“That’s why we’re here,” Mackey pointed out.
Marcantoni said, “Let me get the tape off this flash.” He and Angioni peeled the electric tape from the flashlight lenses, and then they started into the tunnel, moving in loose single file, carrying the wastebaskets and the file drawers.
Had the tunnel ever been used? If so, the people who’d been in here left no marks. At the time this had been built, gaslight was common in this part of the world, but it hadn’t been installed in here. If someone had been in the tunnel, using some kind of torch for light, there might be smoke smudges on the curved ceiling, but none appeared. It looked as though the tunnel had been built simply because that was the way the plans had been laid out, then it was locked and forgotten.
They walked down the easy slope, the tunnel absolutely straight, then headed along the level section. There was no sound but the brush of their feet. The air was cool and dry, with a faint mustiness. Every twenty feet or so there was a large iron ring jutting from the right side wall at about shoulder level. For sconces? For a guide rope, to be followed in the dark? There was no way to tell.
“There it is,” Marcantoni said, and they all came up to cluster at the beginning of the collapse. Just ahead of them, the ceiling had started to fall, three bricks wide at the peak to begin with, then wider. On the floor were the bricks, some broken, and a little debris. Farther on, the two flashlights showed that the collapse had become wider, with a combination of dirt and stone fallen from the hole. By twenty feet from the beginning of the rupture, the debris made a steep mountain slope that completely blocked the tunnel, top to bottom and side to side.
Marcantoni said, “My idea is, the bricks we can push against the side walls, and the rest of it we scoop into the wastebaskets, carry it back a ways, dump it out, leave room to get by.”
Williams said, “What if more comes down, when we start moving this shit?”
“It’s an old fall,” Marcantoni said. “Whatever happened was a long time ago. It’s stable now.”
Parker said, “When we start to move it, it won’t be stable any more.”
“Well,” Marcantoni said, “this is the route. This is the only way in. And we’re here.”
They took turns with the flashlights, looking up at the early part of the rupture. The remaining bricks to both sides were solid, hadn’t been loosened at all by whatever had happened to the part that fell. Here in its narrowest section, there was shallow emptiness just above where the bricks had been, and then compacted earth. Farther on, more dirt and stone had fallen from above the displaced bricks, so maybe Marcantoni’s idea was right, that this was an accident done by the crew removing trolley tracks half a century ago, who never knew they’d done it.
Finally, Mackey said, “I think we can try it, anyway. If more of it starts to fall in, though, I’ve got to tell you, I’m going back to the library, and anyone who wants my share can have it.”
“Listen, we can do it,” Angioni said. “Come on, Tom. A couple you guys go get tables.”
Williams and Mackey went away, pleased to go, taking one of the flashlights. Parker held the other, and the remaining three moved slowly forward, at first kicking bricks and debris to the side, and then, when it got to be more than that, scooping the file drawers into the slope of the debris mountain, dumping dirt and stones into the wastebaskets. They stacked bricks to the sides, and carried heavy baskets back along the tunnel to empty into little pyramids of trash. From time to time, the slope ahead of them made small shifts, and they could hear stones pattering down its side, but then it would be silent again.
By the time Mackey and Williams had made three round-trips, bringing one of the eight-foot-long tables back with them each time, lining the tables up in a long row, the other four had progressed into the trash mountain, which was loose and easily disassembled. Parker had spelled Kiloski, and then Kiloski had given the flashlight to Angioni, and now Marcantoni had it.
Above them, they were now at the serious part of the rupture, where the tear in the ceiling was a dozen bricks wide and where, when the flashlight beam was aimed up there, it was all a dark emptiness, like a vertical cavern. But nothing else seemed to want to come down out of there, so they kept working, and now Mackey and Williams joined them, and from that point on three cleared debris while two carried the full wastebaskets back to empty, and one held both flashlights.
They worked for more than three hours, from time to time sliding the tables forward. They didn’t try to clear all the trash out of the way, just enough so they could keep moving forward and bringing the tables along after them.
Finally, Marcantoni said, “Listen!”
They all listened, and heard the faint sound, the rustle of dirt sliding down a slope, and Angioni said, “Is that the other side?”
“You know it is,” Marcantoni told him. “We’re almost through.”
Still it took another half hour to finish this part of it. When they moved the tables forward now, the easiest way was to go on all fours underneath and juke them along that way. Soon they could start emptying the wastebaskets into the cleared area ahead, which made things go faster.
And it looked as though Marcantoni’s estimate of the length of the collapse was right. The length of the three tables would total just a little longer distance than the rupture above them. Nothing additional fell while they worked, but the tables gave them a sense there’d still be a way out if things went bad.
Williams had the flashlights when they first broke through. “Hey, wait,” he said. “I can see it. Tom, there’s your damn door.”
They were looking through an ellipsis, less than a foot wide, brick and rupture above, rubble below, at a dark continuation of the tunnel. At the far end, just picking up the gleam from the flashlights, was the black iron door.
At this end, the rupture in the ceiling had narrowed again, with less debris having fallen down. They moved more quickly, wanting to get this part over with, and then Marcantoni strode on ahead, not bothering about a flashlight. When he reached the door, he had his wrench-and-bit assembled, and with one move he had the door unlocked; one kick, and it was open.
A dry breeze whispered through the tunnel, maybe for the first time. A few pebbles rattled onto the tables.
On the far side, the iron door led to a nearly empty storage room, thick with dust. A few old glass display cases had been shoved haphazardly against the side wall, along with an upright metal locker with a broken hinge, a jeweler’s suitcase with a broken wheel, and other things that should have been thrown away. Whatever the army had used this space for, if anything, Freedman Wholesale Jewel used it, when they remembered it at all, as a garbage dump.
Crossing this room to the door in the opposite wall, Marcantoni said, “I was only here during the rehab, so I don’t know the layout now. I only know the plans didn’t have a lot of interior alarms, because they counted on the building to take care of that.” He tried the knob and cursed. “What the hell’d they lock it for?”
Kolaski said, “That’s a rare antique suitcase.”
“Shit,” Marcantoni said. “Gimme a minute.”
It didn’t take much more, and then they moved on into a broad dimly lit area; the employees’ parking lot under the main store, empty on a Sunday night. Exit lights and a few fire-code lights led them diagonally across the big concrete-floored room with its white lines defining parking spaces to where an illuminated sign, white letters on green, read STAIRS.
The stairs were also concrete, with a landing at the top and a closed firedoor that was also locked. “Shit,” Marcantoni said, and reached for his tools.
Parker said, “That door is going to be alarmed.”