Children of the Underground (14 page)

“Okay,” Michael said. The city was alive beneath us now. Michael was talking over the din of the cabs and garbage trucks on the street. “The fat man flinches when I hit him with the light, so I drop the flashlight and I leap toward him. It takes only a second. In that second, I get the hood over his head. He drops the gun and I push him. I meant to push him just enough to get him away from the gun, but when I push him he stumbles backward and falls to the ground. He reaches up and tries to pull the hood off, and I wait. If he wants to see the man who's going to kill him, I'll give him that. But I move close to him. By the time he gets the hood off, I'm right there. I can see the fear in his eyes. I always expect them to say something like ‘Please.' They almost never do. Then I plunge the knife into his neck, right below his jawline. I pull the knife across his neck, creating a gash from one side of his neck to the other. The blood comes now, pouring out. I take a step back. He never said a word. I waited until I was sure he was dead. It took only a couple minutes. Then I left.”

I couldn't believe that was the whole story. “So how did you hurt your leg?”

“On the way out, I decided to go back through the hole I cut in the fence, since I knew the way from there. One of the dogs that I drugged had woken up. He must have chewed his way through the rope. As I climbed back through the hole in the fence, the dog grabbed me by the back of the leg. The damn thing's jaw was like a vise.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, he was still pretty stoned, so I kicked him in the face with my other leg and finished climbing through the fence. He must have been too drugged up to figure out how to jump through the hole. Then I walked back to the car, but it was a slow walk because of the new holes in my leg. When I got back to the car, I knew that I had to clean myself up a little bit before walking through the hotel lobby, so I taped my pants to the wounds in my leg.”

“And that's why you were late?”

“Yeah.” Michael let out a small laugh. “You look disappointed.”

“I thought there would be more to it,” I admitted.

“I'm not a beginner at this, Maria. I'm good at killing people. Sometimes these jobs just aren't that hard.”

I don't know what I was expecting. “I should go home,” I said to Michael. I'd finished doing what I could to clean his wounds. Then I remembered Dorothy. I still needed to tell Michael about the promises I'd made while he was away. I walked halfway across the roof. I didn't want to tell him—not yet—but I knew that there wasn't enough time to wait. “That woman from the Underground found me,” I said, turning back toward Michael.

“Who? Clara?” I could hear the surprise in Michael's voice.

“No. The younger one. Dorothy. They've been following us.” Michael looked down at the ground, trying to process this information. “I told them that I would help them to hide someone,” I said.

“You what?” Michael asked, sounding even more surprised. “I thought we were on the same page, Maria. I thought we had a plan.”

“We are,” I said. “We do.” I shook my head, trying to think of something to say. “One of the kids they're trying to help needs a place to stay for a few days. They asked me to help. I said okay. It's nothing.”

Michael looked away from me. “I need to get some sleep. Let's talk about this later. I'll come to see you later.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can you make it back to your room on your own?”

“I think I'll manage,” Michael answered.

I wanted to say something else to him,
thank you
or
I'm sorry
. I didn't have the guts to say either. “I'll see you later?” was what I said instead.

“Go home,” Michael answered, staring past me at the city. So I left.

Twenty-one

“So are you going to tell me about your decision to become a hero?” Michael asked. It was late in the afternoon. I was still awake when Michael knocked on the door. I tried to sleep but it didn't come. I could smell liquor on Michael's breath when he came inside.

“I'm not trying to be a hero,” I told Michael. I just want to be decent, I thought to myself. “It's going to be six days at most,” I assured him. “We're not even going to have to do anything.” I made the same promises to Michael that Dorothy had promised me, even though I had no business doing so. I told Michael how Dorothy had promised to try to help us if we helped them.

“And you believe that?” Michael asked.

“I don't know. I think it's worth the gamble.” Michael's leg didn't appear to be any better. His limp was noticeable. I felt guilty. I wanted to give him something. “The kid is on your side,” I told him. Michael didn't say anything. He just nodded. “I wouldn't have agreed to it if he was on the other side,” I assured him.

“You do realize that he might lead Them right to us?” Michael asked.

“Honestly, Michael, I don't even know who
Them
is anymore,” I answered with a chuckle.

“Hopefully, no one ever reminds you,” Michael said. He let the words sink in for a minute. He didn't sound angry. Instead he sounded disappointed. In that moment, I would have preferred anger. “When do we pick this kid up?”

“You don't have to help me.”

Michael looked me in the eyes. His buzz was wearing off. “I don't have to do any of this,” he reminded me.

“Noon tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. “I'll be here before ten. We'll need time to get ready.” Then he stood up from the couch. “By the way, they gave me my next job,” he told me. “It's in Philadelphia. They gave me two weeks.”

“That's not enough time. Your leg—”

“It'll have to be enough time,” he cut me off. “If you want them to trust me again, then I can't go asking for a breather after my first job.” He walked toward the door. I didn't want him to leave—not like this. The only thing I wanted less was to ask him to stay. I didn't say anything, he walked out the door, and I was alone.

