Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (21 page)

“It’s the real world, kid. It’s not like you read about in paperbacks.”

“You mean like the ones you publish, Charley?”

“I mean like the one you wrote,” he said. “Bang-bang stuff, where the blood all washes off by the final scene and the bad guys all wear black.”

“You liked it well enough when I wrote it,” Tricia said.

“Sure. I just don’t like living the real-world version.”

“You think I do?”

They walked on at as fast a pace as they could manage, the tunnel stretching out more or less endlessly in front of them.

“I’m sorry, Charley,” Tricia said. “Okay? I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have written the book.”

“Ah, hell,” Charley said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to.”

“You didn’t ask me to make things up.”

“No,” Charley said. “But all you did was make them up. I’m the one that published it.”

“You thought it was all true,” Tricia said.

“And that makes it better? Would you tell me what the hell I was thinking, deciding to publish the actual secrets of an actual mobster?”

“That you’d sell a lot of books.”

“Yep. That’s what I was thinking, all right.”

“And you will,” Tricia said.

“Maybe the profits will pay for a nice headstone,” Charley said.

“Only if we get out of this tunnel,” Tricia said. “They bury us down here, we don’t get a headstone.”

They both walked faster after that.

By the time they reached the far end of the tunnel, Tricia figured they must have walked a good quarter of a mile, maybe more. How anyone had been able to dig a tunnel under the streets of Manhattan that ran at least five blocks she couldn’t fathom. Unless this was a much older tunnel even than Prohibition—maybe, she thought, the tunnel came first and the buildings were built around it.

The room at the far end had wooden crates stacked against the walls and a folding card table in the center. It had no chairs and no people, though, and the one door in the room was closed and barred. The question was what they’d find when they opened it.

“They know we’re here,” Charley said. “They must. There’s nowhere else we can be. The only thing we can hope is that we made it faster than they could because they were busy dealing with the cops.”

“And that none of them had the chance to telephone ahead,” Tricia said, “to tell someone to be here when we came out.”

“Yeah,” Charley said. “That, too.”

He hesitated, counted
three, two, one
with his fingers, and in a rush of movement raised the metal bar, pulled the door open, and stepped through it gun-first. There was no one on the other side.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said.

“We’re not out yet.”

They raced up the staircase they found, cousin to the one in the basement of the Stars Club. At the top another door waited. When Charley started the bit with his fingers again, Tricia just pushed it open and walked out into the basement of the Sun.

Off to one side she saw the freight elevator and two of the fabric-sided carts the maintenance staff used to wheel supplies in and out—the same sort she’d had her unnamed thief use to escape with the loot in her book. The same sort the real thief had used, too, apparently.

She heard sounds from the loading dock outside: running feet, then hands at the metal gate, trying to raise it. Tricia went to the freight elevator door, banged on it with the flat of her palm. From the loading dock came the rattle of a padlock. “Come on, come on,” came a muffled voice. “Who has a key?”

Tricia rapped on the elevator door again, kept pounding until it slid open. The operator stuck his head out, barking, “What are you doing, banging away—”

She put her gun in his face and he quieted down. When he saw Charley leveling a gun at him too, he meekly put his hands up.

“I were you, I wouldn’t rob this place,” he said. “We got hit just a month ago and the people in charge are out for blood.”

“We’re not here to rob the place,” Tricia said. “Just take us upstairs.”

Out on the loading dock, a gunshot went off like a cherry bomb and what Tricia had to assume were padlock fragments rained against the metal gate.

She stepped into the elevator. “Up.”

The operator pulled the door closed and worked the lever to start the car. Heavy chains clanked overhead and they started to rise.

“How far?” he said.

“All the way,” Tricia said.

“Is that smart?” Charley said. “Why not just go to the lobby?”

“Because it’s almost two
AM,
Charley,” Tricia said, “and at two
AM
people from Nicolazzo’s other clubs start showing up in the lobby, delivering the night’s take. Some of them are probably there already. With armed bodyguards. Not to mention the man in the security booth out front.”

