He started to walk along the narrow ledge to the left of the last set of tracks. Mercer followed, and I was next in line. “I always thought the tunnel-people stories were urban legend. All the stuff about a city beneath the streets.”
Hank Brantley shook his head. “I asked to work in this building thirty years ago, Alex. It was the height of the city’s homeless problem. I came here because I loved trains, and then I had this awfully rude awakening. Grand Central was one of the meccas for the homeless.”
“The station itself?” I asked.
“There used to be a waiting room,” Hank said. “A huge space that’s completely empty now. In fact, it’s rented out for private parties. But it was quite the sight in its time. Marble walls and oak flooring, with wainscoting around the entire room. Maids standing by for women who were traveling without help. When train travel hit the skids, that waiting room became the finest free hotel space for the city’s homeless, sleeping on the long wooden benches that lined the room.”
“I can’t imagine it.” Though the homeless-whether mentally ill, victims of domestic violence, or returning veterans without resources-were still a big problem in the city, there were now entire departments of government and nonprofit agencies that tried to work with the struggling population.
“Vagrants is what we called them back when I was a kid. Got here to find out that Grand Central’s public areas were considered the safest places for them to seek shelter from the wild streets of the eighties,” Hank said. “That was the city’s decade lost to crack and homelessness.”
“They could remain inside all night?” Mercer asked.
“Yes, unlike today, the building used to stay open. There’d be regular police checks at one in the morning, and then again at five A.M., just before the commuter rush. In between, it was easy for them to close their eyes and get some real rest. During the day, they’d panhandle to get enough food to keep them alive.”
“How many homeless people lived inside the main station?”
“By 1990, the estimates were at least five hundred of them. And from the faces I’d see day after day, I’d say at least fifty of them lived in here for more than a year. Pretty ironic that this magnificent edifice was so full of human misery.”
The path was narrow, and the farther we got from the train platform, the dimmer the lighting became. Every now and again, over our heads, was a bare bulb throwing off a glow against the dingy black area of the tracks. There was the distant rumble of subway trains going by somewhere farther below us. It seemed to repeat every few minutes.
“Is this dangerous?” I asked. I was running one hand along the wall to my left to keep my balance. “Where we’re walking now?”
“Not dangerous for you, Alex. More so for the poor souls who call it home.”
There were noises all around us in the long tunnel. Train whistles from nearby and far away, the occasional screeching sound of brakes, a dull pounding from a jackhammer, and voices too indistinct to hear from this distance.
“Is there still such a thing as an electrified third rail?”
“Sure there is. But not in a dead tunnel like the one we’re going to.”
“Relax, Coop. Years of ballet lessons and you can’t do a little balance beam here?” Mike said. He had latched his forefinger into the rear waistband of my jeans. “You won’t get electrocuted.”
“Actually, Mike,” Hank Brantley said, “that’s usually the way we discover where moles live. Someone rolls out of a cubby onto the tracks, while they’re sleeping or high. Gets electrocuted. Those bodies even cause trains to derail. Happens every week or two.”
There was the sound of something scratching against the metal tracks up ahead of us.
“Quit tugging at me, Mike,” I said.
“Can’t have it both ways, kid. I’m either hooked in your pants for life or not. Hear that noise?”
“Yeah.”
“Track rabbits. That’s the sound their nails make when they’re scampering across the railroad ties. Nails scratching metal.”
“I just changed my mind then, Mike. Don’t let go of me.”
Hank turned on a flashlight to guide us ahead. In about ten feet, he came to a place where the path widened into a raised concrete square, and we all grouped around him.
“So the guy you’re looking for, you know anything about him?”
Our heads all turned to Joe Sammen, the cop who’d recognized “Carl.”
“Only that I’ve seen him around my beat for the last three, maybe four years. That he’s a mole. ’Cause he told me that a few times, and I’ve seen him with other guys I know.”
“What’s your sector?” Hank asked.
“Charlie-David. I got above 43rd Street, Third Avenue to the east side of Fifth, north to 50th Street. The body was in DePew.”
“Let me see his photo again,” Hank said, holding out his hand for Mike’s iPhone. He looked at the picture of the dead man’s face, grimaced, and shook his head from side to side.
“Not familiar to me, which probably means he didn’t come into the station proper.”
“Is that uncommon?” Mike asked.
“Not for a real mole. I mean, there are at least six hundred people-men, women, and the occasional kid-who live in the tunnels that burrow out of 42nd Street, below the concourse. Some of them come in to use the bathrooms and clean up in the sinks, but the ones who are really hard-boiled? They’ve got their own little apartments down here. And they’re afraid that if they run into any of the homeless advocates in Grand Central, they’re going to be scooped up and taken to the nut house. Last thing they want are the rules and regs of a homeless shelter, you know?”
I knew that fact from many of the vulnerable homeless with whom my colleagues had worked.
“I’m warning you guys. What you’re going to see is unpleasant. These folks, they’ve got their own mayor, their own system of laws, and they live by their wits. Some of them cook food on the steam pipes that you hear hissing-food they beg for or take half eaten out of the trash.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Hobos have lived along train tracks since the first steam engine was invented. Right here, I’d say the nineteen eighties was the decade of the tunnels. The New York Central had gone bust, so a lot of tracks were shut down. At first men mostly used to come in to do drugs. It just kept growing,” Hank said. “Okay, we’re going to move along now. When we stood at the entrance to gate one hundred, I’d say we were almost directly underneath what would be 44th Street to the east of the building.”
“Sort of right below where DePew Place begins,” Mike said.
“Yeah. We’re going to pass along here, and there are hollow areas under this walkway where people live. Don’t disturb anyone if you hear noise. Most of them know me and will respond better than to strangers.”
“Okay.”
Hank Brantley was moving as he talked, turning to look back at us so we could hear him. “There are also some cubbies overhead-”
“In the wall?” Mike asked. I stood still while he leaned his head back. “Up there?”
“Pickaxed into the cracked concrete. Yup. That’s what I meant by apartments. If you look for the areas with overhangs, they’re especially sought after,” Hank said, pointing the light up and craning his neck. “That protects the moles from being seen by workmen on the platforms opposite the wall.”
“Do the tracks run straight out like this from the station?” I asked.
Hank held out one of his beefy arms. “Not at all. The train tracks go due north, but the tunnels spread out and around like the veins on the back of my hand. Sooner or later they connect to the subway tunnels throughout the city, and eventually they lead over to Penn Station,” he said, referring to the city’s massive but far less attractive train hub on the west side. “They were never meant to be linked together, but as the systems spread and the infrastructure rotted, you can pretty much get from here to the Hudson River via underground tunnels.”