I reminded myself of my belief that the Phantom didn’t want me dead. Problem was, I was also reminded of the fact that the last time I showed up at a meeting supposedly created by the Phantom, someone ended up dead on the Public Garden. I put that out of my mind, perhaps out of desperation, maybe ignorance, probably both.
And I began walking, slowly, buying time, but for what I wasn’t sure. Probably for Hank Sweeney to get himself in better position. I walked past the door to an office building on my right, then the darkened entrance to Locke-Ober on my left. Inexplicably, the thought occurred to me that thousands of patrons of that restaurant, given its two-century tenure, had left this material world, and I wondered if I was about to join them. My thoughts, my mood, my expectations were of little more than death.
Or were they? One more time, I reminded myself that the Phantom wanted me alive. Very, very much alive. I was his mouthpiece for a message he hadn’t yet gotten out, and I don’t think he was about to kill me out of spite. Maybe somebody else was, but not the Phantom.
I arrived at the passageway, every bit as long and narrow as I had envisioned, and even darker than I had imagined. There wasn’t a single light along the way, which was a metaphor for something in my life, but damned if I could conjure up what.
This was really stupid, I realized, arguably the stupidest thing I had ever done, not just putting myself in harm’s way but voluntarily walking, unarmed and barely protected, into the most vulnerable crevice in all of Boston.
And yet I took that first step. And then another. And another yet.
They were slow steps, cautious and methodical. Pretty soon, it was as dark behind me as it was ahead — so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I heard a dull squeak, and felt a swoosh along the pant leg at my shin. A rat, though, was the least of my worries. The passage was so narrow that I kept brushing against one of the cement sides with my shoulders.
After each step, I paused, looking for something that I couldn’t see, trying to hear something that perhaps wasn’t there, feeling for something that didn’t exist. I didn’t know. I only knew what my gut told me to do. There are thousands of newspaper reporters in this great country of mine, good reporters and bad, curious and incurious, ambitious and lazy, and I was the one, the single one, who was a big enough jackass to be meeting a killer in a tiny, blackened, concrete-enclosed sliver of downtown Boston tonight.
I got what I estimated was about 40 percent of the way through the walkway when I thought I heard a noise emanating from the other end. It was a vague scraping, shuffling noise, and I stopped, held my breath to stifle my own sounds, and strained to figure out what it was.
Scrape, scrape.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
My voice ricocheted off the walls, magnifying along the way, then echoing mournfully toward the end.
Silence.
But only for a moment. Then the scraping resumed, and the scraping was accompanied by hard breathing. I had a terrible picture in my mind of one of the Phantom Fiend’s victims lying on the passageway floor, not quite dead but barely alive, searching for help that maybe I was there to give.
So, frantically, I shouted again. “Who’s there? Say something! Who’s there?”
A panting noise now, and more scratching. I surged forward, perhaps in vain, maybe in stupidity. With each step, I poked ahead with my foot and pushed at the air with my outstretched arms. I took maybe four steps this way, looking not dissimilar to the way Frankenstein looked when he lurched across wherever it was that he lurched.
And that’s when the collision occurred.
Whatever it was, it was low to the ground, where I pictured the injured woman to be. I hit it with my knee and my foot at the same time. It was solid and resilient, very much alive. As I pushed against it, I heard a guttural noise, and whatever it was pushed back against me, knocking me off balance, toppling me against the side wall, and then to the ground.
I thrashed on the pavement, making contact with whatever it was, pushing against it while it pushed back at me.
“Who is it?” I yelled, my voice reverberating off the two walls. Again I got no answer, but I didn’t think I would; part of the reason for yelling was so Hank Sweeney could hear me out on the street.
I rose into a crouching position and felt around my knees — carefully. But just as I made contact with my hands, whoever it was, whatever it was, lunged at me, driving into my waist and chest, trying to take me down onto the undoubtedly urine-stained floor of this ancient passageway yet again.
I retaliated hard, quite literally fighting for my life. I grabbed he/she/it, forcing it off me, and then pinning it to the ground as I climbed on top of it, my face grazing one of the side walls. But still it wouldn’t give up, thrashing as it was. It felt solid. It felt muscular.
It felt, um, furry.
So I cupped my hands, ran them across the squirming figure, up and down in unison, until I felt an unmistakable shape I’ve felt thousands of times before: a dog’s head.
I felt its forehead. I felt its muzzle. I felt its floppy ears. I was relieved until the second I wasn’t, which was when it occurred to me that it could be a vicious pit bull or an aggressive rottweiler, sent into this enclosed space to tear me apart like the lions used to kill Roman peasants.
I grabbed whatever it was by the muzzle and held it closed with one hand, hearing a soft whimper in response. I patted around the animal’s neck with my other hand until I felt a collar, and I slipped my fingers inside. I struggled awkwardly to my feet, with both my hands otherwise involved in this creature, and began yanking him toward the direction from whence I came.
He or she was a willing prisoner, and reasonably polite, given the circumstances, passing along with me as I backed toward the entrance. My shoulders kept colliding with the walls, sending me staggering, but I never lost my grip on his nose or his neck.
And finally, I felt a little breeze on my neck and the sides of my face. The air became softer, less pungent, and a streetlight glowed from above. My eyes readjusted for a long moment, and I looked down at my hands to see a singularly frightened but particularly handsome black Labrador retriever staring at me with his enormous brown eyes. I let go of his muzzle, but not his collar.
Immediately, he hung his jaw open, gulping at air, panting hard. I knew how he felt. Then he voluntarily went into a sitting position in front of me, his eyes never leaving mine.
“What the hell were you doing in there?” I asked him.
He didn’t respond.
Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. He banged his tail hard on the pavement about half a dozen times, still staring at me staring at him.
For Hank Sweeney’s benefit, I said, “What’s a good dog like you doing in a dark alley like that?”
More tail thumping. I let go of his collar and he didn’t move away from me. Instead, he scratched at my leg with his left paw.
I crouched back down, this time in a show of peace. He licked me hard across my face, his grainy tongue seeming to pause on my cheek before it swept against my nose. I laughed, which was no small feat on this night, and memories, nice memories, wonderful memories, of my own golden retriever, Baker, dead a year now, washed through my head. So I pressed my face against his and rubbed the soft underside of his chin.
Which is when I felt it, an object jutting out of the bottom of his collar, much like a cask a Saint Bernard would carry. I maneuvered his collar around until the object was illuminated by the streetlamp. It was an envelope, business-size, folded over, fastened by a pin. I pulled it off delicately so as to not prick my new friend. Through the dark haze, I saw that the envelope bore the name Jack Flynn. I think I’ve heard of the guy. Tall. Handsome. Brave.