The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3) (17 page)

I watched them drive off.

“Shit, you need Shearson again,” Ambler said. “Too bad.”

I wasn’t worried about Shearson. I had learned how to motivate her from our prior conversation. I knew what it took to push her buttons. She had lots of interest in this case and with the potential promotion she saw coming along with its successful resolve. All I had to do was keep her in the loop and salt the mine, as it were, until she was sure it was going to make her rich. “Not a problem.”

In my years on the job, I’d learned that it was a blessing to have a sixth sense, that ability to sense aspects of the case and reach for conclusions mere mortals could not. I’d also learned that it was a mistake to go off half cocked and make commitments in the name of the New York Police Department and your commanding officer that might prove fruitless and utterly embarrassing. I wasn’t going to take a chance on wasting time and resources. Furthermore, I needed to prove that Doyle was wrong. I hate that guy. Now usually, this being modern times, a cop’s first move would be to hit the computer and Google your way to the answer, but I knew of a resource that might prove more valuable at a time like this, a resource that might very well hold the answer I wouldn’t find on a modern day computer. So while my colleagues waited for the MTA to arrive, I set off to confirm my suspicions.

I
t was a little past 6:00 p.m. when I met Zugg, Lido, and Ambler back on the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, the site of the infamous subway grating.
Lido looked refreshed and Ambler…well what can I say, he looked like business as usual. Zugg looked pretty good—perhaps it was the fading light of day that masked his appearance.

“I assume you got Shearson’s buy in on this?” Ambler said. “You know there’s no way the MTA is letting us down there without her request, especially after making such a warm impression on MTA dickhead, Doyle.”

“We’re good to go, my friend. Shearson is behind this operation, one hundred percent. She’s already contacted the MTA. They should be here as soon as they can round up the equipment and personnel.”

“She must smell a promotion in the air,” Ambler quipped.

“What’d you find?” Lido asked.

I had a stack of photocopies in a folder under my arm. “You are going to love this.”

“Look at the expression on her face,” Ambler said. “Why you cocky broad, you think you’ve got this all figured out, don’t you?”

“I prefer to remain humble.”

Ambler couldn’t hold back any longer. He flipped me the bird.

Lido looked smug and happy, ready to share in my excitement. I sensed Ambler was withholding judgment.

“It all starts at 260 Broadway.”

“The crime scene?” Zugg said.

“Right, it all starts at The Nine Circles Restaurant and what’s beneath it.”

Ambler looked a bit impatient. “Come on, Chalice, spill it. What’s beneath the restaurant, and don’t give us some riddle with a reference to Dante’s Inferno—I’m not getting any younger.”

The Municipal Archives contained some surprisingly good period photographs and detailed records. I made copies of every one of them. The top page of the stack was an official authorization from the New York State Legislature. It was dated 1868. “Gentlemen, I give you Beach Pneumatic Transit.”

“The hell is that, Chalice?” Ambler asked.

“1868, Alfred Ely Beach received permission and funding to build pneumatic tubes beneath the city to transport mail and packages from the city’s main post office over on Broadway and Cedar Street.”

“So?”

“Beach didn’t build mail tubes, he built a subway, and used Devlin’s Clothing Store at 260 Broadway as a secret vantage point to access the tunnel. He worked at night, removing rocks and debris and bringing in construction materials. Today Devlin’s is The Nine Circles Restaurant, the home of our horny little friend, Mr. Pakpao.”

“Why did he have to work on the QT, Chalice?” Lido asked.

“Because, Gus, he didn’t have permission to build a subway. Beach was following his own agenda and had to keep his activities secret from Boss Tweed and the political power barons of Tammany Hall. He built a fan-propelled pneumatic subway that ran three hundred feet.” I had to go to my notes in order to continue. “Says here that the tunnel started at Warren and Broadway, directly across from City Hall. It ran under the south side of Warren Street to Broadway before curving south to Broadway and Murray Streets. It goes on to say that Beach decorated the lobby with frescoes, fine paintings, and a goldfish fountain, in order to gain popular support after it opened—the man had style.”

