AHMM, October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She came over. “Cops,” she told me.

  "Cops, who?” I asked, swinging around.

  "Suits, uniforms."

  "So some of them were plainclothes?"

  "The kid can smell copper, uniformed or not,” she said.

  It figured to be Gallagher. “What happened?” I asked her.

  "They moved in, rounded them up, and cleared them out,” she said, waving a hand at the obvious signs of abandonment.

  "How did they find the place?"

  She gave me an up-from-under look.

  "No.” I shook my head. “We didn't lead them here, Judy. O'Toole couldn't get his fat ass through the cracks you took me through, and Gallagher wouldn't soil his suit. They had to come in from a different direction."

  She went over to the boy again and they talked.

  Judy swung back. “From the East River side,” she said.

  "Where are we?” I asked. “Close to Grand Central?"

  She shook her head. “East of Lex, below Forty-seventh."

  I was completely turned around. I thought we'd been moving north, or south, but we'd been going crosstown.

  "He can show us the way,” Judy said.

  I took a few steps in the boy's direction, keeping my hands behind my back. He moved away from me, warily, staying out of reach.

  "My name's Mickey Counihan,” I told him, introducing myself as if to an adult. “Judy will tell you the last thing I'd choose would be to rat you out to the cops or the youth wardens, but we pay each other's tariff. Point us the way they went."

  "What's in it for me?” he asked, tilting his chin up.

  I grinned. “A hot meal, a safe bed, and a cuff on the back of your head, you scut,” I told him.

  He cut his eyes at Judy.

  She shrugged, as if to say I hadn't yet played her false.

  The kid spat in his hand and stepped forward, and we shook on it, like Irish livestock buyers at a country market town.

  "What do I call you?” I asked.

  "Billy,” he said.

  "Billy the Kid?” I suggested.

  He smiled.

  I pointed. “Get on with you,” I said.

  On we went.

  I found it odd, the distance you were able to cover below ground. I'd have thought the opposite, but we weren't walking the grid of streets and avenues. It still came as a surprise to me, where Billy led us, although I should have guessed.

  The old graded roadbed curved, and then straightened, and then curved again. Maybe half a mile, as the crow flies? It was hard to judge. Then the two kids stopped, alert to some new signal. I caught it, too, the touch of a cool breeze, not the fetid air of the tunnels, but it carried the smell of the river, damp and nearby, an oily scent, sweet with decay.

  I'd been content to follow, thus far, because the two of them were familiar with the secret byways, as if they were playing a game of Chutes and Ladders, but now I took over the lead. The breeze freshened as we edged forward, and up ahead I made out a lighter spot in the gloom. It flickered like a candle, but as we got closer, I realized it was the flare of an oxyacetylene torch. I raised a hand, and Judy and Billy went still behind me. I worked my way into a better position, moving up behind a corroded stanchion.

  It was a maintenance crew, four men. They were wrestling steel plates into place, and riveting them together to block off access to the tunnel behind me.

  I stepped out from cover and motioned the kids to follow in my wake.

  The first of the crew to notice me reacted with a terrified double take, and slapped the shoulder of the man in front of him. I must have looked a sight, hatless, my trousers torn, the jacket of my suit smeared with grease and rust.

  I adopted a jaunty air. “Chased these scamps up and down and all around,” I said. I took each of them by the ear, not playfully, and shoved them past the barricade. Judy played her part, whining aggrievedly. Billy didn't realize he was supposed to be who he was, only more so, and tried to twist away. I bit down harder with my thumb and forefinger. Judy levered out with her left leg and popped him with her heel, just below the knee.

  "Who's up top?” I asked the riveting crew.

  They took me for police, as I'd hoped they would.

  "Lieutenant of detectives,” the guy with the torch told me. “Big fella, almost your size, wearing a good suit."

  "And a lard-ass sergeant with a long line of mouth,” one of the other guys put in.

  Gallagher and O'Toole. How not?

