13

Stan Dolchik read the two-inch-high bloodred headlines of the morning’s New York Post, then threw the paper aside in disgust. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of for months. He’d known that sooner or later this unresolved situation would get out of hand. And he’d tried over and over to convince the mayor to act, but Russ Matthews knew what was best for New York City-and for Russ Matthews’ political career-so nothing was done.

The headline “ ‘THEY WERE DEAD BEFORE CRASH’ SEZ SUBWAY VICTIM” caught Dolchik’s eye again. Reluctantly he retrieved the paper and opened it to the center-spread feature on “the accident of the century,” as it was being called. There, in a series of gruesome black-and-white photos, was the aftermath of the most devastating accident in the New York City subway’s history. Dolchik didn’t bother reading the captions, but he did reread an accompanying article that focused on the claims by a passenger, Mr. Ray Teal of Kew Gardens, Queens, who was riding in the second car and miraculously hadn’t been killed.

Miraculous, Dolchik thought ruefully. If Teal had been killed, that would have been the miracle. For Ray Teal was telling everyone that he’d seen at least two bloody bodies lying on the floor of the first subway car just before the train started its fatal run into the Chambers Street terminal. Dolchik sneered at the publicity-seeking bastard. If only he’d said something to someone in authority at the scene of the wreck, none of this story would have seen the light of day. If Mr. Ray Teal of Kew Gardens, Queens, had told Stan Dolchik or one of his men what he’d witnessed instead of the goddamned newspapers, Mr. Teal would have disappeared without a trace for a while, at least; probably be listed as one of the dead. But no, Teal had talked to the fucking reporters to get his name in the papers. Now everyone was buzzing about an attempted train hijack-and three fanatical terrorist liberation groups had already claimed responsibility for the accident. The cover-up was becoming more complicated-Teal’s reliability would have to be discredited overtly or by implication (alcoholism always seemed to work), and a lot of innocent people were going to suffer. Still, it was a hell of a lot easier than explaining what actually had happened to the corpses in the first subway car.

The intercom on the desk in his small office at City Hall buzzed, and Dolchik jumped. “Yeah?” he answered gruffly.

“Come into my office, will you, Stan?” Matthews’ voice was breezily cheerful, but Dolchik knew he was on the warpath. The mayor had promised the press to clean up this situation, and it was obvious that this time he’d been forced into a corner and would have to give the order for tonight’s maneuvers to proceed.

Matthews, looking natty in a dark blue suit, pin-striped tie, and button-down Oxford-cloth shirt, sat calmly behind his oversized desk. He smiled as Dolchik entered without knocking. “You fucked up, Stan,” he said sweetly. “It was your men’s job to segregate the passengers from the media and find out if any of them saw anything.” He pushed a copy of the Post across the desk distastefully. “Someone talked.”

“So I read.” Dolchik calmly took a chair opposite the mayor. He’d be damned if Matthews was going to bait him. “So what do we do now?”

“I’ve got Tom Geary on his way up. I want to talk to him before you make any more half-assed decisions.”

They sat in angry silence for a full five minutes before Geary was announced. Geary was attached to the medical examiner’s office and had been working on the case since the discovery of Ted Slade’s body. Dolchik admired the doctor’s forensic skills, but he had a personal grudge against him-he was the asshole who’d let Corelli see Slade’s body when he’d been instructed to clear any inquiries about the death with Dolchik first. That, more than anything, had probably tipped Corelli to the covert operation. And his own slip in mentioning the doctor’s name hadn’t helped, either.

“You know Captain Dolchik,” Matthews said as Geary pulled up a chair. Geary nodded curtly. “So, what have you got?”

“A lot, and it’s not pretty.” Geary opened his briefcase, put on his reading glasses, and settled back into the chair. “I examined the body of the motorman found in the wreckage of the first subway car and that of the conductor brought in from the tracks. The conductor’s body showed signs of the same evisceration the Slade corpse exhibited. There were no surgical wounds, but I suspect in this case there wasn’t much time to use a knife. Teeth are faster, you know.” He looked up and smiled, but neither man acknowledged him. “The traces of saliva in his body and in the chin wound of the motorman match those taken from Slade. And the viral infection found in the saliva matched that found in the blood of Lester Baker.”

