The Manhattan Hunt Club (28 page)

Staring, as if looking for something.

Or someone.

“Just like the guys at every other station I’ve been to,” Keith whispered, leaning closer so he could speak directly into her ear. “Except all the others were acting like they were just hanging out. These guys are looking for something.”

“Us?” Heather whispered back.

Keith shook his head. “How would they even know we’re here?”

“Someone who saw us jump off the platform at Columbus Circle could have taken a train and told them. The trains are full of homeless people.”

“Or they could be looking for Jinx,” Keith suggested.

“Or Jeff.”

Her words hung between them, and Keith said, “You want to know something, the best thing to do is go ask, right? Wait here.”

He started forward. Heather, ignoring his last words, kept pace with him. When he stopped and turned as if to say something, she shook her head, and there was a look about her that told him it would be useless to argue. She said, “If there’s any trouble—”

“If there’s any trouble,” Keith repeated, cutting her off, “you just stay down.” He pulled the gun out of his waistband, showed it to her, then shoved it and the hand that held it deep into the outer pocket of his pea jacket.

Heather’s own hand tightened on the grip of the pistol she’d taken from her father’s gun cabinet, which was now deep in the folds of her own coat, a badly worn bomber jacket that she’d tried to convince Jeff to get rid of more than a year ago.

“Let me do the talking,” Keith said. “Act like a junkie.”

They moved forward, Keith letting his body slump into the defeated slouch of the derelicts he’d seen in the streets, parks, and subways over the past two days. Heather shuffled beside him, her head down, her hair hanging limply so her face was only partly visible. When they came to the platform, Keith climbed up, then pulled Heather after him. “Fuckin’ bitch,” he muttered. “I oughta—”

Heather jerked her arm loose. “Keep your fuckin’ hands offa me, asshole.” As she turned sullenly away from him, he shrugged helplessly to one of the two men, who gave him a gap-toothed grin and winked.

“Shit, man—whyn’t you dump her?”

Keith spread his hands. “She’ll be okay. Seen Jinx?”

The man’s grin faded. “What you lookin’ for her for?”

Keith’s mind raced, then he remembered the wad of cash Tillie had shoved into the girl’s hands yesterday. He jerked his head meaningfully toward Heather, whose back was still to him. “Heard she’s got some money.”

The gap-toothed man shook his head. “You crazy, mothafuck? You roll Jinx, you be dead. Hunters go after you soon’s they finish off the fuckers they’re after right now!”

Keith spat out the kind of profanity that never failed to grab the attention of his work construction crew. “Any idea where they are?”

The second man nodded farther down the track. “Heard they was down three, and three workin’ east, the rest comin’ this way. If you ain’t herdin’ I’d get my ass outta here.”

“Shit,” Keith said. He grabbed Heather, tugging at her arm until she turned around. “Time to go.”

She acted like she wanted to pull away from him. “Fuck you—why don’t ya just leave me alone!”

“Maybe I will, bitch!” Keith dropped her arm and started down the platform as an eastbound train pulled into the station. “Who the fuck needs you anyway?”

“Don’t you leave me here!” Heather screamed, running to catch up to him just as he stepped onto one of the cars. The doors slid shut behind her, and Keith winked.

“You’re good,” he said as the train pulled out of the station.

“For a second I thought you were actually trying to get away from me.”

“I figured I could count on you not to let that happen. Come on.”

They made their way back to the last car, and when the train pulled into the Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street station, they got off.

They were back on the tracks before the train had pulled away, scurrying into the darkness like rats into a sewer.

“He said the hunters were ‘down three’—got any idea what that means?”

Heather nodded. “Jeff took a class in urban architecture last year. There are all kinds of tunnels under the city, and they go deep. ‘Down three’ must mean three levels down from here.” She peered into the darkness. “But how do we get there?”

“If there’s a way down, then we’ll find it,” Keith said. “Come on.”