  I started to thank them, but I realized it would be out of character. Cops don't thank anybody. What the subway crew expected of me was no more than I gave them. “Get out of my damn way, then,” I said, my manners as bad as possible.

  I ramrodded the kids past.

  "The cheaper the clothes, the tougher they talk,” I heard the guy with the torch say. It didn't bother me. I'd heard the same patter before.

  "Keep moving,” I muttered to Judy and Billy. I'd let go of her, and she took the opportunity to kick Billy again.

  "Cut it out,” he said to her.

  "Cut it out, yourself,” I said, letting go of his earlobe.

  "That hurt,” he complained.

  "You don't know when you've got it good,” I said. I looked at Judy. “Billy the Kid's your responsibility,” I told her.

  Judy rolled her eyes.

  "No,” I said. “Get him gone. Look ahead."

  She did, and saw what I'd seen.

  There was a ragged hole at the end the tunnel, where earth-moving equipment had torn into the vaulted underground cavern and exposed the abandoned subway line, like breaking open a hive of bees. It was the excavation for the UN dig.

  "They scattered them like birds,” I said to her.

  "It wasn't our fault?” she asked.

  "No,” I told her. “It was an accident. Fortunes of war."

  She didn't entirely trust me, that was evident.

  "I'm going out into the light,” I said. “But once I get in the clear, the two of you skedaddle."

  She understood. “You going to be okay, Mickey?” she asked.

  "Not hardly,” I said.

  "Meet you in the sweet by-and-by,” Judy said.

  "Get lost,” I told her.

  She did, but she did it without haste, so as not to call any undue attention to herself. And she took the kid along with her. They were slippery bastards. They'd had enough practice.

  Me, a different story. I ducked past the plywood hoardings that had been erected to shroud the subway tunnels, and stepped out again into the sucking mud. I saw Judy and Billy scramble away, vagabonds on the streets, fugitives below ground, adapting for their own survival.

  The lights hit me. I was an understudy filling in for the lead actor, not knowing my lines. The hot, piercing glow pinned me like a butterfly.

  "Mickey.” It was Gallagher, calling down.

  He didn't help me, he let me struggle, but when I managed to get to the lip of the trench, he held out a hand, and dragged me up the last few feet.

  O'Toole stood back, watching me with vengeful eyes.

  "You keep turning up, boyo, like a bad penny,” Gallagher said. “How d'ye come to be here? Better question yet, why were you in the subway tunnels in the first place?"

  "Same as you, Pat,” I said. “Chasing runaways."

  "You don't turn your kids out, Mickey,” he said. “What are you about?"

  "Answering to my own conscience,” I said.

  Gallagher stepped in close, so we were standing shoulder to shoulder. “The girl died of a broken neck,” he murmured.

  I nodded. “One of her clients?"

  "Most like,” he said.

  I looked past him. August van Rensellaer stood ten yards away, at the edge of the incline, but in the shadows, not in the light. Gallagher didn't have to follow my gaze.

  "I'd be guessing, mind you,” Gallagher said, still speaking under his breath. “Yank my Doodle, it's a dandy."

  "My first question would be how he came to be her
e, Pat,” I said. “How much is he paying for your protection?"

  "Well, now, Mickey, those kids have proved to be a nuisance and an eyesore, and a detriment to the neighborhood."

  "So a complaint from a concerned and well-connected citizen would encourage you to clean house."

  "We serve at the public's pleasure,” he said.

  "You feed at the public trough,” I told him.

  "Hell,” Gallagher said. He waved a hand at van Rensellaer. “You can't pin the killing on him. Could have been anybody."

  "Not just anybody was scared enough to call in his markers, and get a bent cop on the case."

  He smiled. “Which isn't evidence. It's simple dislike for the man, on your part."

  "I doubt if he's a likeable man,” I said.

  Gallagher stepped back. “You're welcome to talk to him,” he said. “Be circumspect, if it's in your nature.” He grinned. “But the more threatened he is, the better I like it."

