Andy Luong, a bantamweight with Fab Four-style black hair, was on the bigger guy like a backpack, a full nelson, his fingers braided in the guy’s hair, his legs ratcheted around the guy’s waist.
Andy first started showing up at the Y a year earlier. We showed him how to shoot hoops, not that he had a prayer, but he tried. His compact, muscular body did better with the medicine balls.
“So get this. The idiot calls Andy a Jap,” Reuben said, “but Andy says he’s from Vietnam and keeps walking. So the guy calls him Cong. You know, like Viet Cong? Of course, the moron wouldn’t know Hanoi from Hoboken. Andy explodes and takes the guy down. Every time he tries to get up, Andy bends his neck until he screams. It’s pretty impressive.”
Reuben and I shouldered into the circle of bodies, dropped to a knee, disengaged Andy’s fingers from his prisoner’s hair digit by digit, and pointed the adversaries in opposite directions. Andy, eyes blazing, proclaimed to everyone within earshot, “I no VC, got damn, I no VC.”
Reuben and I exchanged a knowing glance, and I drew close. “Small guy, sharp, strong as hell, afraid of nothing.”
Reuben nodded. “Yeah, he’d make a damn good spotter.”
CHAPTER 12
Mom had already been in bed for two hours when Reuben pulled up in front in his decaying Falcon. But I’d never complain about a car that had probably shuttled me thousands of miles since high school.
I dropped into the passenger seat. “You okay?” I asked, assessing Reuben’s mood. Cloudy with a chance of rain.
He gnawed the inside of his cheek, thinking. “Remember in grade school when those big kids said we’d each get a Three Musketeers if—”
“If we dropped a bag of dog shit on Coach Vaughn’s porch and rang the doorbell? Yeah, I remember.”
Reuben glanced right. “That’s about how I feel right now. You?”
I looked out at the blistered paint on the car’s hood. “About the same.” Dread and excitement battled in my gut, leaving me fidgety.
Reuben stepped on the accelerator. “You agreed to do it, not me. I can’t stand Three Musketeers bars. That stuff in the middle—”
“Nougat.”
“Yeah, like sugared sugar with sugar on it. Nauseating.”
I was glad to hear a bit of regular Reuben, even though his lightweight words defied his pinched expression. “We never collected our candy.”
“Duh,” he said. “No time when you’re running for your life.”
“What breed was that anyway? German shepherd?”
He shrugged. “Probably part wolf.”
We rode in silence until pulling up in front of Andy’s apartment complex. A decent place. I wondered, suddenly, how immigrants forced to start over could already be doing better than Mom and me. Then I felt angry at myself for comparing.
Andy emerged within seconds, dutifully climbed in the back seat, and waved a greeting.
A few days earlier, over a table in the Y’s canteen, Reuben and I had told Andy everything we knew. If he was going to join our band of subway pioneers, he had to do so with informed consent. We told him about our train station photos, my run-in with Tony Drax, my release from jail on Alfred’s bail money, the rescue of our film followed by its imprisonment in Alfred’s wall safe, and the need for underground measurements.
I didn’t mention Tricia. It wouldn’t make sense. Former social spaz despises the grandfather who saved her from prison but studies his every move. Or, buttoned-up retail manager wants to be left alone but sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong. No, Tricia made zero sense.
At one point around that table, I’d given a weighty pause to make sure Andy was listening. Then I said, “Drax will do anything to protect itself. Do you understand what I mean by that?”
“No problem,” Andy had said, his face surprisingly unconcerned.
We parked the Falcon on an anonymous side street, hopped the squat fence behind an elementary school, and scrambled up railroad ballast to twin tracks running east and west, an ideal route to the portal. With scarce overhead lighting, no foot traffic, and neighborhood houses tucked behind fences and high bushes, we traveled the half-mile unobserved, all the while quietly talking. Through Andy’s broken English, Reuben and I learned more about our newest member.
Communist loyalists in South Vietnam had begun overtaking border villages, assuming an imminent Viet Cong victory from the north. Dissenting clans were targeted, and Andy’s uncle was murdered, his corpse dumped in the village fountain for public viewing. Andy, his parents, and younger sister escaped to Cambodia and found their way into the US under asylum status.
No wonder he shrugged off Drax. Apparently, when you’ve seen such horrors and escaped the Cong by night, corporate corruption didn’t seem so scary.
I spotted our destination up ahead, a squat moonlit building no bigger than a one-car garage. Constructed of tornado-proof brick and painted beige, the structure had no windows, only a single steel door. I gestured us into a crouch at the downhill edge of the ballast. “Let’s sit tight for a minute to make sure we’re alone.”
Andy looked curious. Reuben looked with surprise at the building. “What the hell’s that?”
“You were expecting a manhole cover with to the subway painted on top?” I said. “It’s a Cincinnati Bell switching station for this neighborhood.”
“Why do you know?” Andy asked.
I explained my mom’s jobs with the phone company. “Switching stations are part of basic training, like dial tone.” Then I explained dial tone. Andy received my tutelage with interest. “The portal’s below that building.”
