Big Machine (19 page)

She was testing me for my own benefit, but damned if I remembered the term she’d used in the car. I was too busy feeling my wrists ache from phantom handcuffs as I slouched through the gathered forces of Garland’s police. I guess all the criminal hadn’t been knocked out of me. I still felt the paranoia.

“Nonnative
spartina,
” she said. “It’s cordgrass. I know it sounds a little silly, but if it’s growing in that pipe, it could’ve reacted badly with the sewage and released a highly combustible gas. There have been three cases in the last five years in Northern California alone.”

I stopped moving. “Is that true?”

The Gray Lady walked ahead two steps, quiet now. She touched her face absently. The hand roamed up and squeezed the black tam that hid her white hair.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

We reached the shoreline, where the mayor had spoken only that morning. I looked back at the patio where the Gray Lady and I had been, and wondered if Mr. Clay could’ve been there too. Right behind us. Solomon Clay.

The actual site of the explosion, including the remains of the lectern, was surrounded by crime tape and guarded by two young cops hunched
forward in the nighttime chill. They talked with each other and only peeked at me and Ms. Henry to be sure we didn’t disturb the scene.

The Gray Lady kept going. It looked like she was about to hop right into the waters of the Bay. She opened a little gate at the very edge of the square and went down a ladder that led to a sandy shore. Down there we saw the rest of the damage done by the day’s explosion, a hole about the size of a washing machine in the concrete base wall of the square. There was crime tape across this too.

“Take out your flashlight,” she said, then peeled the tape off on one side.

We climbed in.

THE WADERS WERE A WONDERFUL IDEA
because ten seconds in that muck would’ve eaten through the soles of our shoes. It wasn’t that deep, about two feet of sludge. Even with our flashlights and with moonlight coming through the hole, I only knew the Gray Lady was with me because of the shallow breaths ahead. Don’t get me wrong, there was a cone of light up there, but I couldn’t make out the person in control of it. Like I said, just her little breaths—sniffles, really—through the nose, an effort to fight the smells.

I wonder what to call that color of goo. There was green in it, but a golden cream too. Plus these veins of reddish mud floating at the top. Ms. Henry breathed through her nose, but I opened my lips, catching the air in there because I didn’t want to smell the stuff.

“Close your mouth,” she whispered. “You don’t want sewage going down your throat.”

Mouth closed meant nose open.

I’ve described the color, but there’s still the stench to explain. Imagine a dying mule vomiting a soiled diaper all over your sweaty feet. The pipe smelled worse than that. Plus rancid milk was in there somewhere. What a bouquet. Our sniffled breathing made us both sound panicked as our legs sloshed through this pancake batter.

The Gray Lady hesitated, stopped moving actually, and I took the opportunity to get as close to her as I could. Rudely, I popped the flashlight right in her face. She squinted and curled her lips and showed her uneven teeth. The little razor bumps on her neck looked like a bad rash.

We’d gone another hundred feet down the pipe before I felt calm enough to ask a question. “Why did Solomon Clay defect?”

“He’s not running off to Russia, Mr. Rice.”

“But why does he
think
the Library’s corrupt?”

“He’s a fanatic,” she whispered.

“You said that earlier, Ms. Henry.”

And how many times had people called my family exactly that?

“You think sensible people plant bombs in crowded places?” she asked loudly.

The Gray Lady wouldn’t answer me, not directly, not honestly. This only made me want to ask more questions.

But she interrupted me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rice. Just one second. I have to adjust my cap.”

This time it wasn’t me who turned the flashlight on her. She simply tucked hers into the top of her waders, and the light rose up against her neck and face. It flattered the woman. Capturing her eyes, large and somber. She wore those drab olive waders, yes, but sable eyeliner too, heavier above the eyelids and faint beneath each eye. Then she pulled the black tam from around her head, and that white hair gathered the light until it flared around her like a pearl headdress.

Just let me look at her.

She got the cap on again, moved her flashlight. “Now what were you saying, Mr. Rice?”

What had I asked again?

I really couldn’t remember.