P
erry Randall felt the familiar thrill run through him as he moved through the semidarkness of the utility tunnel. Behind him, Frisk McGuire—who, like the rest of The Hundred, never brought his honorific through the anonymous door on West Fifty-third, leaving Monsignor Terrence McGuire on the street outside—was on his left, while Carey Atkinson watched the right. The formation wasn’t necessary yet, of course, for they weren’t nearly deep enough to be in any real danger. Yet at the same time you couldn’t be too careful—the jungle beneath the streets could be far more dangerous than the African bush. Only two years ago they’d lost one of their members when the tribe that lived on the lowest level of the tunnels had set up an ambush that even the best of the club’s gamekeepers hadn’t heard anything about.

But that was what made the hunt thrilling. It wasn’t as if there was danger only to the prey—nothing like the hunting farm he’d visited in Zimbabwe, where the sense of adventure was primarily an illusion. Here, beneath the streets of the most civilized city in the world, the risks were as real for the hunters themselves as for the quarry they tracked. Indeed, Perry could still remember the first hunt, after he and Linc Cosgrove had organized the Manhattan Hunt Club within the walls of The Hundred. When Eve had told him what she wished the club to do, it was obvious she already had her husband’s support, and that if Perry didn’t agree to what she proposed, Linc would simply find another member who would. Linc, after all, had nothing to lose—the heart problems that killed him on the Jamaican beach a few months later had already been diagnosed.

“The man who raped and killed my daughter was released from prison today,” Eve had said, her dark eyes smoldering, her voice ice cold. “My daughter is dead, and now he’s a free man.” Until that moment, Perry Randall hadn’t been aware that Eve Harris had ever had a child, let alone that the child had been murdered. But Eve anticipated the question before Randall could voice it. “My daughter didn’t count,” she said. “I was just another unwed mother, and she was just another black girl with no father. If my daughter had been white, the bastard would have been executed.” Her eyes moved over the white faces surrounding her, daring any of them to argue. They all looked uncomfortable, but none of them spoke. “But she was my child,” Eve went on. “And now he’s back on the streets, going on with his life.” Her voice dropped another notch. “You know as well as I do that he’s already looking for his next victim.”

Still Perry Randall said nothing, and then it was Linc Cosgrove who spoke. “It’s not just my wife’s daughter,” he said. “It’s the tenor of the times we live in. No one is being held accountable for their own actions. Everything is someone else’s fault.” He passed a photograph to Randall, and the Assistant District Attorney found himself looking at a man of about twenty-five, with narrow-set eyes, a weak chin, and a shock of dirty blond hair falling over a sloping forehead. The man’s name was Leon Nelson. “I’ve read the transcript of his trial,” he went on. “They didn’t try him—they tried Eve’s daughter instead. When they were through, they gave this man fifteen years.” Linc Cosgrove’s heavy brow arched and his voice took on an edge of sarcasm. “It was a murder, after all—they had to do
something
, didn’t they? But the prisons are overcrowded, and apparently he has behaved himself. So he is now out, and, as Eve says, undoubtedly looking for his next victim.”

Perry Randall’s gaze shifted back to Eve, his unspoken question hanging in the air.

“I want justice,” Eve said. “But not just for my daughter. I want justice for every powerless victim in this city.” She’d outlined her proposal then, in the same dispassionate tones with which she now discussed whatever proposal lay before the City Council, to which she’d been elected three years after that first meeting. “I think of it as a club within the club,” she’d said. “A club of fair-minded people who have the greater good of the city and its citizens at heart.” What she proposed was not a lynch mob. Rather, it was an orderly system in which the worst elements of the city would be identified and dealt with. “Each of them will have a fair chance,” Eve explained. “There will be a time limit—a statute of limitations, if you will. And should any of them prove themselves capable of finding their way out of the maze that exists under our city, then they shall have truly won their freedom. But it must be won—we have been giving too many people too much for too long. It’s time people began earning their lives again.”

Perry Randall had long understood that the coddling of the criminal element had to stop, and that the established system was unlikely to correct its own dangerous drift.

