The Night Tourist (9 page)

Jack went up four steps, then down four steps, turned a corner, and found himself standing in a series of dimly lit rooms. Sawdust covered the wood floors, and two old Labrador retrievers stretched out in front of the dying embers of the fireplace, whining in their sleep. The walls were covered with a combination of photos of New York City firefighters and famous authors, as well as some of their book jackets. Two dozen ghosts dressed in old-fashioned clothes, all with the same wan faces and flat, lifeless eyes, floated beside the wooden tables. A ghost bartender washed glasses by the bar. “Where are the living?” Jack asked.

“The place closed hours ago,” said Euri. Lowering her voice, she added, “But I’m sure someone here will be able to tell us more. Chumley’s used to be a speakeasy during Prohibition. That’s why the door is so hard to find. You can see it’s just a regular old bar now, but there are still some weird old ghosts that hang out here.” She pointed to a table at the back of the bar. “See that guy?”

A stubbly gray face hung in the shadowy corner like a gargoyle. The ghost sat alone, one thick hand mechanically reaching down for a glass and lifting it to his lips. “I bet he’s been coming here a long time,” Euri continued. “He may know something about that asterisk.”

They weaved through the crowd, but as they came closer to the man’s table, Jack noticed that the grizzled ghost wasn’t by himself. Sitting next to him in the shadows was a flapper who looked a few years older than Jack and Euri. She wore a beaded green dress that ended midthigh, and a feather in her hair. Her bobbed black hair framed a pair of dark, catlike eyes. They flashed up at Euri and Jack. “Well, lookie here, Harry. We have visitors.”

The ghost with the massive, stone face nodded but said nothing.

“You look underage,” the flapper said, pointing at Jack. “Not that I care,” she added with a yawn.

“Well, you look underage yourself,” Euri shot back.

The ghost in the green dress looked Euri up and down. “Not so good dying in a school uniform, is it, sister?”

Jack could see a small vein on Euri’s temple throb. She looked ready to say something really nasty. He decided to step in. “We want to talk to him,” he said, pointing to the stone-faced man. “We need some information.”

“Him?” said the ghost in the green dress. “What does he know?”

“Well,” Jack stammered. “We need someone who’s been dead awhile. Who might know about some of the . . . the unnatural things that can happen.”

A hoarse, croaky voice cut in. “I been dead only seventeen years,” said the old-looking ghost.

Jack looked at Euri, who had crossed her arms and was working her jaw in an angry way. He raised his eyebrows to signal that maybe they should go.

“What ‘unnatural’ things?” asked the ghost in the green dress, narrowing her eyes.

Jack didn’t answer.

“Sit down,” she said, patting the space next to her. “Level with me, and maybe I can help you. Bartender!”

Jack looked uncertainly at Euri, but she was fingering the skirt of her uniform. A busty barmaid blew through the wall. “Yeah?”

“Four spirits.”

The barmaid didn’t move. “How old are you?”

“For crying out loud, Trixie,” said the ghost in the green dress. “I’m ninety-seven. Old enough to have a drink.”

Turning to Jack, she explained, “I died eighty years ago. I’m ancient.”

“Well how’s about those two?” the barmaid said, pointing to him and Euri.

“I’m twenty-one!” Euri said smugly, forgetting her skirt. “I died seven years ago.”

Everyone turned to Jack. “Uh, me too,” he said.

“He doesn’t look that dead to me,” droned the barmaid before she disappeared back through the wall.

A minute later the drinks arrived: three tumblers and a glass of soda with a straw. Jack tried to hide his disappointment when the waitress slammed the soda down in front of him. “Don’t drink it,” whispered Euri. Jack remembered the
Unofficial Guide
and fiddled with the straw instead.

“To death,” said the cat-eyed ghost, holding up her glass.

“To death,” said her grizzled companion, knocking back his drink and emitting a satisfied burp.

Euri mumbled something indecipherable and took a small swallow of her drink.

