Children of the Underground (12 page)

Eighteen

I avoided looking at the clock on the stove until a couple minutes past eight, when Michael was probably crawling through the woods toward the back of the fat man's house. It's hot, hotter than it should be in April in New York. This apartment doesn't have air-conditioning. I brought a fan to try to get the air moving around the place. It helps a little. It doesn't cool the air down, but it feels good blowing over my skin. It's too hot to close the windows. I can hear the incessant sounds of traffic outside. Horns honk. People shout out of car windows. In between the blaring of horns and the sounds of car engines, I can hear people talking out on the sidewalk. I'm alone, sitting here, trying to keep cool.

I memorized Michael's plan so that I can watch the clock and know what he's doing at any given moment. The crawling through the woods behind the fat man's house is more dangerous than it sounds. The fat man lives on the edge of acres and acres of rocky cliffs and trees. Some of the rock ledges rise over three feet above the ground with nothing on the other side but air. Michael has a small flashlight to help him navigate through the darkness, but he also memorized his approach and his escape route to try to avoid the cliffs, in case he has to run.

I watched another hour slip by on the clock. Michael should be coming up to the fence behind the fat man's house. He's supposed to flick his flashlight off before getting too close to the fence so the dogs won't notice him. He's supposed to stop in the woods and pack the tranquilizers in the hamburger meat and then make his way toward the house, following the light from the fat man's windows. Without his flashlight, Michael will have to feel his way through the darkness, reaching from tree to tree, listening for the dogs so that he knows he's headed in the right direction. The dogs will smell him before he can see them. They'll start to bark into the darkness. The barking should help. Michael can follow the sound of the barking. He just has to be sure to move fast enough to throw the meat over and head back into the woods before the barking gets too suspicious.

My mind keeps racing with every possible thing that could go wrong. I feel like I don't have control over my own thoughts. I'm worried about Michael, for you, for us, for him too. I keep imagining him tripping in the darkness, falling over a cliff, or even more ludicrous scenarios like him being eaten by a bear or a mountain lion. I'm also worried about the practical problems like making sure that each dog eats the right amount of the tranquilizers. If one dog eats too much, instead of two sleeping dogs, Michael's going to have to deal with one dead dog and one very angry dog.

It should take about forty-five minutes for the tranquilizers to go into effect. Michael is supposed to sit in the woods and listen for the dogs to go quiet. It's ten o'clock. He should be making his way toward the house now. The top of the fence is lined with barbed wire, so Michael is planning on cutting a hole in the fence with some wire clippers. Then he'll crawl through the hole and tie up each dog. He has two long lengths of rope so that he can tie the dogs to different parts of the fence.

Once he's taken care of the two dogs outside, Michael is going to have to break into the house through one of the basement windows. He'll cut the phone lines and the power. Even though the fat man is in his own house, Michael claims that having a flashlight in the darkness will give him an advantage. Michael will also have to deal with the dog inside the house. He brought a hood with him with a cinch at the bottom. The hood is similar to the ones Clara made me and Michael wear when they drove us back to D.C. in the van. Michael's plan is to get the hood on the third dog and to lock it in a separate room downstairs.

The night air has gotten cooler, but it's still hot. I have the fan in the window, trying to pull the cool air in from outside. Michael should be tying up the dogs now. The whole job is only supposed to take another hour to an hour and a half at most. The fat man's life was forty-seven years in the making and is about to be unraveled by three and a half hours of work, and I'm sitting here. Michael is the only person in the world who knows where I am, and he's wandering through the darkness over two hours away. I wonder how many jobs he's going to have to do before Jared contacts him. Two? Ten? Every job is one more person that will die because I convinced Michael to help me.

What is that? Somebody's knocking on my door. How is that possible? Nobody's supposed to know I'm here.