That was why The 100 Club had originally been established: to allow for society’s elite to do what was necessary in private, without the necessity of convincing a seemingly uneducable public to find the spine to do the right thing.

Thus was the Manhattan Hunt Club born.

He and Linc Cosgrove had selected the original members themselves, and he could still remember that night when he, Linc, Frisk McGuire, and Carey Atkinson had first gone into the tunnels in search of the man who had murdered Eve Harris’s daughter. Eve herself had organized the people living in the tunnels, those who had become the gamekeepers for the hunt, funneling money to them in payment for their work.

Carey Atkinson’s people had discovered where the killer was living, and some of Eve’s people escorted him into the tunnels, explained to him what was about to happen, and why, and had given him certain provisions.

Then they released him.

What Perry hadn’t expected was the excitement that had run through him as he and the others moved through the special door that had been cut through from The 100 Club’s subbasement—now the headquarters of the Manhattan Hunt Club—and began exploring the tunnels. That first hunt lasted nearly a week, as he and his team began mapping the tunnels, learning where there were hidden passages, and which passages led to dead ends. Eventually, they had trapped their prey in a storm drain on the fourth level down, backed up against a grating that opened onto the Hudson. Perry himself had shot Nelson, placing the red dot of his laser sight in the precise center of the man’s forehead as he was silhouetted against the grate. The thrill he had felt as he squeezed the trigger, and the satisfaction of seeing Nelson’s body slump into the muck covering the bottom of the culvert, had been better even than the sexual gymnastics Carolyn had taught him.

The thrill of the hunt had never waned for Perry Randall, and as he began tonight’s adventure, he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He’d been anticipating this moment for months. From the moment Jeff Converse was arrested, Perry knew that sooner or later the young man who thought he might someday marry his daughter would become part of the hunt.

After the sentencing—the mere slap on the wrist the judge had inflicted—he knew the time had come. When Eve Harris called him to convene a meeting of the special committee that she herself chaired, he was prepared. Of course, Eve herself was going to have to be disciplined; it was inexcusable that Converse had been allowed to get his hands on a cell phone. But that could be dealt with later, after the hunt was over.

After Jeff Converse had been placed among the other trophies that lined the walls of the Hunt Club.

With senses made sharper by the adrenaline flowing through his body, his fingers tightened on the strap that held his rifle to his back. The gun was one of the Steyr SSG-PIs, to which he’d fitted a day-night scope with an infrared beam.

As he came to a place where a locked door led from the utility tunnel into the Fifty-third Street subway tunnel, he reached into his pocket and took out one of the numerous keys that had been supplied to the members of the hunt by one of their own, whose public responsibilities included overseeing most of the city’s utilities. Randall fumbled with the lock as the key stuck, but then it turned and the door opened.

He glanced to his left and saw nothing but the distant glow of the subway station.

To his right, barely visible in the distance, a couple of derelicts—a man and a woman, judging by their size—were shambling off into the darkness.

By the time the rest of Perry Randall’s team had come through the door and relocked it, the two figures had vanished.

H
eather Randall’s fingers closed on Keith Converse’s arm. when he turned to look at her, he could barely make out her finger pressed to her lips in warning. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “I heard something—like a door closing.”

Keith frowned in the darkness. They’d passed a door only a few minutes ago. He’d tried the handle, anxious to get away from the subway tunnel, but it had been locked.

He couldn’t recall seeing another.

But he
had
found a shaft, a narrow one, leading downward, with iron rungs embedded in its walls. Until Heather’s whispered warning, he’d been undecided about whether to take the shaft or not. Now his mind was made up, and with no hesitation at all he climbed down into the darkness.

A second later, Heather followed.

And less than a minute after that, Perry Randall and his fellow hunters came to the top of the shaft.

After conferring among themselves, they, too, began climbing down the rungs of the ladder.

CHAPTER 33

J
agger gazed down at Jeff’s face. His eyes were closed, but Jagger wasn’t sure if he was really sleeping or just pretending to. It didn’t make any difference, because all he was going to do was look at him.