Zugg was beaming. “You’re an intelligent and persistent young woman. So what you’re saying is that the Beach Subway tunnel runs from our crime scene to the ventilation grating just inches from where we’re standing now?”

“It’s a fact.”

Ambler looked dubious. “And you think the tunnel’s still down there? That was almost a hundred and fifty years ago. It’s certainly been destroyed by now.”

“Maybe not. The last account which was written in 1912, states that they found remnants of Beach’s wooden train while they were building the BMT subway lines.”

“This is too much.” Ambler walked over to a parked car and shifted his bulk onto its fender. It took a moment and then I could see acceptance winning him over. “I think the whole thing’s crazy, but Chalice’s been right about crazier shit than this. I say we go for it.”

“We already are.” I saw an MTA truck with a winch rolling toward us. It was time to take our act south of the border.

B
ennett was meeting his date for the first time and had chosen The Nine Circles Restaurant for the rendezvous.
“So, what convinced you to register at sugardaddy.com?”

“You’ve got money, I don’t—It’s just easier to be up front about these things—we’re both adults, aren’t we?”

Bennett was a personal injury attorney and Paola was an aspiring pop star, emphasis on the word aspiring. As so many before them, they had been brought together via the magic and mayhem of the Internet. Bennett was fifty, but warranted in his online profile that he was only forty-five. He was a Sephardic Jew with a tanning salon tan from Rockland County. She was a twenty-three year old Latina, hoping to be the next Shakira. It was a match made in heaven, or perhaps and more appropriately, the island resort of Hedonism.

Sugardaddy.com was a website that existed to…well, I’m sure you can figure it out.

“Are you married?”

“Do you care?” Bennett had a wife, three kids, three dogs, and a mortgage payment large enough to choke a horse, but he had just settled a three million dollar lawsuit, the largest of his career, and was now flush with coin of the realm, flush enough to add a little long sought spice to his life. 

Paola liked sex and didn’t mind putting out for money so long as she didn’t get labeled a whore for doing so. “No, not really, I’m struggling and you seem nice. Let’s have dinner and see if we enjoy each other’s company.” Paola had worn her Miracle Bra and a low cut tee to make sure Bennett enjoyed her company.

For Bennett, “Enjoy each other’s company,” was a euphemism for private fuck buddy. “So you’re a dancer. You’ll have to dance for me.”

Paola winked at him. “If you play your cards right.”

“Great, let’s order. You like oysters?” Bennett signaled for the waiter to come over.

The restaurant was crowded despite the police barricade in front of the next door apartment. The house drink was the
Grey Goose Blue Elephant
, which Pakpao had premixed with Puerto Rican vodka—yes, Puerto Rican vodka does actually exist. At twelve dollars a pop, he was cleaning up; more than enough money to replace the upstairs office door the boys in blue had reduced to toothpicks. Yes of course the city would go through the motions of paying the tab, but as we all know, the records would most likely be lost by an underpaid clerk and Pakpao would never see a nickel of remuneration—such is life.

The walls were painted an indigo blue, and with the lights dim, you could hardly notice the large black air vent in the far wall. The vent was ornate, constructed of iron and intricately fashioned in an oriental pattern; a reproduction from the Han Dynasty, but as I said, it rarely got the attention it deserved from the restaurant patrons or anyone else, and certainly not from Bennett and Paola who were already holding hands.

Behind the vent he waited, patiently and quietly, watching normal everyday folks who had come to dine and socialize. He was a stranger to this world and completely envious of all that shunned him. Air whistled through his occluded nasal passages; heavy breathing, adenoid breath, his to listen to for a lifetime. He opened his mouth to gather sufficient air to fill his deprived lungs.

He sat on the ground hugging his knees, focusing through the spaces in the vent at the people sitting close by, smelling their food and perfume, and listening to their conversations. He had unobstructed vision in one eye, which was trained on a young man with crew cut hair doing a poor job of eating Pad Thai noodles with chop sticks. Pakpao kept them in supply for the tourists, despite the fact that the Thai people eat their noodles with a fork. The man he was watching had a cleft chin and sharp features. His hair was so short that the suture line between the occipital and temporal bones were clearly visible on the back of his head. He focused there, at the perfectly formed skull. His pulse jumped to a hundred and forty beats per minute and sweat began to trickle down his temple.

