She nodded. “Must’ve.”
“And you weren’t supposed to do that.”
“Ah, but no,” Julie said. “That’s the cardinal sin. Rule number one. They tell all the new girls, first day on the job, you must never give your personal contact information to a client you meet at work. Never. Sometimes they say it’s for your safety, like they care about your safety. But of course it’s for their safety. Because if the customers and the girls start making arrangements amongst themselves, the house gets cut out. Get the picture?”
I was starting to. “You left to go off on your own, you took their customers with you, they eventually heard about it, and they had to teach you a lesson.”
She tapped a finger to the side of her nose. “You’re a natural at this, Johnny.”
“So who did it? Who runs Vivacia?”
She cast her eyes downward, started teasing the grass back and forth. I raised her chin with an index finger and she slapped my hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
She’d raised her voice and I noticed a few people looking in our direction. In the distance over her shoulder, I saw our brawny friend stand up.
“Julie, who runs Vivacia?” I said again.
Julie stood up, too. She shook her gloved hand in my face. “You want to end up like this?”
“Like that? Cassandra is dead. They had her killed, Julie. Do you understand?”
“Keep asking who did it and they’ll have you killed.”
“I’ll take that risk,” I said.
“Fine,” she spat, “you do that. And I’ll strew your ashes—do you prefer the East River or the Hudson?”
“Damn it, Julie, who runs Vivacia?”
“You really want to know? Here’s a name for you. Ardo. The Hungarian. Oh, you’ve heard of him! Good for you. Good for you. Now you know what you’re dealing with. You can go back to your nice little office, Johnny, with your pencils and your poetry and your button-down shirts, and when you go home at night you can get on your knees and thank god your worst problem is what grade you got on an exam, and not dealing with a man like—let go of me! Get your fucking hands off of me!”
But I didn’t. I lifted her bodily and shoved her around the corner of the building and dived after her. She’d thought I’d gone pale when she’d said the name Ardo, that I knew who she was talking about, but that wasn’t it—I’d just seen what she couldn’t, which was the man behind her, closing the distance between us with his long runner’s strides, and then, just before I shoved her out of the way, reaching behind him to the small of his back and coming out with a gun.
Chapter 7
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
“He’s got a gun.” I kept my voice low, dragged her by the elbow. “We’ve got to move.”
“Who’s got a gun?”
“Move!” We turned another corner—Buell Hall has lots of them, bless those 19th century architects. Lots of nooks and crannies for lunatics to lose themselves in.
But behind us, and not far, I heard pounding footsteps. There were still lots of people around, and it was broad daylight, and the rational part of my brain said he’d be a fool to shoot at us with that many witnesses. But he’d already pulled a gun in public. It wasn’t a bet I wanted to take.
I kicked open the front door and pulled Julie in after me. There was a grand staircase leading up to the second story and a not-so-grand stairway leading down to the cellar. “Down,” I said.
“No!”
“Come on.” I whipped one arm around her and levered her into the air against my hip. Her breasts pressed against my arm and she hammered on me to let her go. She was heavy, too—I had to set her on her feet again on the landing halfway down.
“You touch me again—” she said.
The front door burst open above us, slammed against the far wall.
“He has a gun,” I hissed. “You want to see if he’ll use it?”
I dragged her to the farthest corner of the cellar, where a short metal door stood. She could make it through upright, but I’d have to stoop. I grabbed the handle with both hands and tugged furiously. It didn’t budge.
“Julie!” The voice overhead was hoarse, angry. “Julie!”
The door had been painted over since the first time I’d been here, led on a midnight tour by an urban spelunker who called himself “Benoit.” It was one of the things Columbia was famous for, and I’d figured as long as I was going to be a student here I might as well get the whole experience. Chalk it up to the investigative spirit. But it wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good if I couldn’t get the goddamn door open. I braced myself with one foot against the wall and yanked. The door wrenched open with a scream from the hinges that might as well have been a voice announcing where we were. I ducked inside. A long, narrow tunnel lit with a faint orange glow stretched yards into the distance. I held a hand out to Julie through the doorway. Behind us we heard pounding on the stairs. She took my hand and followed me into the tunnel.
We ran. As fast as we could on uneven ground, me with my shoulders hunched and head bent low. The only consolation was the knowledge that our pursuer, with his broader shoulders and extra height, would have an even harder time of it than I was having.
At the first T-branch, we took a left. There were rusty pipes overhead and running in ranks along one wall. Steam pipes, water pipes, who the hell knew what. The ground was dirt, and in some areas leakage from the pipes had turned it into mud, sometimes ankle deep. We ran through it. Across one particularly deep puddle some helpful soul had stretched a warped plank of wood. I pulled it up after we were across, left it leaning against the wall, then thought better and took it with me.
I don’t know who built the tunnels under Columbia. I don’t know if anyone knows. They’re very old, dating back to when coal and steam powered the place, and some people say they were used for transporting fuel from building to building. Maybe so. What I do know is that they connect half the buildings on the campus, basement to basement, in an intestinal labyrinth that has captivated students and frightened their parents for decades. During the riots in the 1960s, the students used them to get around. In the 80s, a kid named Ken Hechtman got expelled for using the tunnels to steal uranium from the physics lab in Pupin Hall where four decades earlier the Manhattan Project had been headquartered. There was a lot of history to these tunnels. None of which meant a damn thing to me right now. All that mattered was finding a way out.
I could hear breathing, ours and his, raggedly echoing in the narrow space; footsteps, too. We kept making turns every chance we got. Anything to avoid a direct line of sight—and of fire.
Ahead of us, the tunnel widened and we could run side by side. We were under Fayerweather Hall, if I remembered correctly, assuming we hadn’t gotten turned around. Ahead of us, the tunnel forked: a short passage on the left led to two narrow steps and a door, while the longer arm on the right just led on into darkness. I mounted the steps and pushed on the door, which had no knob. Locked. I shoved at it with one shoulder. Nothing. I set the plank down and tried again with as much of a running start as I could get in the narrow space. I could feel the door rattle under the impact, but it held.
“Come on,” Julie said, too loudly. In the distance we heard footsteps come to a halt, then start up faster.
I grabbed the plank again and we ran on, to the right.
The lighting was uneven underground. Some flickering fluorescents for a stretch, then nothing, then a bulb in a plastic cage overhead casting a dim yellow glow. Here, as we crossed a long transverse passage, there was nothing at all, and we felt our way carefully, unable to see each other even inches away. I brushed against the stem end of a pipe at ankle level and heard as Julie walked into its mate on her side. She stifled a curse. I reached out, felt her sleeve, and used it to tug her toward me. This time she didn’t complain.