He just liked watching Jeff sleep. Liked the way his lips curled up a little at the corner, like he was smiling. Liked the way his jawline was squared off, like some kind of movie star.

His eyes left Jeff’s face and began moving down his body. For some reason—a reason that Jagger couldn’t quite remember—Jeff didn’t have any clothes on, and even though Jeff wasn’t shivering or anything, Jagger was sure he must be cold.

Jagger himself was shivering.

Maybe if he just lay down next to Jeff and put their bodies close together—

Suddenly, Jagger didn’t have any clothes on either, and his body was pressed close to Jeff—really close. Jeff’s skin felt warm and soft, and Jagger let his finger trace the curve of the other man’s hip. Jeff moved, pressing closer, and Jagger felt his groin start to stir.

And his hand, which only a second ago had been on Jeff’s hip, was now—

Jagger jerked awake, the dream shattering. His hand was on his crotch and—

He jerked it away and looked around, terrified that Jeff had seen him, and knew what he’d been dreaming.

Realizing he was still alone in the alcove in which Jeff had left him, he relaxed.

It was just a dream,
he told himself.
It didn’t mean nothin’. Nothin’ at all!

Then, as he came fully awake, he began to wonder where Jeff was.

And how long he’d been asleep.

He hadn’t intended to go to sleep—hadn’t even thought he could, the way his face was hurting. And now it wasn’t just his face, either. Now his whole body hurt, his muscles aching with the chill of the tunnel. With a grunt, he rolled over, and a searing pain ripped across his right cheek. Without thinking, he put his grimy fingers to his face, flinching at the stinging. His fingers automatically went to his mouth, and he tasted the saltiness of blood.

More gingerly, he began exploring the rest of his burns. The blisters on his scalp and head were much worse—the last time he’d touched them, he could barely feel them. Now they seemed to be everywhere, and even though he knew he shouldn’t touch them, his fingers kept going to them anyway, poking and prodding at them until finally they started to burst. They were on his face, too, and not just on his right cheek, where they’d torn open from the concrete he was lying on. They were on his chin and the side of his nose, and his right eye was starting to hurt so bad he could hardly open it. He must have had his head turned to the right when the bastard dumped the boiling water on him, because the left side of his face actually seemed to be okay. But the rest of the burns were hurting so bad it was like his whole head was on fire, and—

And where the fuck was Jeff?

Dumped me,
Jagger thought.
The motherfucker dumped me.

It seemed hours since Jeff had left. At first, Jagger hadn’t been worried at all—he trusted Jeff—trusted him almost as much as he’d trusted Jimmy before—

Well, before the bad thing had happened.

Anyway, he hadn’t trusted anyone else like he’d trusted Jimmy until Jeff came along, and when Jeff said he wouldn’t be gone very long, he had believed him. But now, with no idea how long he’d been asleep, and with the pain from his burns getting worse, he was starting to wonder. All Jeff was supposed to be doing was finding some water. How long could that take? It seemed like there’d been dripping pipes all over the place.

Unless something had happened to Jeff.

He thought of all the people they’d seen in the tunnels, all the men that had flashed knives at them and looked like they wouldn’t even think about it before sticking blades in their chests.

What if Jeff had run into a couple of those guys, and without him there to protect him?

Shit! What kind of idiot was he, letting Jeff go off by himself? Jeff was really smart—a lot smarter than he was—but he wasn’t very big, and without him to take care of Jeff—to watch his back—anything could have happened. Any one of those guys could have taken him out.

Jagger heaved himself painfully into a sitting position, his back resting against the end of the alcove. His throat was parched, and his stomach ached with hunger.

And Jeff had taken the wieners.

Motherfucker! Took all the food and just took off, leaving him to starve to death.

Jagger’s fury began to burn with as much heat as the wounds on his head. That was what happened when you trusted people—they fucked you over. It had happened with his mother, who’d just taken off one day and left him in the crummy house they lived in with no food and no one to take care of him. He’d started screaming then, and somebody had finally heard him, but all that happened was they put him in the foster home.