“Hold it, doc,” Dolchik interrupted. “What’s this about Baker? I thought he’d just been bitten by a dog.”

“The autopsy showed-”

“Autopsy!” Dolchik almost leaped from his seat. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Calm down, Stan. I didn’t get the chance to tell you; Baker died last night.” Matthews’ tone of voice was only slightly superior. Stan Dolchik was an okay guy, but he had to be reminded constantly just exactly who was running this particular show. Keeping him in the dark about certain things always worked.

“And why didn’t you tell me this last night?” Dolchik’s eyes narrowed angrily.

“We’ll discuss that later.” He waved aside the captain’s complaint. “Go on, Dr. Geary.”

“We sent samples of the saliva and Baker’s blood down to the Disease Control Center in Atlanta for a full examination, but my guess is that he died from some mutant form of rabies virus.”

“Jesus,” the mayor whispered.

Geary was on the roll now. “As you probably know, in its last stages, rabies attacks the brain cells, causing outbursts of violence and uncontrollable physical attacks. Eventually it causes insanity and a very horrible death. The process normally is a fairly slow one that can be counteracted if caught in time.”

“And in this case?” Matthews had begun to sweat.

“In this case it seems to have run its full course in less than twenty-four hours. Baker began to exhibit signs late Thursday afternoon. That evening he broke out of his restraints, and just after midnight he was in a coma. He went into a series of convulsions later and died about one A.M. I did the autopsy an hour or so later.”

“And that’s what happens to someone who gets bitten by these things?” Dolchik almost whispered.

“Looks that way,” Geary agreed. “Although I can’t say for sure. That’s how Baker reacted. Someone else might react differently.”

“Such as?” Matthews inquired.

Geary shrugged. “Who knows? Someone with a stronger constitution might not die so suddenly, might not die at all. The organisms might use the body as host, like it seems they did when all this started.”

“And whoever was bitten would walk around never knowing what was living inside them?” Dolchik didn’t like that idea at all.

Geary laughed rudely. “I doubt that. This virus is very virulent. It might just cause the victim to assume the characteristics of…”

“Those things in the subway,” Matthews completed the thought. “It might turn anyone bitten by one of those things into another one.” Geary nodded. “And what about the thing you found on the tracks next to the conductor’s body?”

“That was something else, let me tell you,” Geary replied proudly. “I’ve never seen such adaptation to environment in the human body before-”

“Human?” Matthews pounded his fists on the desk. “You still want me to believe those things are human?” Despite the evidence of the saliva tests, he suspected Geary had been wrong from the start. At least, that’s what he hoped. Cannibalism was against everything Russ Matthews stood for.

“With a good cleaning and a new suit and tie, any one of them could be a relative of yours, your Honor.”

Dolchik smiled and shook his head. He couldn’t have put it better.

“Never mind the smart-ass remarks, Geary. I want the rest of this story.”

“It looks like these creatures have simply adapted totally to an underground life-the eyes are more finely attuned to seeing in the darkness than ours are, and the whole skeletal system is bent lower to the ground, thrusting its weight forward onto the backs of the hands for easier propulsion and camouflage, I’d imagine.”

“Sounds like you’re describing a monkey,” Dolchik surmised.

“Not so far off, Captain. The backbone showed slight signs of congenital stooping. If I’d seen just the skeleton, I might have, if the room were dim, put it anywhere between Cro-Magnon man and today’s hero.”

“Any idea how long it might have taken for such a posture to become inherited?” Even Dolchik knew that the slow, time-consuming environmental adaptation of a species could be accelerated by quantitative reproduction-breeding these things by scores…hundreds.

“It probably took several generations, but not going back before 1904, when the subway was opened, eh?” Geary laughed again. It was a singularly inappropriate sound. “Also, we must remember that this stance was most probably taught, chosen, not inherited. There is no evidence at present to suggest that all the traits of this one creature are showed by all. There are probably many distinctly different creatures living down there.”