I slept that night. It wasn't a deep or an easy sleep, but it was something. In the morning, I woke up early to exercise. I did push-ups, sit-ups, and dips on one of the kitchen chairs. Everything is getting easier. I can feel the muscles in my body changing. I don't think it's visible, but I'm getting stronger. I went for a run. I was only planning on running for forty minutes, but I had excess energy to burn so I kept going and ended up running for over an hour. As I ran, I thought about your father. He used to go on long runs in the morning five or six times a week. Sometimes he'd be gone for two hours at a time. I used to ask him what he thought about when he ran. He told me that most of the time he wasn't thinking about anything—he was just putting one foot in front of the other and going. “And the other times?” I asked.

“I think about you,” he'd say, smiling at me, “and Christopher and how lucky I am.”

“What do you think about when you think about us?” I would tease him, fishing for details.

“I think about the three of us living in a small house in a small town somewhere. I think about going to Christopher's Little League games. I think about taking him fishing. I think about us growing old together, watching Christopher become a man. I think about me getting a potbelly and taking long naps on the couch on Sunday afternoons. I think about how beautiful you're going to look when your hair turns gray. I think about meeting Christopher's first girlfriend. I imagine she'll be a lot like you. I think about watching him fall in love.”

“I guess it's a good thing your runs are so long,” I'd say to him, and he would kiss me. They took so much away from me.

Twenty-two

Michael knocked on my door at almost exactly ten o'clock. He knocked once and waited. That's how I knew it was him. He was too proud to knock twice. I undid the chain lock and opened the door just wide enough for Michael to slip through. “How did you know it was me?” Michael asked.

“I recognized your knock.”

Michael walked past me into the apartment without responding. I closed the door, and Michael began asking questions. He wanted to know everything that I knew about the kid: what he looked like, why he was running, where he was going next. He wanted to know where in the park we were supposed to meet. All Michael's questions made me I realize how little I knew. I said
I don't know
so often, the words lost their meaning. “What's with all the questions?” I asked. Dorothy had made it seem so simple.

“The kid's running, right?” I nodded. “That means somebody is chasing him.” Michael walked over to the window and looked out. “And another thing, the next time someone asks you to meet them somewhere, you pick the place. Don't let them do it. Now we need to go to the park early to be able to scope it out. There's a lot we need to know. We need to get a feel for the sight lines. We need to understand our escape routes. If anyone sees me helping this kid, we can kiss Jared good-bye.”

I hadn't even thought of that. “I can do this on my own,” I said again. This time, after the torrent of questions I couldn't answer, I was worried that Michael would agree with me.

“You don't believe that,” Michael said, “and if you don't believe it, then it's not true.” His eyes were cold.

“What can I do to make this better?” I asked him. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. Michael ignored my question.

Michael made us walk around the park twice before we even went inside. First, we did one loop a full block away from the park, walking the streets surrounding the streets that surrounded the park. Michael explained that if we had to run, we'd want to know where we were running. We'd want to avoid the unexpected. Next we circled the streets directly surrounding the park. Michael kept looking up at the buildings around us, trying to determine what parts of the park were visible from the buildings and what parts were hidden beneath the trees. “If they try to pull us out into the open, you'll have to go and bring them back to me. We can't risk me being seen.”

The park was full of young people of every shape, size, and color. I could hear children playing at the playground. No matter what they looked like, nobody would stand out in the park; nobody would look out of place. Maybe that's why Dorothy picked it. Once inside the park, Michael made us look for every place where someone could hide both in case we had to run and hide and in case someone might use one of the hiding places to try to ambush us. Then Michael had us study potential bottlenecks, exit routes that led to nowhere. By the time we were finished, it was close to noon. We went to the spot Michael had identified for us to wait, a shady spot under a tree on the grassy hill in the middle of the park.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we wait for them,” Michael replied. “We're doing them the favor. They can come and find us.”

So we waited, watching the faces of the people who walked by. Noon came. Michael had me so on edge that I expected the park to erupt into chaos as soon as the clock struck twelve. Nothing happened. Noon went. “How long are you willing to wait?” Michael asked. I hadn't thought about it. I hadn't thought I'd need to. Then I saw them. Dorothy was wearing the same baggy cargo pants. She had a white tank top on now instead of the black one. I could see the muscles in her arms flex as she walked. It was the first time I'd noticed them. I had fooled myself into thinking that she was sweet and innocent. She wasn't. She was a fighter like Michael. They just chose different battles.

“There they are,” I said to Michael. Michael recognized Dorothy. She was walking with a young black man. I had grown accustomed to thinking of other people my age as younger than me because of everything I'd been through. The kid didn't look young, though. He had been through a lot too. The War isn't easy on anybody.

Dorothy was doing her best to casually scan the park as she walked, but she didn't see us. They walked past us. The kid walked next to her, staring straight ahead of him as if in a daze. He was tall and lanky, but he looked like an athlete. “Should we go get them?” I asked Michael.

“They're too exposed. It's too risky for me. You'll have to go get them.”

