Songs of Innocence hcc-33

by Richard Aleas

“I hope you don’t think I’m being impatient,” I said.

  “But you want to know what I stole,” Julie said. “All right, Mr. Blake, I’ll tell you, since you’ve waited so nicely. I stole my customers. Not their customers—my customers. If they’d been their customers, they wouldn’t have come with me. Right? If what they liked was the jade sauna and the ginseng tub and the choice of a dozen girls, they’d have kept right on going to Vivacia, and the hell with me. Right? But no. They called me. They sent me e-mail. Even though all I had now was a room with a table on 28th Street. No sauna, no steam room, just me and my two little hands. And eventually a few other hands I brought on to keep up with demand.”

  “How could they call you? How did they get your phone number?”

  “How do you think? I gave it to them,” she said. “When I knew I was leaving to start my own place, I told all my regulars I was going and I told them where they could reach me. I was a good little entrepreneur. I printed up business cards with a phone number and an e-mail address and a little photo of me, and I made sure every customer left with one.”

  “And one of them got back to your old boss,” I said.

  She nodded. “Must’ve.”

  “And you weren’t supposed to do that.”

  “Ah, but no,” Julie said. “That’s the cardinal sin. Rule number one. They tell all the new girls, first day on the job, you must never give your personal contact information to a client you meet at work. Never. Sometimes they say it’s for your safety, like they care about your safety. But of course it’s for their safety. Because if the customers and the girls start making arrangements amongst themselves, the house gets cut out. Get the picture?”

  I was starting to. “You left to go off on your own, you took their customers with you, they eventually heard about it, and they had to teach you a lesson.”

  She tapped a finger to the side of her nose. “You’re a natural at this, Johnny.”

  “So who did it? Who runs Vivacia?”

  She cast her eyes downward, started teasing the grass back and forth. I raised her chin with an index finger and she slapped my hand away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  She’d raised her voice and I noticed a few people looking in our direction. In the distance over her shoulder, I saw our brawny friend stand up.

  “Julie, who runs Vivacia?” I said again.

  Julie stood up, too. She shook her gloved hand in my face. “You want to end up like this?”

  “Like that? Cassandra is dead. They had her killed, Julie. Do you understand?”

  “Keep asking who did it and they’ll have you killed.”

  “I’ll take that risk,” I said.

  “Fine,” she spat, “you do that. And I’ll strew your ashes—do you prefer the East River or the Hudson?”

  “Damn it, Julie, who runs Vivacia?”

  “You really want to know? Here’s a name for you. Ardo. The Hungarian. Oh, you’ve heard of him! Good for you. Good for you. Now you know what you’re dealing with. You can go back to your nice little office, Johnny, with your pencils and your poetry and your button-down shirts, and when you go home at night you can get on your knees and thank god your worst problem is what grade you got on an exam, and not dealing with a man like—let go of me! Get your fucking hands off of me!”

  But I didn’t. I lifted her bodily and shoved her around the corner of the building and dived after her. She’d thought I’d gone pale when she’d said the name Ardo, that I knew who she was talking about, but that wasn’t it—I’d just seen what she couldn’t, which was the man behind her, closing the distance between us with his long runner’s strides, and then, just before I shoved her out of the way, reaching behind him to the small of his back and coming out with a gun.

  Chapter 7

  “What are you doing?” she screamed.

  “He’s got a gun.” I kept my voice low, dragged her by the elbow. “We’ve got to move.”

  “Who’s got a gun?”

  “Move!” We turned another corner—Buell Hall has lots of them, bless those 19th century architects. Lots of nooks and crannies for lunatics to lose themselves in.

  But behind us, and not far, I heard pounding footsteps. There were still lots of people around, and it was broad daylight, and the rational part of my brain said he’d be a fool to shoot at us with that many witnesses. But he’d already pulled a gun in public. It wasn’t a bet I wanted to take.

