"How do you know they won't shoot you as soon as you go out there?"
"Can't be any worse than sittin‘ here wondering what's going to happen," Jagger replied. He pulled the door open, hesitated a second, then stepped out into the darkness beyond.
Nothing happened.
"You coming?" he asked. "Because I ain't waiting."
Ripping off his own clothes, Jeff pulled on the ill-fitting pants and shirt that still lay on the floor, then picked up the second flashlight. He was about to turn it on, then thought better of it. If the batteries ran out in one, they'd need the other.
Moving through the door, he peered into the darkness that stretched away in both directions. "Which way?" he asked.
"Up," Jagger replied. "Except we haven't got a ladder."
From somewhere far off in the darkness to the right, they heard something.
It sounded like a shot, followed by a scream.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," Jagger said. Without waiting for a reply, he moved quickly into the blackness to the left.
A second later, before Jagger would disappear completely, Jeff followed.
CHAPTER 14
Keith and Eve Harris were sitting in a tavern- Mike's, or Jimmy's, or something like that-at a tiny table covered with a red-checkered tablecloth. A real linen tablecloth with the stains to prove it. Every table in the place was filled, and people were three deep at the bar that ran the full length of the far wall. Curtains partially blocked the view of the sidewalk outside, giving the illusion that a steady stream of bodiless heads were drifting by. The buzz of conversation was loud enough that Keith had to strain to hear Eve Harris, but that same buzz gave them a degree of privacy they might not have had at a quieter restaurant.
Keith's gaze had flipped back and forth between the woman and her business card at least half a dozen times in the five minutes since she'd led him into the tavern, ordered a glass of merlot to his scotch on the rocks, and handed him her card. "This is real?" he'd asked as he read the title beneath her name.
"It's real," the waiter had said. "Nice to see you again, Ms. Harris."
"Nice to see you, too, Justin. Everything going all right?"
"I'm still working, aren't I?" the waiter countered, then turned to Keith. "If it weren't for Ms. Harris, I'd probably be dead by now. You don't even want to know how I was living before I met her. Be back in a minute with the drinks."
A minute was exactly what it had been, and in that minute Eve Harris told him that she hadn't done much for the waiter-she'd just gotten to know him when he was panhandling in Foley Square, and after talking to him almost every day for a month, asked him what he wanted to do with his life. "He said he just wanted to get himself cleaned up enough to get a real job. So all I did was take him shopping. We got him new clothes and a haircut, and I rented him a room. Then I sent him in here to talk to Jimmy, and he's been working ever since." Then Justin reappeared with their drinks, and Eve Harris glared at him mischievously. "Of course, if he screws up, he'll be the best bartender living in a box on Foley Square."
"Don't worry, I'm not screwing up," Justin assured her, grinning.
Now that they were alone again, Keith said, "I don't get why you're even interested in this." He could feel Eve Harris studying him with as much concentration as he'd been studying her before answering.
She took a sip of her merlot, seemed to come to some kind of decision, then leaned forward in her chair. "I'm aware of who your son is, what he did, and what happened to him," she said. "But I'm also aware that Perry Randall's daughter doesn't think he was guilty, and was planning to marry him. What I don't understand is what you were doing in the subway, asking people if they'd seen your son. He's dead, isn't he?"
As briefly as he could, Keith told her what he'd seen at the Medical Examiner's office, and what the drunk over on Bowery had told him.
"And you believed him?" Eve asked.
"Why shouldn't I?" Keith challenged, a note of belligerence in his voice.
She shook her head almost sadly. "Mr. Converse, there are basically three kinds of people living on the streets of this city: the addicts, the crazies, and the houseless." She smiled thinly at the puzzled look on Keith's face. " ‘Houseless' is their term, not mine. Some of the people consider the streets their home, so they aren't homeless, at least according to them. Houseless, but not homeless. But a lot of the groups tend to overlap-most of the addicts and crazies are homeless, but not all the homeless are addicts or crazies." She tilted her head toward Justin, who was busily wiping down a table that had been momentarily vacated. "A lot of the homeless just need a break. But some of the rest of them…" She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I wish I could say they're all just down on their luck, but I've lived here too long and seen way too much. And I've learned that the addicts will tell you anything they think you might be willing to pay for." She fixed him with a look that told him she would know if he didn't tell her the exact truth. "So how much did you pay him?"
Keith felt utterly stupid. "Five dollars,"he admitted.
"Tell me what he looked like. And be specific-shabby clothes and gray hair isn't going to cut it. That's half the derelicts I know."
Keith cast his mind back to when he'd talked to the drunk that morning, and began describing everything he remembered. When he was finished, Eve Harris nodded grimly.
"Al Kelly," she sighed. "Well, at least now I know what happened to him." She took a deep breath. "Mr. Converse, let me tell you a few things about this city…" She talked steadily, and when she was done, Keith's hands were clenched around his now empty glass.
"You're saying it was my fault Al Kelly died?" he asked, signaling Justin for a refill. "You're saying if I hadn't given him the five dollars, he wouldn't be dead?"
Eve shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. But I do know better than to give money to addicts. Drunks and junkies-they're all the same-they'll lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. And it sounds like you bought Al's lie for five dollars. Some other people saw the money change hands, and a few minutes later Al's dead. You add it up."
Now it was Keith who fell into a long silence. Out the window, it was starting to get dark, and cold-looking rain had begun to fall. The bar itself was so packed now that the waiter was barely able to get through with his drink. Keith pictured the subway platform again, and recalled the roar of the trains that streamed through the station every few minutes all through the long afternoon as he'd shown Jeff's photograph to anyone who would look. Most of the people-the well-dressed ones who had things to do and places to go-barely even glanced at the photo. Most of them turned their back on him, or refused to acknowledge his existence at all.
Only the bums-the ragged men and women who had nothing better to do-had been willing to talk to him.
And now Eve Harris was telling him that most of them would just as soon lie to him as tell him the truth.
Like Al Kelly had lied. And gotten killed for a lousy few bucks.
And even if Kelly hadn't lied, how was he supposed to find Jeff? he wondered. If his son had made it into the subway station, he could have gotten on any one of the trains and gone anywhere.
Maybe Eve Harris was right-maybe he should just give it up and go back home. But then he remembered there was still one more possibility. "Do you know a lot of them?" he asked. "The people on the streets?"