A Thousand Tombs (19 page)

Looking back, Gen knew she could have gotten away if she’d just paid closer attention. She was sprinting like a track star in the opposite direction from where Luca was headed, just in case Luciano was still after the kid.

And she thought she was home free, coming out to the street-side of the building and with her car in sight, when she rounded the corner and Carla made her hesitate with just a few words.

Well, and a gun.

“Stop, or your boyfriend is dead,” she said.

Who did she mean, Mack or Luca?

Regardless, no way did she believe the woman, and no way was she going to hang around to find out what she meant. And no way was Gen worried about someone getting away with firing a gun at her in broad daylight, even though – aside from the crooked cops and Giampaolino – she hadn’t seen a single soul anywhere, despite the smattering of cars.

She pulled her keys from her pocket and blew by Carla at about forty miles an hour. At least that’s what it felt like.

Until her knees buckled.

Her mind was fuddled as she went down, trying to figure out why she’d lost control of her legs. Had she tripped on something? Did Carla fire the gun in spite of the risk?

Just before the lights went out, she understood.

The bitch had a Taser, and Gen had just taken about twelve hundred volts.

* * *

The air was musty when Gen came to, and the room was dark. Not pitch black, but too dim to make anything out. A feeble square of light flickered a bowling alley’s length away, plus smaller pinpoints illuminating bits of nothingness high above. Not a thing seemed familiar.

She raised a hand to the knot on her scalp where Rudy had punched her and scowled when she realized her hands were bound, then winced at the pain when she touched the goose egg.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Mack was going to kill her for leaving the stun gun in the car, that’s for sure.

When was she going to learn?

She rallied at the image of Mack chewing her out; something to look forward to. She held that thought and edged onto one elbow, then sat up as slow as her aching muscles would allow and crossed her legs beneath her, happy to find that at least her ankles weren’t tied.

Giampaolino had pummeled her pretty good. Then she remembered what she’d managed to do to him, and that brought on a grin. Maybe the sight of Rudy, bruised and hopefully bloodied, would temper Mack’s irritation.

She sat for a moment, head bent, willing herself to recover, wondering where she was and whether or not Luca was still free. She clenched her eyes hard and sent out a prayer that he’d had his cell phone in his pocket, then that he’d had a chance to use it and was talking with Mack right now, and lastly, that Mack was on the way, leading a horde of cops to liberate her.

Please God, keep them both safe.

And then she remembered how angry she’d been with the kid just before the whole day blew up.

No sense going back there. She could blame the boy all she wanted, but this wasn’t his fault. It was hers. Mack had warned her a million times if she was going to work in this business, she had to be vigilant. To be on the lookout for trouble at all times, and to sally forth strapped – that meant wearing a gun in cop lingo – into the day. And night.

She hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet, had she?

She hung her head there in the dark and her throat swelled, threatening tears. Gen Delacourt did not cry in public, but right now she was alone and no one would know.

Except Gen Delacourt. She’d know.

And she also knew crying wouldn’t help. She pulled in a breath and put a lid on the self-pity. It was time to rely on her wits, however diminished or incompetent they might be.

She shifted her legs beneath her, used her bound hands for balance, and rose to her feet. Her head pounded out the sound track to Jaws and she almost lost her lunch, but bent at the waist in time to avert it. When the worst of the booming had passed she moved forward, hands stretched out and feet shuffling, to keep from tripping or smacking into a wall.

Toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

It seemed as if it took an hour to reach it, and when she did it wasn’t much help. It was a door. The brightness she’d seen was seeping around the jamb. She found the knob and rattled it. Locked. She felt the edges in the darkness, not sure just what she was looking for.

She backtracked to the right along the wall, feeling for furniture or implements or – wouldn’t that be great good luck? – a hammer or an axe that could break the sucker down.

That’s right, Gen. Humor will help. Think of this as something to write about in your memoir, just another adventure you barreled into and out the other side unscathed. She continued to slide her hands along the wall, but the room appeared to be empty of anything but her sorry self.

And that was when she remembered Rick again, and, finally, used her fingers to explore what was binding her hands. Better late than never, she supposed, and spat out a “Yes!” when she discovered it was, indeed, a plastic tie, and she could feel the locking mechanism.

But her palms were already facing, so there was no extra room to maneuver. She put her back to the wall and slid into a squat and tried to manipulate one hand free. That was when she heard footsteps.

Sneaking. Stealthy.