  I kicked open the front door and pulled Julie in after me. There was a grand staircase leading up to the second story and a not-so-grand stairway leading down to the cellar. “Down,” I said.

  “No!”

  “Come on.” I whipped one arm around her and levered her into the air against my hip. Her breasts pressed against my arm and she hammered on me to let her go. She was heavy, too—I had to set her on her feet again on the landing halfway down.

  “You touch me again—” she said.

  The front door burst open above us, slammed against the far wall.

  “He has a gun,” I hissed. “You want to see if he’ll use it?”

  I dragged her to the farthest corner of the cellar, where a short metal door stood. She could make it through upright, but I’d have to stoop. I grabbed the handle with both hands and tugged furiously. It didn’t budge.

  “Julie!” The voice overhead was hoarse, angry. “Julie!”

  The door had been painted over since the first time I’d been here, led on a midnight tour by an urban spelunker who called himself “Benoit.” It was one of the things Columbia was famous for, and I’d figured as long as I was going to be a student here I might as well get the whole experience. Chalk it up to the investigative spirit. But it wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good if I couldn’t get the goddamn door open. I braced myself with one foot against the wall and yanked. The door wrenched open with a scream from the hinges that might as well have been a voice announcing where we were. I ducked inside. A long, narrow tunnel lit with a faint orange glow stretched yards into the distance. I held a hand out to Julie through the doorway. Behind us we heard pounding on the stairs. She took my hand and followed me into the tunnel.

  We ran. As fast as we could on uneven ground, me with my shoulders hunched and head bent low. The only consolation was the knowledge that our pursuer, with his broader shoulders and extra height, would have an even harder time of it than I was having.

  At the first T-branch, we took a left. There were rusty pipes overhead and running in ranks along one wall. Steam pipes, water pipes, who the hell knew what. The ground was dirt, and in some areas leakage from the pipes had turned it into mud, sometimes ankle deep. We ran through it. Across one particularly deep puddle some helpful soul had stretched a warped plank of wood. I pulled it up after we were across, left it leaning against the wall, then thought better and took it with me.

  I don’t know who built the tunnels under Columbia. I don’t know if anyone knows. They’re very old, dating back to when coal and steam powered the place, and some people say they were used for transporting fuel from building to building. Maybe so. What I do know is that they connect half the buildings on the campus, basement to basement, in an intestinal labyrinth that has captivated students and frightened their parents for decades. During the riots in the 1960s, the students used them to get around. In the 80s, a kid named Ken Hechtman got expelled for using the tunnels to steal uranium from the physics lab in Pupin Hall where four decades earlier the Manhattan Project had been headquartered. There was a lot of history to these tunnels. None of which meant a damn thing to me right now. All that mattered was finding a way out.

  I could hear breathing, ours and his, raggedly echoing in the narrow space; footsteps, too. We kept making turns every chance we got. Anything to avoid a direct line of sight—and of fire.

  Ahead of us, the tunnel widened and we could run side by side. We were under Fayerweather Hall, if I remembered correctly, assuming we hadn’t gotten turned around. Ahead of us, the tunnel forked: a short passage on t
he left led to two narrow steps and a door, while the longer arm on the right just led on into darkness. I mounted the steps and pushed on the door, which had no knob. Locked. I shoved at it with one shoulder. Nothing. I set the plank down and tried again with as much of a running start as I could get in the narrow space. I could feel the door rattle under the impact, but it held.

  “Come on,” Julie said, too loudly. In the distance we heard footsteps come to a halt, then start up faster.

  I grabbed the plank again and we ran on, to the right.

  The lighting was uneven underground. Some flickering fluorescents for a stretch, then nothing, then a bulb in a plastic cage overhead casting a dim yellow glow. Here, as we crossed a long transverse passage, there was nothing at all, and we felt our way carefully, unable to see each other even inches away. I brushed against the stem end of a pipe at ankle level and heard as Julie walked into its mate on her side. She stifled a curse. I reached out, felt her sleeve, and used it to tug her toward me. This time she didn’t complain.