Jagger felt like screaming right now, but he’d learned a long time ago that screaming didn’t do you any good at all. It just got you in more trouble. What you had to do was pretend you didn’t care. Pretend nothing was wrong at all. Then, when you got a chance, you got even.

The anger inside him burned hotter, and Jagger’s fist closed on the railroad spike that was his only weapon. He began grinding its point against the concrete surface on which he lay, honing it sharper with each stroke. And as he worked the metal of the spike, he began imagining the things he would do to Jeff if he ever found him again. And not just with the spike, either.

With his hands, too.

He imagined his hands closing around Jeff’s throat. And Jeff’s eyes—his beautiful, soft brown eyes—staring at him, begging him not to do it, to let go of him. But it wouldn’t happen—he’d only squeeze tighter, and watch while Jeff’s face turned red, and his eyes bugged out, and his arms started flailing around as he struggled to free himself. But he wouldn’t free himself, because Jagger knew he was too strong.

And he’d never let go of Jeff, no matter how much he begged. He’d just hang on to him, holding him, until he finally stopped struggling. And after that, when he knew that Jeff would never go away from him again, he would go on holding him, cradling him in his arms, rocking him, just like his mama had rocked him when he was a little baby boy, back before she left him.

And then they’d be together, just the two of them, him and Jeff.

A sound, so faint he almost missed it, drifted out of the darkness, and Jagger froze, the spike suspended a fraction of an inch above the concrete shelf. His body tingled with tension as he strained to hear.

The sound came again.

Footsteps, somewhere in the distance.

Footsteps that were coming closer . . .

J
eff was getting more worried. When Jinx had first appeared out of the darkness, he’d felt a surge of hope, had been certain, in fact, that she must know of a way to escape the tunnels. But now he was starting to wonder. They were halfway back to the place where he’d left Jagger, when he stopped and turned to face her.

“Why do they do it?” he asked.

Jinx looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Why does who do what?”

“The herders. Isn’t that what you called them? The men guarding the subway station?”

“Why does anybody do anything?” she countered. Then, before he could reply: “Money.”

“ ‘Herders,’ ” Jeff repeated, more to himself than to Jinx. “It sounds like they’re running cattle or something.”

“Not cattle,” Jinx replied. “Don’t you get it? They’re running game.”

“That’s all it is?” he asked, his voice reflecting his outrage. “A game?”

The girl fairly glared at him this time. “Not ‘it’! You. You and that other guy. Don’t you get it? You’re not cattle—to the hunters, you’re just game. Like rabbits, or deer, or anything else people hunt.”

Jeff felt numb. “And the people down here really help them?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Jinx asked, shrugging. “People die down here all the time and nobody gives a shit. Half the time nobody even knows who the bodies are. So if someone wants to pay us just to keep someone else from gettin’ out, what’s the big deal?”

Jeff eyed her warily through the gloom. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, but there was a hard edge to her that told him she’d been on the streets for a while. “So why shouldn’t I think you’re just another one of the herders?”

Jinx looked at him as if he were stupid. “They only use guys for that. Big guys. Like I could keep you from doing anything? Jeez!” Then, out of nowhere, she asked, “What’s your dad look like?”

“My dad?” Jeff echoed. “What’s my dad got to do with—” And then it came to him. So much had happened since Tillie had thrown them out of the rooms she called the co-op that he’d almost forgotten the faint voice he’d thought was calling his name. “I thought I heard him,” he breathed, almost to himself. “But—” He cut himself short, studying Jinx carefully. What could she possibly know about his father?

“There was a guy in the subway station,” she said, eyeing him almost truculently now. “The one at Columbus Circle. He showed me a picture of you.”

“What did he look like?” Jeff asked, his pulse quickening even as he told himself it couldn’t possibly have been his father. Why would his father even be looking for him? And if somebody had seen him running into the subway, it was a lot more likely it was the police showing his picture around than his father.

