Metropolis (26 page)

“That’s not your problem, why I want you, but consider it a consolation prize, if you like.” He glanced over at Beatrice and laughed. “For now, just listen to what you need to do. It’s a change from the plan we described back at the theater. As soon as you’re sure the boys are at the right place for the pickup and they’re settled in and no one’s onto you, you’re going to come meet the two of us. It’s just the three of us plus my mother on the Tammany job, understand?”

Harris nodded, wondering what Johnny would do if he refused, wondering why he didn’t, knowing it all had to do with Beatrice. They took the return trip on the ferry, and when they landed on the Manhattan side Beatrice and Johnny walked off together, leaving Harris standing on the pier. He walked past Billy’s and would have gone in and ordered a glass of rye, just to test his luck, but there was a sign on the door:
CLOSED FOR FUNERAL.
He took it as a portent and returned to the O’Gamhnas’. Beatrice, of course, didn’t return at all.

Harris lay awake much of the night thinking and thrashing. He imagined getting up and going to the dry tunnel on his own, finding the money and then finding Beatrice and running away. He pictured them on a steamship, him with yet another new name, on the run again, but now with her at his side. They could head west to California. Except for the fact that she was with Johnny now.

But Harris was wrong there.

A short time after they left Harris, Johnny told Beatrice to go to Fiona’s for the night and stay there.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You want me to stay at Fiona’s?”

Of course he followed her. Johnny was aware that Beatrice was sleeping with the sewerman. That had been her business before, but now he wanted to know what he was dealing with, to see how both of them reacted to the evening’s developments. He was pleased when she went to Fiona’s directly and stayed put. He was in no hurry to claim her for himself.

Harris went to work in the morning. He felt like a mechanical man, not afraid, not angry, not the master of his own action. But that was only on the inside. Outwardly, he couldn’t conceal his alternating numbness and agitation from John-Henry. He was jumpy, taciturn and preoccupied. He ruined an entire barrel of mortar because he measured the lime wrong.

Finally, John-Henry said, “You having trouble with that girl again?”

Harris shrugged. But then he couldn’t contain it. He told John-Henry part of what had happened: that Beatrice had taken up with a Five Points gangster. John-Henry shook his head—he’d predicted it would go badly. Harris would have liked to tell John-Henry everything, the full story. If he didn’t count Beanie and the O’Gamhnas—and he didn’t, anymore—John-Henry was his only friend. Who else could he talk to, if not him? But he’d never mentioned the word
Whyo
in John-Henry’s presence before and didn’t plan to start now. Knowing about the Whyos would only jeopardize his friend, not to mention their friendship. And so he found himself in the unsavory position of cooking up a story. In the afternoon, he lied to John-Henry again, telling him he wanted to leave early to see about a possible job. John-Henry had urged him before to go look for work outside of the sewers, using his masonry skills, but Harris had never done anything about it, knowing he wasn’t free to leave.

“Well,” said John-Henry, “it’s about time. Maybe that would help your cause with your girlfriend. It’s funny you say that now, though, because I’ve got my eye on something, too. It’s good wages but dangerous: underwater blasting for the piers of the new bridge to Brooklyn. I got a connection to one of the higher-ups, a colonel I fought for in the war. The blasting’s done way down, underwater—crazy world, when you can set off a blast underwater, and I don’t know quite how it works—but the thing is, of course, that they’re building the tower out of stone. I’ll put in a good word for you, if you want to look into working on the tower.”

Harris’s chest opened up. The new bridge was just the kind of thing he dreamed of working on. Tonight, instead, he would help a bunch of criminals rob the government and then help two of those criminals rob their own mates of even more. On top of that, his lie to John-Henry left him feeling ungenerous. He’d asked for a favor and lied, while John-Henry had offered to help him get a job that would have been perfect.

“That sounds like a dream,” Harris said. “The job I heard about’s just, uh, roadwork, but I guess I still better go.” Really, he could have wept as he walked away.

His first task was to ferry the dozen pairs of boots for the principals from a shed where the Whyos had deposited them late the night before to the ledge in the grotto—the place where he’d kissed Beatrice. There was a manhole right near the shed, and he set up a sawhorse to block the street and proceeded as if he were conducting normal sewer business. No one looked twice as he lowered into the hole three enormous canvas bags containing four pairs of boots each. The hard part was hauling them through the long pipeline to the grotto, but he worked quickly, and when all of them were finally laid out, he looked at the pocket watch Beatrice had handed him to use during the job—hot, of course—and saw that he was ahead of time, so he sat down on the ledge for three quarters of an hour and tried to blank out his mind. He listened to the water flowing and stared into the blackness.

