CELLULAR ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGY GAINS TEST APPROVAL
Chicago. The FDA will announce approval this morning for preliminary trials to test a drug touted as a T-cell enhancer. IG-65, the name of a lipoprotein that purportedly helps fortify the T-cell membrane, has the potential for boosting immune systems of people who’ve tested HIV-positive. The drug, in early development stages, is the product of a small Skokie company, Cellular Enhancement Technology. Announcing the FDA’s decision on Friday afternoon, Senator Alexander Gantner (R-Illinois) said that where so many lives are at stake it was of vital importance to bring drugs like IG-65 to maturity as fast as possible.
I searched the paper feverishly but could find no other mention of the company. I shoved the paper aside and stared sightlessly out the window. So that was Phoebe’s quid pro quo. Draw the Lamia women away from their project and Alec Gantner will get the FDA to approve preliminary trials. But why had she done it?
As anger started to build inside me the back of my head began to pound. Easy does it, I admonished myself. Getting angry only made you careless Saturday afternoon and got you this headache.
I went to the phone to call Phoebe. Because I didn’t have my address book I had to call Capital Concerns’s main switchboard instead of using Phoebe’s direct line. I dialed and got a recorded message.
“Due to the emergency evacuation of the building none of our staff can answer your call personally. If you will leave your name, the name of the person you’re trying to reach, and a number, we will return your call as soon as possible.”
Emergency evacuation of the building? I held the receiver in one hand, my jaw slack with incomprehension, until a beep on the other end roused me. I replaced the receiver without leaving a message and went down the hall to the small sitting room where Max kept his television.
Channel 13’s Mary Sherrod was standing in the backyard of a clapboard building next to the Chicago River. As I watched, the camera moved from her to the river where a pickup truck was dumping gravel.
“That small whirlpool you can see shows where the breach is. Right now city trucks are dumping gravel on the site, hoping to fill the opening from above. It’s too soon to tell how big the hole is or how extensive the damage will be. It may be a disaster for the city, but newlyweds John and Kathy Beamish are enjoying a front-row view of the activity of the city’s terrified engineers.”
The camera switched to a couple in a hot tub. The man grinned and raised a glass of white wine at the camera. I switched channels.
After a while the story became clear. Water was pouring from the Chicago River into a series of tunnels that ran deep beneath the Loop. The barrier that shut the river off from the tunnels had been breached, perhaps when pilings along the bank had been repaired earlier in the spring. Water had begun flooding the tunnels early this morning.
I had never heard of these tunnels. According to one reporter they’d been built at the turn of the last century. Originally designed to carry the first underground cable for a phone company, the network had grown so large that businesses could haul coal and other supplies from barges to their offices. The tunnels hadn’t been used for transport for decades, but the space had been ideal for modern skyscrapers to house their electrical lines.
Channel 5 showed frenzied activity at the Board of Trade as a private engineering firm tried to pump water out of the deep basement that had been built into the tunnel. The computers had been shut down because of damage to the electrical plant; no one knew when trading might resume.
“You and I aren’t aware of these subbasements,” the reporter pointed out. “They lie three levels below what we consider the basement of the building. Those of you who’ve been in Marshall Fields’s ‘Down Under Store’ will be surprised to know there are three more basements below that subterranean shoppers’ haven. One is used for storing inventory; managers are grimly aware that they can do nothing but pray while water continues to rise.”
Not all buildings were affected as severely, Channel 13’s Beth Blacksin assured us, but the Loop was being evacuated until the city could determine which ones were safe to use. In any event power was out downtown; no one could work there today anyway. The next shot showed the Loop as a ghost town. Traffic lights and streetlights were dead. The el wasn’t running. Skyscrapers were dark. I watched, fascinated, my quarrel with Phoebe briefly forgotten.
Beth Blacksin went on to describe the tunnels themselves. “No one at City Hall can agree on how extensive the network is—I’ve heard estimates ranging from forty to eighty miles. And no one knows how many of those miles are underwater right now—especially not at City Hall, where workers are feverishly trying to move sensitive records from the basement to high ground and beating back rats in the process.”