“But if we go up to the club,” Charley said, “how are we going to get out...?”

Tricia watched the little metal arrow above the door travel to the end of its arc. “What, you didn’t read my book?”

At the top floor, they left the operator tied hand and foot with his belt and Charley’s necktie; a handkerchief they found in the man’s back pocket served for a gag. They turned the elevator off. Let the boys in the basement holler for it. That’d buy a few minutes at least.

They followed the hallway to a pair of swinging doors and pushed through, finding themselves in the kitchen, where a sloe-eyed saxophonist sat nuzzling a tall glass of something amber. A woman setting dishes in one of the sinks looked up when they entered: Cecilia, still wearing her costume from their dance number, which she’d presumably had to turn into a solo. “Trixie! What happened to you? Where were you?”

“It’s a long story, Cecilia,” Tricia said, hurrying past, “I’m sorry I let you down tonight.”

“Robbie didn’t show up either. Do you know where he is?”

Probably still in the trunk of Mitch’s car, wherever that was. “No,” Tricia said. “Listen, we’ve got to go. If anyone asks, you didn’t see us. It’s for your own good, trust me.” She realized as she said it that it was the same thing Charley had told Mike. Well, it was doubly true for her. Cecilia certainly didn’t need a ‘ZN’ added to her cheek.

“Will you be here tomorrow?” Cecilia asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tricia called over her shoulder.

“That lady’s sure in a hurry,” the saxophonist said to no one in particular.

They burst through the door to the storeroom, rushed down the crowded aisle between two tall metal shelves. The window at the end was closed; the glass was unbroken. Tricia tried to open it but couldn’t. “Charley, you try,” Tricia said.

“I’m not climbing eleven stories down the side of a building,” Charley said.

“Then open the window so I can,” Tricia said. “And when he gets here, say hello to Uncle Nick for me.”

Charley gave her a murderous stare, spat on each of his palms, planted his feet and tried to wrench the window up. When his first try failed, he gave two more heaves, grimacing furiously each time. The third, true to form, was the charm. Tricia, meanwhile, slipped the gun into the pocket of her dress, next to the box of photos. It was a tight fit, even though she’d kept the smaller of the guns for herself.

“Okay.” She stuck her head out the window, looked down, wished she hadn’t. Not that she could see much in the dead of night, but the little she could see didn’t make her want to climb out on the window ledge.

She climbed out on the window ledge.

Charley gripped her legs with both hands. Holding on tight to the window frame with her left hand, she fished for the rain gutter with her right. Her fingertips brushed it twice before she was able to get a good grip.

“Okay,” she said. “Let go.”

“You sure?” Charley said. He sounded dubious.

“Yes.” Stretching out one leg to the side, she found the nearest of the metal brackets that anchored the pipe to the wall and when she felt reasonably secure putting her weight on it, she brought her other hand and leg over.

“Nothing to it,” she said, or tried to, but her teeth were chattering too much and she gave up.

“You think it can hold both of us at once?” Charley said.

She would’ve shrugged but didn’t want to chance it. Instead, she started carefully inching her right leg along the pipe, feeling for the next bracket down. It was too far beneath her, especially with her legs constrained by the way she was dressed.
(Slacks,
she thought.
Why couldn’t I have worn a nice pair of slacks?)
But she knew the bracket was there, just inches below her toes. So holding tight to the pipe with both hands and both knees and thinking of all the trees she’d climbed as young girl in Aberdeen, she let herself slide slowly—slowly!—down to the bracket. She rested there for a moment, flexed her fingers slightly, then tightened her grip and let herself down to the next one.

As she went, she kept her eyes focused on the bricks immediately before her. This was about feeling her way, not seeing where she was going. Slide; stop. Slide; stop.

Down had to be easier than up, at least. That’s what she kept telling herself. But her hands had already started to hurt. Her chest, too, from tension and the drumbeat of her racing heart. She chanced a look up, saw Charley’s legs and posterior a few feet above her. He was on the pipe too, now. Once again she found herself with nowhere to go but down.

