a job?”

  “She’ll suffer some consequences, but I think she’ll keep her job. Our Special Agent in Charge is a sucker for romance. Liu’s career will take a hit, but it’s not over. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Faye’s joyful smile was probably just as wide.

  “I suppose that Kaayla’s in custody.”

  “She’s told us everything. About finding Lonnie. About luring him into a fake plot to blow up the IRS when she really meant to blow him up. About panicking when Stacy found her vandalizing the paintings. About locking her up and trying to decide what to do when everything snowballed out of her control. Everything.”

  “Were Grace and Lucia involved?”

  “She says no, but her instinct is obviously to protect them, so it’s hard to be sure. She says that she assigned them to mop the area around the door and told them where to put the ‘Wet Floor’ signs so nobody would come near, except a man in a cowboy hat. They were supposed to let him pass. She claims that they were in the dark, otherwise.”

  “She had to have told them more than that. What if they recognized him?”

  “As it turns out, they did, and it saved their lives. Grace recognized Lonnie when he came out of the wall. According to Kaayla, Grace was still terrified of him even after all their years apart, so she called out for Lucia to run. Seconds later, the bomb blew. Despite that, Kaayla is adamant that her sisters were innocent, just doing as they were told. And they did that, up until the very end when Grace defied her by going into the sewer to stop her sister from killing again.”

  Faye tried not to think of Grace and a fistful of candy on her pillow. “What about Lucia?”

  “We don’t know where she is. If she went in the sewer with the rest of you, she washed out into the river without anybody seeing her. Maybe she drowned and we’ll find her body downriver. Or maybe she could swim enough to get away during the confusion, but Kaayla says no. More likely, she escaped into the catacombs, coming aboveground at the entrance you found or maybe at another one that we don’t know about. On one hand, it’s going to be hard for her to get far with no money and no car. On the other hand, it’s hard to track a woman without credit cards or ID.”

  Faye thought of another woman who was once on the streets of Oklahoma City with none of those things. “Somebody helped Angela Bond find a new life. Maybe somebody will help Lucia.”

  “I don’t think you want her to get caught.”

  Faye wasn’t sure what she wanted.

  Ahua gave her a close look but said only, “You do good work. If you ever need anybody to vouch for that, send them to me.” Then he shook her hand and let himself out.

  Faye spent the rest of the evening sitting quietly on the couch, watching her kinfolk, old and new. They told stories and, after the sauna had done its work, they read a damp letter from Angela to Cully that had passed beneath Oklahoma City in an FBI agent’s pocket. They pored over a yellowed envelope full of old photos. And they did a lot of laughing.

  Eventually, the Mantooth men remembered that she was alive and Cully announced, “Cousin Faye. It’s time for your first lesson. Go get your flute.”

  Notes for the Incurably Curious

  The parts of this book’s historical backstory that are the most difficult to believe are true. There really was a Chinese community living underground in downtown Oklahoma City in the early twentieth century. The health department really did perform an inspection down there in 1921 and report that they found “the 200 or more inhabitants of the submerged quarter in good health and surroundings and as sanitary as all get out.” A staircase really was discovered in 1969 during convention center construction and part of the underground system of rooms was explored at that time. Even the photograph that I described of a man holding a flashlight on an old stove was, and still is, real.

  Here is a 2007 article from The Oklahoman’s website, summarizing much of what is known and rumored about the underground community: https://newsok.com/article/3069770unlocking-the-secrets-of-oklahoma-citys-mysterious-city?

  If you scroll to the bottom, past the broken link to the article’s slideshow, you will see t
he flashlight photograph and a photo of Chinese language flyers like those Faye encounters in Catacombs.

  The chambers uncovered in 1969 are presumably still down there. Why would anyone go to the time, trouble, and expense of destroying them, if they were planning to seal the entrance? I feel confident that intrepid urban explorers have invested a great deal of time over the years in looking for another entrance but please, Dear Reader, do not attempt this yourself.