In a flash she was pressed hard against the wall behind the door, where she would be hidden as it swung into the room. And swing it did, slowly, creeping open an inch at a time.

Someone breathed on the other side, and she could tell from the sound that whoever stood there was taller than her. Oh shoot, not Rudy. Please God, not Rudy. He’d be mad enough that she didn’t want to consider what he might be willing to do if he got his hands on her again.

She shrank into a crouch, making herself the smallest target possible, and held her breath. But with the flick of a switch the room lit up like an airport runway, and it must be clear to anyone standing in the threshold that whoever rattled the knob was now behind the open door.

The hinges creaked. She heard her captor take two steps forward into the room, and she closed her eyes against the brightness and the moment she would be revealed. Bound. Defenseless. No weapon but her mind, which clearly wasn’t all that dangerous.

That’s when she heard a sharp intake of air. Her lids flew open, and she went from resigned to depressed in the space of a breath.

It was Luca, and his hands were also bound.

Gen straightened, narrowing her eyes against the influx of light. “Crap. I’ve been sitting in here hoping you got away.” His expression had also deteriorated at sight of her, and she knew why. The only good news about this development was that she wasn’t in imminent danger of getting pounded by the Italian Stallion.

“I was hoping the same thing about you,” he replied.

Yeah, she’d figured.

“How are we going to get out of here?” he asked.

“We’ll think of something. Like, please tell me you have your cell phone.”

He shook his head. “It’s in the Camaro.” He gave her a look that only a seventeen-year-old could conjure, then turned his back and walked out.

Which left her standing in the corner alone, studying the place. Her instincts had been right; it was like a bowling alley, long but not wide, with an old-fashioned narrow-slatted oak floor and small windows high in the wall. The building must be old, built before the codes required windows on the ground floor big enough for an occupant to climb out in case of fire. Either that, or they’d simply been walled over, or this was a basement.

And, as she’d expected, the place was as empty as a high school classroom on a Saturday morning. That is, except for a few random wood chips and wisps of newspaper drifting across the floor.

“Luca?”

“What.”

“Where are we?”

“Inside one of the buildings we wish we were still outside of.”

She found him in the next room. It was a duplicate of the former but not as large. A single door led to who-knows-where, and Luca was slumped beside it with his back to the wall and his head on his knees.

“They must have thrown you in there before they brought me in,” he said. “I didn’t know until you rattled the knob.”

“You must have given them a pretty good chase, then.”

“Not good enough.” He sounded disgusted. “I came around a corner and some guy was waiting for me with a gun. I should have yelled for help, but I didn’t.”

She heard the frustration in his voice and did her best to throw him a bone. “Look, I work as a private detective, right? But my stun gun, which I’m supposed to have with me at all times, is in my car.”

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and came up empty-handed. “Forget that. Since they’ve relieved me of my keys, they probably have another weapon in their arsenal now. Great.”

It was her turn to be disgusted. “Okay, that’s it,” she said. “Let’s lose these zip ties.”

That got his attention. “I’ve been trying to, but I can’t,” he said.

“I know the secret,” Gen replied. “A big brawny man taught me how.” She hunched over and searched the floor for just the right fragment of wood, then picked it up and went to sit beside him.

“We’re lucky on two counts.” She went to work on his zip tie. “Number one, they tied our hands in front of us. Two, and I can’t imagine why, but they didn’t bind our legs. Dealing with that would have taken longer. I suppose the hand thing was just meant to discourage us. Clearly they don’t expect much out of you and me. Let’s prove them wrong.”

She worked the end of the stout little sliver into the locking mechanism. When she tried to lift the plastic, the tip of the wood broke off and she tossed it away. But Luca had gotten the idea by then, and he jumped to his feet and began another search. Within seconds they each had a sturdier shard and were face-to-face and ready to try again.

It took several attempts, but Gen soon had him loose. Then it was her turn, and in minutes she was pulling off the tie and shaking her hands out.

Luca had already turned to study the door.

“I’ll assume it’s locked,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She moved forward and put her ear to the jamb. Not a sound. She took a step back and tugged on one of the hinge pins. It moved easily, so she worked it up and out. The other two were more difficult, but she and Luca managed to pull them.

Taking the door off proved to be more of a challenge.

But eventually they did it, tearing the lock from the jamb in the process. The open doorway revealed a staircase that ascended about twenty treads to a landing and another closed door. Gen started up, and Luca followed. When she gained the top, she grasped the knob and turned it as slowly as she was able.