Matthews was liking this conversation less and less with each passing minute. He particularly didn’t like the phrase “several generations.” In that length of time these things could have bred themselves into a veritable army; hunched over, looking for raw meat, living down there in the darkness. Dammit, he should have listened to Dolchik six months ago and smoked them out and killed them. But the timing was off, that’s all. Everyone was on his back about the financial crises in the city. Dolchik wanted money to send teams into the subway, but Matthews wasn’t willing to part with a red cent at that point. It seemed like throwing it away. Still, he’d organized the investigating team with Dolchik as head. But obviously that hadn’t been enough. There was no way he could bullshit himself out of this one…unless he did something about it right away.

These creatures had taken a quantum leap from rumor to fact, making the headlines-albeit disguised-without an intermediary step. The acceleration from Dolchik’s reports of a few attacks on isolated passengers to the wholesale slaughter in Chambers Street was frightening, and Matthews was beginning to suspect that he-none of them-had heard the worst news yet. “If these things are the carriers of this rabies-like virus, why is it they aren’t affected themselves?”

“Pure chance, I’d say. Some form of natural immunity has been protecting them until now.”

Matthews had sensed it all along; Geary had something to tell him. Goddammit, the smug prick was holding something back until the last minute. Now the shit was going to hit the fan. “Why did you say ‘until now’?”

“From the autopsy on the specimen found on the tracks, I’d say it has been in something like the terminal state of rabid infection for several weeks. The deterioration is evident, but the process seems to have been prolonged. I’d say that thing has been nearly out of its mind since the end of August.”

“And just what does that mean?” Dolchik knew what it meant, but he just wanted it confirmed by the doctor.

“It means that as their immunity weakens-which seems to be happening-and the virus gets a stronger foothold on their systems and brains, these things will become more aggressive and dangerous with each passing day. They’ve escaped detection before by being animal-clever; now they don’t care. All they want is food… any way they can get it!”

Matthews had to get this straight before panicking. “So the insanity and violence are prolonged in the creatures themselves and accelerated in their victims?” Geary nodded wearily. “Was this thing’s brain normal otherwise? I mean, are these things capable of intelligent thought?”

“There’s nothing in my tests to show they aren’t.”

“Is it possible they may know what’s happening to them? I mean, could they sense that they’re dying from this disease, that it’s getting worse?” Dolchik knew that if this were true, they might try anything to save themselves.

Geary only shrugged at the question. “I couldn’t answer that. We know nothing of the societal system they have erected-if they have leaders, if they know their history. If they do know these things and they have managed to retain some humanity, then it is possible they know that constant inbreeding with their own kind is not only perpetuating this disease, but that it is the very thing that is killing them.”

Matthews wiped the sweat from his forehead. To be talking about such creatures so rationally, as if they were human, went against every value he’d grown up with. While he recognized the extremes the human temperament could tolerate, he was not quite willing to believe that a tribe of men and women could choose such a way of life. To him it was preposterous. Still, he had to know as much about them as he could in order to defeat them. “If, and I emphasize the word ‘if,’ they could see their own self-destruction coming, how might they prevent it?”

Geary considered the question a moment, then replied calmly: “They’d have to start breeding with people who were not diseased.”

“For example?”

“Any woman in good health who happened to fall into their greedy little hands.”

Louise had made the decision. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, exactly. Maybe it was while Corelli talked so dispassionately about the creepers and the image of Lisa in their hands blotted out everything else. Maybe it was during the night as she lay awake in Willie Hoyte’s mother’s bed listening to the soft murmur of the city outside the windows. Or maybe it was during breakfast in the sunny Hoyte kitchen as she pushed her scrambled eggs around the plate, unable to think of eating.

When she had made the decision hardly mattered. That she had made it, did.