Reuben asked, “Why was it never sealed up?” Moonlight refracted through his glasses and sliced his cheekbones with white shards.
I grinned. “You’ll love this. Before they welded everything shut, they rerouted the utilities, but with an exception—City Hall. The election was coming and the politicians didn’t want their service disrupted.”
“Empty promises to be made, arms to be twisted, and palms to be greased,” Reuben said, bitterness riding beneath the surface of his words. “So the subway still carries phone lines into City Hall?”
I nodded in the dark. “A handful. You still doing okay?”
“IHOP’s open all night. Maybe we buy Andy some pancakes after this insanity.” He bumped his shoulder against Andy’s.
Silence settled around us, except for a few crickets and the odd night bird rustling in nearby shrubs. We were good to go. I led the way.
The door to the switching station was secured by an embedded circular plate with a four-digit combination lock dead center, like a thumbwheel mechanism under the handle of a briefcase, but bigger. Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine combinations—secure enough. I entered the digits I’d memorized from Alfred’s crib sheet and we were in. As the door clicked behind us, I released a pent-up breath.
The only ambient light was green and spare, coming from refrigerator-sized machines lined up in the room’s center. Cooling fans rushed steadily, interrupted by the clacks of metal switches and staccato clicks of rotary calls going through. Reuben and Andy awaited my move.
I followed the swath from my flashlight. On the floor behind the machines, a rectangle of cream-colored linoleum was framed in aluminum and earmarked with a recessed pull ring. It was a trap door, just as Alfred had learned from some phone company insider he refused to name.
“If that flimsy flooring’s the only thing blocking our access all these years,” Reuben said, “I’ll shoot myself.”
“Don’t count on it.” I yanked the pull ring and the panel rose easily, one edge anchored with a piano hinge. I pointed my flashlight down into a four-
foot square hole with rebar ladder rungs cast into one wall. The hole bottomed out at a circular object like a manhole cover, the steel smooth, with a single pull-handle and the same four-digit locking mechanism.
I descended the ladder, dialed in the second memorized code, and tugged. The portal swung open easily, as if we were expected. No drumroll, no Sousa flourish, no sunrise horns like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Only a smell that reminded me of Granddad’s stone-lined well.
CHAPTER 13
Even though we’d come on a mission, I couldn’t let duty overshadow the experience. To urban explorers coast to coast, the Cincinnati subway was Mount Everest upended, and I was among the chosen few.
As I hopped off the lowest rung to the tunnel floor, I wanted to scream We made it! at the top of my lungs. Perhaps momentous proclamations were in order, like when Neil Armstrong pressed mankind’s first footprint into terra luna. Or maybe I should’ve celebrated the moment in solemn reference, whispering questions to the dark void and sensing answers of infinite wisdom.
Reuben shattered my reverie. “I don’t smell it. Do you?”
I closed my eyes and breathed in what I expected: limestone, silica and other elements of public transit construction, but the aromas were touched by an electric arc as raw as nature, even though the last underground voltage had sparked decades ago from the utility lights of Depression-era laborers. I drew a deeper breath and detected faraway vegetable wetness—hot, alive, and unnerving. “No, but there’s moisture,” I said, “so we have to be careful.” We’d told Andy about hydrogen sulfide, but he’d reacted as if we’d shared a weather forecast.
“That reminds me,” Reuben said. He rummaged in his pocket and retrieved a fistful of fine chain. He untangled three necklaces from the clump and handed them out, each with a shiny new penny dangling. “Wear it over your clothes.” He demonstrated.
“For good luck?” Andy asked.
“Far from it,” Reuben replied. “Stink damp discolors copper. Think canary in the coal mine. We watch each other’s penny. If it discolors, it might be too late.” Reuben’s choice of words included too much Hollywood drama.
“Then what good from it?” Andy asked.
“I said might.” Reuben’s voice echoed off the vertical surfaces. “Which implies the possibility of might not.”
Andy smiled in spite of the morbid subject matter.
After positioning Andy at his watch post near the access portal, Reuben and I walked down the straightaway, flashlights in the lead, our footsteps damped by the layer of dust like a sheet of felt. Twelve feet above the floor, the concrete ceiling curved gently where it met the walls, as if sized for a gigantic loaf of bread cruising between stations.
Smith had selected three locations for taking measurements. We’d be testing laser distances of twenty feet, a hundred feet and, finally, a quarter-mile down an arrow-straight section of tunnel.
We entered one straightaway that paralleled another, and I imagined passengers catching glances across trains, their line of sight interrupted by concrete columns as if watching a flickery old movie.
I stewed as we walked. I had three items on my to-do list, but Reuben knew of only one, the measurements. He’d suffer the others but not without complaint. I decided to let one cat out of the bag.
“Alfred wants us to run a little errand.” I went on to explain mystery spur number five. “If it exists, we’re supposed to take pictures through a gate, nothing more.”
Reuben glanced at me like a truant officer who’d heard it all. “What do you mean supposed to?”
“Come on. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“That’s your justification for anything boneheaded. Do as Blumenfeld asks, okay?”