I stood up and dusted myself off. “Okay,” I said. I took one quick look around me before walking toward the path. I had to walk quickly to catch up to Dorothy and the kid. “Dorothy,” I said in a whisper when I was only a few steps behind them.

She turned toward me when I said it. So did Joseph. I looked at him first. He looked more muscular up close, but his muscles were long. He looked tired. He had bags under his eyes. Then I noticed his eyes. They were a dark emerald green, unlike any eyes I'd ever seen before. I looked at Dorothy. She looked nervous. “Maria,” she said in a single exhaled breath. “I almost thought you weren't going to show.”

“We're under the trees,” I said to her. “Michael thought it was safer there.” Joe didn't say a word. He just gave me the same intense once-over that I'd given him. Then they followed me to the spot where Michael was waiting.

“How did you guys get here?” Dorothy asked. “We've been looking for you.”

“We came early,” Michael answered her. “We thought it would be safer if no one saw us. I didn't want to get Tased again.” It dawned on me then why Michael had made us go through all that preparation. He was taking back some of the control he'd lost in the park in Washington, D.C. Even if they could follow us, Michael wasn't going to let them get the jump on him again. The park. The middle of the day. I hadn't even seen the parallels. Michael had.

Dorothy looked at Michael. She knew who she was dealing with. That's why she looked nervous. That's why she didn't think that I was going to show up. “You don't have to worry,” Dorothy said. “It's only me this time. For jobs like this, where we believe we're working with people we know we can trust, we send only one person.” Dorothy was alone. She was so brave. I wondered why she didn't run away like the people she helps. She looked over at me. “Maria,” Dorothy said, “this is Joe.” Joe stuck his hand out for me and I shook it. He had a firm handshake.

Michael interrupted the introductions. “What's the plan here, Dorothy?”

“It's exactly what I told Maria. Joe needs a place to stay for a few days while we prep his next stop. We'll come get him when it's ready.”

Michael shook his head. “We've had enough of your surprises. We need to know when he's leaving. We need to make arrangements for the drop-off now.” I hadn't expected this, but I wasn't going to argue. Still, it felt strange, standing there while Dorothy and Michael debated Joe's future right in front of him.

“Fine,” Dorothy said. “How about ten o'clock on Sunday night? We can meet here again.”

Michael shook his head again. “Maria's going to decide where we meet.”

Everyone looked at me. I knew Michael was testing me. I didn't feel ready but I had to say something. I thought about the different routes I'd run over the past few days. “On the footpath beneath the FDR,” I said, “in between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.”

“Okay. We can do that,” Dorothy said. She turned to Joe. “Stay safe,” she said. She reached out and hugged him. “I'll see you in three days.” Joe just nodded. I couldn't tell if he was being quiet because he didn't have anything to say or if he was too emotional to speak.

As Michael, Joe, and I walked away, Dorothy called out to me. “Thank you, Maria,” she said. “I know this isn't your battle.”

I turned back to her for a second. “Just remember your promise,” I said. She nodded. Then she walked away in the other direction.

* * *

The kid Joe.
The name hurt too much. On the way back to the apartment, I asked him if I could call him something else, a nickname or a middle name.

“Everyone calls me Joe,” he said. “My middle name is Reginald, but I hate it.”

“How about Reggie? Do you hate that?” I asked. I didn't wait for him to answer. “Can I call you Reggie?”

He seemed dubious. “Whatever you need,” he answered anyway. Michael took to the name change immediately. Apparently, he wasn't ready to call the kid Joe either.

Before Michael left me and Reggie alone, he suggested that we lay out some ground rules for Reggie. Reggie said okay. “Rule number one,” Michael began. I wished that he didn't number the rules, but I stayed quiet. “No leaving the apartment without one of us with you. Rule number two: don't abuse your situation here. Listen to every word Maria says. No games. Rule number three,” Michael said, because there always seemed to be three rules, “you never speak a word to anyone about who Maria is or who I am or what we did for you. Not now. Not ever.”

“That's fair,” Reggie said.

“Don't break the rules. Break any of those rules and you'll be lucky if I just kick you out on the street.”

“Understood. I'm not here to play games. I just want to thank you guys for your help.”

“Don't thank me,” Michael said. “I had nothing to do with this. Thank her.” Michael pointed at me. Reggie looked back at me again. I held his stare a little longer this time. When I broke it off, Reggie turned back to Michael.

“Thanks anyway,” Reggie said to Michael.

Before leaving, Michael came up to me. Reggie had wandered into the other room. “Are you sure you're okay with this?” he asked me in a whisper.

“Yes,” I said without hesitating.

“You're okay being alone with him?”

“I'm not afraid,” I assured him.

“Maybe you should be,” Michael answered.

“Why don't you trust him?”

Michael looked into the other room. I could see Reggie sitting on the couch. “Because he's willing to let other people risk their lives for him. I don't understand what type of person would do that.”

I felt my skin go flush. “Maybe he's just”—I searched my brain for the right word—“desperate,” I finished. I reached out to hug Michael before he left. It was awkward. I clutched him and he stood limply, barely touching my back.