Now, under the icy needles of a cold shower, Louise slowly and absentmindedly caressed her soapy body. The feel of her nipples slowly hardening under her palms reminded her of yesterday evening when she’d gone to bed with Frank. Funny, but it hadn’t surprised her at all. From that first day he’d held her, comforted her in the kitchen over the spilled coffee, Louise suspected that someone special had walked into her life. Now she was sure of it. And she was also sure that she couldn’t tell Frank of her decision. He had too much invested personally to let her go off on her own. What she intended to do might be dangerous…or fatal.

She lathered her body with more soap, trying to forget the past four days. With all her mental strength she pulled herself right into the moment, felt her hands against her skin, concentrated on the tumult of water immersing her, and deeply inhaled the flowery smell of the soap, so obviously Willie’s mother’s. As she accomplished this, Louise felt the days-old burden of her missing daughter lift for a moment. If only she were able to leave Lisa’s fate to the powers that be, trusting that whatever happened was for the good. If only.

She turned off the water and stood for a moment in the glistening tub, brushing the water beads from her body. It broke the spell, and her thoughts drifted once again to Lisa. Tears welled up in her eyes. What were the chances her baby was still alive? Corelli tried so hard to be kind, but his words secretly illuminated his own fears that Lisa was already dead.

What if she weren’t? What if she were still alive, being held captive by those… things? How would her child’s mind react, deal with that reality? Lisa was only seven years old, a baby. How could she face living with those things in the dark, wet subway amid the grisly carnage? Maybe her mind wouldn’t be harmed by the experience. Maybe the trauma would wash off like the grime from the subway once she was home. Maybe…

Louise shook all thoughts of Lisa from her mind and dried off. She now had only one goal in life: to fulfill it was her destiny. Making the decision had been the easiest decision of her life; carrying it out would be the hardest. After all, what did she know of the New York subway sys^ tern? Other than the colorful maps that covered the station walls like an arterial diagram in a pathology class, the system’s complexity was a mystery. Louise paid her money, pushed through the turnstile, got on, then off the train. What did she know of tunnels and crawl spaces, workmen’s troughs and abandoned stations? Nothing. But she’d learn tonight when she went back to Seventy-second Street and began searching for Lisa.

Just before breakfast, Corelli went out and bought all the morning newspapers. The style of the three major dailies ran the gamut from the liberalism of the Times through the conservative position of the Daily News to the bloodthirsty gossip of the Post. Despite the three different perspectives on this morning’s subway disaster, they all meant one thing to Frank: the creepers were at work again; this time en masse.

In the past the attacks had occurred late at night, and only while one person waited for a train. The attacks, as though carefully planned, were conservative in their modus operandi. But last night’s attack had broken that mold. The creepers seemed to have forsaken care and caution in favor of visible attack, bloodthirsty slaughter. For generations these creatures had lived lives so geared to hiding their very existence that they eluded even the most scrupulous examination of the system. But because they did exist, and at one time or another were seen by passing motormen or conductors, the myth of their existence, the myth of the creepers had risen to explain the unexplainable. And the pattern was set. And had never varied once. Until now.

And it scared Corelli, for he intuited that this shift in their feeding habits was the signal that the creepers were about to make the transition from myth to hard, cold fact. And that meant that many people would die during the change.

“More coffee, Frank?” Willie called out from the kitchen.

“No, thanks, Willie, but keep it warm. I suspect I’ll be needing it later.”

“You got it,” he called, then went back to cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

Corelli was fostering a deep appreciation of Willie Hoyte. He’d suspected all along that under the facade of smart-ass dude Willie had a heart and soul. The formation of Dogs of Hell proved it. The quest for publicity only proved that he was as human and fallible as anyone else. He’d asked Willie about the photograph of his father, and Willie told him exactly how he felt about the man-without shame, without embarrassment. And Corelli’s admiration had grown.

“What you gonna do, Corelli?” Willie asked as he came into the dining room drying his hands. “You gonna tip off the newspapers about these creepers?” He nodded toward the stack of dailies on the floor.

“And have all hell break loose? Not on your life. Have you ever thought what would happen if I convinced people about the creepers? Can you imagine the panic?”

