The Manhattan Hunt Club (24 page)

Or was it that she looked like so many other girls he’d seen in the city, not only here in the subway, but downtown as well? He must have seen dozens of girls who looked just like this one during the months when he’d visited Jeff in jail. A lot of them had been there for the same reason he was: visiting someone.

Sometimes, rarely, it was a brother or a father.

Far more often it was a boyfriend or a pimp.

The ones who weren’t dressed in the miniskirts and tight blouses that were the uniform of the prostitute had usually been wearing the same kind of worn shirt and jeans the girl on the subway wore today. If not for the strange interplay between her and the transit cop, Keith might not have noticed her at all.

At first, he’d assumed that the cop was going to arrest her. But when nothing happened, and the cop simply countered every one of the girl’s moves with one of his own, Keith began to suspect that the girl hadn’t done anything at all.

That the cop was just hassling her.

Why? Simply because he could?

He began paying more attention, and by the Seventy-second Street stop, he was sure he was right. If the cop had been intending to arrest the girl, he would have done it by now.

When he glanced around the car and saw that no one else was paying any attention to what was going on, he told himself that the other people were right, that it was none of his business, and that he was probably wrong anyway—maybe the girl was a criminal and the cop knew her.

A criminal?
he repeated to himself.
What am I thinking? She can’t be more than fifteen, for God’s sake!
He took a closer look at her and realized she didn’t much resemble the dozens of other down-on-their-luck kids he’d seen. For one thing, her eyes didn’t have the glazed look of a junkie, and there was nothing about her to suggest she was a prostitute.

And he was almost certain he’d seen her before.

Then it started to fall into place.

She’d gotten on at 110th Street, where he’d gotten on.

Only a block away from Riverside Park, where Eve Harris had introduced him to the homeless woman on the bench yesterday.

There’d been a girl there. A girl wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, who’d asked Tillie if he and Heather had been messin’ with her. The homeless woman had given her money and told her to go away.

Preoccupied with Tillie, he hadn’t paid attention to the girl. But now, studying her face, he was almost certain this was the same person.

When the girl moved to the next car and the cop immediately followed, Keith moved to the back of his own car so he could watch them through the windows. Though he’d intended to ride the train on down to Fiftieth Street, he got off at Columbus Circle, following the cop and the girl.

He walked toward the stairs, certain that the girl would hurry out of the station, but instead she stayed on the platform, moving across toward the uptown side, peering down the tracks as if looking for a train. The cop lounged against a pillar, his eyes still on the girl.

A few people milled around on the platform, some taking the stairs toward the surface, just as many coming down to the platform.

The girl seemed utterly disinterested in anything except the tracks. A couple of minutes later an uptown train came in. The doors opened and the girl stepped on.

So did the cop.

Keith glanced at his watch. He still had an hour before the mass was supposed to begin, plenty of time to walk over to Fifth and down to St. Patrick’s, or even catch the next train down to Fiftieth. But if he headed back uptown . . .

The mass could happen without him, he decided. Right now it was more important to talk to the girl. He dashed toward the train, but was still a few yards away when the doors started to close. He broke into a sprint and was about to thrust his arm between the closing doors when the girl suddenly slipped back out onto the platform.

The doors finished closing and the train pulled away.

The girl flipped her middle finger at the cop, who was now glaring at her from the departing train and talking into his radio. Then she turned and almost bumped into Keith.

“Jeez!” she said. “Can’tcha watch where you’re goin’?” She started to push past Keith, but he put out a hand and held her arm. Her eyes locked on his. “Don’t fuck with me, mister,” she warned.

“I just want to talk to you for a second,” Keith said, speaking so fast his words almost ran together. “I saw you in the park yesterday. With a woman named Tillie?”

The girl frowned, then nodded. “Yeah. You were with a girl. Kinda young for you, isn’t she?”

“She’s not—” Keith began, then shrugged. “Way too young,” he agreed. He reached into his pocket and dug out his wallet, flipping it open. The girl recoiled.

