Of course, while that might keep their pursuers out it also left them only one way to go, since this room was where the stairs began. There was no up—only down. Which struck Tricia as an apt metaphor for their entire situation.
Side by side, guns held tightly in their sweating fists, they started to descend.
26.
Grave Descend
The stairs turned twice at little square landings, but there were no doors at either, no way to go but further down. The only light came from low-wattage bulbs hanging overhead in metal cages, and few enough of them that there were stretches where Tricia couldn’t see a thing. In an act of what she first thought of as unaccountable bravery Charley led the way, walking in front of her into the unknown; but then she thought about the known they were walking away from and his eagerness made more sense.
“Do you see anything?” she said.
“Sh,” he said.
In the faintest whisper she could manage she said, “Well? Do you?”
“No.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“That’s good advice,” he muttered. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
He stopped suddenly and she collided with his back. The gun fortunately didn’t go off.
“Door,” he whispered.
“Can you open it?”
She heard a knob turn. Charley leaned into the door with his shoulder, gently eased it open.
Past it, the light was slightly better, but only slightly. A long tunnel extended perhaps twenty yards before curving out of sight. It looked a little like a subway tunnel except for the absence of rails along the bottom. Instead the ground looked to be dirt—hard-packed earth, uneven and pitted, as though dug by hand.
They stepped inside, closed the door behind them, and Charley swung a metal bar down to latch it shut.
“What is this?” Tricia said. “An old bootlegging tunnel? Some sort of secret escape tunnel?”
“You know something,” Charley said, “you read too many books.”
“Well what do you think it is?”
“Oh, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying you read too many books.” He started off down the tunnel and she followed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He crept cautiously through the tunnel’s curve, gun held high, finger tight on the trigger. They came out into another straight stretch. There was no one in sight, but he didn’t lower the gun. “You say ‘bootlegging tunnel’ like it’s something romantic. It’s not romantic. It’s ugly. It’s people stealing from each other, cutting each other’s throats. There are probably people buried down here, you know—nice romantic bootleggers who fell out of favor with Uncle Nick.” He kicked at the dirt underfoot. “We’re probably walking on their graves.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s the real world, kid. It’s not like you read about in paperbacks.”
“You mean like the ones you publish, Charley?”
“I mean like the one you wrote,” he said. “Bang-bang stuff, where the blood all washes off by the final scene and the bad guys all wear black.”
“You liked it well enough when I wrote it,” Tricia said.
“Sure. I just don’t like living the real-world version.”
“You think I do?”
They walked on at as fast a pace as they could manage, the tunnel stretching out more or less endlessly in front of them.
“I’m sorry, Charley,” Tricia said. “Okay? I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have written the book.”
“Ah, hell,” Charley said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to.”
“You didn’t ask me to make things up.”
“No,” Charley said. “But all you did was make them up. I’m the one that published it.”
“You thought it was all true,” Tricia said.
“And that makes it better? Would you tell me what the hell I was thinking, deciding to publish the actual secrets of an actual mobster?”
“That you’d sell a lot of books.”
“Yep. That’s what I was thinking, all right.”
“And you will,” Tricia said.
“Maybe the profits will pay for a nice headstone,” Charley said.
“Only if we get out of this tunnel,” Tricia said. “They bury us down here, we don’t get a headstone.”
They both walked faster after that.
By the time they reached the far end of the tunnel, Tricia figured they must have walked a good quarter of a mile, maybe more. How anyone had been able to dig a tunnel under the streets of Manhattan that ran at least five blocks she couldn’t fathom. Unless this was a much older tunnel even than Prohibition—maybe, she thought, the tunnel came first and the buildings were built around it.
The room at the far end had wooden crates stacked against the walls and a folding card table in the center. It had no chairs and no people, though, and the one door in the room was closed and barred. The question was what they’d find when they opened it.
“They know we’re here,” Charley said. “They must. There’s nowhere else we can be. The only thing we can hope is that we made it faster than they could because they were busy dealing with the cops.”
“And that none of them had the chance to telephone ahead,” Tricia said, “to tell someone to be here when we came out.”
“Yeah,” Charley said. “That, too.”
He hesitated, counted three, two, one with his fingers, and in a rush of movement raised the metal bar, pulled the door open, and stepped through it gun-first. There was no one on the other side.
“Well, that’s a relief,” he said.
“We’re not out yet.”
They raced up the staircase they found, cousin to the one in the basement of the Stars Club. At the top another door waited. When Charley started the bit with his fingers again, Tricia just pushed it open and walked out into the basement of the Sun.
Off to one side she saw the freight elevator and two of the fabric-sided carts the maintenance staff used to wheel supplies in and out—the same sort she’d had her unnamed thief use to escape with the loot in her book. The same sort the real thief had used, too, apparently.
She heard sounds from the loading dock outside: running feet, then hands at the metal gate, trying to raise it. Tricia went to the freight elevator door, banged on it with the flat of her palm. From the loading dock came the rattle of a padlock. “Come on, come on,” came a muffled voice. “Who has a key?”
Tricia rapped on the elevator door again, kept pounding until it slid open. The operator stuck his head out, barking, “What are you doing, banging away—”
She put her gun in his face and he quieted down. When he saw Charley leveling a gun at him too, he meekly put his hands up.
“I were you, I wouldn’t rob this place,” he said. “We got hit just a month ago and the people in charge are out for blood.”
“We’re not here to rob the place,” Tricia said. “Just take us upstairs.”
Out on the loading dock, a gunshot went off like a cherry bomb and what Tricia had to assume were padlock fragments rained against the metal gate.
She stepped into the elevator. “Up.”
The operator pulled the door closed and worked the lever to start the car. Heavy chains clanked overhead and they started to rise.
“How far?” he said.
“All the way,” Tricia said.
“Is that smart?” Charley said. “Why not just go to the lobby?”
“Because it’s almost two AM, Charley,” Tricia said, “and at two AM people from Nicolazzo’s other clubs start showing up in the lobby, delivering the night’s take. Some of them are probably there already. With armed bodyguards. Not to mention the man in the security booth out front.”