Osborne had gone pale, which Marlene thought was a hopeful sign. She liked Osborne. Which didn’t mean much, since she liked Oleg, too.
Osborne turned to the Russian. “Oleg?”
Oleg made a little shrug. He smiled winningly. “Well, you know, Lou, truthfully, I think Marlene is maybe a little carried away here. This kind of operation is more complicated than watching out for girl singers, make sure no one sneaks into the dressing room. What you say on the phone to whoever, this is not always what you mean.”
They all looked back at Marlene, who guffawed and said, “Oh, horseshit, Oleg! I got you nailed and you know it. But, hey, you don’t want to believe my version of the story, I’d be glad to hand this package over to the press and let them play with it for a while, send a bunch of investigative reporters over there and let them poke around. The SEC is bound to be interested in it, too, especially the paragraphs on page twenty-one of the transcript where our boy here says”—she flipped through the pages and read—“‘This is most important, Ilya; you must go in on the sixteenth.’ And then Ilya says, ‘We could do it tomorrow, we’re all ready.’ And Oleg says, ‘No, the sixteenth. There is a business reason. Let them sit there for a while, it won’t do them any harm.’ Yeah, I think the SEC would be very interested in that part. It’s probably even worse than messing with Rule 174.”
At this the table erupted with angry noises, directed at Marlene. Osborne had to restore order by pounding his fist on the table and bellowing, and in the following hostile silence he asked, “Assuming you’re correct in your allegations, what do you intend to do?”
“Not much. This is a good firm, more or less. There’s no reason for you to lose all you’ve worked for because one person didn’t quite get it. But I want out. I want to be bought out, now, today.”
“That’s impossible!” said Unger. “We can’t trade in stock for six months after IPO.”
“I don’t mean a public trade. You all have margin accounts. It shouldn’t be hard for you to raise the cash, especially with stock as the collateral. Interior trades are perfectly legal. “We closed at fifty-five and a quarter on Friday. That’s sixty-six point three million that my piece of Osborne is worth. You can divide my stock up among you however you like, I could care less. But I want a check for that amount net of strike price, taxes, and charges, and I want it today.”
“How do we know you won’t release this material anyway?” Fox demanded. “What guarantees can you give us?”
“My sacred word of honor, one, and two, if I blew the whistle, Oleg would kill me. Right, Oleg?”
Like automatons, every head swiveled to look at Oleg. They all thought they were pretty tough people, but they all cringed a little at what they saw in Oleg Sirmenkov’s eyes just then.
Marlene continued, “And then Harry would kill Oleg, wouldn’t you, Harry, even though you might be a little pissed at me now?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, “I guess I would,” in a tone and with an expression that he hadn’t used much since he became a corporate guy, but which was absolutely convincing.
“Which would not be all that good for the firm, either. I just mention that in case Oleg is thinking about killing me anyway,” said Marlene with a bright smile around the table, which was not returned.
Lou Osborne asked Marlene to leave the room, which she did, then walked back to her office, to find Min Dykstra standing guard, embarrassed but resolute about not letting Marlene into her own office. She wanted to know what was going on, and Marlene told her that it was better that she didn’t know. Marlene left and went to the ladies’ room and sat in a booth and used her considerable reserves of self-control to resist tears and actually made a small dent in the steel wall of the booth with her fist. Then she went back to Osborne’s office and hung around, in the invisibility of the corporate pariah, until Bell came out and took her into his office, and they began to negotiate.
Three hours later, Marlene signed her name to an agreement. In it she promised that she would not compete with Osborne by opening her own international security firm or by working for an Osborne competitor, and also that if she ever made public anything whatever having to do with her career at Osborne International, said firm would have the right to strip her of all she possessed, parade her naked through the streets in a cart, transport her to a deserted island, and stake her down in the sun, to be devoured by ants and crabs, or words to that effect. In return she received a certified check for $50,823,000. Then she cabbed downtown and had a long conversation with Ms. Lipopo. If Ms. Lipopo was amazed, she did not show it. Marlene imagined that the banker had experienced all manner of financial eccentricity, and that Marlene’s was nothing much in comparison.
Back on the street, she recalled the first time she had walked out of Ms. Lipopo’s elegant suite. Then she had been heavy, plutonic, rich, as they say, beyond the dreams of avarice. She was still richer than 99 percent of the planet’s people, but she was about to become very much poorer, and she felt light, Apollonian. She stepped off the curb to hail a cab, then stepped back and dropped her arm. Instead, she walked through the money-intent throngs to the subway and took the Lexington Avenue line up to the Hunter College station. The train was not crowded. She found a seat and observed her fellow passengers. She estimated that not one of them had been born in the United States, which obscurely cheered her. On the platform at Hunter College, where she left the train, she found a hairy kid with a guitar singing “I Shall Be Released.” She paused to drop a twenty in his case and tripped up the stairs and to the garage that held her battered Volvo. In it she drove downtown, happily cursing the cabdrivers and truckers, and after stopping off to pick up some supplies for the tunnel expedition, she returned home, changed into worn jeans and a T-shirt, fixed herself a wine cooler, and telephoned the archdiocese about a donation she wanted to make to the Church. And, no, she told the secretary, she couldn’t just put it in the box.
