I took an anxious peek sideways at the booth. The group was beginning to break up. I was out of time. I picked up my purse and pitched it into the blackness of the hole, like a bean bag into a clown’s mouth. The purse landed inside and I pitched the canvas briefcase in after it. A soft thud. Neither rolled back out, so I figured there was room for me.
The sirens shrieked. They were right outside the building. I didn’t dare look back at the booth. I hooked my clothes on the back of my neck, then scrambled to my feet and jumped into the dark hole, grabbing onto the jagged sides, hoisting myself mightily to get my chest in. I crawled forward on my elbows until my legs were inside. I lunged the final yard and was in all the way.
I had no idea why this hole was here, but it stunk. I wriggled forward, unable to see a thing in the pitch black, wishing I had a penlight or something more useful than a dog picture on my keychain. I dragged myself farther into the darkness. The stench got stronger. I reached my purse and my briefcase, realizing it was a tunnel of some kind. A very stinky tunnel. In three feet the odor grew unbearable and I was crawling in something cool. Crumbly. Revolting.
What was it? I scooped some up and held it under my nose, propping myself on my arms. I couldn’t see a thing, but it smelled like shit. Then I sniffed again and realized that it was. Manure. I recoiled in disgust, but couldn’t back out. Why would there be manure in a parking garage? Then I remembered the man-made forest in the atrium of the building. Their root system must have been between the ground floor and the garage, and was evidently serviced from this crawlspace. I was in deep shit, no joke.
Suddenly I heard men’s voices. My heart pounded, I forgot about the smell. The voices moved closer, underneath the hole. I held my breath. Directly below me, a guard was telling a farmer’s daughter joke. I didn’t listen for the punchline. The voices receded, then disappeared. I exhaled with relief and spit the dirt out of my mouth.
It was all downhill from there. I spent the night in muck, watching the minutes tick by on the glowing green digits on my watch. By 5:30A.M., I hadn’t slept at all, I felt so raw and anxious. My knees were killing me, scraped up, and my back was crampy. My hair reeked of dung, and you could grow mushrooms in my mouth. But the sirens had subsided and I was safe. Quiet descended like a blessing. Still I had to get out of the tunnel before the business day started.
I looked over my shoulder toward the lighted square of the tunnel’s entrance. I tried to turn around but it was too narrow, so I grabbed my stuff and crawled in reverse, toward the light. I reached the hole and straddled it, then did a push-up and looked down. The green Range Rover was still there. Were the cops? I squirmed backward and peered out.
No cops or guards were in sight, just an elderly cashier, evidently the morning shift, filing her nails in front of a portable TV flickering in the booth. Time to go.
I collected my stuff and lowered it onto the car’s sunroof. No one came running, so I took a deep breath and dropped out of the hole. I hit the roof of the Rover with a decidedly un-catlikethump and flattened as soon as I made contact. I took one sideways look at the cashier, who was watching TV, then slid on my back down the far side of the Rover, grabbing my stuff at the last minute and landing in an aromatic heap on the garage floor.
I sat there a second, forcing myself to stay calm, squinting in the sudden brightness. I was a mess. Dirt and manure soiled my suit. My pantyhose were ripped and one knee was bloodied and filthy. I reeked of shit. I looked, and felt, homeless.
Then it hit me. The way out. The next step. I could be homeless, a smelly ruin of a woman with plastic bags and an oily canvas briefcase. I tore up the garment bags, then rubbed the manure into my hair and clothes, stifling my disgust. In two minutes, I was ready. I made sure no cops were in sight, then shuffled toward the exit. My heart was racing under my grimy blouse.
I staggered toward the exit. My heart beat louder with each step closer to the cashier, but I had no choice. I couldn’t back down and I couldn’t run or she’d call the cops for sure.
She turned from the TV and spotted me, her emery board poised in midair. Her hooded eyes narrowed instantly. She was no dummy and she didn’t like what she saw.
Still I kept walking and when I got close enough I had a brainstorm.
32
Hide in plain sight. It was getting to be second nature.
I lurched directly for the booth, dragging my feet and shredded plastic bags. I stopped right in front of the window and pounded on the scratchy Plexiglas.
“Listen, listen, listen,” I screeched at the cashier. I knew how to sound crazy, it was in my blood. “You got somethin’ for me? You got somethin’ for me? Yougotsomethin ’forme?”
The cashier recoiled in alarm.
“I know you got money, honey! I know you got money, honey.” I banged out on the windows, leaving an odiferous smudge. “Gimme, gimme, gimmegimmegimme!”
“Get away or I’ll call the police!” she shouted from behind the thick glass.
Oops. I waved a loopy good-bye and staggered away from the booth, crossed the bumpy median at the exit to the underground garage, and walked the wrong way up the cement ramp out of the building. I breathed easier as I climbed, tingling with a heady adrenaline. I reached the top of the ramp to the pavement outside and smiled as I inhaled the night air blowing down the backstreet behind the building. I was on a roll. And I was free, even if I smelled like shit.
Then I saw that the stench wasn’t coming only from me. Large rusty Dumpsters loomed in the dark, overflowing with garbage next to the black wells of the loading dock. The sidewalk was dirty and gum-spattered where the building faced the back end of the office building across the way. A homeless man slept like a crumpled puppet against the building, and I suppressed a twinge of guilt. I had to go. It was getting light, almost dawn. Like a vampire, I needed cover. I ran across the street to the back of another office building and slipped into the dusky shadows.
EEEEEEE! A squad car tore suddenly down the street, sirens screaming, red, white, and blue lights flashing on the top in an alternating pattern. I ducked against the wall in the darkness and almost fell backward. It was an open door, blistered and battleship gray. BUILDING PERSONNEL ONLY, it said, but it had been pried open, either broken into over the weekend or left unlocked carelessly. Another siren screamed at the other end of the street. I snuck inside the door before the cruiser passed and locked the door behind me.
I found myself in a hot, dirty hallway that smelled thickly of urine. The bathroom tour of Philly. It was dim inside with the door closed but I could follow a light at the other end of the corridor. A rumbling, mechanical sound emanated from it.
I lifted up my stuff, which was getting heavier and heavier, and trod cautiously down the corridor, running my fingers along the wall for guidance. The wall was painted cinderblock, cool and bumpy beneath my fingertips.
The hall ended in another door, defined only by the dim light that outlined its perimeter, showing through the crack between door and jamb. I tried the knob and it moved freely. Unlocked. I paused a minute before opening it. There was no sound coming from behind it, but what would I do if there were people on the other side? Lie, badly. What could be worse than the cops? I held my breath and opened the door.
An empty staircase, lighted. No exit doors. There was nowhere else to go, so I went down, first to one landing, then the next, ten concrete steps at a time. Descending toward the rumbling, which was getting louder, and the increasing heat. At each landing was a dim lightbulb covered by a wire cage. The sirens grew fainter as I traveled down, but I was still jittery. Maybe I shouldn’t have left Grun. Maybe I shouldn’t have given Grady back the gun. Jerk took my screwdriver.