  First of all, trespassing is against the law. Second of all, the kind of trespassing that would be required to access underground rooms that have been abandoned for a century is incredibly dangerous. The danger inherent in being trapped underground without a cell signal to call for help is obvious. If you’re thinking of trying Faye’s strategy of using storm sewers for access, remember that they have an additional risk baked into their design—water that comes in in large quantities and at unpredictable intervals—so stay out of them. People have drowned in storm drains when surprised by sudden storms, here in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

  It’s far safer to let this piece of history remain in our imaginations, a time capsule safely buried with its secrets…unless someone once again stumbles on it accidentally.

  The convention center that was being built in 1969 is coming to the end of its useful life, and it is soon to be replaced by something more up-to-date. As I write this, plans are afoot for demolition and redevelopment of the old convention center. Proposed plans include restoration of the mid-twentieth-century street grid or replacement with a high-rise building, as described here: https://kfor.com/2018/07/12/whats-the-future-of-the-cox-convention-center/.

  Our best bet for getting a look at what the Chinese community built a century ago is to remain comfortably (and safely) aboveground and wait to see what the bulldozers of progress turn up this time.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank all the people who helped make Catacombs happen. Tony Ain did his usual scour of the manuscript, and you would not believe the number of unclosed quotes, errors of fact, plot holes, unclosed parentheses, and omitted punctuation marks that I can leave in a manuscript that I think is pretty close to finished. This wouldn’t have been the same book without him.

  My children—Michael Garmon, Rachel Broughten, and Amanda Evans—also offered their insightful commentary.

  This was my first book featuring a significant FBI presence, and I am hugely indebted to Angela Bell with the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs for patiently answering many question that, truth told, were a bit odd. When FBI agents in Catacombs behave as FBI agents in real life do, it is due to her experience and expertise. When they do not, it is either due to my failure to ask her the right questions or to the necessity of bending reality to fit the needs of a good story.

  I’d also like to thank Raymond Melton and Derek Johnson with Oklahoma City’s Department of Public Works for helping me imagine the world beneath the feet of everyone who walks through downtown Oklahoma City. And I’d like to thank Lieutenant Medley of the Oklahoma City Police Department for believing me when I told him that I did not ask Public Works for information on moving around under the city because I had any intention of doing anything untoward down there. I’ve been writing crime novels for more than fifteen years now, and this is the very first time that my quirky questions have triggered a call from law enforcement. I feel oddly proud.

  I’m grateful to Ember Ahua for helping me get a feel for my Nigerian American FBI agent and for telling me about egusi soup with bitter leaf, because it is just the kind of sensory detail that brings stories to life. She was so helpful that I gave my FBI agent her beautiful surname.

  Cully Mantooth’s first name owes a debt to Leroy Cully, my friend and the maker of my beautiful cedar flute that I don’t play very well. His flutes were the inspiration for Cully Mantooth’s career as a musician and composer. If you see me wearing a cowboy hat with a beautifully beaded band, know that the band was a gift from Leroy. His daughters Kelley Morrow and Vinci Cully Barron have also been very generous with their knowledge of tribal issues and of Oklahoma.

  As always, I am grateful for the people who help me get my work ready to go out into the world, the people who send it out into the world, and the people who help readers find it. Many thanks go to my agent, Anne Hawkins, and to the wonderful people at Poisoned Pen Press, who do such a good job for us, their writers. For Catacombs, I’m proud to add the wonderful people at Sourcebooks to my list of folks to thank. I’m happy to be a part of the Sourcebooks team and I’m excited by the synergy that will help Sourcebooks and Poisoned Pen Press get Faye’s adventures to a new audience. Because I can trust that my editor, Barbara Peters, and the rest of the hardworking Poisoned Pen Press staff will ensure that my work is at its best when it reaches the public, I am free to focus on creating new adventures for Faye. I’m also grateful to the University of Oklahoma for providing the opportunity for me to teach a new generation of authors while continuing to write books of my own.

  And, of course, I am always (always!) grateful for you, my readers.

  About the Author

  Photo by by RandyBatista at Media Image Photography

  Mary Anna Evans is the author of the Faye Longchamp Archaeological Mysteries, which have received recognition including the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Mississippi Author Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals.

  Mary Anna is the winner of the 2018 Sisters in Crime Academic Research Grant and is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.

  Check out her website, newsletter, Facebook, and Twitter.