Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (5 page)

“Does it mention how he got lost under New York for two years?”

Janice made soft clucking sounds as she presumably scanned the article. “No, nothing. The article is from four years ago, though. From the magazine put out by the Royal Geographic Society. Do you want me to dig around for something more recent?”

Lindsay grimaced. “No, my meeting with him today brought me about as up-to-date with him as I want to be.” Seeing how Jack had turned out had been like saying goodbye to him all over again.

“Do you want me to come over? It might help to talk. To have someone around.”

Lindsay eyed the pile of survival gear on the floor. “Janice, I think I need to be alone tonight.”

“Okay. You call me if you want to, though. Anytime.”

Lindsay wondered if it was Janice that needed the company more than her. Seline’s disappearance must be killing her, too. “You take care,, and try not to worry. One way or another we’ll get her back.”

She opened her new backpack and loaded it up, trying to make every item easily accessible. Giving up, she zipped it close and slung it over her shoulders. She stood and adjusted her balance to the weight on her back. She forced her attention away from the glowing Christmas tree. It landed on Leo. She’d found the fifty-pound stuffed lion at a novelty store, outrageously overpriced, and had instantly bought it, forgetting to even bargain. Seline had squealed in undiluted excitement when she’d first seen it, and would lie down alongside it on the couch and stroke its mane. There’d been many a night that she herself had stretched out along its length and felt comforted.

The lion stared at her in friendly abstraction. Its golden eyes, Lindsay realized with a jolt, bore an uncanny resemblance to Jack’s. The damn man was tagging her every thought.

She cut through the Chelsea apartment she’d spent the last three years and every spare penny making over. She and Seline had replaced or redone nearly everything else, and except for the finishing carpentry, all by themselves. She’d scoured stores, auctions, and newspaper ads for the absolutely perfect rug, perfect sofa, perfect dining set. She’d wanted to make an ideal home for them, a perfect home like the one she’d grown up in.

She found herself looking at it through Jack’s eyes. His crack at her wealth stung more than she cared to admit. She loved beautiful things, because they were beautiful and not because she was materialistic. Didn’t she give to charities? Didn’t she pay her employees generously? Hadn’t she put her heart and soul into every project she’d ever worked on? Yes, yes and yes. So fuck him.

Anyway, Seline had been the one to take on good causes. From the time she was a little girl she’d been interested in social work and was determined to make a difference in the lives of New York’s poor and homeless. Charismatic, honest and caring, she had earned the trust of addicts, derelicts and petty criminals that many seasoned social workers were afraid to deal with.

Through it all Lindsay had been worried for Seline—and so very proud. Perhaps her niece’s attraction to things grim and gritty stemmed from her own aversion to them, but the point was the girl was blazing her own trail. Now Seline was the one who needed help, and here, only a few days into the New Year, she found herself about to gamble her life in the hopes of staging a rescue.

That ought to count for something, Jack Cole.
She hadn’t seen the man in eighteen years, he was living in some hole in the wall with all the success of a garbage picker and the sweet attitude of a cornered rat, and here she was worried about what he was thinking of her. “Fuck you, and the box you came in,” she added aloud for good measure.

She pulled out pen and paper from the coffee table drawer.
Seline, I’ve gone into the tunnels to find you.
She was about to sign it ‘L’ when she added,
Wait for me and we’ll take down the tree together, like always.

She tucked it between Leo’s front paws because if, by some miracle, Seline came home, that’s where she’d go first.

* * *

Lindsay had learned from her niece that there were countless ways into New York’s underground—manholes, subway tunnels, maintenance hatches and the basements of certain condemned buildings. Since Hurricane Sandy, even more had been created by repair crews drilling new holes to pump out water. Her route would be the same as the one Seline had chosen, however. Via Grand Central Station.

The place was a kind of gateway to the underground, where both the common citizens of New York and its homeless mixed, often unknowingly, with the tunnel dwellers. According to Seline there were about a thousand people living beneath the marble floors and arched windows of Grand Central, colonizing its tunnels, ducts and passageways, and the safest and simplest way to gain access to the lower levels was through an unmarked door off one of the platforms.

This particular door was controlled by a gang of sorts, who had somehow gotten hold of a copy of the transit authority’s key. Anyone who wanted to descend merely had to pay them a toll, which varied in amount depending on the apparent wealth of the person and how much the gang liked them. Her niece had described these gatekeepers as ‘friendly’ and ‘pretty reasonable, considering’, which Lindsay took to mean that they might not rip her off too much.

Rush hour was over when she arrived at the Terminal, and being a Thursday evening, it wasn’t crowded. She spotted a few rumpled businessmen, a handful of Japanese tourists, and a chattering gaggle of teenage girls. None of them seemed to pay her the least bit of attention.

Wandering down the platform she spied what she took for the correct door, an innocuous steel portal, no different from others in the station, located exactly where Seline had said it would be.

Lindsay hitched up the backpack, where it was already cutting a groove into her shoulders. This was nuts. Jack and Reggie were right. She had about as much street smarts as the Pope. She had no idea how to talk to people down here or how to find her way around. She’d get lost or robbed or murdered. Then an image of Seline rose in her mind, buried alive beneath the frozen streets, cold and starved. It was as she told Jack: she had no choice but to go on. Besides, if a whacked-out crackhead could survive down here, surely she could. She suppressed the niggling voice that said that perhaps you
had
to be a whacked-out crackhead to survive in the tunnels.