This one was not locked.

She opened the door a smidge and shoved her eye to the crack. It was a utility closet, lined with stand-alone shelving that a mediocre carpenter had knocked together using two-by-twos and cheap plywood. They housed a mish-mash of paper towels and cleaning supplies. The room was illuminated by a weak, naked overhead bulb.

The best part? The place was empty of humans.

Still wary of Rudy’s fists, she slid the door open but protected her body with its bulk and checked behind it. “Nobody here,” she said, then walked in with Luca close on her heels.

The area was about eight feet square, and the shelving left little space for the two of them. Gen crept to the door on the other side and listened. She could hear the buzz of some kind of machinery.

A sander, maybe, or even a vacuum cleaner.

“Somebody’s out there,” she said.

“Yeah, I can hear it.”

Gen glanced back at Luca. He was staring at the ceiling. She followed his eyes up and saw an access door, undoubtedly to the attic. That meant spiders and dust and – worse – rodents.

She made a face. “Ugh. I know what you’re thinking.”

He pulled the Windex and paper towels from a set of shelves and piled it all on the next one over, cautiously moved the empty unit beneath the metal ring of the inset door, then clambered onto the top shelf and grasped the ring. It didn’t budge. He yanked harder. Again, no movement. So he lay flat and pulled with two hands.

“It’s painted shut,” he said.

And just then, the door gave a massive squeak and shuddered downward.

The door revealed one of those attic access units that unfolded into its own set of stairs as it descended to the floor.

The stairway to heaven, only not.

They had the shelving back in place and the treads down and were up and on their knees in the musty, dreadful crawl space so quickly Gen had little time to contemplate what might be waiting in the dark.

“We have to move,” she said. “As soon as somebody sees the stairs, they’ll know where we went.”

“Which way?” Luca asked.

“Beats me. You were awake when they brought you through the place. Your call.”

“I think they shoved me in through a door in that end of the building.” Luca pointed.

“Then let’s head for the other side. Keep your eyes peeled for a way out to the roof. From what little I could see from below the complex, the pitch of the roofline isn’t real steep. Maybe if we can get onto it, we can find a way down.”

The pair began the journey on their hands and knees, scrabbling over ducting and bundled electric wires. The light was dim to nonexistent, but Gen had noticed when they first climbed up that the fiberglass insulation shoved into each of the joist bays was dotted with little black pellets.

Rats. The thought made her cringe.

They edged along from one joist to the next like two ants trying to navigate a football field strewn with trash. It was hot, and it was dark. Her nerves were raw before they’d covered fifty feet.

They hadn’t gone much farther when Luca stopped, then beckoned for her to crawl up beside him. He was crouched over a square of metal grating that was like an open window to the room below. Once upon a time, an arm of the cylindrical heating duct had covered it, but some workman had detached it from the grate and failed to hook it up again.

“Check it out,” he whispered.

Gen moved closer and peered over the edge.

They were about twelve feet above the milieu strewn about the room below. It took a minute to realize what she was seeing, but she got the picture soon enough.

There were crates and cardboard boxes of every size and shape stacked throughout the space. The open ones contained cups and plates and statues and clay vessels and implements she couldn’t name, all still semi-shrouded in the newspaper they’d been packed in. Many of the pots were in pieces, and a few had what seemed to be clumps of soil clinging to their sides.

The place was so stuffed with artifacts it looked like the bowels of a museum.

A fan whirred somewhere off to the right. A man sat at a long picnic-style table in the same direction, hunched over and working. He was balding, and his scalp was shiny under the overhead fluorescents. A tabletop task light focused its beam on several plates in front of him. He seemed to be packing them up.

From what Gen could see, it appeared there was no one else in residence. She could just make out a stretch of the second-story windows, which were dingy and coated with grime. Appalling work conditions. The guy should complain. Then again, maybe he was getting paid enough that a greasy window or two couldn’t upset him.

She sat back on her heels and studied Luca’s face across from her, illuminated by the lights from below. She speculated about what was going on downstairs, and bet big money the room was filled with illegal artifacts, and that this building was a clearing house, set up to receive the loot and ship it on.

And the Carabinieri were part of it, maybe even running the show.

She wondered how much Vitelli knew.

The kid hooked a thumb over his shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. He was saying it was time to get on with it, and she couldn’t agree more.

They resumed their scramble in the dark.

That is, of course, until Luca fell through the ceiling.