But tonight, when Freddy shone his light down the alley, he saw something that hadn’t been there before: a battered shopping cart piled high with tightly wrapped bundles. Freddy was pretty sure it didn’t belong to the museum, and so it shouldn’t be there. It looked an awful lot like a homeless guy’s cart. Freddy had nothing against the homeless, but they could cause trouble sometimes, and it was his job to keep that from happening. He held his light high and stepped carefully down the alley for a closer look. As he approached the cart, he saw a figure wedged in between the shopping cart and the dumpster. He stopped and shone his light on it. “Hey there!” he called.
The figure moved, squirming as if trying to wriggle its way into the wall to hide, and mumbled something Freddy couldn’t make out. “What’s that? Hey, are you all right?” He took a cautious step closer, shining his flashlight on the figure’s face. It was a man, scrawny, ragged, and incredibly filthy. He had a large and bushy black beard covering most of his face, and the rest of his features were hidden by a dark and greasy film of smudged filth. “Hey, buddy,” the guard said.
“Veteran. I’m a veteran,” the figure said. “Let me be, let me be, I’m a veteran, please, I need a place to sleep, just let me be.”
“Huh,” Freddy said, coming to a stop. After his own time in Afghanistan, he knew that a surprising number of his old Army buddies ended up like this, too torn up by memories to do anything but huddle in the dark and fight the demons of PTSD. “All right, buddy, take it easy,” Freddy said. “Nobody’s going to bother you tonight.”
“Veteran. I’m a veteran,” the man mumbled, and scrunched back down again.
“So am I, buddy. You rest easy here for tonight, okay?” The figure just mumbled. Freddy moved a little closer and crouched down. “I did two tours in the sandbox, pal,” Freddy said. “I know what you’re going through. I’ll make sure nobody bothers you tonight. But just tonight, okay? In the morning you got to move on.”
“I’ll go, I’ll move, I have to, I—I can’t stay, not anywhere, because, you gotta know, it gets so loud and I—please, okay, I’m a veteran—”
“Yeah, I got that,” Freddy said. He stood up. “You just take it easy. You’ll be safe here tonight.” He looked down at the filthy, scrunched-down figure, and then, thinking it could have been him instead of this guy, he added, “Don’t worry ’bout nothin’. You just get some sleep.” And he turned away and out of the alley.
When he was gone, the filthy figure got to his feet, watched the mouth of the alley for a moment, and then ran straight up the side of the building to the roof.
* * *
—
For many years there have been rumors, even urban folk tales, about hidden Things under the streets in Manhattan. There are stories of unknown and unexplored tunnel networks, vast caverns, elaborate Victorian train stations that were somehow forgotten—or deliberately hidden, if your tastes bend toward sinister conspiracies. With these stories go tales of mysterious tribes of pale subterranean humans who never see the light of day. There are tales, too, of tribes of creatures that are not quite human—the Mole People, who have been spoken of in frightened whispers since the 1800s.
And who knows? Some of these stories may well be true. But there is no doubt at all that if the Mole People or any other strange population is really there under the streets of New York, they live in the long stretches of abandoned tunnels that branch off from the main subway arteries that service the city.
Andres Maldonado had heard these stories. He could hardly avoid them—he’d been working for the MTA for twenty-three years now, and the last fifteen he’d been driving the Lexington Avenue local, which was a route that had plenty of history all its own. People said some crazy stuff about this route, like about the old City Hall station, which was closed but still there. He hadn’t seen anything in that area himself, but who could say these people were wrong?
Andres knew there were several other spots along the route that looked like hastily blocked side tunnels. He asked about them, and he heard more stories—about the Mole People, the Homeless Army, the Lizard People, and some that were even less believable. He’d never seen any signs that these tales might be true, but who knew? He was old enough to understand that there’s plenty of weird shit in the world that nobody really knows about. His uncle back in Puerto Rico had seen chupacabras, many times, but nobody wanted to believe him. Andres believed; it was his
uncle, after all. But he was smart enough to know that, for the most part, nobody wants to admit things like that are real.
So as he slowed for the 59th Street station, he was not terribly surprised to see a figure up ahead in a dark jumpsuit and a helmet with a light on the front caught in the glare of the train’s headlight. Andres swore and felt the sweat pop out on his face. There was nothing he could do; he was too close to stop now. He was going to hit this pendejo.