The restaurant’s air conditioning cycled off, and the intake of air through the large vent quit immediately.

Paola subconsciously heard a few seconds of heavy breathing, but was uncertain of what she heard or where it had come from. She pulled her hand from his so that she could take a look around, but there was no one close enough to have been the source.

“Is everything alright?” Bennett asked.

She no longer heard it and chalked it off to the loud noise level in the restaurant and the bad acoustics. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She put her hand back in his. “I hope they bring out our food soon. My stomach is growling.”

“H
ow long is it going to take to get that truck into place?”
I was holding my safety helmet under my arm and waiting impatiently for the MTA to yank the ventilation grating out of the sidewalk.

“Patience, Chalice,” Ambler said. “They’re almost ready.”

The MTA truck seemed to be moving in slow motion as it backed up, positioning its winch over the ventilation shaft. Doyle was there, looking on unhappily, no doubt worried that his wife wouldn’t keep his dinner warm and his beer cold while I wasted his time looking for cooties in the ventilation shaft. A workman stood behind the truck directing the truck as daylight faded in the sky above us.

“I didn’t want to go down there in the dark,” Lido said.

“You? I’m a girl, how do you think I feel?”

“You’re the toughest girl I know.”

“No doubt,” Ambler quipped.

We had set up a mobile command post. Zugg was within, conserving his energy while we waited for all the fireworks to go off.

Doyle could hold his tongue no longer. I could see him building up a good head of steam as he approached me. “You couldn’t wait until morning? What do you think you’re going to find down there in the dark? Waste everyone’s time. Someone could get hurt down there.”

“That’s what they have lights for, Doyle. No one asked you to stick around. Go home, we’ve got it covered. You’ll get credit if something good comes of it. Trust me, we above ground cops are good that way.”

“You just don’t want to listen. You haven’t been underground in the dark—accidents happen, especially in old tunnels like that.”

“According to you, there’s nothing down there. If that’s the case, we’ll be in and out in ten minutes.”

I’d been so focused on Doyle that I didn’t see that the MTA crew had the grating hooked. The winch tightened and the grating came free with a loud creak. The truck rolled forward and laid it down on the roadway where it was out of the way. The MTA guys moved cautiously setting up the ladder and emergency lighting. It took some time until they were satisfied that the vent could be explored safely and then the safety engineer descended into the vent. We stood around anxiously waiting for the okay to proceed. And then it came, the all clear. Lido, Ambler, and I put on our safety helmets and began climbing down into the earth.

W
e’re never truly sure at which moment sleep takes us.
It’s in the moment we return to consciousness that we determine how well we slept. Did we sleep soundly? Did we awaken refreshed? Did we dream or toss and turn? It’s at that instant of awakening that we judge our night’s work. For John Doe, the night had lasted several days, but when consciousness finally returned, he was immediately aware that he was out of danger.

How long have I been asleep?
He laid silently for a long moment and then a thought formed in his mind,
I’m back
. He was immediately aware of his physical condition. He was aware that his mouth was parched and that his shoulders ached, but he was otherwise free of pain. His wrists were unrestrained and although his vision had been reduced to no more than shadows of light and dark, he knew that he was no longer in the cube-like white room in which he had been imprisoned for so long.
I’m free.

He was still motionless as he began to recall the events of the evening on which he had escaped, and replayed them all in his mind, beginning with the squirreling of the pills in the pouch of his cheek to his emerging from the subway and entering Central Park. He remembered lying on his bed for a great while playing possum, until he was sure that he was alone and could attempt to pull the bars free of the window before his captor returned. He was lying just so now, awake in his hospital bed playing possum, looking no different than while he was in his coma, except for the small amount of light he allowed to enter through the slits that formed under his eyelids.
No more darkness. No more darkness.