SOON WE WERE IN THE THROAT
of that sewer, where the air was so thick it felt like drizzle, and I sweated my clothes three shades darker pretty quick. The air wasn’t combustible, but it did make me feel light-headed. My legs moved in that slow, mechanical way I recognized from dreams, like I’d trespassed into someone else’s hallucination.

The Gray Lady had a little easier time than me because she didn’t have to stoop beneath the low ceiling of the tunnel, but it also meant the sewage floated as high as her thighs. The coldness in my right leg now had a challenger. The back of my head was scraped raw. I thought it was just decay that made the top of the sewer pipe feel so rough against my scalp, but when I finally trained my light up, I saw a layer of grease seven inches thick and hardened into jagged copper rock. Bits of glass, hair, stone, insects, even eggshells were buried in there. Seeing that, I tried to stoop even lower because my head really hurt, but it was impossible to stay that low and keep moving. I was forty years old! And not one of those jog-around-the-track-with-your-baby-in-a-stroller kinds of forty.

At first Ms. Henry and I tried to swish through the water quietly, but being stealthy takes the energy out of you, and the more tired you get, the more you just want to hurry. Pretty soon we were kicking our way through, churning the sewage so loudly I’ll bet people heard us from the sidewalk. Though maybe there wasn’t anyone up there. We’d passed Stone Mason Square a while back, I was sure of that, were probably halfway toward my hotel already. Tree roots cracked through the surface of the pipe here and there.

The Gray Lady stopped ahead of me, and I was thankful for the rest, but it wasn’t me that made her pause. We’d finally reached two offshoot tunnels, one going left and another right. Both even smaller than the main pipe. My back filed a protest and my legs signed it too.

She put a hand over her mouth before speaking.

“You go left and I’ll go right and we’ll meet back here in ten minutes.”

I said, “Lady, if you try to leave me, I’m going to climb on your back.”

“You’re afraid?” she asked.

“Terrified.”

This was one benefit of being a grown man and not a kid: I wanted to impress this woman, but not to the point of getting myself killed.

“Me too,” she whispered.

Then I pushed it. I said, “Maybe we should hold hands.”

A line! I used a line on the Gray Lady as we stood knee-deep in filth.

Her smile disappeared. No hand extended.

“We’ll check the left tunnel first,” she said, and went in ahead of me.

I’LL CALL THIS PIPE JUNKY ROW
because there were a lot of used needles floating in the muck. Both the Gray Lady and I kept our black cases in front of us as we walked so we wouldn’t get poked in the legs. Along with the needles there were sheets of wadded paper, razors, pens and pins, buttons, lots of rags. We even passed through a cloud of plastic straws. Above us there were small openings in the ceiling that fed waste down into the water.

“It’s been sealed,” she said. “Look around. See if there’s anything unusual.”

“Besides
everything?
”

“Yes,” she said sarcastically. “Besides that.”

The passage ended abruptly, a smooth concrete slab cutting us off. A very new wall, its age obvious because it wasn’t stained, nothing growing through or on it. I knocked the concrete with my flashlight, and it made a quiet sound,
-pock- -pock-
, that echoed. Up this close the Gray Lady’s flashlight exposed some numbers, code, in orange paint. Nothing that made sense to me. Information for other sewer workers who knew the
language. Maybe this was the first work being done for that ferry terminal. Reclaiming Panhandler Plaza. I wasn’t quite ready to move yet, so I stood there, panting, but pretending to study the digits.

“Do you understand them?”

“Pretty standard municipal codes,” I answered.

Sounded good to me, but what about to her? She looked at the wall again, passed her light over it once more. I felt stuck between mistrust and attraction as I watched her move. And I wondered how I appeared to her just now, touching the numbers with my fingertips. In her eyes was I dashing or dim?

WE BACKTRACKED
to the main pipe and then went across, into the other offshoot tunnel. If the left tunnel was Junky Row, then we should call the right one Jelly Lane. The stray needles were replaced by bright multicolored muck, sticky as jam to get through. Looking up at the narrow drainpipes in the ceiling, I wondered if there was a marshmallow factory above us. There were pink globs, purple globs, blue violet, and hot pink globs. They looked like the heads of baby jellyfish bobbing at the top of the sewage. I even thought they might be some freaky marine life spawned in the chemical vat of the sewer. But when I pressed at them with my black case, they simply popped and oozed, like blisters, blending with the sewage that carried them. They weren’t creatures. They were bubbles. They added to the overwhelming spice of the air down there, and I felt the edges of my perception turning fuzzy.

