But Michael wasn't done. "How did you find out about Raval?"
"That is a secret of Grogg's and cannot be revealed."
"What is Grogg?"
"He's sort of like a shaman. He can look into your soul."
Michael looked to Grady, who shrugged as if to ask if she was to speak of company secrets.
"It's dark as hell down here," she said to Sam.
"To our advantage," said Sam. "Take my hand." Grady held it and then took Michael's in her other.
"The air's bad. Smells of poison."
"Yep. Tastes like it came straight out the ass end of a diesel bus." Sam was leading them forward slowly over uneven ground. In places the cement had buckled and deteriorated.
"Get out of here," said a gravelly male voice. A dog growled low in the throat. In an odd way the human and the dog had a similar snarl. A light came on, blinding them. Then the light went flying. By chance it landed at an angle to them, casting soft light over the scene.
"You bastard. I'm gonna…" Then Grady could see Sam grabbing somebody. There came the sound of a struggle and a series of gravelly curses.
"Let's relax," Sam said.
Grady could see that the man was huge, even all hunched over, and Sam was holding the fellow by nothing more than one hand.
"All right, all right," the big guy was saying. "Just don't h urt my dog."
"Make sure it stays put or it'll be having quite a headache."
A small light appeared in the gray and the smoke and she knew it was Sam's.
"Keep your hands where I can see them." Sam released the man and stepped back. Sam's small light shone on a scraggly, bearded man who looked like he was covered in Vaseline and lived in a dirt pit. The skin of his face shone through a sheen of petroleum and grime, maybe sweat. She wondered if he even felt the chill of this cold hell.
"We don't like your kind of strangers down here."
"We'll be passing through."
"You taking her through here?"
"With your help I'll bet anything is possible."
"Why would I help?"
"A hundred bucks."
"You're right. I'd help. You got iron?"
"Enough for an anchor factory."
"Don't be shootin' down here. Ricochets are deadly."
"We only shoot those who need to be shot."
"You got a lotta balls bringing her down here… these days."
The dog began barking again. "Some unfriendly city officials are coming. How do we exit?"
The man pulled out a bottle and held it in front of him. "Singe their ass with this. Molotov cocktail. Just run it up there and light."
"Got a match?"
The man produced a lighter.
"You guys should have come down on a sheet of plastic. More hepatitis up that hole than in a whore's ass," he said as he took his dog's leash. "Now I can light that rag, but you gotta run like hell with it to get it up near the old grate."
"Go ahead," Sam said.
The man lit the rag; Sam ran to the hole in the plywood and threw it.
"You should have gone all the way up near the old grate."
"I don't know the old grate. Besides, I want to entertain them, not kill them."
Chapter 16
Slay the bear before sleeping in its cave.
Sam knew about the New York underground and the old subway stations, especially along the financial district. The city tried to keep the more obvious entrances closed, but it was like trying to keep ants out of a farmhouse.
They looked across a chamber, perhaps a quarter of the size of a football field. The old tunnel disappeared into the black, and what once had been an opulent waiting area of gleaming tile and polished wood had become like a gilded carriage left to rot in the carriage house. The base of the walls seemed to be favored for campsites. Maybe that was because if a man had his back to a wall, he didn't have to see behind him. The next most popular residential areas seemed to be around the base of the pillars.
Smoke filled the place, and to see far, you ducked down to get beneath the acrid haze. What Sam could see of the ceiling was pitch black from soot. Flame from the barrels angled toward the tunnels indicating that most of the draft came from that direction.
"What do you call yourself?" "Lugger. Or Dog Man."
"Dog Man is pretty apparent. How do you come by Lugger?"
"When I was a kid, I played football. I was a lineman, and when I would forget myself, I used to pick up the opposing guards and carry them. Hence, Lugger."
"How do you like it down here?"
"Beats up there. You look like a Greek or an Indian or something."
"I use liquid tan. No harmful radiation."
"Is that true?"
"No. How do we exit this place quietly and far from Christopher Street?"
"You go down the tunnel if you wanna come out a long way from here. Last day or two, the tunnel's been a bad place, though."
They were near one end of the old loading platform and so, to their left, the tunnel was maybe fifty feet. To the right it was much farther because it would be necessary to traverse the entire main hall of the station to start down the far segment.
"Right or left to get out of here?"
"You're kind of out of luck. Left tunnel has the best exit and it's a long ways to daylight. But, like I said, the meanest, craziest sons of a bitches is down there."
"What are you talking about?"
"Mostly people down here live and let live. Most are too crazy or hopeless to hurt anybody. Couple days ago, some gang guys came down. No fun. Raped a girl. I think they still got her back there."
"Let's go get the girl and get out of here at the same time."
"That tunnel is one place that Lugger and Big Dog don't go right now."
"Not even for two hundred bucks?"
"Damn, you trouble my soul with that kind of money. I came down here to get away from greed and corruption and such, and now you lay it in front of me."
"Let's go. We'll discuss greed on the way," Sam said. "Grady, you should have an extra gun." Sam handed her a 10mm semiautomatic. "Get each hand on a butt."
"I don't have a gun," Lugger said.
"I'll shoot twice as fast and that way you won't need one," Sam said.
Sam picked up Lugger's light, snapped it off, and handed it to him. "When I tell you to turn this on, give me light."
Sam used his own small light to guide the way. They walked across the old concrete floor and Sam could imagine better days sixty years ago when New York's finest made their way through a highly crafted underground structure exhibiting the proclivities of an era when craftsmen labored for hours over a few square feet of handwork. Lights in classic brass fixtures had radiated colorful tile mosaics that overlay the walls, ceiling, and floors. Signs had been created from the tile and embedded in the walls. In those days it didn't usually occur to people to mar and deface public property.
Now the place had become a haven for those left in the wake of a society committed to mass production.
There were only two or three darkened campsites in a di rect line to the tunnel. Sam was concerned that soon their hunters would find a more palatable way down into the under ground.
"What are the other ways in here? Tunnels?"
"Secret."
"Yeah, but what are they? It's part of the two hundred dollars."
"I'll give you a free history lesson. In the real world I operated one of the trains."
"Okay."
They came to a big drop down into the concrete well that held the track. For a moment the talking stopped as they lowered themselves off the edge of the concrete down to the crushed rock. When everyone was down, they started walk ing. Sam took Lugger's big light and handed Grady the smaller. The tunnel was thirty feet wide. At the sides it was packed earth.
"You have heard of the City Hall subway station. Closed down in 1945 because the curve was too tight. The cars got too long and they put the doors in the middle of the car and it didn't work on that tight curve. This station was the same thing. Happened in 1945, just like City Hall. If you look back, you'll see the curve in the track in front of the platform. The big cars wouldn't fit around the curve for offloading. With the doors moved to the middle and the longer car length, they no longer had the right fit to get people on and off. They kept the old City Hall pretty nice. It didn't get torn up and they still sometimes run a subway on the track past the platform. But they more or less forgot about this one until it was too late, and now they don't really want to get into the fact that the homeless people ripped the thing apart. All the brass fixtures are gone. All the tile is messed up, smoked up, or fallen down. At City Hall station they plugged all the stairways but didn't plug the track. Here they did both-"