I’ll never tell another lie as long as I live. I swear it. I’ll never write another book about gangsters. Only friendly, happy subjects, like trips to the beach and picking flowers. I promise. Just let me not die here in this airshaft. Let me make it down. Please.

Slide. Stop. Deep breath. Slide. Stop.

“You know something?” Charley’s voice was weak; she imagined she could hear his teeth chattering too. “It’s not eleven floors.” He let himself down to the next bracket above her head, made sure of his footing. “It’s only ten.”

“What?” Tricia managed to say.

“We only have to make it to the
roof
of that news peddler’s place,” Charley said. “That’s the second floor. So we’re only going ten floors, not eleven. And,” he added with a hopeful tone, “a fall from just one floor up probably wouldn’t kill us. So it’s really only nine that we have to worry about. And,” he said, “we must be at least halfway there already.”

“Charley,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Shut up and climb.”

Two stories later, Tricia lost her grip. Her left hand, sweaty and tired, slipped off the pipe. She felt herself tilting backwards, her feet losing their purchase on the bracket. Desperately, she tried to wedge her entire right arm between the pipe and the wall, but thin as it was, it wouldn’t fit. She scrabbled with her feet, tried to hold on with just one hand, but found herself falling. She meant to scream, but somehow nothing came out, and as she fell she only had time to think,
So, this is it.

Then she hit, and though the breath was badly knocked out of her, she was somewhat astonished to find that the life wasn’t. She lay where she’d landed, flat on her back, just eight or nine feet below where she’d lost hold of the pipe.

“Tricia!” Charley called. “What happened? Are you okay?” When she didn’t answer, he looked down. “Oh, thank god.” He quickly slid the rest of the way to the bottom. “You see? We
were
more than halfway.”

Looking up at him from where she lay, she nodded very slightly and concentrated on breathing in and out.

“Come on,” Charley said, inching over to the chicken wire-laced window above the toilet. “It looks like there’s a light on.”

Tricia forced herself to get up, brushed off her hands and the seat of her dress, which was smeared now with god only knew what. The smell here was dismal, and though she’d made up the rat for the chapter in the book, she didn’t doubt that there were various sorts of vermin here, biding their time in the darkness.

While Charley pried open the window and let himself down, Tricia checked her pocket. The gun and the photos were still there. The gun hadn’t even gone off and shot her in the thigh, and for that small miracle she was thankful. She limped over to the skylight, where Charley’s arms were sticking out, reaching up for her. She let him lower her down, and they stood together in the tiny bathroom.

There
was
a light on, not here in this little closet of a room, but outside—you could see it leaking through around the door. Tricia tried to remember, from her many nights at the Sun, whether she’d ever seen this place open at
2AM
—she didn’t think so. How many people could possibly want a newspaper or a coffee at
2AM?

There was nothing to do about it, though. They couldn’t stay in here much longer. For one thing, their entrance had probably been heard. And even if it hadn’t, if there were people outside someone would eventually come in to use the toilet, and then what would they say?

Charley grabbed a handful of the coarse brown paper towels the owner had set out and, wiping his hands, pushed the door open.

“Gentlemen,” he said. Tricia followed him out. There were two men in the small space, a heavyset character, gray at the temples, sitting at the counter with a mug in front of him, and a skinny one standing behind it, wearing his usual canvas apron, the pocket in front loaded down with coins. The door to the street was closed, a shade drawn over the glass. Charley seemed to be deciding, for a moment, whether to bolt or stay—were they safer in here or out on the sidewalk? Finally he went to one of the two empty stools, motioned Tricia to the other.

The men stared at them. They both seemed to have been caught in mid-sentence.

“Jerry,” Tricia said to the man in the apron, “this is my friend Charley. Charley, Jerry. Jerry’s always very nice to me any time I come in.”

“How’d you get in there, Trixie?” Jerry said nervously. “You weren’t there ten minutes ago.”

Tricia shrugged. There was no good answer, and why give a bad one?

“You don’t mind,” Charley said, “we’d both do well with a cup of coffee.” He dug a few coins out of his pocket, dropped them on the counter.