No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (25 page)

A seventeen-year-old girl belted out her version of the classic rock tune, “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” while Michael skirted the outside of the room. He avoided eye contact and moved with purpose. It was an attempt to dissuade others from engaging him in casual conversation.

Michael stopped, waited, and then continued on, moving closer to Father Stiles. The priest stood on the side of the small stage watching the future pop princess work up to the song’s final refrain.  His pompadour was combed high and back, and his crushed blue velvet jumpsuit and cape hugged every inch and bulge of Father Stiles’ body.

“
Father,.” Michael spoke in a hushed voice, barely audible over the music.

Father Stiles looked around, not knowing who in the audience had called for him.

“
Father.” Michael casually and briefly raised his hand.

The priest met Michael’s eye. He squinted, then a look of recognition.

The song ended and the young girl put the microphone back in the stand. Father Stiles looked at the girl, then the audience, and finally back at Michael. He mouthed the word, “Office.” Then he trotted over to the microphone with a large, silly grin.

“
Thank you, Miss Sandy.” It was a smooth, southern drawl. “Father Elvis thanks you, thanks you very much.”

Then he began talking up the next performer, thirteen year-old Stuart Capri. He would be singing George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas (That’s Why I Hang My Hat in Tennessee).” Classic karaoke.

Michael turned from the stage and walked over to the bar. There was a temporary lull in the usual run on beer, and he had the space to himself.

He looked around.

Nobody was coming; the volunteer bartender had his back turned. He was restocking the sodas and filling the cooler with ice. Before the bartender could notice, Michael reached into his knapsack and removed three large stacks of one-hundred dollar-bills. Michael slipped them through the slit of the offering/tip box on the corner of the bar.

Then he walked away.

###

Surrounded by the musty theology and philosophy books that he had devoured as a young man, Michael waited in Father Stiles’ office. The smell of recently microwaved pepperoni Pizza Rolls still filled the room, reminding Michael that Kermit had stolen much of his dinner. He hadn’t really eaten since lunch.

Lunch now seemed like a long, long time ago.

There was a knock at the door, a warning, and then Father Stiles entered the room. He locked the door behind him, and then took his place behind the large cluttered desk.

“
Not a big fan of the hair,” he nodded toward Michael’s new platinum crewcut.  It was meant to be a joke, but Father Stiles’ tone and expression were flat. He knew what was happening.

“
I’ve got to go.”

Father Stiles nodded.

“
But you wanted to say goodbye?”

“
I did,” Michael said. “You deserve that much, and I regret that last time ...” Michael shrugged his shoulders, and then took a deep breath. “I’ve been a little …”

Father Stiles raised his hand.

“
Now isn’t the time for punishment, either self-inflicted or by me.” Then he cocked his head to the side. “They’ll be lots of time for reflection, Michael.” The conversation was heavy and stilted; both wanted to say more than they could. 

“
I don’t know if I’ll be back.”

“
You’ll be back,” Father Stiles said.

“
I don’t think so.” Michael shook his head. “Not this time.”

“
You’re going to want this thing resolved one way or another. All things must be resolved in time, and you, in particular, are not satisfied with running away. I know that’s what you’ve done and what you are doing, but I also know it isn’t who you are.”

There was a knock at the door.

Father Stiles looked at Michael, and then at the door.

“
Yes?”

“
It’s Graydon Horner.” The person on the other side of the door knocked, again. “There’s a man here that wants to see you, Father, says it’s important.”

Father Stiles stood.

“
I’m coming.” He and Michael embraced, holding close. “Take the stairs through the house,” he said, and then Father Stiles took a step back. “Father, are you coming?” Graydon Horner continued from the other side of the closed door.

“
Yes. I’m coming. I’m an old man now, you know.”

When he got to the door, Father Stiles glanced back at the stairs leading out of the rectory’s attic to the second level of the attached house. Michael was already gone.

“
Can I help you?” Father Stiles asked, after he had unlocked and opened the door. Graydon Horner stood before him with a blank expression, while a man in a wheelchair shouted at Horner to get out of the way.

“
Where is he? Who were you talking to in here?”

“
And who are you?” Father Stiles was forced to step aside as Vatch nearly knocked Graydon Horner down as he wheeled past. “Excuse me, who are you?”

“
You know who I am.” Vatch wheeled further into the office. “Where is Collins?”

“
I believe that I have a right to see some identification, if you are claiming to be a law enforcement officer of some sort.”

Vatch turned to the priest.

“
I’m pretty close to tossing you in jail for obstructing this investigation and harboring a criminal.” Vatch looked around the office. “So where is he?”

“
I was just meeting with a parishioner. Last time I checked, a conference between a priest and a parishioner was confidential.”

Vatch wheeled to the desk, and then to the back stairwell.

“
Really.” Vatch looked down the stairs. “When was this so-called parishioner here?”

“
The parishioner was here when I got up to answer the door.”

“
Good.” Vatch smiled. “That was helpful, Father, very helpful.” He took out his phone and pressed the speed-dial.

While peering down the stairwell, Vatch pressed the phone against his ear and strained to catch a glimpse or hear a sound of Michael.

“
In the house.” Vatch turned off the phone, and then turned back to Father Stiles. “You’re a real man of the cloth, Father, a real man of God.” Vatch wheeled toward the door and the church’s old rickety elevator just on the other side. “The government of the United States thanks you very much.”

