The Baker Street Letters (24 page)

Reggie saw that it was a settled issue.

“As you wish,” he said.

“So where is the bloody thing?”

“In my coat pocket.”

Laura picked up Reggie's coat. “I hope you don't mean this pocket,” she said as she examined the coat.

“Why?”

Laura pulled out the contents of Reggie's waterlogged coat pocket. She laid the wet sheets of vellum on the glass coffee table and pressed out as much water as she could. Then she folded them carefully between the pages of a thick weekly
Variety
magazine, placed all of it together in a paper bag, and gave the whole package back to Reggie.

“I hope they survive long enough for our purposes,” she said.

“I hope we do,” said Reggie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With all the old shops permanently closed, and no neon residuals to illuminate anything, there was probably not a darker place in the city than the Lankershim construction wasteland where the cab dropped Reggie and Laura. There was one weak amber streetlamp to cover three blocks. To the south, the Paradigm building was lit at the top. One block to the immediate north was a yellow light at the security gate for the dig.

“I'll go, you stay and call the police if I don't come back,” said Reggie.

“Bloody hell I will. If you don't come back, me calling the police will be a bit late, won't it?”

“I—”

“We settled this issue. Now let's just do it.”

“I hope you wore comfortable shoes.”

They began walking toward the south end of the dig. Then Reggie put his hand on her arm and they paused.

There was one parked car, at what used to be curbside, just fifty yards from the south gate.

It was a powder blue 1960s Volkswagen Beetle.

“I know that car,” said Reggie.

He approached it from one side, and Laura from the other.

In the dimly lit street, it was impossible to see anything through the rear window.

“Wait,” said Reggie. “The driver's side is halfway down. Can't be right.”

Reggie went to the driver's-side window. He started to lean inside for a better look.

There was a sudden explosion—of fur, slobber, and growling canine teeth—and Reggie jumped back.

“Bloody damn dog!”

Mara's Saint Bernard had half its body in the front seat now and half in the back, where it had compressed itself, like a huge coiled spring—until Reggie arrived.

“Don't be angry, just because he scared you.”

“Knocked me down a full flight of stairs last time he did that.”

“Doing his job,” said Laura, approaching the animal. “Sweet baby. Not annoyed with me at all, are you?”

Reggie looked inside again, warily, as Laura stroked Mookie's head.

“Keys are in the ignition,” he said. “Keys in the ignition, and window down. Do you suppose she'd walk away and leave her car like that, counting on the dog to protect it?”

“No,” said Laura. “She wouldn't leave him here. He's her baby. Something's wrong.”

Reggie stood back from the car and looked around. At the north end of the site, there was a small yellow lamp on at the security station booth; presumably there was still a guard there.

But the south edge of the site, just fifty yards or so away, was dark.

“We're almost there,” said Reggie. “We need to move on.”

“We can't leave him here,” said Laura. “If the sun comes up in this heat, he could cook.”

“If the sun comes up and we're not back, I doubt that I'll care whether he cooks.”

“We can't just leave him,” repeated Laura.

“All right, then,” said Reggie. “If we let him out, can you tie him up?”

“Of course.”

Reggie stepped back from the car, and Laura let the dog climb obediently out. She tied it by the end of its leash to the nearest pole.

“Sit!” she said firmly, and the dog did.

Reggie and Laura moved on to the south edge of the site.

The perimeter of the chain-link fence was topped with spirals of razor wire. But there was a gate.

The gate appeared at first to be chained shut. Reggie gave it a push.

The lock fell open, and the chain dropped to the ground with an interminable metal clatter. Reggie looked about furtively, but the security booth was apparently too far away for anyone to have heard, and he saw no one.

He opened the gate, and they entered the site.

To the left, a dirt-carrying conveyor belt angled ninety feet overhead, with a mountain of the day's diggings piled at its base. Directly ahead was the main excavation itself.

The tunnels had to be below, at the bottom of the 150-foot excavated pit.

They walked on, past stacks of concrete tunnel segments, toward the excavation.

As they drew closer, it became apparent that the pit itself was completely dark—there were amber lamps along the surface, but there was nothing but black in the depths. The lamps gave just enough light to locate the lift Reggie had seen when he spoke with Sanger earlier.

But the platform cage was locked. And as they moved cautiously closer to the edge, it was clear that the platform itself was, quite inconveniently, at the lower levels.

Reggie took a step closer to the edge of excavation and peered into the darkness below. At the far end a faint arc of light spilled out from some source, but it was too weak to illuminate more than a bit of damp ground.

“Now where do you suppose the tunnel is?” asked Laura.

“Further down than one would like,” said Reggie.

“And was this our only mode of transportation?” asked Laura, looking at the vacant lift cage.

“I believe I saw a set of stairs somewhere along here—scaffolding, really, and it's a long way to the bottom. Can I persuade you to reconsider?”

“Nothing of the sort,” she said.

They walked for several yards along the perimeter until Reggie found the metal spiraling steps to the excavation floor.

They both paused at the edge and looked down.

“It's even further than it looks,” said Reggie.

“I'd say you're right about that, since we can't see past three steps in this dark.”

“Are you sure you want to proceed?”

“Stop asking that,” said Laura. Then she said, “You first.”

Reggie went first. The metal steps clanged and echoed as they began the descent.