Nineteen

I put the journal down. The last time I'd heard an unexpected knock like that, strangers came into my home, killed your father, and stole you from me. I wasn't about to let something horrible like that happen again. I stopped writing. My eyes scanned the apartment to gauge how quickly I could run. I had barely bothered to unpack my bag. It was sitting on top of the bed in the other room. I looked over at the fan buzzing in the window. The fire escape was on the other side of the window. I stood up, trying to move fast without making any noise. I took four quick steps into the bedroom. I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder leading up to the bed and pulled my duffel bag off the mattress. I threw the journal into the bag. Anything else not in the bag, I was prepared to leave behind. I heard another knock as I pulled my duffel bag off the bed. This one was louder. I felt sweat rising on my skin due to the heat and the adrenaline. I took a quick look around the bedroom to see if there was any other way out. The window in the bedroom had locked bars on it. Even if I could get through the bars, it was a four-story drop to the street.

I moved quickly, stepping back into the kitchen. I had opened the window to pry the fan out so that I could get to the fire escape. It was an old, squeaky window and it was no more than ten feet from the apartment door. I put my palm on the bottom of the window, getting ready to push. I heard a third louder, more forceful knock. Whoever was out there was less than ten feet away from me and was losing their patience. I pushed up on the window and it screeched like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. The banging on the door grew louder and more intense. The door shook. I grabbed the fan and moved it out of my way. I threw my duffel bag onto the fire escape and swung a leg over the window ledge. I looked down. I could climb down three stories and then jump from there. The city was buzzing beneath me. Lights were shining everywhere. I had forgotten all about Michael. I had forgotten about the fat man. If people found out who I was, none of that would matter. I was about to swing my other leg over and run when I heard a voice shouting through the door.

“Maria,” the voice yelled. “I know you're in there. You don't have to be afraid.” It was a woman's voice. I recognized the voice from somewhere. She knocked again. Then she shouted, “It's safer to stay than to run, Maria.” I stopped. The voice didn't scare me. I straddled the window and tried to think of what to do. I tried to imagine what your father would have done, but your father wasn't there. Michael wasn't there either. I was alone.

“I'll be right there,” I yelled toward the door. I pulled myself back into the apartment, leaving my duffel bag on the fire escape in case I had to jump for it. Then I walked toward the apartment door. I left the chain lock strung across the door and opened it the two inches the chain lock would allow. Then I looked outside.

A woman was standing outside the door. She was bigger than me but not by much. She was wearing cargo pants and a black tank top. She had a bulge in the pocket of her cargo pants that I was sure was a weapon. I recognized the woman. It wasn't so long ago that this woman had brought me breakfast when I was hungry. “Dorothy?” The woman nodded. What was she doing outside my door? It had been only a week since I was never going to see her again. “Are you alone?” I asked her.

“I'm the only one standing here right now,” she answered.

“Okay,” I said. Then I closed the door and unhooked the chain.

Dorothy stepped inside. Without asking, she began a silent examination of the apartment. Despite the heat, she closed the bedroom window as she passed it. Then she came back into the kitchen and looked out the window leading to the fire escape. She grabbed my duffel bag from outside and handed it to me. “You probably want this,” she said. Then she closed the kitchen window too. With the windows closed, the apartment heated up like a greenhouse and the sounds from the city were muffled into little more than white noise.

The way Dorothy was moving made me nervous. She caught the look I was giving her. “You can't be too careful,” she responded.

“Am I in danger?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” she replied. I wasn't going to second-guess her. She helped people hide for a living.

“What are you doing here?”

“We'll get to that,” she replied. She looked over at me. “How are you?” she asked. I think she was trying to stop me from asking more questions. It didn't work.

“How did you know I was here?” I remember thinking how innocent Dorothy looked when I first met her. She didn't seem so innocent now.

“We've been following the two of you. It's standard protocol when people leave us without accepting our help. We need to make sure that they aren't turning us in.”

“So you've been following us the whole time?”

“Not me,” Dorothy said, “but someone.” I felt a chill run down my spine. We had tried to be careful. No matter how careful we were, it wasn't enough.

“Why are you here?” I asked Dorothy again. I hadn't expected to see her again, ever. I hadn't expected to see any of them again. Once they said they couldn't help me, I believed that was the end of it.

She was looking out the windows of the apartment into the windows of the adjacent buildings. Satisfied with what she saw outside the window, Dorothy sat down at the kitchen table. “We want your help.”