18
MARLENE HAD BOUGHT THEM ALL YELLOW COVERALLS OF SOME PLASTICIZED material, and white hard hats and Motorola two-way radios, and black gum-boots. The twins had been shipped off to their grandmother’s. The dog was straying no more than four inches from his mistress’s knee, well knowing some interesting events were in the offing. The four donned their outfits in the loft, and Marlene looked them over like a sergeant major on parade and distributed to each a four-cell Kel-light, the policeman’s choice for both illumination and tuning up the skulls of malefactors. Father Dugan appeared the most authentic in the costume, oddly enough, more authentic than he usually looked in a surplice. His roughneck Irish face fit right in with the sandhog getup. He also seemed to be the most enthusiastic, which was perhaps not so strange since he was the only one who knew where they were going. He had spent the day in the chart room of the Department of Public Works, working out a rough map based on the instructions he had received from Spare Parts. It was a very approximate map since either Spare Parts was crazy or he knew a lot more about the underground than DPW did. The priest hoped it was the latter. As for the others, Marlene looked like the plumber’s daughter she was; Lucy, pale, thin, and floating in the helmet and gear, resembled a breaker laddie sent down the pits at eight years old; Karp looked like a disguised distinguished attorney, miserable and awkward, and felt the same and said so more than once.
“Oh, stop,” said Marlene after one of those comments. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Didn’t you ever read boys’ books when you were a kid?”
“I did,” said Karp, “and by the age of twelve I had identified them as unrealistic fantasies, never thinking I would marry someone who hadn’t.”
“How do you pee in these things?” Lucy asked.
“You let it run down your leg,” answered her mom sweetly, “and then remove your boot to drain.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Karp almost under his breath. “All we need is a map that’s been browned in an oven. And some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.”
“The sooner
we get started, the sooner we’ll be finished,” said Marlene in a leadership tone of voice, and headed for the door. Karp came close and said sotto voce, “Where’s your guy?”
“His name is Tran. After the fuss you made, and on further reflection, I figured you would not be comfortable acknowledging the presence of someone you knew to be a suspected felon. You will not have to take cognizance of him.”
“That’s extremely and unusually considerate of you, my darling. But he’ll be there? Backing our play if need be?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said with an airy flip of her hand.
It was a dark, rectangular hole in the western flank of Manhattan, down among the shadows of old dead piers, just south of Seventy-second Street, guarded by a loose and rusted gate. They entered, switching on their lights, Father Dugan in the lead, then Karp sticking close to his daughter, and Marlene last, descending damp slate steps, stumbling on the many broken ones.
“This is an emergency exit for the crew that built this tunnel,” Dugan explained at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s a railway tunnel and not used anymore, which is why it’s popular. I think we should switch these lights off now. I don’t want to upset the residents.”
They did so. At first the blackness was absolute. Karp reached out without thinking and squeezed Lucy’s hand. Gradually, however, they became aware of a distant, ruddy glow, and as their eyes adjusted, they made out shadows moving across it. They passed through a sparse waterfall dropping from a great height, and beyond that they found themselves in the midst of a considerable settlement. The railroad had cut deep bays out of the rock for storing equipment, and these had been converted into apartments with beds and furniture and rooms separated by curtains. The place had a zoo smell, mixed with smoke from the several fires. A huge figure came out of the gloom and approached Father Dugan. As the figure came closer, Karp thought he was wearing a cheap Halloween mask and then, with a shock of revulsion, saw that it wasn’t a mask. Lucy said in a whisper, “That’s Jacob. Spare Parts.”
“Our faithful native guide.”
“He’s okay,” said Lucy reprovingly.
“If you say so,” said Karp, suppressing the bourgeois in him who was recoiling from the knowledge that his little dearie was hanging out with people like this. The big man finished his honking conversation with the priest, of which Karp could understand not one word, and strode off into the tunnel, which debouched after a few minutes into a larger tunnel, with two sets of rusting railroad tracks on its floor. They all turned their lights on, but the narrow beams, strong as they were, did little to dissipate the blackness or to give any sense of scale, for they had to direct the light at their feet in order not to constantly trip over the uneven ties. Spare Parts, in the lead, was setting a brisk pace. He didn’t have a light and didn’t seem to need one. Father Dugan had his light angled to keep track of the guide’s legs. He was feeling better than he had since leaving Salvador. This was why he had joined the Jesuits, to go into dark and dangerous places in the service of God and humanity. Nevertheless, his lips moved in prayer.
Karp followed the circle of light in front of him and kept his own lit circle small and tried, not always successfully, to keep his footing in the clumsy boots. In the part of his mind that was not controlling his feet or cursing, he was trying to put in order the chain of events that had led to his being here in a dark, wet tunnel with his wife and daughter, guided by the Son of Frankenstein into who knew what. He was angry, mostly at himself, but also at Brendan Cooley and the district attorney.
