Barbara D'Amato - [Cat Marsala 09]

by Hard Road (html)

Now I was hurrying, almost pulling Jeremy, although careful not to tug on his arm, trying not to frighten him more than he was already.

  The light grew stronger. The light at the end of the tunnel, I thought in my head— an oncoming train? —and I came close to giggling. I stifled it. That really would have freaked Jeremy.

  There was a bend up ahead. When we reached it, I saw that the walls in this part of the tunnel were tiled with snow-white glossy ceramic squares. How weird! How useless! Maybe this was an abandoned subway stop. There were a dozen or more of those scattered under the city. As we came into the light, I saw— glory be! —cars! Parked cars.

  "Come on, honey! We'll find a guard."

  We ran. The cars were thinly scattered here, with a lot of empty spaces. We were at the far edge of this garage level, the less desirable parking spaces, and the few cars left must be the remnants of the overflow of the day workers who flooded into the Loop every morning. We would know as the cars grew more numerous that we were nearing the booths. People coming to the festival this evening would have parked as near the exits as possible. Which was exactly what I had done. Jeremy and I had parked on level one. My Jeep— so near and yet so far.

  The tollbooths had cashiers, but the booths were at the top of the ramp, wherever that was. The place was just so damn huge! Guards patrolled on some random sort of schedule, though, and as we got closer to the center, finding one should be easy.

  I heard footsteps. There must be a guard up ahead.

  "Hurry, Jeremy!"

  We ran. "Guard! Help!" I yelled.

  My voice echoed off the tiled walls.

  And so did the footsteps. They were an echo, too. In fact they came from behind us.

  A shot spanged against one of the support pillars. "Quick," I said, pulling Jeremy along with me.

  Maybe a guard would hear the shot and come running. Sure. But he'd get here after we were dead. Or be shot himself.

  We ran flat out. Grant Park Underground has emergency call phones at intervals, installed here after a series of rapes several years ago. As we raced by, I grabbed one. I couldn't take the chance of stopping to actually talk on it, but I gave it a toss and left it hanging by its cord. Maybe that would bring a guard. Maybe each phone read out its location somewhere in a central security control booth. I hoped it did.

  But I'd bet they'd get here too late.

  We ran on, hearing slapping footsteps running behind us. I flipped another phone off its cradle as we pelted past.

  There were access tunnels where drains and electric cables threaded their way out of the garage. They were much smaller than the tunnel we had been in before, but there were several of them. Maybe we could confuse the man pursuing us.

  "This one," I said aloud, and then as Jeremy turned toward it, I waved my hand to another just beyond. A gamble, but maybe our guy heard me, and if so, would follow the wrong trail. We plunged inside.

  As soon as we got in the narrow tunnel, I put a hand on Jeremy's chest, slowing him down. Then I walked rapidly, but with exaggerated care. He imitated me. There were bulbs in wire cages along here, but they were at best twenty-five watts and two out of every three were burned out. Very shoddy maintenance; what do we pay our taxes for? Twenty-five watts is plenty to see by, though, in an otherwise completely dark place. I was grateful for them but fearful that they would let our pursuer see us. When we passed into a dark stretch, I stopped and looked back at a light a hundred yards behind. No figure passed into that yellow glow. Maybe we were safe.

  As long as we didn't get lost. We came to places where the tunnel branched. The first split was a narrow-angle fork, and it seemed a good idea to take the right-hand one, because it was smaller. Jeremy was a small child. I'm a short adult. Therefore the man who was chasing us had to be larger than we were, since virtually all adults are larger than I am. At the second, which was a T-junction, we took the left. Later a right. If we got completely lost and needed to come back, I should be able to remember that we'd gone right, left, and right again, alternately.

  Something brushed against my ankle. I jumped in terror, hitting my head on the low cement ceiling.

  The cat had followed us through the garage and into the new maze of tunnels.

  Jeremy kept up with me. But he was making soft whimpering noises, quietly enough so I doubted he could be heard. The signal was clear, though. He was near the end of his rope. I could feel a buzzing in the hand I held against his back, as if his chest were full of bees.

  * * *

  The tunnel was not only cramped but extremely unsavory. The farther we walked, the more horrible the odor became. I had recently done a short article on nonlethal police crowd control devices. One of them was an odoriferous exploding pellet that delivered a stink so disgusting that any crowd hit with it dispersed fast. Skunks perfected this type of warfare eons ago. Horrible smells apparently demoralize human beings very quickly.

  I knew this hideous moldy, fecal, vegetable-rot smell would eventually pull the heart and gumption out of Jeremy. Me, too. There was nothing to criticize when he finally crouched near the wall. "Aunt Cat, I'm scared. I can't go any farther."

  "Aw, honey. Hold my hand."

  "I'm scared, Aunt Cat. I'm really, really scared." For the first time, he started to cry, big, big tears. He was gulping and on the verge of panic. Before now he'd been frightened and hair-trigger tense, but I'd been able to keep him focused. This was serious. I hoped we were far enough away from our stalker so that stopping a few minutes wouldn't be disastrous. With the choices we had made of branching tunnels, the killer would have to be very lucky to be anywhere near us.