“My help?” I asked, too confused to be offended yet.

“We want you to help us hide someone.” Before I had a chance to respond, she continued. “He's nineteen years old. He's your age, Maria. He doesn't want to become a killer, so we've reached out to him.” I tried to think of something to say, some way to object. “We need a way station,” she said. “Six days at most.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Neither side knows where you are. You're off the radar. Besides, we thought you might be sympathetic given your situation. This kid is basically Christopher in eighteen years. Wouldn't you want someone to help him?”

I looked at the clock on the stove. It said eleven thirty. If everything went according to plan, the fat man was dead. “Do you smoke?” I asked Dorothy.

“No,” she answered.

“I haven't had a cigarette since you guys found us in D.C. It was one of Michael's conditions for agreeing to help me. I still carry a pack wherever I go, though.” Dorothy's features softened. She looked more like the woman who brought me breakfast a week ago. “I never smoked before they kidnapped my son.”

“If you need a cigarette, I'm not going to judge,” Dorothy said.

I shook my head. “I'm saving them.”

“For what?” Dorothy asked.

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. The still, hot air in the apartment was stifling. “What does it mean to help you hide someone? What would you need me to do?”

“The kid needs a place to stay. We need to find him someplace in the city that's safe so that we can make a plan for him. The process of cleaning someone isn't simple. We've just made contact with the kid. It takes time. We knew you were here. It seemed to make sense. All you have to do is let him crash here.”

“That's it?” I asked.

“That's all. When we're ready to take him to his next stop, we'll come get him.”

“How do I know I can trust him? How do I know that I can trust you? You guys wouldn't even help me.”

“You don't. I will tell you this, though. If you help us here, we may be able to help you in the future.” I paused at this last statement. I nearly forgot everything else that she'd said.

“Are you telling me that if I do this, you'll help me find my son?”

Dorothy shook her head. “I can't make any promises, but I do have some influence with Clara.”

I looked at the clock as I thought about it. Hopefully, Michael was on the road, driving home. “What side is the kid on?” I asked.

“Does that matter to you?” Dorothy asked.

“It's going to matter to Michael,” I said. Dorothy looked disappointed. I didn't care. She wasn't the one putting her life on the line for me. “If it matters to Michael, it matters to me.” I thought about the photo of your father that Michael had given me.

“He grew up on Michael's side, but hopefully he won't have to worry about sides ever again.” Dorothy watched me think. “His name is Joe. You'll be saving his life.”

I already had the fat man's death weighing on my conscience and I wasn't even sure he was dead yet. There would be more too, more bodies left in the wake of my mission to find you. I liked the idea of saving someone to balance out the karmic scales. But what about Michael? “If I agree, how do we do this? How do I find the kid?” I asked.

“The day after tomorrow,” Dorothy said. “Meet me at noon in Tompkins Square Park. Do you know where that is? It's close to here.”

“I can figure it out,” I said, agreeing to help her before I even realized I'd consented.

“I'll have Joe with me,” Dorothy finished.

I took a long breath, the same type of breath you take before diving into deep water. I looked at the clock again. It was almost midnight. “Okay,” I said. I wasn't being naive. I understand the risks, but everything has risks. I simply have to hope that they're worth the reward. “But don't forget that you guys owe me.”

Dorothy smiled a genuine smile. “I knew you were a good person when I met you. I knew that we'd be able to count on you.”

She had an enthusiasm in her voice that I didn't share. “I didn't expect anything like this,” I said to Dorothy as she stood up from the table.

“What did you expect?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I just want to find my son.”

“Things rarely happen the way we expect them to, but they happen anyway,” Dorothy said before turning and walking toward the door.

“Dorothy.” I stopped her before she let herself out. She turned back to me. “When this is done, after I've found my son, will you try to convince Michael to leave the War again?”

“We were already planning on it.” Dorothy opened the door just wide enough to slip out. “See you at noon on Tuesday,” she said, and then she was gone. Everything is happening so quickly now. I rehooked the chain lock after Dorothy left. Michael is supposed to be back at his hotel in less than two hours. What am I getting myself into?