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

Taking the stairs three at a time, Michael was down one flight in four steps and a leap. He righted himself at the base, and then kept going. He ran through the second-story hallway until he reached another flight of stairs. Michael tried to take a hard right, but the momentum pushed him forward, and he crashed into the wall. Two framed pictures fell to the ground. The glass shattered, cascading down the steps along with him until he finally reached the main level of the rectory where Father Stiles had lived for over twenty years.

Michael was breathing hard, now. They may have found him, he thought, but they weren’t going to catch him. This was his neighborhood.

He sprinted out the front door, not bothering to close it behind him, just as two helicopters, maybe three, appeared out of nowhere.

They circled overhead. Their spotlights crossed back and forth, searching for him. Michael ducked down between two parked cars.

He waited.

There was activity at the far end of the block, people meeting, and then spreading. Car doors slammed closed. Michael knew the circle around him was forming. They were moving in.

A woman in jeans and a navy blue windbreaker ran down the street toward the rectory. She held a walkie-talkie to her ear, listening, and then shouting back into it.

“
I’m twenty yards away, fifteen, ten …” Michael edged further between the cars, as she turned and ran into the house, her gun drawn.

Two men came up to the house from the other direction, also with their guns drawn. A helicopter passed directly overhead, its spotlight missing Michael by only a few feet. He didn’t have much time.

Michael took a breath, counted down from three, and then darted across the street, staying low.

Once across, Michael again ducked between two parked cars. He waited, his eyes wide, his heart beating faster than it ever had before. Michael listened. He heard more agents and police officers running toward the house. Could they see him? He couldn’t wait.

Michael ran across the sidewalk, and then into a narrow space between two sets of row houses. There was barely enough room to move. The arms of his jacket scraped along the brick exteriors on either side; catching and then coming free.

“
I thought I saw something over here. Give me your light.” Beams from an agent’s flashlight streaked the space as Michael made it to the end. He threw himself around the corner, and fell to the cold, wet ground.

“
Did you see that? Did you see that?”

“
I didn’t see nothing.”

“
Hold it right there, Collins. Don’t make me fucking run.”

Michael picked himself up off of the ground. He had fifteen seconds, maybe less.

He ran to the far side of a dumpster, only five feet away, and pushed it as hard as he could. At first, the dumpster didn’t give, but then the wheels underneath righted themselves and the dumpster lurched an inch forward.

Michael pushed, again, and the dumpster rolled in front of the narrow space between the two sets of row houses. The men giving chase must not have had time to stop, because Michael heard them crash into the dumpster as he ran down the alley toward Tompkins Park.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

The park was abandoned and dark. It had been over ten years since the city bowed to the pressure of the increasingly gentrified neighborhood residents, and started barring homeless people from sleeping there.

Michael ran northeast, past the 1890s monument to Congressman Cox and toward Temperance Fountain.  The simple stone drinking fountain at the center of the Tompkins Park was one of fifty such fountains built by temperance crusader Henry Cogswell in the latter part of the 19th century. From a distance, the fountain appeared to be a simple squat column. Surrounded by four taller columns that supported its roof, the fountain’s only adornment was a bronze statue of Bebe, the mythical carrier of water.

About fifteen yards from it, Michael ducked off the path and into an old grove of elm trees. In the center, there was a small, concrete slab with a rusted metal grate. There were two hinges on one side and a padlock on the other, giving the appearance that the grate was secured.

Michael, however, knew better. The bolts supposedly keeping the hinges together had been removed. Attempts were periodically made by the city to “fix” the grate, but the bolts always managed to disappear a short time later.

Michael yanked the grate. It opened, and he climbed inside one of New York’s many tunnels. Although out of sight and out of mind to the millions who live there and even more who visit, New York was honeycombed with underground passageways and caverns, some abandoned and some used every day to carry subway passengers, utility lines, sewage, and of course, Bebe’s mythical water.

On narrow bands of iron that protruded out of the wall, Michael began his 670-foot descent below the surface and into complete darkness. The shaft that led from Tompkins Park to Water Tunnel No. 5 was originally constructed in 1913, and Michael hoped that the iron steps wouldn’t break away from the crumbling walls and send him falling to the ground.

He stopped with each step, making sure that his foot was firmly on one before taking another. Michael listened for somebody above, certain that the men on foot had seen where he was going or the helicopters had spotted him. He heard nothing.

Michael kept on, lowering himself further into the dark. The air thickened with the smell of sewage and mold. Heat from the steam pipes raised the temperature in the narrow shaft with every step he took toward the bottom.

Finally, Michael touched ground. He allowed himself a second to relax and take a breath. He wondered how long he could stay in the tunnel, how long they would keep looking for him.

Michael got down on his hands and knees, crawling on the floor. He blindly circled the space below the ladder, reaching and feeling in the tunnel’s muck, ignoring the rats that scurried through his fingertips.

“
You have to be here.” He reached into a pool of grease and mud. “Traditions never die.”

Then he found it.

His right hand grazed the side of an old wooden milk crate, a gift from one urban explorer to another. He reached inside. It was filled with candles, most burnt down to an inch or two, but some were longer. Then he found the plastic bag.

He opened it and removed one of the boxes of matches by touch. He couldn’t see them, but Michael could tell that the boxes were dry.