“Shit! You’re not a cop, are you?”

“God no! I’m—look, just take a look at this picture and tell me if you’ve ever seen this guy, okay?”

“Why should I?”

Keith pulled out a five dollar bill. “Will this help?”

The girl hesitated, then took the five dollars and glanced at the photograph. Her eyes widened. “How come you know him?” she asked. “You don’t look like one of them.”

“One of who?”

The girl hesitated. “Tell me how you know him.”

Keith took a deep breath. “I’m his father,” he said. “The police told me he’s dead, but I don’t believe it. I’ve heard he’s in the tunnels.” His voice broke, pleading. “All I’m asking is if you’ve seen him.”

Jinx looked up into Keith’s face, marked with obvious signs of tension and worry.

She could see the same strong line in this man’s jaw that she’d seen in Jeff Converse’s yesterday morning. Scanning the platform without seeing anyone who looked like a herder, she finally nodded. “I’ve seen him,” she said. “He’s down here. They’re after him.”

Keith stared at her. “After him? You mean the police?”

Jinx shook her head. “The hunters. They—” Abruptly, she fell silent. Two transit cops were coming down the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Shit,” she muttered. “That asshole called his buddies.” Whirling away from Keith, she dashed down a short flight of stairs. Keith followed her, only to see her take a second flight, deeper into the station. By the time he reached the lower platform, she seemed to have vanished, but a moment later he spotted her. She was on the tracks to the right of the platform, and as Keith watched, she headed toward the mouth of the tunnel. In the distance he could hear a train coming.

“Wait!” he shouted. “What’s your name?”

For a second he wasn’t sure she’d heard him, but then she turned. “Jinx!” she called. As the roar of the train grew louder, she darted into the tunnel. The cops arrived just as the train sped into the station. A few people got off and on. The doors closed again, and the train began moving, gathering speed as it lumbered into the same tunnel that had swallowed Jinx a moment ago.

“Which way’d she go?” one of the cops demanded. “The kid in the jeans and flannel shirt?”

Without even thinking about it, Keith shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “By the time I got down here, she was gone.”

The cops grunted and headed back toward the stairs, but Keith stayed where he was, staring into the tunnel. The train had vanished, its rumble fading away.

What about Jinx? he wondered. Had the train crushed her as it raced down the tracks? No, if it had hit her, surely it would have stopped, so she must have survived, must somehow have gotten out of its way. His first impulse was to jump down onto the tracks himself and follow her into the darkness. Then he remembered how he was dressed.

And that the gun Vic DiMarco had brought in from Bridgehampton was still sitting on the drawing board in Jeff’s apartment.

Swearing silently at himself for having agreed to go to the mass in the first place, he climbed the stairs back to the upper platform, punching Heather’s cell-phone number into his phone as he went. “Tell Mary I couldn’t make it to the mass,” he said through the static when Heather answered. “I—” He hesitated, then decided that Heather, at least, had the right to know what he was going to do. “I’m going home to change my clothes,” he said. “Then I’m going to find Jeff.”

Giving her no chance to argue, he cut the connection and jumped aboard an uptown train.

H
eather had been at Fifty-ninth Street when she received Keith’s call. Instead of crossing the street, she turned around and ran the seven short blocks back to her building. Less than five minutes after telling the doorman to get her a cab, she was back in the lobby, clutching a paper sack full of the items she thought she’d need—or at least what she had been able to grab in the two minutes she was inside the apartment. Getting into the back of the waiting cab, she gave the driver Jeff’s address, then prayed she wouldn’t be too late.

A
s usual, Perry Randall paused across the street from the 100 Club, taking a few seconds to admire the building. From the outside, of course, there was nothing to reveal the power of its members, power they wielded not only in New York City, but far beyond. They whispered into the ears of the chairmen of the huge financial conglomerates that had swallowed up the small banks that had once been the nation’s—and the world’s—banking system. They stood behind the heads of the oil cartels that controlled the energy industry and the media giants that controlled the communications empires.