When it was time, he made his way through the archway, into the p.o.’s cesspool chamber and around the edge of the putrid holding tank. His headlamp flared brighter there, thanks to the foul air. At the hatch, he paused and listened. All was quiet. He tapped once, counted to five and tapped again. A minute later, the Whyo who’d confirmed the grotto’s location by finding Beanie’s dime tapped back and then released the hasp on the latch. He opened it and looked in at Harris. Harris couldn’t believe he was a Whyo—he was just a kid with a shiny forehead and hardly a whisker. The Whyo made a face at the stink and pushed the rusty door shut again without latching it, and they returned to waiting on either side of the metal door for the men, who were just then responding to the signal to strike in the post office above.

Harris stood on the narrow walkway along the edge of the cesspool, breathing shallowly. Raw excrement and wastewater dribbled and spurted from the pipes in the ceiling now and then. It was a hundred times stronger than the watery brew that flowed through the average sewer pipe. The cesspool had clearly been designed into the building’s plans before the construction team discovered the adjacent grotto; it was the usual model, intended to be emptied out on a routine basis by night haulers, but when they linked the flow to the stream it became unnecessary. The overflow spilled out, the rest festered, and no one had to deal with it. Still, in a strange way, it was beautiful down there: In the light of his lantern, the whole chamber glowed. Hoarfrost grew from the walls and ceiling like a glittering mold, especially around the pipes, where it formed elaborate suspended sculptures of ice, some of them so large they looked dangerous. He thought through the plan yet again, with some incredulity. Apparently it was possible for a dozen men to commit a brazen crime in a crowded room and then disappear. So why then couldn’t he manage to lose just one man—himself—in the vastness of the city, the world? Why couldn’t he manage to flee? The truth, of course, was that he’d handily disposed of several selves. Even now, thanks to the dubious assistance of the Whyos, he was hiding in plain sight, working for a city agency, despite the fact that he was on the most-wanted list for murder and arson. He couldn’t manage to feel grateful to Johnny Dolan for that, though. What he did see at last, however, was that disappearing wasn’t a way to escape after all. No matter how many identities he’d shed, what remained behind was always himself, mired in his predicaments and perceptible to the naked eye.

As he waited, he tried to envision a life without disaster. He thought of the bridge across the river. He imagined two towers rising up from the harbor. A tower, no matter how large, was built of stones, each one laid by the hand of a man like himself. A tower was ambitious but plausible. But a span across all that space and water? It was almost too large and strange for him to fathom. It defied possibility.

Then came a distant commotion from beyond the hatch. Another instant and the door flew open. Harris pulled the men through one by one and pointed them toward the grotto, reminding them to hug the wall on the narrow walkway and mind the cesspool. He counted eleven. Not twelve, eleven.

“Who’s missing?”

It took only a moment for the men to realize it was Piker Ryan, and they were worried. No one had seen him during the scramble downstairs. They’d all been too busy whyoing, casting their voices and the echoes of their footsteps to the opposite side of the p.o.’s great hall. Indeed, in terms of creating a sonic cover, they’d done well: Only a deaf man would have been able to detect them, the way they moved in contrary motion to their audible paths. Harris handed out headlamps, pointed the men to their boots and then crept quietly back past the icy cesspool to the hatch and listened. He heard footsteps, then voices, faint but coming closer. On the one hand, Harris needed to be there to get Piker Ryan through in a hurry if he showed up; on the other, being there meant that the police had only to open the hatch to discover him. He held his breath.

“Show me every Goddamn corner of the basement. I don’t care if they were seen climbing to the roof. As far as I can tell, they probably scattered like rats, in every direction. One or two of them are liable to be here. What’s back behind the boiler? Are there any other rooms, passages, other ways out of the building from down here?”

“No, sir.”

“What’s that there?”