“To death,” said Jack. He winked at Euri then held up his drink and stuck the straw between his lips, pretending to take a sip.

After a while the ghost in the green dress spoke. “I’m Ruby,” she said. “This here is Harry. I was stabbed to death, so I don’t like knives. Harry froze on the street.”

“Was a night like this,” he added. “I was drunk.”

Ruby turned to Jack. “How’d you die?”
“Train.”
“A tragic bunch. How about you?” she asked, cocking her head toward Euri. Jack waited to hear what Euri would say. “Accident,” she said after a pause. Ruby chuckled. “Is death ever not? Care to specify?” Euri shifted in her seat. “Not really.”

“Okay, Miss Mysterious.” She looked back at Jack, studying his eyes. “You’re a funny lot, you two. What do you want, anyhow?”

“We want to know about an asterisk,” Jack explained.

“What asterisk?”

“We went to look someone up in the death records and she had an asterisk next to her name. The record keeper seemed upset by it. Do you know what it means?”

Ruby shrugged. “An asterisk? I have no idea. A cross, I know. A circle . . .” She turned to Euri. “You’re all secretive. I bet you have a circle.”

“What’s a circle?” asked Jack.
“Shut up,” Euri hissed at Ruby. “It was an accident.”
Jack felt confused. “So you don’t know anything about an asterisk?” Ruby shrugged. “Can’t help you, kid.”

“It was an accident,” Euri repeated. She looked like she wanted to cry.

“You got anything else to go on?” Ruby asked.

Jack opened his backpack and pulled out the map. “This.”

Ruby grabbed the map out of his hands and studied it. “Hey, isn’t this the map that fellow used years ago?” she said, sliding it across the table to Harry.

Harry pulled the map closer to his stubbly face.

“What fellow?” asked Jack.

“The one who broke in. The living one,” Ruby said.

“Yeah,” mumbled Harry. “It is.”

For a second Jack thought that they were talking about him. But then he remembered that Ruby had said that the man had come in years ago. “Tell me more,” he begged.

Even Euri had stopped brooding over the circle business. “Yeah, what happened?” she asked.

Ruby bent forward and whispered, “A living fellow came into the underworld. He wanted to take away some woman. Said they were in love.”

Jack stared at his mother’s name written in the corner of the map. Had his father come to the underworld like Orpheus, and tried to bring his mother back? Is that why she had an asterisk next to her name? “Was he a professor? A big man with a beard?”

Harry cut in. “We never saw him. But I thought he was some sort of teacher or something.”

Euri grabbed Harry’s arm. “What happened to her?” she asked. “Did it work?”

“He went back up. I’m not sure what happened to her.”

Jack had a powerful feeling that the man had been his father, but there was one way to find out for sure. “Was it eight years ago? Was that when he came?”

Harry nodded.

Jack squeezed Euri’s hand under the table.

But a voice interjected. “No, it was definitely further back than that.” They both turned to Ruby.

“What do you mean?” Jack said. “It had to be eight years ago!”

She shook her head. “It happened sixteen years ago.”

Harry cocked his head and made calculations on his hands. “She’s probably right,” he finally said. “I got a bad head for dates.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked. His mother had been alive sixteen years ago, so there would have been no reason for his father to go to the underworld to find her. The man must have been someone else. He couldn’t believe he was wrong. He folded up the map and put it in his pocket.

“It was definitely sixteen years ago,” repeated Ruby. “It happened the same year that the fellow who murdered me finally died.” Her eyebrows arched slightly and her black eyes flickered at Jack. “You know there’s something funny about you. It’s almost like you’re alive....”

“He just died,” Euri interjected. “He’s new.”

But Ruby ignored her. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you followed that map down here yourself. It’s funny he has the map, isn’t it, Harry?” She gave a laugh that made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck prickle.