  The more money in his pocket, he meant. I walked over to van Rensellaer, the loose earth sucking at my shoes. He glanced at me, recognized that I was of no importance, and looked away.

  "The kids in the tunnels,” I said. “They live there because they have nowhere else, and they work the streets out of necessity. They're victims almost by design."

  He didn't give me a second glance. “I don't believe I know you,” he said, dismissively.

  "No,” I said. I started to turn away, discouraged, but I thought about the look Judy might give me later, and turned around again. “I know your wife,” I said. “I knew her when she was a whore."

  "She's still a whore,” he said. “But her price went up."

  A vein began throbbing in my temple. “Her price is her own dignity,” I said to him.

  He condescended to make eye contact with me. “Were you the lowest bidder?” he asked.

  I blinked back my anger. My temples were about to burst.

  "Or did you offer rescue?” van Rensellaer asked, smiling.

  I shifted my weight and kicked the earth out from under his left foot. Off-balance, he tumbled over the edge. I threw myself after him into the trench, dirt and loose stones getting up my sleeves. “Goddamn it,” Gallagher shouted, waving O'Toole and the uniforms in.

  I rolled over on top of van Rensellaer, straddling his lower body, and hit him once hard, on the bridge of the nose. I felt the bones in his face break, and the knuckles in my hand.

  I lifted him off the ground, shaking him by his shirtfront. “You bastard,” I said. “You're not safe from me."

  His eyes were wide and frightened, but uncomprehending.

  I shook him again. “I'll kill you, Augie,” I said, my face inches from his. “That's a promise you can take to the bank."

  O'Toole scrambled down the slope and hauled me back.

  The uniforms picked van Rensellaer up and dusted him off. He was staring at me, blood leaking out his nose, but he didn't say anything. I took it to mean he understood I'd meant exactly what I told him.

  I shrugged out of O'Toole's grip.

  He stayed behind me, oddly passive, and made no move to cuff me. I looked up at Gallagher, standing at the edge of the trench. He shook his head, but it wasn't in disappointment. He was a man who knew the usefulness of hate.

  * * * *

  So the Black Cardinal, Johnny's father, went unsatisfied. He would have benefited from van Rensellaer's embarrassment, if it had turned out to be financial, not personal. But the August van Rensellaers of this world have a habit of shrugging off scandal. It's not simply the brute power of their money; it has more to do with the imperviousness their money breeds.

  "So there's no justice for her death?” Dede asked me.

  "There's no retribution,” I said.

  I didn't tell her she might be sleeping with the man who'd murdered Maggie. Justice has a way of seeking its own level. Dede had asked me to look after the girl, and I was only able to lay Maggie's ghost to rest. An unresolved conclusion.

  Judy was likewise less than happy. I was turning out to be unlucky with women.

  "Social Services has the lot of them,” she said.

  "They'll be back on the streets in a week,” I said.

  She eyed me leerily.

  "Easy pickings, we recruit the ones with promise."

  Judy studied on it, and grinned. “Okay,” she agreed.

  And a package came, a couple of days later. No return address, no card. It was a bottle of Canadian rye. I knew that the bank loans to Israel had been approved.

  I cracked the bottle and poured myself a couple of fingers. I inhaled the scent. Good, smoky stuff.

  Absent friends, I thought. I tipped back the glass.

  Copyright (c) 2008 David Edgerley Gates

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE FOUR CASTLES by Terence Faherty

  "Strangers are like wild animals. They may look interesting, but they make lousy pets."

  Julia Caden, a petite woman with wide, blue eyes, smiled, both because her husband David's remark was, for him, witty and because she was trying to agree with him as often as possible. Their trip to Scotland was a celebration of their twenty-five years of marriage, but it was also their conscious attempt to rediscover the common ground they felt they had lost.

  "But she is interesting” was all the rebuttal Julia would allow herself.