“I guess you’re right.” Willie dropped the dish towel over his shoulder. “Besides, that news would break the TA for sure. No one in his right mind would ride the subway then. Tokens would go up to ten bucks.”

“And only the rich could afford to ride,” Corelli finished the thought. “Let me tell you something, Willie. If the rich were using the subway, it would run on time, it would be safe and so clean you could eat off the floor.”

Willie shook his head. “It ain’t money, man. It’s pride, self-respect. It’s jes’ too bad poor folks ain’t got none no more,” he said wistfully.

“Can you get your men together today?” Frank asked, changing the subject. Time was running out. He wanted to do something to prove the creepers’ existence, show the right people, let them take care of the problem without causing a public panic. And as far as he could see, there was only one way to do that-catch a creeper!

“My men comes when I call,” Hoyte responded proudly. “What you got in mind?”

“A sweep operation down the Seventh Avenue IRT line from Ninety-sixth Street.”

“You want my men to go into the subway, down on the tracks?”

Corelli shook his head. “No way. Someone would surely get hurt. I want your men stationed at Ninety-sixth Street, Eighty-sixth Street, Seventy-ninth Street, and Seventy-second Street on both the uptown and downtown sides. I’m going into the tunnel alone.”

“Alone with me,” Willie corrected.

“No way. This is my neck, not yours.”

Willie leaned up against the door frame and folded his arms across his chest. “There’s no way I be left out of this action.” Helping to smoke out these creepers would validate Dogs of Hell once and for all. “Corelli, I already been in the stretch of tunnel once, if you remembers. I was the one who found Slade’s body. I spent the night in jail for my troubles, too. And if you think you’re going to get all the glory, you’re one fucking crazy cop.”

“You’ve sure got a way with words, Willie.” Corelli laughed. “Okay, you can come, but no one else. Your friend Slade saw a creeper near the abandoned station up near Ninety-sixth Street, and that’s where his body was, too. So that’s where we’ll start.”

Willie pulled himself up straight and threw the dish towel into the kitchen, where it landed in a heap on the floor. “I’ll get on the phone to my men right now.”

“Not so fast. If we go running into those stations in broad daylight, we’ll all disappear before you can count to ten.”

“How’s that?”

“The someone who wants me and Louise out of the way knows about the creepers. They’ll be watching the subways. They want my mouth shut at any cost.”

“Jes’ like old El Bee,” Willie said mournfully.

“Let’s not complicate the issue. We don’t know how Lester died. It’s easy to imagine that whoever was holding him killed him, but personally I don’t believe it.”

But Willie wasn’t buying that idea. “Man, I was jes’ talking to him a few hours before he croaked. He was jes’ fine, a little whooped up on drugs, but that weren’t nothing unusual. I say he was offed by the man.”

“Forget it, Willie. Let’s concentrate on us. I’ve still got to make a few phone calls before going off the deep end. Maybe, if we’re lucky, this whole operation can be shelved. If not, well…”

“I usually likes action, Corelli,” Willie admitted, “but if you can swing it so I don’t have to come face to face with one of the creeper characters, you gets my vote.”

“Vote for what?” Louise asked as she came out of the bedroom.

Corelli smirked as she strolled into the room, aware of the vague stirring in the pit of his stomach that appeared each time they were together. Louise had been through hell the past four days-but she looked great. He’d worried about her at breakfast; she was withdrawn and sullen and obviously hadn’t slept well, but a morning shower seemed to have done wonders for her.

“We got a plan to get them creepers,” Willie boasted.

“Oh? That’s nice.” Her voice was expressionless.

“Never mind, Willie,” Corelli interrupted. “I’ll handle this.”

“Too late.” Louise smiled as she sank down on the couch. “The cat’s already out of the bag. So what’s this plan, and where do I fit in?”

“You stay right here, that’s where you fit in. Willie and I and his men are going out tonight for a while. You’ll be safe right here.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll be safe anywhere. I can’t go home, I can’t go to my ‘hideout,’ I can’t go out on the street. Guess I’m just a real fugitive from justice,” she said offhandedly.