The globs actually grew bigger as we trekked down the tunnel, growing from baseball-size to softball-size. Each blob had a little weight to it, so when you walked through one, it pulled slightly. It felt like someone catching at your pants. That was bad, but worse was if you walked through a few at once. Then they all seemed to grab together. Swarms of them slowed us down.

“You doing okay?” I asked her, as if she was the one getting fidgety.

“Fine.”

She said this, but my flashlight caught sweat on the back of her neck.

I looked behind me, just as a precaution, and when I did, I saw that the globs I’d been kicking off hadn’t just floated away. They’d passed behind,
but stuck together in my wake, one after the next clinging to the back of my waders. It trailed for yards. I’d grown a glowing tail.

And that was just about enough.

I didn’t think, just reacted. Thrashed in the water because I needed to, absolutely got damn had to, get those glowing bubbles off my ass. I spun, but that only made the whole tail wrap around me. They wouldn’t pop. They held. I was under attack by foam!

And losing.

I stamped my legs, swung my case, howled and coughed and splashed. Please just give me some space. That’s what I would’ve said if I could’ve said anything. But I couldn’t. Instead I growled as I fought them. And, finally, finally, I tore myself free.

To find the Gray Lady just watching me.

“You need a cigarette break,” she said.

I pointed at her. “Check.”

She turned her flashlight away from me, then back.

“I think they sealed this pipe up too. Looks like another new wall just a ways down. It’s close enough that I can see the same orange numbers, but I want to make sure. The Dean would want me to be thorough. So I need you to stay cool for just a little longer, okay?”

What the hell did she call me? Was she speaking Spanish all of a sudden? Or Creole? It damn sure wasn’t English, was it? I heaved and sighed and caught my breath while she repeated herself, but I still didn’t understand. So she pointed at the spot where I stood and then held up her open hand, and I got it. Stay. At this point I was too exhausted to be scared.

She left me.

But wait, here’s a little gift for Ricky while he recovers. The sudden and overwhelming smell of perfume.

I shined the light behind me and prayed the new scent wasn’t coming from there. Thankfully, it wasn’t. It came from above. I pointed the flashlight up and, just a few inches to my left, saw another small drainpipe. I moved closer. Stood as straight as I could. Pointed my nose at the opening and inhaled.

Laundry soap.

Sweet laundry soap.

Not that industrial kind either, which is mostly just ammonia. This was a combination of a dozen home detergents. We must’ve been underneath some neighborhood Laundromat. The pipe gave off an aroma of berries and lemon and rose and violet and vanilla and lavender and just a hint of ammonia. It was a welcome antidote to the poisonous stench of the sewer. I shut my eyes, and I’m sure I was smiling. Then I heard Adele Henry’s lovely voice.

“This tunnel is sealed. I don’t see anything that would expose the Library.” I heard her sigh deeply. “I’m going to check under the waterline to be sure.”

“Don’t forget to hold your breath!”

I nearly sang the sentence.

She paused. “Is everything all right?”

“Don’t I sound all right?”

“You sound
cheerful
.”

“Just smelling the roses,” I said.

“I’m glad I wore gloves,” she responded. Then I heard the rippling sound of her hand brushing through the sewage.

I enjoyed the outrageous moment, the ridiculous mental image of my nose pressed to a laundry pipe while the Gray Lady groped through sewage.

Then I felt a hand touch my arm.

I wanted it to be Ms. Henry’s, needed it to be hers, but when had she ever touched me? Besides, she was still way down
there
.

As soon as I registered the touch, it became tighter. Gripping my left wrist. It did more than hold. It tried to drag me down. And I didn’t fight, not exactly. Not at first. Instead I tried to see who it was. That was my stupid first reaction. Not fight or flight, but understand. But the flashlight was in my left hand, the one that had been grabbed, so I couldn’t do more than wave it over the sewage. The dot of light flickered against the sewer walls.