Within a few moments, the top of the rim from which they had descended was no longer distinguishable in the darkness;
below, everything was dark as well, except for the weak light at the far end.

Laura stopped and reached down to touch Reggie. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?” He turned toward her.

“I thought I heard something above.”

“Something like what?”

“A click. Something hard on metal.”

“I didn't hear it.”

“All right, then, let's both hold very still.”

Reggie did.

They were standing very close to each other—of necessity on the narrow stairs—she two steps and one-half turn above him. He could hear her breathing. He felt her body heat, and he could tell that at some point in the last twenty-four hours, she had put her perfume other places than just behind the ears. If they hadn't been standing with no guardrail over a pitch-black chasm on a mission of utmost urgency—

“What are you doing?” said Laura from above.

“I'm holding still.”

“Not completely. And the position of your face is quite untimely. Kindly hold still in your own space.”

“If I lean any more into my own space, I'll be in a ten-story free fall. What are you doing?”

Laura was reaching up and touching the edge of one of the metal steps above them with her fingertips. “If someone else is on the stairs,” she whispered, “we should feel the vibrations.”

“Do you feel vibrations?”

“Nothing from the steps,” she said. “Let's shove on.”

Reggie roused himself from his position, and they moved on. Several long moments later, they reached the end of the ladder and stepped off onto gravelly ground.

Somewhere water was dripping; there were thick scents of wet earth and fresh concrete and a sharp scent of diesel fuel.

Now they knew that the faint light they had seen from above was coming from the tunnel opening, fifty yards or so away. They approached tentatively, not speaking, walking past the high mounds of freshly dug earth and stacks of rebar and concrete tunnel linings.

Reggie looked hard into the shadows and saw no one. But it was too dark to really tell; anyone could have been in the excavation watching them, and there was no way to know.

They reached the entrance to the tunnels—two of them, each about fifteen feet in diameter—but only one of them had any source of light. Black lettering on the concrete face of that one identified it as 110-Left.

Reggie checked his watch again, then stepped to the opening and looked in as far as he could.

“Well, we're here. Tunnel 110-Left,” said Laura.

“I think the idea was we go inside.”

“No doubt,” said Laura. “Cheery thought.”

They entered the tunnel, walking between the steel rails.

In this part of the tunnel, concrete linings had already been set in place. Lamps attached to the upper portions of the walls glistened in shades of white, gray, and silver off the concrete, and reflected iridescent patterns on the steel rails and dark rainbows on oily substances that floated on the occasional pools of water.

But the electrical installations weren't complete, and there were gaps, with darkness and loose hanging wires, between the glow of each lamp, and there were dark recesses in the tunnel walls.

It was surprising how much their footsteps echoed on the damp sand and gravel.

In the far distance—or near distance; it was nearly impossible
to judge, given the perfectly straight path of the tunnel and the reflecting light—was a dark obstruction of some kind, dead center in the tunnel, with a faint halo from residual light in the tunnel that continued behind it.

They were moving toward it rapidly, and as they got nearer, pieces of tunneling equipment and trailing carriers were distinguishable along the sides of the tunnel.

Reggie put his hand on Laura's arm to stop her from continuing forward.

Now the haloed obstruction in the center of the tunnel was distinguishable. It was the mole, a massive tunneling machine.

And on a recessed service shelf in the tunnel wall on the right was a dark object that Reggie had at first supposed was another piece of equipment.

But it wasn't. It was a man, sitting very still on the shelf, legs dangling over the edge, facing the farther end of the tunnel, in the direction of the mole.

Reggie and Laura took another few steps, then stopped.

The man turned his head; the features of his face were still indistinguishable.

“Closer,” he said.

It was the same voice Reggie had heard on the phone, but now he was certain where he had heard it previously.

It was the angry man from the soup kitchen. It was Mara's father.

“Ramirez?” said Reggie.

“Move closer,” the man said again. “I can't see your faces.”

They moved closer. Cautiously.

Now the man stood up. He was wearing the oversize dirty overcoat Reggie had seen when he'd chased him in the alley.

Ramirez stared back at Reggie's face for a moment and seemed satisfied.

“Show me the map,” he said.

Reggie pulled the
Variety
magazine out of his coat pocket and extracted a sheet of the map from it.

“Closer. Can't tell from here.”

Reggie stepped closer, unfolded the map, and without letting go of it, displayed it for Ramirez.

“Okay,” said Ramirez. “That's it. That's the one.”

Reggie expected Ramirez to try to take the map now, but he didn't. He just stared at it intently, as if mesmerized, as Reggie held it out before him.

“Damn eyes. Can't see shit anymore. But see that mark at the bottom corner? That's me. That's my own mark. That one's the truth.” He said this almost longingly. To Reggie, it seemed the man was beginning to lose focus.

“How will you clear my brother?” Reggie said quickly, bundling the map back into the newspaper.

“What?”

“My brother. You said you can clear him.”

Ramirez paused and looked annoyed, as if Reggie were insisting on the trivial. “Yeah. They think he killed that jerk under the freeway, right? Well, he didn't. I did. I killed the little bastard.”

“Why?” said Laura.

“The guy was lurking. I watched the place for days, so there was no doubt about it. Always seemed to be coming down the stairs when she got home. Always seemed to be coming down the stairs when she got her mail. Not shuffling around like he was shy and wanted to meet her or something like that, but lurking, dammit, for no good.