Louise’s lackadaisical manner was partially feigned; she’d counted on Corelli’s being busy tonight. For four days she’d done nothing, but tonight she would remedy the situation. She was obsessed with Lisa, but that was natural, just as it was natural for any child’s mother to want to take some action. Going into the subway was the answer. Louise had to do it for her own sanity. If she didn’t, she’d never have a moment’s peace for the rest of her life.

But her manner didn’t escape Frank’s notice. Something was wrong. He’d seen it the moment Louise spoke; though her eyes sparkled almost unnaturally, her voice was dead. He’d seen this reaction before in accident or mugging victims in the subway. The trauma is so intense that a mechanism deep inside closes off vulnerability with a thick wall of protection. Sometimes its working shows in the face, oftentimes not. But it always appears in the voice, leaving only the plodding, grinding mechanical sounds of speech.

Because Corelli had seen it so often before, he’d been waiting for it in Louise. God, she was only human, and she’d been under tremendous pressure. That it had taken so long for her defenses to overload was a tribute to her tough spirit. Other women, men, too, would have crumbled long before. But Louise had fought it off…long enough for Corelli to get involved… long enough for Louise to need him. He wondered now if the Louise Hill he was falling in love with was actually a ghost, a persona that evolved to cover the shocking loss of her daughter. Whatever the answer, he had to deal with her objectively now, personal feelings aside. There was too much at stake.

“Look, Louise, tonight is a very special night and it’s going to be very dangerous. I can’t take you with me.” He took her hand and squeezed it, hoping she wouldn’t put up a fight.

“Don’t worry about me, Frank. I’ll find something to do while you’re gone.” She smiled enigmatically, then looked around. “There’s television… and books… and the newspapers”-she poked them with her foot “I’ll be just fine.”

Corelli wasn’t so sure. He was relieved she’d acquiesced to his wishes, but the rapidity of it bothered him. Louise was a fighter, not a quitter. Damn! It just didn’t feel right. But there was a simple solution to his quandary: later, he’d ask Willie if maybe a woman friend of his or his mother’s might stop over to keep Louise company…and to keep an eye on her.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” he said softly, trying to intuit what was going on behind her eyes; she showed no emotion whatsoever. “Willie, I want to make a phone call.”

“Use Momma’s room, it’s more private.”

Before leaving, Corelli made one last attempt to break through Louise’s lassitude. She finally looked up at him, and all the pain and fear surfaced in her eyes. His heart went out to her. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love without warning. I know the gaping hole it leaves in your life. Only I’d hoped I might fill it for you before the pain got too bad.” He knelt in front of her chair and took her hands. “You’re a very special lady, do you know that?”

“Maybe you bring that out in me.”

“On the contrary, I’m known around town as “hardhearted Corelli,’ the last true bachelor on earth.”

When she smiled, her lips began to tremble. She pulled his hands to her face and rubbed them against the soft skin. “Oh, Frank, what am I going to do about Lisa?” Her voice trailed off to silence, and the emotion went as fast as it had come.

“It’s okay. You’ve got every right in the world to cry. Let it go.” He squeezed her hands. “You need the emotional release.”

“No, no, I’m all right.” She regained her composure. “I just got carried away.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Go make your call. 111 be all right… really.”

Corelli kissed her on the cheek, then went into the bedroom, pausing just long enough to take one last look at Louise. Something definitely was wrong with her. Under the mask of lethargy boiled a caldron of rage. Louise was keeping it contained for a reason. Why? Why did she need to keep herself angry? Well, there was no use guessing now; he had other, more important things to do.

Ten minutes later Dolchik picked up the call in the mayor’s office. The call had been transferred from uptown and was placed on the conference line. Matthews sat at his desk, eyes closed, listening. Corelli had said it was urgent; Dolchik wondered. “What can I do for you, Frank?”

“I want to know what the fuck’s going on, Dolchik,” Corelli said hotly, “I want to know why, in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been tailed all over this city.”

“I don’t know nothing about no tail, Frank.”

