Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (41 page)

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 grabbed 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.”

I
bathed the wound over and over, far more than it needed, until I realized the
old man was flinching, that I was scraping the raw flesh against the bone. I
put some salve on it. Worrying that the rats might be attracted to the smell of
salve, I tried to cover the wound as completely as possible. They wandered
around us as I worked on him but didn’t try to avenge their fallen comrade’s
death.

Back
on his feet, Mr. Contreras picked up the sledge and rapidly enlarged the
opening behind the brickwork. More rats poured out as he worked. My arms were
wet inside my coveralls. I began to shiver in the clammy air.

When
he’d finished he needed a few minutes to catch his breath. I peered through the
hole he’d made. The opening led directly to a set of stairs. I could see the
top two or three in the light from my flash.

I
picked up the rope, the ladder, the spare flashlight batteries, and a blanket
from the dolly. I looped one end of the rope around my waist, then tied the
other to my neighbor. As a final preparation I took the Smith & Wesson out
from my armpit holster and stuck it in one of my side pockets. It was absurd—I
couldn’t possibly shoot all the vermin milling around the space—but it made me
feel better.

My
neighbor nodded to show he had recovered his wind. “Ready, doll? Take it easy
going down. You don’t know what kind of repair the place is in, or if you’ll be
landing in water, or what.”

“Right.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go.” Taking my metal tube in one hand
for a walking stick, I climbed through the hole in the wall.

Tunnel
Vision

Damp
had mixed with coal dust to form a black glaze over the stairs. The flashlight
glinted on it like moonlight on black ice. We tried looking down the stairwell
to see how far we had to go, but could make out nothing beyond the circle of
light. We started gingerly down, using our poles for balance.

Beyond
the flashlight the darkness was absolute. It was as though a giant hand had
squeezed all the light from the air. We seemed to move not through dark air but
the essence of darkness itself, a physical presence that squashed and flattened
our puny light. We moved quietly, oppressed by the weight of the air, and of
the earth above us. Only the twittering of the rats, taunting our slow
movements by the speed and ease with which they ran past us, broke the silence.

For a
moment I panicked, confusing the lack of light with lack of oxygen.

Dizzy,
I reached out for the iron bar someone had bolted to the stairwell. It came
away in my hand and I landed with a smart thump on my rear end. Mr.

Contreras
hovered over me anxiously, but my coveralls provided a good padding. I got up
again with nothing more than a twinge of pain in my tailbone. The jolt cleared
my mind.

The
air stank of mold and rat droppings, but it was not stale. I lit a match to
prove it to myself. The flame burned bright. To overcome the weight of the
atmosphere I started to sing Figaro’s jaunty farewell to Cherubino. Mr.

Contreras
and I were like a couple of butterflies ourselves, floating downward into the
bowels of the earth instead of off to battle.

My
singing released the spell holding back Mr. Contreras’s speech. He began to
regale me with his own battle stories. I had heard most of them before, from
how he’d stolen Clara away from Mitch Krueger to the piece of shrapnel he’d
taken at Anzio, but his vibrant voice, echoing from the walls, filled the shaft
with life.

At
the bottom of the second flight the light caught on a lump. I stopped to pick
it up. It was cloth of some kind, with shreds of a lining hanging from it.

The
synthetic outer shell still had enough shape to show me what it had been: a
child’s ski mitten, originally a vivid aqua. I had no idea how fast mold and
grime work on fabric, but it looked as though it had lain here for years. I put
it back down—it would protect no child’s hand at this point. At least it
confirmed that we were on the trail, if not of Tamar Hawkings, of some human
life.