"So?" Jeff asked Randy as the boy began licking his lollipop. "Sure you don't want to move in here?"
Randy shook his head. "It's ugly," he pronounced.
"Hey! Is that any way to talk about Jinx's house?"
"The boy's got good taste," Jinx said. "Let's go get lunch. I have two classes this afternoon, and then I've got to get to work."
"Still working both jobs?"
Jinx shrugged. "The way I figure it, I didn't work any jobs for so long that now I'm playing catch-up. By the time I graduate, I figure I'll be even, and then I can cut back to one job. And that one is going to pay more than waitressing."
Leaving the apartment, they went to the diner that had always been Jeff's favorite and found a table by the window so they could watch the activity on Broadway. The mix of people hadn't changed much since Jeff had lived in the neighborhood: mostly students with a lot of university faculty and staff mixed in. But there were others as well-tourists and shoppers and people just prowling the city.
And always the homeless.
An old woman-nearly indistinguishable from Tillie to a casual observer-pushed an overflowing shopping cart, and down the street three shabbily dressed men sat on the sidewalk, their backs resting against a wall, panhandling for change.
For a long moment both Jinx and Jeff gazed at them in silence, and it was finally Jeff who uttered the thought that was in both their heads.
"Do you suppose it's still going on?"
Seconds ticked by as Jinx said nothing, but at last she shook her head. "It was Ms. Harris," she said. "She was the one who passed out the money, and without the money, it never would have worked."
"Ever wonder what happened to her?"
Jinx's expression darkened. "I'm just glad she's gone."
Half an hour later Jeff and Randy were back in the subway station, waiting for a train to take them back downtown. "Who's Ms. Harris?" Randy asked, looking up at his father.
Jeff hesitated, then said, "Just someone we used to know, a long time ago."
"Was she a friend of Auntie Jinx's?"
A southbound train roared into the station. Jeff clutched tight to Randy's hand as the crowd of departing passengers swirled past them, then helped him step onto the train. "No," he said as the doors closed. "Ms. Harris wasn't a friend of Auntie Jinx's. She wasn't a friend of anyone's."
The train started to move and Jeff reached up with his free hand to grab the railing above his head. For a fleeting second, he saw someone peering at him through the window from the platform.
A woman, her face nearly lost in the folds of a ragged shawl.
He glimpsed her face for only a few fleeting seconds, and yet it terrified him. It was a face that looked as if it had been attacked. The skin was deeply scarred, the features distorted and twisted. It reminded him of the tunnels and the time he'd spent in them, seeing people who had been attacked by other people, or rats, or insects, or alcohol and drugs, or simply by life itself.
It was a face that was universal in the tunnels.
It was the eyes that he recognized.
They were the same eyes that had looked at him during the one moment when he'd thought a stranger might choose to help him.
And that person had turned away.
Now, as the train began to move, it was Jeff who turned away from Eve Harris. When his son asked him a moment later if he knew who the lady was, he just shook his head.
"No," he said. "She wasn't anybody. I don't think anybody was there at all."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
A full count of the people living beneath the streets of Manhattan is difficult to achieve for two simple reasons: The population is transient and most census officials do not wish to go into the tunnels. Estimates of their numbers vary wildly, from a few hundred, to a few thousand, to tens of thousands. Since Grand Central Station was restored and most of its public seating removed, the homeless have largely disappeared from that very public venue, though they can still be found making efforts to keep themselves clean in the rest rooms on the lower levels. Though many of the "nests" above the tracks have been cleaned out, this does not mean the people who inhabited those nests are no longer in the city; rather, they have simply burrowed deeper into the tunnels, beyond the reach of official New York.
To date, there is no complete and integrated map of the tunnel system beneath the city. Partial maps exist: the subway system, the water system, the various utility systems. But in addition to the tunnels and passageways and storm drains that are still in use, there are miles of abandoned tunnels that have been long forgotten. Forgotten, at any rate, by everyone except those who live in them.
Contrary to popular belief, not all the people who live beneath the streets are derelicts and drunks. Many of them are productive members of society, holding jobs and attending school, giving false surface addresses to whatever bureaucracies they come in contact with. Some families have chosen to live under the streets rather than having their children separated from them by government agencies. Many of these people do not consider themselves homeless, but only "houseless." They organize themselves into tribes and family groups and establish territorial claims beneath the city. It is said that the deeper people live beneath the city, the less frequently they visit the surface and the less likely it is that they will ever live on the surface again.
Many of our subterranean citizens suffer from mental illness and chemical dependencies that often make them incapable of taking advantage of the services that are provided for them. They drift through our lives, muttering softly to themselves or ranting at invisible enemies, until finally they disappear back underground.
Underground and out of our consciousness.
All of the characters and events in this book, on the surface and in the tunnels, are fictional. At least, I hope they are…
– J.S.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many people helped me in the preparation of this book, especially with regard to the New York City criminal justice system. My dear friend Elkan Abramowitz and his partner, Bill McGuire, connected me with all the right people and guided me through the various judicial departments of New York City, and Marvin Mitzner, Esq., put me in touch with the mayor's office. People from the district attorney's office, the police department, and the Department of Correction were all very cooperative in showing me their facilities, familiarizing me with their procedures, and answering my innumerable questions. From the district attorney's office, I particularly want to thank Constance Cucchiara, who spent a morning guiding me through the courtrooms at 100 Centre Street and solved the mystery of the missing twelfth floor. From the Midtown South Precinct, I am especially indebted to Adam D'Amico, who gave me a guided tour of the precinct house and instructed me in the procedures involved in booking a person into the judicial system. I owe a special thanks to Deborah Hamlor and Jo-Ona Danoise of the City of New York Department of Correction, who spent an entire day with me as I toured Rikers Island and the Manhattan Detention Complex. They not only provided me with mountains of information but were endlessly patient. Many thanks to both of you! Others who were generous with their time and information at Rikers Island were Bureau Captain Sheila Vaughan, Head of Special Transportation Brian Riordan, and many other correction officers. Thank you for an enlightening experience and for your time and energy. John Scudiero, warden of the Manhattan Detention Complex, also took several hours to educate me about his facility and its relationship to the New York City courts and provided me with a tour from a prisoner's perspective. I also wish to thank the judges and bailiffs who seemed utterly unsurprised to see me appearing through the doors usually reserved for prisoners. Thanks, too, to Mayor Giuliani's office for connecting me with various precincts in Manhattan, and to the transit police, who didn't apprehend me as I endlessly poked around subway stations and Grand Central station, taking pictures, peering down tunnels, and generally behaving in what must have seemed a very suspicious manner.