Suddenly, the two old labs in front of the fireplace staggered to their feet and began to bark and then whine. “Quiet!” shouted the bartender. The horse-size three-headed dog barreled into the bar in a tracking posture, dragging one of the thick-necked guards after him, and sniffed at a short, heavyset ghost, who dropped his drink in terror.

“Stay calm. We’ll just go through the wall,” Euri whispered. She turned to Ruby and Harry. “So long, we’ve got to run.”

Standing next to Cerberus and his handler was the uniformed guard from the photograph, with the bushy mustache and nightstick. “Stay where you are,” he shouted in the cold, commanding voice that Jack remembered from when he was wedged into the tunnel. “We have the walls surrounded.”

“What are we going to do now?” Jack whispered to Euri.

Euri looked frantically around the bar. “I don’t know.”

“Jeepers, creepers, it’s Clubber Williams,” said Ruby.

Jack remembered Professor Schmitt’s warning. “Who exactly
is
Clubber Williams?”

Ruby looked at Jack as if he were crazy. “Who’s Clubber Williams? He was only the most corrupt cop in the city’s history. He averaged a fight a day in Hell’s Kitchen, then made hundreds of thousands of dollars terrorizing the Tenderloin.” She pointed to his nightstick. “You can guess how he got his name.”

Jack stared at the shiny, black nightstick as Clubber joined the other guard, who led Cerberus, sniffing and growling, toward the middle of the bar. Another ghost in a flapper outfit stood with her arms in the air, quivering as Cerberus sniffed her ankles. “I’m really dead!” she repeated over and over again.

“There’s got to be a reason why Clubber’s here,” said Ruby as she stared at Jack. Slowly her glance fell on his soda. “Why aren’t you drinking that?”

Jack tried to give a casual-looking shrug. “I’m not thirsty.”

Ruby picked up the glass and held it to his lips. “Well, why don’t you just take a little sip for us. . . .”

Euri knocked the glass out of Ruby’s hands.

“Jumping Jehovahs, Harry,” said Ruby. “I knew it! He’s alive!”

Jack looked helplessly at Euri.

“It’s not what you think,” Euri said to Ruby.

But Ruby just grinned at her. “The jig is up, sister.”

The other flapper ghost moaned in terror. “It’s not her,” said Clubber as Cerberus followed the trail deeper into the bar.

Ruby chuckled. “Boy, have you got yourself in a jam. You almost had me fooled, though. You look pretty dead for someone who’s still kicking.”

“They’re heading this way!” Jack whispered. “I’m going to die.”

Ruby shrugged and took a sip of her drink. “What’s wrong with that?”

Euri grabbed a steak knife and lunged across the table, brandishing it at Ruby. “A lot’s wrong with that! You’ve got to help him.”

For the first time that evening, the mirth behind Ruby’s eyes faded. “Easy, sister,” she mumbled. “I was just razzing you.”

Euri pointed the knife in the direction of Cerberus, Clubber, and the other guard, who were all moving toward them through the crowd. “Don’t worry, Jack,” she said. “They’ll have to get through me first.”

Jack looked at the steak knife shaking in her hands and grabbed his own knife. “They’ll have to get through both of us.”

“Touching,” said Ruby. “But this is a juice joint. There’s always more than one way out.”

“Where?” asked Jack and Euri simultaneously.

“Well, there’s the bookcase,” she said. “It’s really a secret door that leads to an alley. But it’s right by the entrance. There’s no way you can make it that far without being noticed. And anyway, Clubber said they’ve got the walls surrounded.”

“Maybe we can fly up through the ceiling?” Jack suggested.

“They’ll notice anyone who flies up,” said Ruby. “But they may not notice someone who disappears down.” She pointed to a door in the floor near the bar. “There’s a small cellar beneath the bar where they used to hide spirits during Prohibition. Clubber died before Prohibition so I doubt he knows about it. If you descend through the trapdoor, you should be smack dab in the center of it, and you can float into the basements of neighboring houses.”

“Thank you!” said Jack, scrambling to his feet.

“Wait, Jack,” whispered Euri, pulling him back down. “The guards are practically there already.”