“And don’t give me any more of your redneck deezes, dems and dozes, Stan, I don’t buy it.”

Matthews nodded his head toward Dolchik in acknowledgment of Corelli’s astuteness.

“Frank, you’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I-”

“Hold on, Dolchik. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, there was a good reason for you wanting to haul me in. That still doesn’t convince me that my fear of what’s going down in the subway’s ‘out of proportion’-to use your words.”

“Frank, you jumped the gun on this whole thing. Sure, we’ve got a problem downstairs, but if you had come to me with your suspicions, I could have explained… made you one of the team,” Dolchik lied, wishing Matthews weren’t so adamant about Corelli.

“I went to you, Stan. I confronted you about Penny Comstock, about the missing-persons file, and you gave me a load of crap about hiding a bottle of Scotch.”

“So I played it wrong. Give me a second chance, Corelli.”

“Not a shot.” He lowered his voice to a properly impressive level. “I know about the creepers, Dolchik. And I know that Lester Baker is dead. I saw his body this morning in the morgue at New York Mercy.”

“Jesus!” Matthews shouted without thinking about his anonymity.

Corelli’s laugh echoed around the room, amplified by the telephone system. “Dolchik, you’re a real prize. You want to sweet-talk me…right into a trap. Who’s your playmate, fat man?”

“It’s Russ Matthews, you meathead. It’s the goddamned mayor of this fucking city,” Matthews screamed as he leaped from his chair. “I’ve listened to about as much of this adolescent you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine crap I’m going to. Now, listen to me, you asshole, I want you in my office within the hour or your ass is in a sling.” Matthews hated to drop the Ivy League facade that got him elected, but Corelli was just a dumb wop in his book, and a dangerous one at that.

“Enter your office and disappear in a cloud of smoke, is that it, Mr. Mayor?” Corelli chuckled. “You never did impress me as much more than an overdressed windbag, Matthews, and as a man whose word is worth about as much as the paper it’s written on. So, no deal. You want me, you’ve got to find me.”

“Corelli, you dumb sonofabitch, you’re out of your mind,” Dolchik hissed toward the conference phone.

“Maybe, but until you catch me, I’ve got the upper hand, so now I want you to listen to me a minute. You’ve been sitting on this situation for months, as far as I can tell, and people have died because you haven’t taken any action. I don’t have to tell you the latest mess is the subway situation down at Chambers Street…” He paused to let that bit of information sink in.

Matthews’ eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Dolchik shrugged; what could he do? He’d warned the mayor that Corelli was on the ball.

“We’re working on it, but it’ll take time,” Matthews said evenly.

“That’s just not good enough, Mr. Mayor. I want better…or if you don’t do something, I will. I’ll bring physical proof that the creepers exist up out of the subway and I’ll have your ass for trying to cover it up. It’s your move.” Corelli hung up without giving Matthews a chance to answer.

“That lousy, crusading prick,” Matthews burst out “He’ll have my ass? I’ll have his balls for this.” He cooled off almost immediately. It was too late for self-righteous anger. “Corelli’s given us no choice, Stan. We have to move tonight for sure.” Until the call, he hadn’t been convinced he’d implement the plan to smoke the creepers out.

Dolchik remained silent throughout all this, hating Russ Matthews’ petty politicking more than ever. It had taken Frank Corelli to get that cocksucker Matthews to take affirmative action; yet it was Corelli who was the fugitive. Where the hell was the justice in that?

“I’ll call the governor and discuss finalizing the plans with him. There shouldn’t be a problem getting the National Guard mobilized.”

“What about me?”

“You round up the team. I want two men at the street-level entrance of every operating station in Manhattan.” Aside from Matthews, Dolchik, Dr. Tom Geary, and a few tactical experts, the team was mainly composed of TA and NYPD cops who were on twenty-four-hour duty for a secret mission.

“No problem getting them together. But what about Corelli?”

Matthews shoved his chair back from the desk and went to the large window that overlooked lower Manhattan. “There’s only one way Corelli can make good on his threat-go into the subway tonight to find one of those things.”