I shuddered involuntarily at the thought of fighting off rats, as Blacksin showed stills of the tunnels. Some looked like ancient caves, covered with lime deposits and waist high in sludge. Others, though, appeared ready for immediate use. The tracks for the mule-drawn trains were as tidy as if they were a model railroad laid out for Christmas.
The camera switched back to Blacksin, who was standing in poor light in front of a brick wall. “A number of Loop buildings boarded up their entrances to the tunnels years ago. Older buildings with small plants didn’t make use of the deep tunnels, or they shared power with a giant neighbor.”
Something about the brickwork behind her seemed familiar. I studied the wall as best I could for the brief time it stayed in the shot. When they went back to Mary Sherrod at the Chicago River I turned off the set and shut my eyes.
The wall behind the Pulteney’s boiler—that false inner wall I’d shied away from because the rats came and went through it with ease. No wonder that was their main nesting place. They were coming and going through holes in the brickwork to the tunnels underneath. And so were Tamar Hawkings and her children.
That was how she entered the Pulteney without anyone noticing her. How did she get into the tunnel to begin with? Through a ventilator shaft? By somehow gaining access to Marshall Fields’s—or some other business’s—inventory basement? I cut off my speculations mid-thought: Tamar and her children had no way of knowing the danger they were in. If the Board of Trade basement was already underwater, what state was the tunnel beneath the Pulteney in?
I hurried to the hall phone and called Mr. Contreras. “I need to go downtown and break into my old office building. And I need help. Are you up for it? It’s going to be risky, because the Loop is crawling with cops.”
He was thrilled to be called into action. Not the young punk, nor the cop lover, nor even yet the smart-ass Ryerson, but Old Reliable himself. He hadn’t seen the news. I told him to turn on the TV and get caught up, that I didn’t want to take time to explain things now.
“We’ll need a crowbar, some rope, maybe a pickax. Work gloves. Waders. See what you can dig up. I’ll be home as soon as I can find a cab in this bucolic fastness.”
I hung up on his enthusiastic assurances and looked up the number for a local cab company. While I waited for the cab I stuffed my few belongings into my backpack, checked the clip on the Smith & Wesson, and got the spare keys from the silverware drawer in the kitchen. I was about to leave the house when my conscience pricked me.
I went back to the kitchen phone to call Lotty. She was with a patient, her receptionist, Mrs. Coltrain, told me, and couldn’t be disturbed.
“Tell her I’m on the trail of our missing homeless family,” I said. “If I’m lucky I’ll be bringing them into the clinic later on today.”
I started for the door again, then returned to the phone: my conscience was doing double overtime with its pricking. Conrad wasn’t at his own place, his mother’s, or at the station. I heard the cab honk out front. Hurriedly leaving word with the dispatcher at the precinct, to tell him I was going to try to get into the tunnels at the Pulteney, I jogged down Max’s sidewalk to the cab.
42
Dead Loop
The unlit Loop
looked like the abandoned city of a science fiction horror. The loss of electricity turned the buildings to dark towers. The sky itself was the color of tired lead, with a white sheen of ozone reflected onto a dull cloud cover. Normally on such a day the streetlights would turn on. People moved silently through the dark streets, as if the blackout imposed quiet.
All downtown parking had been abruptly banned. A phalanx of blue tow trucks swept the streets to scoop up those unfortunates who had parked ahead of the hastily posted notices. Police barricades shut off a number of streets. Traffic crawled along those that remained open. At various intersections we could see jury-rigged pumping stations, with fire hoses stretched into sewer outlets.
I dropped Mr. Contreras at the corner of Wabash and Monroe with our equipment and went off to find parking outside the tow zone. When I’d collected him we had gone to a hardware store to fill in the gaps in our supplies—a couple of heavy-duty flashlights with spare batteries; wading boots; safety glasses; a dolly; and the kind of portable ladders that are sold as fire escapes. I shut my eyes when I signed the MasterCard receipt—I didn’t want to know how much my debt had increased.