“I guess he was a little shorter than you,” Jinx was saying. “Kind of good-looking—blue eyes and blond hair.” She cocked her head, studying his face in the dim light. “He looked kinda like you, I guess, except for your hair and eyes. Except your eyes are shaped the same. Just a different color.”

“What about the picture?” Jeff asked, struggling to keep his excitement under control.

“It was you. Looked like you were younger—like maybe in college or something.”

Jeff’s heart raced at the description of the picture his father always carried in his wallet. “What did he say?” he asked, no longer trying to keep his voice steady.

“He just wanted to know if I’d seen you,” Jinx replied. “I was telling him about the hunters being after you when—” Now it was Jinx who faltered, but then she took a deep breath and finished. “Well, the transit cops came and I had to split. They don’t like me much.”

Jeff barely heard her. If his father was looking for him, then who else was? His mind was racing now, trying to sort it out. How had his father known where he was? Could it have been the cell phone? But if Heather got his message, or his mother heard him before the phone went dead—

But if his father knew he was still alive, wouldn’t the cops know, too? “What about the regular police?” he asked. “Were they in the subway, too?”

Jinx rolled her eyes. “They only go in the subway if they want to go somewhere, and they won’t go in the tunnels at all. Bunch of chickenshits, if you ask me.”

Jinx suddenly froze, and when Jeff started to speak, she grabbed his arm and put her finger to her lips.

From somewhere off to the left, Jeff heard a sound.

Footsteps.

Footsteps that seemed to be coming closer.

He glanced around. A few yards farther along there was a narrow passage he’d made his way through shortly after he’d left Jagger. If he led Jinx through it, he’d have no choice but to take her to Jagger as well. If she were lying, and working for the hunters, he would have led them right to the man who had already saved his life at least once. But if he didn’t go through it—if he went in another direction and couldn’t find his way back . . .

Then he would have abandoned Jagger completely.

Making up his mind, he signaled Jinx to follow him and started toward the passage, moving carefully so his feet made no sound. They came to the passage, and Jeff slipped into it, Jinx right behind him. He moved as quickly as he could, but the passage seemed endless, and now he thought he could hear the footsteps again, moving faster.

Coming closer.

He came to the end of the passage, turned left, and pulled Jinx after him. Both of them instinctively pressed their backs against the wall, struggling to control their breath as they listened.

In the distance they once again heard the sound of footsteps.

A pause.

On the wall opposite the end of the passage, a brilliant red dot appeared.

It moved over the wall, back and forth, working steadily downward until it reached the floor.

Laser sight,
Jeff thought.
He’s got a laser sight on a night scope, and he’s using the scope to look for me.

The crimson dot vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and then they heard the footsteps fading away.

As Jeff was about to move deeper into the tunnel, Jinx’s hand closed on his arm, holding him back. “Listen,” she whispered.

Once again Jinx’s ears had proved better than his own. Off to the right, in the opposite direction from which he’d originally come, he heard the faint sound of water dripping.

A little more than fifty yards up the tunnel, they found it—water was steadily oozing from a crack in the ceiling, a drop forming and falling every second or two. His thirst suddenly overwhelming him, Jeff held his finger up to the drip, caught one, and put his damp finger into his mouth.

The water tasted clear and fresh, and he was seized with an almost overwhelming urge to put his mouth to the crack in the ceiling and try to suck the moisture out.

Instead he put the paper cup under the drip and forced himself to wait until the cup had filled.

He drank only enough to slake the terrible dryness in his mouth, then filled the cup once more.

“Aren’t you going to drink it?” Jinx asked as Jeff started back down the passage, carrying the cup of water as carefully as if it were filled with gold or diamonds.

“Jagger needs it more than I do,” he said. “After he’s had a drink, I’ll come back for more.”

T
hey weren’t going to find Jeff.

Heather wasn’t sure exactly when the thought first entered her head, but the deeper into the tunnels she and Keith ventured, the stronger its grip on her mind became.