  The interesting stranger was an auburn-haired young woman they had encountered at their first stop in Scotland, Sterling Castle. They'd chosen Sterling as a good place to start their week because it was an easy drive from the Glasgow airport. It also had a military museum, which interested David. For Julia, the castle's interest lay in its romantic past. Mary, Queen of Scots, had been crowned there as an infant, and the towering Wallace Monument was visible in the distance from the castle's stone ramparts.

  The Cadens had spotted the woman as they'd climbed the castle's sloping car park. She had been standing beneath Robert the Bruce's stern statue and had returned the couple's gaze for a moment before looking away.

  "Watching for someone,” Julia had said, focusing on just one of the impressions she had received. The others had been that the woman was pale, attractive, and somehow lost. Then David, who was dark, broad-shouldered, and never lost, had drawn her back with his warning about strangers, and they'd started their self-guided tour.

  Much of the older portion of the castle was under repair. They moved from one scaffolded space to another, reading about what the rooms had looked like after the prior renovations and what they would look like after the current ones.

  "Just our luck to be here this century,” David remarked.

  It was a relief to step out onto the battlements and regain the view of the beautiful valley and the Wallace tower beyond. And there, on a paved walk beneath the wall on which they stood, was the young woman again, a small figure in the foreground that greatly added to the vista's interest for Julia.

  "She's an American, did you notice?” Julia said.

  "Who?” David asked, and then, “Oh. What makes you think so?"

  "She was wearing a University of Delaware windbreaker.” Delaware was two states away from their own New Jersey, but from across an ocean it seemed to Julia to be part of the same neighborhood. Which made the young woman a neighbor and possibly a neighbor in some kind of difficulty.

  "That doesn't mean she's an American,” David countered. “Maybe some American gave it to her."

  "Maybe the person she came here to meet,” Julia said. “Maybe they parted a year ago today and promised to meet again under that statue."

  David must have recognized the echo of her favorite movie. He said, “Don't you mean six months later at the top of the Empire State Building?"

  "I wonder why he didn't show up,” Julia mused, leaning over the parapet to watch the stranger disappear around a curve in the walk.

  Her husband tugged on her arm. “Must have found another windbreaker,” he said.

  * * * *

  IIr />
  That night, in the crossroads town of Callander, the Cadens had their anniversary dinner. They were seated in the octagonal dining room that extended from the side of the old manor house that was their hotel. Only four of the other tables were occupied, each in its own corner of the big room. Julia alternately had the sense that they were eating alone and that they were Peeping Toms, intruding on the privacy of the other diners.

  When she mentioned this last feeling to her husband, he said, “Think of them as strangers you can make up stories about."

  He seemed to Julia to regret this remark as soon as he'd made it. Because it was almost unkind, she decided, and so came near to violating their anniversary truce.

  "I'm sorry for going on about the woman in the castle,” she said, “but I couldn't help feeling that something was wrong there."

  "Something's wrong here,” David replied. “Every course has been brought in by a different server. How many could this place have? And how many am I supposed to tip?"

  "Didn't you feel that?” Julia persisted. “Not necessarily that a tragedy had happened but that one was going to happen?"

  David sighed so loudly that the German couple at the nearest table turned to look. Julia quickly switched to a more appropriate topic: how they'd first met. David had been a traveling salesman, then as now, and she'd been a receptionist at one of his regular stops.

  "You should have heard the stories I made up about you,” she said as a peace offering.

  It evidently worked because David raised his glass to her. “They couldn't have been better than what actually happened to me."

  * * * *

  Later, when Julia emerged from their en suite bathroom in a carefully selected negligee, she found David snoring away. They should have skipped the brandies in the hotel's conservatory, she thought, or waited to have their special dinner until after the jet lag had worn off.

  She switched on her reading light and picked up Jane Eyre, the old favorite that she'd decided to reread on the trip. No better handbook existed, in her opinion, for maintaining hope in a troubled relationship. Then she saw on her nightstand the pamphlet she'd purchased in the Sterling Castle gift shop, A Brief Guide to the Life and Landmarks of Mary, Queen of Scots. She traded the Bronte for the booklet and settled in to read.