  I thought it would help to talk seriously with Jeremy, beginning the conversation actually as a sort of therapy.

  "Jeremy, you're a brave person. You're my very best buddy. This has been a lot for anybody to put up with, and you're doing very well."

  "Really, Aunt Cat?"

  "Shh. Not too loud. Jeremy, I don't mind telling you that I'm as scared as you are. But I think we've lost our hunter, and I know we're gonna get out of here."

  He hesitated. Then he said, "Right-o, Aunt Cat."

  "Right-o? Why the British accent?"

  "Saw it on a James Bond video."

  "Oh. And a very nice accent it is, too."

  "I like James Bond," he said, squeezing my hand. "But not as good as the Wizard of Oz. The Oz books are very, very creative."

  I smiled. "Indeed they are." You smile when a child says something that sounds adult, but you shouldn't; you're being condescending. I switched gears and nodded soberly.

  "And it's a good thing there's a lot of them, isn't it?" he said.

  Suddenly I knew what he was doing. He was chattering to cheer me up! To encourage me.

  I said, "We really are having an adventure, aren't we, Jeremy?"

  "Like Dorothy."

  "Right. Tell you what. I'm the girl. I'll be Dorothy. What will you be?"

  "The Cowardly Lion?"

  "No, you're too brave."

  "So was he. He just didn't know he was. But okay. I'll be the Scarecrow."

  "Good."

  Jeremy looked behind me. "And he can be the Cowardly Lion. He looks just like him."

  "He who?" I jumped and spun around in fear, but— thank heaven! —it was just the cat again. In this light I could see that he was a patchy orange and white. Because my household has a VIP, a Very Important Parrot, I haven't specialized in cats. Was this color pattern called marmalade? If so, it was a very dirty marmalade cat. A marmalade tom? For the time being, we might think of him as a male cat. He generously permitted Jeremy to stroke his back.

  I said, "Good. He helped us back there. He's got every right to come along if he wants to." The cat seemed to be getting used to us. After Jeremy stroked the cat, he picked him up in one arm, still rubbing his ears. I was about to tell Jeremy that strange cats, especially feral cats, don't like to be touched, but the animal lay in his arms purring. Jeremy relaxed visibly. Soothing the cat had drained the
fear out of him. There was a red collar with white diamond patterns around the cat's neck, so dirty that I hadn't noticed it before. No tag was attached that I could see. After a minute or two the cat jumped down.

  Jeremy said, "We have Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow, but we don't have the Tin Woodman."

  "No, we don't have the Tin Woodman." A chill ran down my spine. I said, "I'm feeling better now. How about you? Time to go on?"

  "Sure, Aunt Cat."

  6

  CURSES! SOMEBODY ALWAYS HELPS THAT GIRL

  The three of us walked steadily on, taking a right at another place where the tunnel diverged. At this point, I really had no idea whether we were going north, south, east, or west, but if we ever had to find our way back, I needed to keep alternating choices in a regular manner.

  Where were we now? We could be under Grant Park or under Michigan Avenue. Unfortunately, if we kept going long enough, we could be almost anyplace under the central city. Several years ago, a company driving pilings in the Chicago River broke through the roof of an abandoned freight tunnel that ran under the river. They flooded half of downtown. Millions upon millions of dollars of damage resulted. Why hadn't they known the tunnel was there? Because they didn't have good maps. Why hadn't the city inspectors checked the site before permitting the piles to be driven in? Well, the inspector who was supposed to inspect didn't get there when he should have because he couldn't find a parking space!

  You gotta love Chicago.

  Anyway, that was the first time many Chicagoans, myself included, realized how extensive the tunnel system under the city really was. If you had a decent subterranean map, you could go almost anyplace anywhere in the downtown area without ever coming up where the daylight shines.

  Unfortunately, there was no map down here with me and my buddy.

  We hit another split, where we took a left, and I could feel my stomach muscles tightening from fear, a little more all the time. The tension in my neck was painful. Responsibility for this lovely, brave little child was almost freezing my ability to think. Did he want to ask me, Aunt Cat, do you know where you're going? Probably he did, and was just too nice.

  Thank God for the occasional functioning lightbulb.

  "Jeremy, what's that?"

  "That noise?"

  "Yes. That rumble."

  "It sounds like cars. Up there." He pointed at the stained cement roof.

  "I think so, too."

  We were under a street. That was good. People are on streets. Help was maybe just a few feet away.

  Above us. Through solid concrete.

  "Let's think, Jeremy. If we're under a street, sooner or later, there's got to be a manhole."

  Hope I'm right. Very much happier, I walked forward. The best thing was that as we walked, the automobile rumblings continued, which meant that we weren't walking away from the street into some deserted backwater, but along under a major throughway.

  The tunnel went on and on and on. And in this section there were very few working lightbulbs. We could hardly see the bulb behind us now, and none had appeared ahead yet. The dark was wetly oppressive, the damp like being in a wet paper bag.