  I leaned over, found her ear with my lips. It was strangely intimate, like a kiss in the darkness. “I think there’s a branch coming up,” I said, so softly there was hardly any sound at all. “Feel for it on your side.”

  A moment later, I felt her hand on my sleeve. I moved over to her side of the tunnel, touched the rough stone of the wall with my fingertips. I reached the corner she’d found, paced forward till I touched the opposite side. It was an opening about three feet wide. More than just an alcove: I went five or six steps into it and came back. I found her ear again. “Matches.”

  She dug the matchbook out of her pocket. I heard a scratch and a tiny bead of orange light flared between us, too weak to illuminate much other than her hand and, as she raised it, her face, creased with deep shadows. She looked frightened. I’m sure I did, too.

  I took the matchbook from her, carried it deeper down the new tunnel. It ended after about ten feet in a solid wall. In the instant before the match went out, I saw that the wall was a relatively recent addition, a layer of cinderblocks spanning the rough-hewn tunnel from one side to the other. Maybe they did this after Hechtman’s spree, to keep people out of Pupin. Didn’t matter—what mattered was that we weren’t going any further this way.

  I returned to Julie and was about to lean over and whisper to her again when a bellow split the air.

  “Julie!”

  It came from right beside us.

  I pressed Julie back against the stone wall with one arm. Thank god she didn’t make a sound.

  From inches away: “Where are you?”

  I bent the four remaining matches down with my left hand, the way I’d seen Julie do it. With my other arm, I raised the wooden plank. I pressed down on the match heads with my thumb. From the main tunnel came the sound of movement, footsteps.

  I snapped the matches against the friction strip. All four flared to life at once, burning the pad of my thumb. In the sudden flare, I saw him, slightly farther away than I’d thought, wheeling to face me. One arm extended. Finger on the trigger.

  I threw the matches at his face and swung the plank.

  I saw flashes, reflections, before the flame went out. The side of his gun, narrowing, vanishing, as it swung in my direction. His face, furious. The edge of the plank, sweeping toward him in a wide arc, striking his forearm.

  Then darkness. And the gun went off.

  The explosion was like a thunderclap, deafening, though in its aftermath I could hear the metallic zing! of the bullet ricocheting from wall to wall. In this confined space, he’d be as likely to hit himself as he would to get me or Julie. Maybe he realized this because he didn’t fire again.

  I could hear him coming toward me. I tried to swing the plank again, but it stopped halfway through the swing and was wrenched out of my hands. I heard it clatter to the ground some distance away. Then a pair of muscular arms wrapped my torso and his forehead crashed into mine. My knees buckled and I felt bile rising in my throat. Only the pressure of his arms around me kept me upright. I could smell his sweat, and his breath. His sandwich—salami, I thought. Onions. Jesus. His head cracked against mine again.

  I tasted blood inside my mouth, where I’d bitten myself. I tried to clear my head by moving it side to side, tried to struggle against his grip, but I felt myself lifted off the ground, my feet dangling. All this in nearly total darkness. With Julie it had felt intimate, the brush of her hair and skin against my lips. With this man it felt like a nightmare—buried alive, two to a coffin, fighting to breathe.

  He squeezed and I felt one of my ribs snap. I gasped, cried out.

  I tried to raise my knee to his groin, but I had no leverage.

  I ducked my head forward, felt his chin with mine, his cheek, his nose. I gripped his nose between my teeth and bit down. He howled and let go, dropping me.

  I tried to roll away from him, but something drove into my side, hard: a foot. For an instant, I couldn’t even think. All I knew was pain.

  Then I heard Julie’s voice, shouting “Hey!” and heard the man take a step toward it. Then a whack, the sound of splintering wood. I heard the man groan, followed by a sound like a heavy bag of laundry dropping.

  A cluster of matches flared to life. Julie stood above the man’s still form, half the plank nestled in the crook of her right arm. I saw beads of sweat on her face. She didn’t look well.