Cerberus sniffed the ground near the bar and howled. “He’s got the scent back!” said the thick-necked guard.

“It’s about time,” Clubber snarled.

“We’ll create a diversion,” said Harry. “Ruby’s always good at that.”

“Jeez, Harry, I was just getting comfortable,” said Ruby, but she stood up and put her hand on Euri’s shoulder. Jack heard her whisper, “Tell the kid about your circle, sister. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. He’ll understand.”

Jack noticed Euri wince as Ruby squeezed her hand.

Then Ruby and Harry flew toward the bar, and Ruby ground the heel of her shoe into one of Cerberus’s bear-size paws. All three of his heads squealed as he leaped backward, momentarily stunned. Clubber and the guard seized Ruby while Cerberus gnashed and bared three heads’ worth of teeth at her, preparing to attack.

“She’s going to die!” Jack said.

“Too late for that,” said Euri.

But Ruby struggled, floating her legs, which kicked wildly in the air. As the crowd of Chumley’s ghosts watched in alarm, she shouted, “Dead eighty years and I need that mutt down my throat? What’s the matter with you? Let me go!”

Harry tackled the thick-necked guard and knocked him back into the first room of the bar, away from the cellar. “That’s right. Let her go!” he shouted as they rolled across the sawdust-covered floor, the living labs barking and scampering after them as other ghosts tried to break them up. Clubber dragged Ruby after them, Cerberus snapping at her still-kicking heels.

“Come on,” whispered Euri. She grabbed Jack’s hand and they ran to the trapdoor. Jack watched his feet disappear through the floor, then his knees and waist and chest. But just before his head disappeared, he saw Cerberus suddenly swing around and scramble toward them, barking.

Jack closed his eyes, and when he next opened them, they were in a dark, cramped cellar with a sour-smelling, sticky floor. Aluminum kegs were lined up against the wall and attached to rubber hoses that led up to the bar through holes bored into the ceiling, and cardboard cases filled with glass bottles were stacked across the floor. Euri held her finger to her lips. Overhead, he could hear Ruby shouting over Cerberus’s loud barking. Euri flew to the cellar wall and pulled Jack through it and into the basement of the house next door. It was a dingy room with a washing machine and dryer and some old bikes. The floorboards creaked above them, and they could still hear faint shouting from Chumley’s. “The guards may be upstairs,” Euri mouthed.

She pointed to another wall, and Jack nodded as she once again pulled him through it and into a darkened basement room, where a couple slept huddled together on a pullout sofa. He and Euri hovered in the gloom, listening for any noises, but this building was quiet. Euri looked at the couple. Their quilt had fallen off the bed, and she lifted it from the floor and gently draped it back over them. Jack realized he looked surprised, because she shrugged and said, “Sometimes I remember feeling cold.”

Her expression turned stern. “Let’s go.” Tightening her grip around Jack’s hand, she flew up through the ceiling, into a kitchen, and through the window. Outside, the sky was still dark, but more lights began to twinkle on in apartments, and a few trucks delivering newspapers or milk to the grocers rumbled down the street. “We don’t want to go to a fountain too close by, in case the guards have it staked out,” Euri explained. “Columbus Circle is probably safest.”

As they flew up Eighth Avenue, Jack looked at the homeless wrapped in cardboard and blankets sleeping on the sidewalk; and the coffee vendors arranging Danishes and bagels in their carts. Every few blocks, the street echoed with the thunderous roll of a metal security door being lifted, and the living began to emerge in greater number from their apartments, sleepy and balancing cups of coffee, into the predawn darkness. Just as the first cold pink light rose over the city, Euri landed in front of a granite column. From the base of it jutted the stone bow of a boat with an angel on top and a fountain beneath it.

“I have something to tell you,” Euri whispered as they joined the last few ghosts disappearing into the mouths of the stone fish at the bottom of the fountain.

“What?”

“Not now,” she said. “When we get back under.”