We already owned hard hats and overalls. Mr. Contreras had a wedge and a sledgehammer. In the hopes of finding the Hawkings family I brought along some blankets and clean T-shirts, a first-aid kit, and a case of fruit juices. It had taken a good hour to assemble all these accoutrements. They filled the trunk and the backseat, with the dolly sticking out the window.
During the drive south I kept listening to the news. None of the stations mentioned any homeless people turning up, but it didn’t sound as though the city engineers were crawling around looking for them, either—everyone was racing away from the water.
From what I’d seen on television the tunnels formed an elaborate maze: if the water moved in slowly enough people could find other avenues and perhaps stay dry. And if Tamar Hawkings and her children were indeed camped out down under they might climb back into the Pulteney’s basement. They would be boarded into the building, but at least they wouldn’t drown.
I had to park almost a mile from the Pulteney. I jogged through the dark streets as fast as I could in my overalls, trying to ignore the incipient throbbing in my head. At the Pulteney I found Mr. Contreras in belligerent confrontation with a cop.
“And I’m authorized to break into this building,” my neighbor was saying. “The owners want us to check whether the water’s coming in on them or not.”
“The place is due to come down next month. What do they care about water in the basement?” the cop demanded.
“Who knows?” the old man said. “You ever figure out what’s on management’s mind, you let me know. This here’s my partner; she’ll explain it all to you.”
“Freddie Culpepper is the owner,” I told the officer. “I have his car-phone number if you want to try to reach him to confirm the order—he’s in Olympia Fields today checking on some of his holdings down there.”
I pulled a ballpoint pen from the side pocket of my overalls and scrawled Freddie’s number on one of my receipts. Whether that made us seem authentic to the cop or whether he decided to gamble that looters wouldn’t be after an abandoned building, he abruptly gave in and went back to steering cars along Monroe Street.
Knowing that we didn’t have to worry about the law made the job of breaking through the boarding a lot easier: we didn’t have to be subtle. I held the wedge while my neighbor thumped the sledgehammer into it. The vibration shuddered up my arm and increased the throbbing in my head. My cracked rib began to ache as well.
Mr. Contreras might be pushing seventy-eight, but he still had impressive muscles in his shoulders. The boarding splintered with a satisfying crack. A crash of falling glass followed: he’d slugged the wedge hard enough to shatter the door behind it.
Moving quickly before the cop changed his mind, or called the Culpeppers, we pried the plywood apart and dragged our equipment inside. Except for a ghostly finger of light from the hole we’d created, the lobby was black. It smelled of stale urine and mildew.
I switched on one of the flashlights. Sealing the building had accelerated its decay. The dust had caked into grime, covering the floor, the walls, even the ornate brass doors of the elevator.
If the Hawkings family had come up for air their footprints would show in the filth on the floor. Halting Mr. Contreras with a gesture, I studied the floor, skirting the lane from the basement to the stairwell, but couldn’t detect any signs of disturbance.
I finally went to open the padlock on the stairwell. It was already undone. Maybe Tamar Hawkings had used the key I’d left for her. If she’d come up for air and found the building boarded over she could have moved along the tunnels to any other part of the Loop, in which case I’d never find her.
We tied the flashlights to our sides, then loaded the remaining equipment onto the dolly and rolled it to the stairs. Delivery men routinely bump that kind of load up and down stairs, but neither the old man nor I had the upper back strength for such a workout: we unloaded the dolly once again and carried the supplies piecemeal into the basement.
Near the bottom of the stairs I could hear the rats. They moved around the abandoned pipes with an insolent ease, conversing in loud, high-pitched squeaks. My palms began to tingle. I dropped the load I was carrying. Rope, hammer, and wading boots landed helter-skelter on the floor beneath me.
“You okay, cookie?” Mr. Contreras rushed down the stairs to my side.
“I’m fine—I let these oily creatures intimidate me.”