“Just the hatch to the cesspool. Nowhere to hide in there. Frankly, sir, it’s just a huge bucket of shit. Sorry, sir. But there is one more utility room, on the far side, there. . . .” The voices faded. Clearly they hadn’t found Piker, but the detective seemed determined. Harris asked himself what he was doing there, risking his freedom for that of Piker Ryan. It wasn’t going to bring him any closer to Beatrice. He had just decided to go and join the others when he heard a tap on the door. The hackles raised on his spine, and he extinguished his lamp. Either it was a lone cop or it was Piker Ryan. He stood there frozen, waiting for the second tap, but then the hinge groaned quietly as the door was drawn back. It was Piker, and he had a wild look on his face. Harris pulled him in and shut the door. The investigators’ voices grew audible again, slowly coming nearer.

“Well, sir, what do you say we go back up and join the others on the roof? Not much going on down here, and all the witnesses pointed that way.”

“Not so fast, my boy. It’s a perfect hiding place. Just look at the alcove. You could hide a dozen men in there.”

Harris and Piker stood stock-still in the blackness. Harris dared not strike up the headlamps or breathe a word, but they had to get out of there. He reached out and found Piker’s arms, placed them on his own shoulder blades, and then he inched forward, hoping Piker would follow closely—a step to the right would land him in the cesspool.

Something clanged against the hatch, and they froze again. A nightstick?

“You’re welcome to look inside, sir, but you’ll understand if I stand back a bit—it’s pretty potent in there.”

The door inched open, and then there was a cry of disgust from the policeman. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, if that’s where they’re hiding, I’ll leave them to it.”

“All right,” whispered Harris a few seconds later. “Let’s move.”

But when Piker Ryan let go of Harris’s shoulders, he stepped too wide; his right foot landed on the ice-encrusted rim of the cesspool and shot out from under him. His leg hit the mire, splattering Harris with sewage and breaking the silence. How far away was that cop? Had he heard? Harris knew he ought to run for the archway, to save himself, but he couldn’t let a man fall into that mire, even Piker Ryan. He lunged for Piker, throwing every ounce of his weight into keeping him from sliding entirely into the vat. When they landed, Piker was flat on his back, legs spread, Harris on top of him like a lover. They scrambled to their feet and flew toward the arch. Stealth was not an issue anymore—if the police were anywhere near, they had already heard—there was only speed.

In another moment, they were in the grotto. The others were gone, but there was one pair of boots left behind, along with two of the money bags. Harris helped Piker on with his boots as quickly as possible, cringing at every slight noise. They were making their way toward the sewer outlet, slowly so as not to splash, when they heard a voice echoing from the cesspool and froze.

“God! It’s awful in here. I don’t see anything. You?”

“No, sir. You know, I think that sound could have come from a chunk of ice up above falling off into the pool.”

“Maybe so. All right, let’s go back upstairs.”

Harris and Piker moved forward again. Some minutes later, when they were crawling through the pipe, Piker spoke.

“Thanks for that, Frankie. If you’da let me fall in there, they’da found me drowning in that shit. The whole job would be bust.”

“You’re welcome,” said Harris. And it was strange, considering how badly he wanted to be free of the Whyos, but he felt good about having helped Piker and possibly having saved the whole job. In just that short time, he’d developed a strange bond with the men. It had been exciting and risky, and now here they were, really escaping undetected. He thought about the planned rendezvous in the dry tunnel. It was obvious from the secrecy that Johnny was somehow duping his men out of the truly grand haul. It didn’t seem likely Johnny would be wanting to share all that money with him either—not as a consolation prize, not at all. He wouldn’t even want him knowing about it. What would be the consequences of his knowledge? he wondered, but he had a feeling he knew.

Piker did some whyoing to communicate to the men up ahead that they should stop and wait for them. Harris sang a few verses of the Ballad to ward off any sewermen. Ten minutes later, at the first junction, they all finally met up, and Harris led them all on a long crawl to the nearest dirt-catcher. It was a relief to stand upright after the hour they’d spent in the tubes, but it was crowded with thirteen men in there. They had to stand shoulder to shoulder, pressed up against the walls, with two of them perched on the ladder that led to the manhole cover overhead. There was ice on the walls here, too, and it gleamed dully in the light of their lamps. The men began to pull money from the shoulder bags and bootlegs where they’d stashed it. The take looked to be enormous. Piker took out a flask and toasted Harris. Then flasks and pouches came out all around, and the smoke of a dozen freshly rolled cigarettes and one cigar—Piker’s—mingled with the faint smell of running sewage. It was only reluctantly that Harris told the men that Johnny didn’t want him to wait for the pickup but to make his way home separate from the boys. Piker stuffed something down Harris’s shirtfront: a wad of money.