The guy looked up—it was definitely just a guy, so Andres could tell that at least it wasn’t one of the Lizard People. For half a second the guy stood there, frozen. Then he scrambled frantically up and into one of those blocked tunnels, pulling a duffel bag after him.
The train roared past the spot just as the guy vanished into the hole, and Andres blew out a breath and shook his head. What the hell; that had been way too close. And what was that hijo de puta doing there anyway? Probably just some goofy Millennial asshole trying to explore and write a book about Underground New York. No—not a book, a website. That’s what they did nowadays, websites. And he’d sell T-shirts or something, too.
Whatever; he hadn’t hit the dumbfuck pendejo, so it was none of his business. Andres put it out of his head and brought the train into the station.
As he did, the guy in the jumpsuit was catching his breath just inside the opening he’d made. He’d planned on making it a little bigger, but the oncoming train had forced him to crawl through before he cleared the passage. It had been sealed for a lot of years, and unsealing it had been tougher than he’d expected. He took a deep breath and listened as the train rattled past. That had been way closer than it should have been. But one of the crossbeams blocking the hole had been replaced with steel rebar and anchored in concrete. He hadn’t planned on that, and it had taken him much too long to remove it.
It didn’t matter. Close was still a miss, and he had a job to do. He worked his way toward Park Avenue, along a tunnel that had not been used in living memory. Rubble had fallen from the walls, and even from the ceiling. There were still train tracks underfoot, but they were rusted, broken in many places. So he picked his way along carefully, until the tunnel ended abruptly at what had once been a stop for a long-gone train route. Here he paused, shining his light across the old platform. There was a marble arch on the back wall, but whatever doorway it had framed was gone, bricked up and then plastered over. He moved his light around the vaulted ceiling, which was decorated with a surprising amount of nineteenth-century detail work, and a mural of the Rape of Europa, badly faded and peeling but still visible. The man smiled and took out a map. He examined it carefully, checking it against a GPS on his wrist. Then he nodded and refolded the map.
Next he opened his duffel bag and took out an orange device, about the size and shape of a rifle case. At one end of it was a hand grip, with some kind of electronics mounted on it. He flicked it on and stepped onto the platform and over to the far wall, the one with the sealed arch, and began moving slowly along the wall to his right, watching the dials while holding the other end of the gadget up to the wall.
For the next hour the man went back and forth, covering every inch of the wall with the orange device. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it. He put the orange thing back in his bag and took out another piece of equipment, a black box with twin antennae on top and a meter of some kind on its face. He spent another half hour with this, along the same wall, but when he was done, he was still unsatisfied. He shook his head and mumbled, “Solid fucking steel.” He stared at the wall for a while, but that didn’t seem to help. So he put the box away, took out a bottle of water, and sat on the ground.
For a long time he just sat, sipping his water, sometimes looking over at the wall and then at the ceiling. Finally, he gave this up, too. “Shit,” he said softly. Then he stood, dusted off his hands, and went back down the tunnel toward the platform for the Lexington local, bag over his shoulder.
* * *
—
Angela Dunham was a busy woman. Ordinarily, as assistant curator at the Eberhardt Museum, she did not need to work at the frantic pace she was at now. It was true that her boss, Benjy Dryden, the curator, was a cousin of the Eberhardts, and he was not a man who believed in the virtues of hard work—at least, not for himself. He did expect it from his assistant, and that kept Angela occupied.
Normally, that was not a huge burden. Angela loved the work, and it seldom demanded more of her than she could give in an eight-hour day. But now, with these bloody crown jewels coming in, she was in constant tumultuous motion, arranging extra insurance, overseeing the installation of all the new security—which meant dealing with the men from Tiburon Security, and they were a bit frightening, in her opinion. Curator Benjy kept himself remote from all of it. Angela even had to supervise the design elements for the exhibit—it just never ended. There were so many details that required her attention, and it seemed to her like she never got two seconds to sit down and drink her coffee anymore.
Angela had acquired a taste for coffee—practically an addiction, she admitted to herself. Of course, that was partly because it was new to her; she’d grown up with tea, drank PG Tips all the way through her master’s at University of Birmingham, back home in the UK’s Midlands. But when she’d come to America to take this job ten years before, she’d grown fond of coffee instead. Among other things, it made her feel a bit more like she belonged here. She’d come to relish the ritual of pouring a cup, sitting and sipping for a few minutes while she mentally organized her day. But the last few weeks had been so hectic she scarcely had time to pee, let alone sit and sip.