Or Jack Cole.

A train arrived, and she watched as people shuffled onto it. The doors closed, and with a rush of stale air the subway cars moved on, leaving her momentarily alone on the platform. Time to do it. She strode to the door and banged her fist against it. There was a pause, then it unlocked and opened a crack, giving her a glimpse of the tall, shadowy figure behind it.

“Hi there,” she smiled, doing her best to appear confident. The door swung wide open, and her smile vanished. Staring down at her, his brow furrowed, stood Reggie.

“You!” they said simultaneously.

Reggie launched in. “What the hell are you doing here, woman? This ain’t no place for you.”

Lindsay gave back. “I told you I was going to look for my niece. What, you thought I was kidding?”

“Sheeet. Come over here.” Closing the door behind him, he dragged her by her arm to a nearby bench.

“Let go of me!” she demanded, digging in with her heels. It was as if she was hitched to a moving truck. He plunked her down, the weight of the backpack easing off but its bulk arching her back so bad her butt perched on the edge of the seat.

“Lady, you gotta be as blonde as you look. You’re like your niece. You don’t listen to nobody.”

“You knew her. You let her go down there. Why not me?”

Reggie was already looming over her and now he bent until he was a foot from her face. It was like having a falling building suspended above her. “Because it’s
my
fault. I should’ve turned her back, like Jack said to, but I didn’t. She was a good person. Came here to help people who ain’t got nothing. And now I gotta live with that.”

Guilt twisted his features. Lindsay understood because it clawed away at her, too. She also understood something of what hadn’t been said during their last conversation. “Jack doesn’t know you let her through, does he?”

Reggie straightened, crossing his huge arms across his steel girder of a chest. “A man makes mistakes.”

“And a real man does something about them.”

Their gazes locked in a fearsome stare-down. He looked away first. Lindsay smothered a triumphant smirk. “ So how about you open up that goddamn door and I’ll pay you double the toll.”

The whites of his eyes stood out against his dark skin. “You think you can bribe me? That’s an insult. I run an honest business.”

“Then let’s do business.” She started to stand, but Reggie blocked her way.

“I ain’t helping nothing by letting you go down there. If Jack was with you it might be another story. Things the way they are, it ain’t happening.”

“I asked him and he said no!”

Reggie shrugged fatalistically.

Lindsay struck at his pride. “Are you going to let some white man boss you around? He’s half your size, with a peach pit for a heart. What’s he got over you?”

Anger swelled his enormous body, his arms lifting away from his side as the pressure of the emotion ballooned him. “Jack Cole is twice the man that anyone could hope to be and just because he don’t want to do what you asked ain’t no reason to diss him.”

This time Lindsay didn’t even try to stare Reggie down. The man obviously had his loyalties screwed up. Not knowing his story, however, she couldn’t argue against his having them. She looked fixedly at the door, then up at the man. Once again he had his arms folded like a stubborn bouncer.

“Okay, then. Care to suggest how I might sway your hero into going with me?”

Reggie rolled his gaze upward as if seriously thinking about it. “Jack’s his own man. Won’t be easy.”

“I tried money.”

“Yeah. He don’t care about that.”

“No doubt, given his lavish lifestyle,” she remarked.

Reggie grinned. “You haven’t seen his bed, have you?”

“No occasion to.”

Reggie whistled lowly. “The man’s got one nice bed.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Lindsay frowned. “You trying to give me a hint?’

“Huh?”

Lindsay drew herself up. “You suggesting I sleep with him?”

Reggie’s eyes brightened. “I can guarantee that wouldn’t work on Jack—he’s off women.

You could always try it on me.”

“Would it get me anywhere?”

He gave her another golden grin. “No. But I’d let you down easy.”

Another time she would’ve grinned back. “You don’t think I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting his help, huh?”

Reggie shook his head. “Not even.”

Jack had said as much. Had she really thought the answer would be any different from Reggie? What she’d hoped for was that he would open the way to Jack the same way he manned the entry to the underground. Reggie was right: desperation was making her stupid.

And yet—. She hoisted her backpack and got to her feet. “You aren’t the only way down, Reggie. One way or another I’ll get a door to open for me.”

Usually Lindsay ignored street people and if eye contact was inadvertently made, she’d toss them whatever was in her pocket—gum, change, soap samples. Now that she needed their help it felt more than a little awkward.

To the first few panhandlers she gave a few dollars, asking them straight out if they knew of a way into the tunnels. That approach only garnered suspicious looks and shrugged shoulders, so to the next down-and-out person, a man with straggly gray hair and old boots with no laces, she offered fifty dollars to take her to an entrance.

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “You need to talk to tunnel folk, ma’am,” he said in a slow southern drawl, running a hand through his greasy mane. “I can take you to ‘em for the fifty.”

Beggars couldn’t be choosers. After tucking away the fifty in the many folds of his clothing, he led her on a circuitous journey through the station, gradually descending to the lower platforms. “Gotta find ‘em,” her guide explained.