  “My hand,” she said. “I need a doctor.”

  I got to my knees, felt the rib grate in my chest. I didn’t say anything. The matches went out. She lit some more.

  “How many of those things do you have?” I said.

  “I smoke two packs a day,” she said, wincing.

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” she said. “Just get us the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 8

  They took Julie into surgery. We were at St. Vincent’s, where she’d had her original operation; we checked her in under her real name, which surprised me by being Julie, Julie Park. I was used to strippers and sex workers using aliases to keep their personal and professional lives separate. But Julie said, “I’m not ashamed of what I do, John. I won’t say I’m proud of it—but I’m not ashamed.”

  Her doctor wasn’t there when we arrived, but they paged him and he showed up twenty minutes later. I had a longer wait. The doctor who eventually taped up my chest explained Julie’s situation to me as he circled the roll of bandages around and around and around my torso. Two fractures, only marginally knitted, had apparently broken again and one of the pins had shifted. Bones needed to be re-set and her hand re-immobilized. My doctor went on at length about metacarpals and phalanges, glad to have a captive audience.

  When I next saw her it was three hours later and her right hand was completely encased in plaster. She was lying in a hospital bed. She raised her cast in my direction. “This is me giving you the finger,” she said.

  “You probably saved my life,” I told her.

  “I didn’t do it for you. When he finished with you, he’d have started on me.”

  “Well,” I said. “Thank you anyway.”

  “How’s your chest?” she said.

  “Better than your hand,” I said.

  It hadn’t taken us long to find our way out of the tunnels, but it had felt like hours. We finally emerged in the basement of Havemeyer, the chemistry building, just a few hundred yards from Broadway. Julie had cradled her hand while I stood on 116th Street trying to wave down a taxi without raising my arm.

  And what of Jorge Ramos, the man on the receiving end of Julie’s home-run swing? His wallet gave us his name; his breathing, though uneven, told us he was alive when we left him. That’s all we knew or cared.

  “I should never have agreed to meet you,” Julie said. “Di was right.”

  “Look—”

  “Not even by phone. When she sent me your e-mail address, I should have deleted it.”

  “Ardo’s people might have come after you anyway.”

/>   “They were done with me,” she said.

  “Like they were done with Dorrie?”

  “You don’t know that they had anything to do with her death.”

  “No,” I said. “I also don’t know that they had anything to do with the man who chased us through the tunnels at gunpoint today, but I think it’s a reasonable guess.”

  “How’d they even know I was coming to see you? What do they have, some way to read my e-mail?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “More likely just Jorge Ramos watching your building.”

  “Why? Why would they follow me?”

  “I don’t know, Julie. It’s got to be tied up with what happened to Dorrie. Do you have any idea why they might have gone after her? She didn’t take any customers from them, did she?”

  “How could she?” Julie said. “She never worked for them. Before I hired her she was working at Spellbound—it’s a place on 51st and Second started by this woman from Brazil, and I know Dorrie didn’t take any clients from her, because she didn’t have any when she started with me.”

  “What about when Dorrie left you?” I asked. “What did she do then?”

  “You don’t know?” Julie said. “She didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head. She hadn’t told me about any of this. Not about the attack on Julie, nor about quitting her job out of fear of a long-fingered gunman with a sadistic streak. I couldn’t guess why, except maybe a desire not to worry me. Or maybe fear that I’d have insisted on doing something about it—which I would have.

  “She went independent,” Julie said. “Complete solo act.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “Outcall only. No apartment, no spa, no fixed location. No rent to pay, no agency booking you, no phone girl. Not even a phone number. You run an ad with just an anonymous e-mail address, you answer the e-mail yourself, and if the client sounds okay you meet at his place. Or at a hotel room if that’s what he prefers. I suppose most of them do.”

  I had a vision of Dorrie walking alone down a poorly lit hallway in some seedy building toward an assignation with a stranger. “Isn’t that dangerous?”