The Hundred was composed of those whose faces might not often appear in newspapers or on television, but whose influence exceeded that of senators or presidents.

These were the people who gave politicians their instructions, subtly and politely.

Perry Randall remembered the first time he had stood across the street from The Hundred, before crossing Fifty-third Street, mounting the short flight of limestone steps, and letting himself in the front door. No doorman stood in front of the building to greet members, open the door for them, or hail them a cab. He’d already known there wouldn’t be a bell to ring or a knocker to lift, for the door to The Hundred—at least the outer door—was never locked.

That, at least, was the legend, and on that first day, he had found no reason to doubt it. Despite the momentous occasion, his nerves that evening had been as steady as they had been the week before, when a heavy, cream-colored envelope had arrived on his desk. His name and address were written on the face of the envelope by a calligrapher. He’d assumed it was a wedding invitation until he flipped the envelope over and saw the return address discreetly engraved on the flap:

100 WEST FIFTY-THIRD STREET

There had been no identification of the city—certainly no zip code—but Perry Randall knew there was no necessity for one.

None of these particular cream-colored envelopes had ever been sent beyond the confines of Manhattan, or entrusted to the postal service. And none ever would be.

The following Thursday night, he had arrived at The Hundred as an elected member.

There was nothing extraordinary about the building, really. It could have been almost anything—a private home, a consulate, even the office of a small law firm. The ground floor facade was dominated by two large Palladian windows, discreetly shuttered. Between them was a large door carved out of a single slab of mahogany.

No knocker.

No bell.

Simply the number 100 engraved on a perfectly polished, small silver plaque.

The Hundred neither wanted nor received any publicity.

The people who passed it on the street never gave it a second glance.

Today it looked as it always had, and its simple facade gave Perry Randall the same feeling that had filled him the first time he had studied its understated grace.

The proper people were in charge; the world was under perfect control.

Or, he reminded himself, it had been under perfect control until Jeff Converse had left a message on his answering machine that morning.

Taking a deep breath of the spring air, Randall strode across the street, mounted the steps, and pushed open the great mahogany door. He paused in the small foyer between the outer door and the inner door, allowing the first to swing closed before opening the mahogany-framed glass panel that led to the club’s main lobby.

In keeping with the facade, the lobby could have been the entrance hall of any well-to-do Edwardian family home. It bore none of the pretensions of the Vanderbilt or Rockefeller monstrosities farther uptown, all of which boasted entry halls of such grand vulgarity that only their owners could have admired them. Here at The Hundred the main lobby contained a discreet desk behind which the club manager usually sat, a large closet in which the members hung their own coats, a board upon which each member’s name appeared, along with a peg to designate him or her “In” or “Out,” and a small board commemorating the handful of members who had died before failing to be reelected.

Perry Randall’s deepest, most secret wish was that his name would one day be added to that list.

Hanging up his coat, he went directly into the members’ reading room. The men he had telephoned that morning were all present.

Arch Cranston leaned against the mantel, swirling a brandy that Perry Randall knew would eventually be left somewhere in the club, untasted. If Cranston’s mind would be dulled by anything, it wouldn’t be alcohol, but he’d long ago discovered the advantage to be gained by inducing others to have a drink or two.

Carey Atkinson, whose outstanding work heading the police department seemed unimpeachable by anyone, was chatting with Monsignor Terrence McGuire, who was not only in charge of Montrose House, but kept files on far more than half of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals as well. In the current pontiff’s failing years, McGuire had devoted considerable time to discussions with The Hundred about which cardinal might best serve as the next head of the Catholic Church.

The others in the room were of less visible influence than Cranston, Atkinson, and McGuire, but were no less important to the functioning of the club.

When Perry Randall walked into the room, the level of conversation diminished. Approaching the group, he wasted no time with greetings or preambles.

“Jeff Converse has gotten his hands on a cellular phone,” he said, his baleful eye falling on Cranston, who held a controlling interest in one of the largest of the wireless networks.