I peered ahead into the dark. “If it’s real, we can decide then.” Didn’t Reuben realize the rarity of this moment, of this place? I thought of the citizens overhead, settling for their excitement in the corridors of a shopping mall.
The route to our first stop mapped perfectly to the blueprint stored in my brain. My confidence rose.
The first measurement required lining up the laser on a major support pillar and firing the beam against a curved wall. According to Drax’s bid submitted long ago, both surfaces were to be precisely engineered. Smith’s triangulations, if valid, would tell the truth.
We dropped to our knees and began unloading equipment. I brought the camera into the light and braced myself for Reuben’s reaction.
“Where the hell did you get that?” His words felt like a jab in the ribs. He was referring to the gorgeous Nikon F-series Photomic SLR in my hand.
I rummaged idly. “It’s got a one point four Nikkor lens. Perfect for low light.”
“That justifies theft?”
I wouldn’t go that far and he knew it. “Borrowed it from the school.”
“Without asking. You’re becoming predictable.”
I slid on the flash unit. “Forgiveness is easier to get than permission.”
Reuben sighed and hoisted the laser from his pack. “Don’t we have enough trouble?”
In truth, my old Yashica would’ve done Alfred’s job well enough. But I needed premier optics for another purpose, and before long, Reuben would have to be told.
“Can we debate this later?” I asked.
Reuben shrugged and stood. He pressed the laser flat against the pillar, aligned an orange hash mark with a concrete edge, and leveled the device with surgical precision. I followed Smith’s instructions to make sure the photo included twin reference points on the wall and floor.
“Fire,” I said. A green dot, bright enough to stand out under the flash’s white, appeared about five feet above the floor. I pressed the button and heard the sh-wacka of a state-of-the-art SLR.
Measurement number two went equally well, the laser distance greater. My only challenge was blindness after the flash, short-lived but unsettling.
We walked ten minutes southeast, rounded a turn, and peered into uninterrupted blackness. I ran my thumb in a concrete seam that separated a curving wall from another long straightaway. “That’s your spot. Align on the vertical, level, and fire right into the black.”
According to Smith, the quarter-mile distance would put to rest any doubts about his methodology.
I headed out. “I should be down there in five minutes, but give me ten, okay?”
Reuben rolled his eyes, but he understood. A few silent minutes alone weren’t enough to connect with a place, but I had to try.
I arrived at my destination, eased the straps from my shoulders, and laid my pack in the dust. Leaning my back against the wall, I let my body slide down until my butt settled on a wedge of grit accumulated over decades. I clicked off my flashlight, closed my eyes, and listened.
I let the low-frequency thrum, now familiar and always present, seep into my head and chest. Something skittered along the ground a few feet out. I leaned my head back against the wall. Alfred’s to-do list could wait a few minutes.
I thought of Dad. I wanted to talk with him, to let him know where I was, and that his awkward kid had accomplished something special indeed. I allowed my heart to drop its guard and believe for a moment that I wasn’t alone, that maybe the dead could choose their haunts. If so, then Dad would join me at that moment, holding strong against my back like a rock wall. Impulsively, I pressed a finger against the artery in my neck, under my jaw, as Dad had shown me when I was young. It feeds that big brain of yours, he’d said smiling, his fingers in my hair.
A ripple of anger spread in my chest. With Dad’s help, maybe Drax would pay for what they’d done.
The scratching sound came closer until the cuff of my jeans jostled a bit.
My new friend was bold. Good for him. With a tug, my visitor attempted to steal a swatch of denim for his nest.
“Sorry,” I whispered and shook my leg. “No free samples.”
Skit skit sounds trailed off beyond my hearing.
“Gave up too soon, buddy.” I stood. Back to work.
My flashlight revealed crisp tracks leading toward a fissure in the wall, but no intrepid tunnel mate. Judging by the prints, he was a good-sized rat. Big as a toaster? Close enough.
I took my position, advanced the film, and aimed. “Ready when you are,” I said, my volume only slightly elevated in the cathedral-like acoustics.
Seconds later, the green dot appeared on the wall. Sh-wacka. As with each firing of the flash, I became temporarily blind, my field of vision filled by reversed ghost images of what theoretically still existed.
Time to tell Reuben.
“We’ve got to capture it before it’s too late,” I told him at our rendezvous point.
I’d made the decision the same day Alfred had mentioned the surviving utility access portal. I had to photograph the subway. Time was short. In spite of Alfred and Smith and their grand scheme, Drax would likely win—they always did—and fill in the underground system, burying it for all time.
I told Reuben how I’d use the same technique as in the train station, the shutter held open, painting with light with progressive flashes carefully aimed in total darkness like giant brushstrokes, but this time with a colorful twist.
I paused and waited. After the disastrous shoot in the Union Terminal, I expected an earful.
“Think Andy will wait that long?” he said, his eyes flat behind prismatic lenses.
“You already knew?”
Reuben nodded as if it were obvious. “Yeah, the minute you whipped out the Nikon. You wouldn’t take a risk like that for Blumenfeld. Besides, you don’t need Nikkor optics for what he wants.” He glanced away. “So let’s get this done.”
Follow Me Down Page 12