I shone my flash in the eyes of a long rat who’d slithered over to investigate the rope. He stared at me contemptuously and then slowly sauntered away. He seemed to be saying, “I’m moving off because I want to, not because you scare me. I dare you to attack my lair.”
“Can’t let them bother you,” my neighbor grunted. “Sewer workers are around ’em all day and never get hurt. As long as they don’t think they’re trapped they won’t attack you.”
People always say that about rats, but I don’t believe it. I think they wait until the odds are in their favor. Why else do they bite babies left alone in slum beds?
My fingers thick with nervousness I reassembled the equipment I’d dropped, put it on the bottom stair, and ran back up for another load. I pulled my waders on in the lobby. It made going down the stairs awkward, but they gave me a greater sense of protection.
When we’d reassembled everything on the dolly I led Mr. Contreras to the wall behind the boiler. The squeaking increased as we reached it. I took a deep breath and moved behind the furnace, kicking aside two red-eyes who were blocking my way. They retreated a few steps, then turned to watch me. I shone the light directly at them with unsteady fingers. When they wouldn’t move I picked a piece of metal tubing out of the rubble and poked them. They seemed to snarl, then retreated a few more paces. The old man picked up another pole and helped beat a clear path for me.
“I’ll go first, doll,” he offered.
I shook my head but didn’t answer. I couldn’t let myself give in to fear at this point; we had a lot of enemy territory still to cover. If Tamar Hawkings, clad only in rags, had negotiated these beasts with her three children, I could do it also. I gritted my teeth and stepped forward aggressively. The rats stared at me a long moment and then squeezed past my boots and strolled into the basement.
The gap between the boiler and the wall was just wide enough for my shoulders. As I scraped the metal with my left arm I tried not to think what might be moving above it, but the hair beneath my hard hat grew wet. A trickle of sweat ran down my nose. Mr. Contreras was close behind me, giving little chirrups of encouragement.
When I moved clear of the boiler the space widened enough that we could stand side by side. I shone the flash around, but didn’t see an opening in the brickwork. The old man grunted and got down on his knees. A couple of rats suddenly appeared and launched themselves at him. He yelped and fell backward, scrabbling at his face. I gra
bbed one by the tail, wrenched it free of him, and slammed it into the furnace. The other one ran down his arm and disappeared.
I was trembling as I shone the light on his face. The flesh below his left eye was torn and bleeding.
“I’m okay, doll.” The old man was working hard to make his breathing sound natural. “Stupid of me. They thought I was heading for their nest, of course.”
“Right. They only attack if they think they’re cornered.”
Shaking, I backed slowly past the boiler to our equipment dolly. I rummaged for the peroxide in my first-aid kit, then decided to bring the whole load. There was just room to roll the dolly in front of me. I kept stopping to cover my face every time I heard one of the beasts near me. The one I’d slammed against the furnace was starting to limp back toward Mr. Contreras. In a sudden access of fear and fury I rushed at it with the dolly, running the wheels over its fat body with every ounce of strength I owned. It gave a horrible cry. I was demented enough with fright to be pleased at the sound.
The old man sprang up at the noise. “Oh. You killed one of them. I thought it was you, doll. Gave me worse of a scare than when the beast jumped me. I think I found your hole for you.”
In a corner behind the boiler he’d located a gap in the brickwork. A chunk of masonry from the foundation had broken off, leaving an opening just big enough for a slender person to slide through. I hadn’t noticed it on my earlier foray. Even if the rats had kept me from penetrating this far behind the boiler, I wouldn’t have found it in the poor light—if you didn’t know about the caverns below you wouldn’t search for an entrance to them. Mr. Contreras had found it by feeling along the wall while he waited for me.
I took off my gloves and cleaned his wound. “You should see a doctor for this. Do you think you could catch a cab out on Michigan?”
“I think I could give you another crack over the head for even thinking I’d run out on you, Warshawski, is what I think. You clean it up good. It’s bleeding and that’s a good sign. We can worry afterward about rabies or bubonic plague or whatever these vermin carry.”
Tunnel Vision Page 29