  "Aunt Cat!"

  I jumped inches.

  "Aunt Cat. Look up there!"

  In the almost total darkness, his sharp young eyes had seen thick, staple-shaped wire metal brackets, set into the wall to form a ladder. And where there's a ladder, there ought to be someplace it goes. "Great, Jeremy!" I climbed up.

  What I saw was exciting and daunting at the same time. A round iron manhole cover was visible in the low light, primarily because it was a dark red-rust color against the gray cement. From the circular collar area around it depended stalactites of yuck. The yuck was probably a mixture of road salt and street cruddies. From the crisp, crusty look of the stuff, it could have been accumulating there for a decade, sealing the opening.

  I pushed the round iron lid.

  The manhole cover wouldn't budge. I pushed and pushed at it, but I was standing seven steps above the tunnel floor with my feet wedged uncomfortably onto a metal bracket. If I pushed up with all my might, the bracket cut painfully into the bottom of my arches. I tried standing sideways to the ladder, placing my feet along the bracket instead of across it, but that put one foot ahead of the other. I pushed up hard, but the awkwardness of the position reduced my leverage.

  It was so frustrating I almost cried. Here we were within earshot of safety. I whispered a few choice words under my breath, and that took some of the frustration away.

  Standing with my feet crosswise on the bracket again, I took a deep breath, held it, and gave a mighty heave. The iron lid moved, ever so slightly. Then a rumble passed above and it slid back in place.

  Damn! Damndamndamn! Still, I had broken the seal that rust and street goo had put on it. The second time had to be easier.

  Somewhere I had read that manhole covers were made round so that they couldn't fall into the hole, as square ones could. Thank heaven. Picturing this thing that felt like a hundred pounds of cast iron falling down on me and Jeremy would have been enough to make me give up.

  "Are you okay, Aunt Cat?"

  "Reasonably okay. Here I go again."

  One more huge heave. I felt the muscles scream in my back. There— the lid was off! A thin crescent moon of light showed between the lid and the cement. Warier now about it slipping back, I pushed it more sideways than straight up, and the stupid thing moved much more easily, sliding rather than being held up by my sheer force.

  Air! The glow of streetlights!

  Jeremy said, "Yay!"

  "Damn right! Yay!"

  With another big push, the cover slid farther off. Suddenly, there was a crash and a rattle as a truck tire the size of a Zamboni rolled over it. I lurched back and lost my grip. I tumbled down the bracket ladder and stupidly tried to catch myself with my left hand. The hand got hold of a bracket and the weight of my body pulled my elbow and shoulder joint so hard I screamed.

  I slid the rest of the way down to the wet cement floor.

  "Aunt Cat! Aunt Cat! Don't be dead!"

  Jeremy shrieked and wept and patted my face. My shoulder felt dislocated. "I'm not dead," I said, although frankly I wondered. Of course, it wouldn't hurt this much if I were.

  Slowly, lying in the muck, I made myself sit up. Years ago, my third brother had dislocated his shoulder falling off a playground jungle gym. I remembered the doctor had said if it was dislocated, my brother would be unable to raise his arm above shoulder level. I tried raising my arm above shoulder level. It hurt a lot. Whimpering in pain, I nevertheless was able to raise it. Not dislocated. It needed ice. Cat Marsala, instant orthopedist. But my first job was to get us out of here. Ice could come later.

  Above our heads the manhole cover was tipping and rattling back and forth in the traffic vibrations. It had better not fall back into place.

  "Jeremy, we can get out. But that's a busy street up there, so we'd better do this really, really carefully. You follow behind me up the ladder."

  Right. Up the ladder. One-handed, maybe?

  I was afraid that I would edge my head up into the open space only to have it clipped by a truck tire. I wished I had a periscope or even a mirror. It was so exciting to be within inches of safety that I could hardly restrain myself enough. However, I waited at the top of the ladder, with Jeremy just below me, while cars and trucks rumbled and thundered above. Then came a pause. That ought to mean a red light down the street.

  I peeked up. Yes, there was a streetlight half a block away. The traffic had stopped, but the light was changing again.

  "Okay, Jeremy. Get ready. We're going out in about two minutes. When I think it's safe I'll jump out. Then you come just to the top of the ladder. But be ready to duck back down fast if I say so."

  * * *

  In the event, it happened more easily than that. The light changed. Traffic was thin, and we climbed out fast and walked from the street to the sidewalk. We should have
pushed the manhole cover back, but I was just too drained. I found a cop instead.

  I showed him the manhole cover problem. He called it in to Traffic Control. I asked him to page my friend, Chief Harold McCoo. "About the shooting at the Oz Festival. Tell him I'm Cat Marsala." The cop looked at me kind of funny, seeing an unprepossessing, bedraggled, smelly, damp woman wincing in pain and holding the hand of a bedraggled, smelly, damp child. But he paged.

  Jeremy and I sat in a squad car, listening to the police radio and trying to feel warm. McCoo was on his way. As I tried to relax I suddenly thought, What about the cat? I looked over at Jeremy.