Close behind him, Lucy was feeling guilty about her father, sensing what he was going through, wishing he would stop worrying about her. She was fine. They were fine. She had absolute confidence in the ability of her mother and Tran to get them out of any conceivable problem. Bringing up the rear, Marlene was watching the lights of her family before her, thinking of nothing much but the current situation, in full action mode for the first time since the debacle at Kelsie Solette’s, and starting to wonder when Tran would show. As she walked, she flicked her light beam from side to side, casting long shadows of her companions against the curved walls and vaulted roof. From time to time she spotted a scurrying shadow along the walls and thought that it must be some trick of light because, although she had heard that tunnel rats grew to prodigious size, she had not imagined anything quite that size. The dog trotted along by her side, snuffling when the rat smell hit his nostrils, perfectly content. He smelled and heard the people following them, but he had not been put on guard and so made no complaint.
Marlene felt the tap on her shoulder and let out a short, involuntary yelp.
“My God, Tran, you scared the shit out of me! Where have you been?”
“Following,” he said, and something odd about his voice made her hold up her light to get a better look at him. She was shocked by what she saw. The always calm, competent, imperturbable Tran was sweating and wide-eyed and actually shaking. The plastic raincoat he wore made a slithering sound, and as she watched, he hugged himself tightly in an attempt to make it stop.
“Tran! What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“No, not sick. Or only in my head. I am devastated to have to tell you, Marie Helene, that since the war I am not very able beneath the ground, in the tunnels.”
At once, and with a rush of shame, Marlene recalled the story he had told her years ago, of being buried alive for five days and then dug out and informed that his family had been vaporized by a bomb.
“Oh, you poor man! Why didn’t you tell me?”
A shrug, a weak smile, a side-to-side movement of his head. “I thought I might have improved. It has been a long time. But I find that, despite the proverb, some things time does not heal. I cannot seem to control my limbs down here, and the deeper I go, the worse it gets.”
“Christ! What are we going to do?” She shone her flash back the way they had come. A rat ran from the beam into the darkness, but otherwise the tunnel was empty.
“Where are your guys?”
“I did not bring them. They . . . it is a matter of face, you understand. They cannot see me like this. I am truly sorry.”
She patted his arm. “Okay, no problem. Look, you go back topside and get yourself together. We’ll be fine.”
“I have a pistol. Do you want it?”
Marlene did, very much, but she declined. “Oh, hell no, we’re just going to bring in some poor fool. He’s not being held for ransom or anything. Really! Go on up, we’ll be fine.”
And more cheery words of this sort, which were interrupted by the crackle of the radio in her pocket. She took it out and held it to her ear.
“Marlene!” came her husband’s voice. “Marlene, come in. Shit! This fucking thing doesn’t work for . . .” She waited during more of this until his finger came off the button and she was able to talk.
“Butch, I’m fine. I’ll be there in a second.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just got a little tied up. Are you there yet?”
“We’re at a switch—the tunnel branches off to the right, and Mike says that’s the one we’re going to take.”
“Okay, be right there.” She put the radio away. To Tran she said, “Go now. We’ll be fine.”
“There are two, at least two, other men in the tunnel besides your party. They are moving without lights, but I heard them. They passed me while I was sitting there paralyzed. I had to tell you . . .”
He looked as if he was about to collapse, and this sight was far worse than the thought of going into Rat Alley without him at her back.
She embraced him and kissed him on the cheek, then trotted off down the tracks and found the branching and took the right-hand tunnel. In a few minutes she saw the lights of the others ahead. They had stopped and were looking at the ground.
“This looks like it,” said Father Dugan, indicating the floor with his beam.
Marlene saw that the floor and part of the wall had collap
sed, making a pie-slice hole a few inches wide at the tip, swelling to no more than three feet at the widest.
Karp knelt and shone his light down the hole, but could see nothing but sparkling Manhattan schist.
The priest said, “According to Jacob, this goes down about twenty feet, and then you’re in the old sewer tunnel. Canman lives up a side tunnel that branches a couple of hundred yards down.”
“Is he going to lead us there?” Karp asked.
“No,” said Father Dugan, “this is as far as he goes.”
“So . . . just the one branch in there,” said Karp, looking down the slit.
“No, a lot of them, he says. It’s a sewer, or was.”
“Then how will we know which branch is right?”
“Apparently, it’s unmistakable.”
Spare Parts let out a series of honks and grunts.
“What did he say?” asked Karp.
“He said, ‘I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways,’” answered Lucy.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s from a poem called ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ Oh! He’s going.”
The tunnel king was indeed going, as usual without a kiss good-bye. They watched him move out of the circle of light and vanish.
Karp was by that time in a state that often occurs in unlikely adventures, in which everything seems giddily amusing and like a bad movie. Our cast, he thought: here was the kid who never got killed, and Marlene, the female star, ditto, and there were two guys, one of whom had to be eaten by the slime monster while the other rescued the ladies. Karp wondered which one he was. He said, “It’s quiet. Too quiet. I don’t like it.” They all stared at him, but he was gladdened to see Lucy’s teeth flash into a grin. Without further thought he eased his legs into the wide part of the slit.
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