“And?” Dolchik asked uneasily.

“And the Guard will have orders to shoot everything not in uniform-shoot now, ask questions later.” Matthews whirled around, his face an icy mask. “That should take care of Detective Corelli’s crusading. Now, get the hell out of here and get going. We’ve got to get this cleaned up by tomorrow morning first thing.”

For the rest of the day Corelli went over his plans both mentally and with Willie. If the mayor heeded his warning, there would be no need to send the letter he had written after his phone conversation. The mayor had always impressed Corelli as an arrogant sonofabitch who, despite his promises, put his own pleasure and needs before those of anyone else in the city. Matthews’ acid voice over the phone had convinced Frank that the corruption behind the veil of secrecy about the creepers went straight to the top.

The letter would do something in correcting that situation. Addressed to the editors of the city’s newspapers, the letter detailed the events since Labor Day, since Corelli began his investigation of what he discovered later to be the creepers. It detailed Penny Comstock, Lisa Hill, Ted Slade, and Lester Baker, plus connecting them with the accident at Chambers Street. Corelli couldn’t be sure the editors would believe him, but he’d given them enough, cold facts to get an investigation started. The letter was to be delivered by a friend of Hoyte’s only if Frank Corelli disappeared-or was found dead from any cause.

Louise had withdrawn into herself. She huddled in a chair by the window in the Hoyte living room and stared fixedly into the backyards of the tenements. She was mentally preparing herself for her mission, preparing herself to die in search of Lisa. How, she wondered, have I managed to live through the last days without once losing control? My baby is gone. Dead, probably. Or maybe worse, in the hands of those things.

Thoughts of Lisa were with her now all the time. Once Louise began savoring the memories of her daughter, the torrent of emotion she’d been suppressing gained full power and inundated her. She remembered Lisa that last day, dressed so like a happy child in her painter’s overalls and red shoes. Lisa had been so excited about the trip to SoHo and the prospect of the street fair. Louise remembered the enthusiasm and it made her smile all over again. And right now, feeling so alone in this strange apartment in Harlem, she needed to smile.

Frank had deserted her. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted to comfort her; she knew he saw the change in her, but Louise wasn’t able to accept his ministrations right now. The pain of Lisa’s fate was too new. She needed time alone, to examine the wound, test its depth. Corelli, in turn, went about his business. He and Willie had something planned for later, something that by its very nature, would exclude her. But that was okay. She had things to do herself.

“I’m going to leave this letter with a friend of Willie’s,” Corelli said sometime after ten. “Want to come along? The walk might do you good.”

“Nothing will do me much good right now, Frank.” Louise smiled bravely. “You and Willie go ahead. I’ll be fine right here.”

“Sure?”

She nodded. “In fact, forget about me altogether tonight. You just go. Lettie Jean said she’d be coming back soon.”

Lettie Jean DuChamps was the friend of Willie’s whom Frank had enlisted that evening to raise Louise’s spirits. She’d stopped over for an hour about seven, and was due back soon. At well over two hundred pounds, the twenty-two-year-old Lettie Jean was lead singer in an uptown gospel group called God’s Angels. When she was not singing the praises of the Lord, Lettie Jean was swilling down beer, laughing, and telling dirty jokes. It had been Willie’s hope that Lettie’s boisterous joking would be infectious, and thus cheer up Louise. The fat woman’s caterwauling actually depressed Louise, but she kept that information to herself.

“Maybe we should wait till Lettie gets here,” Frank mused. He still didn’t like Louise’s distant mood.

“Hell, man, time’s running out,” Willie chimed in. “Louise is okay by herself. ’Sides, Lettie’s just down the hall. We’ll knock on her door as we go by.”

There really wasn’t time to quibble. Frank kissed Louise lightly on the mouth, promised to see her later, then took the letters for the newspaper editors and left with Willie.

Bimbo Calhoun smiled broadly as he let Willie and Corelli into his small apartment. “Well, well, if it ain’t the gravedigger hisself.” He laughed raucously. “Welcome to the land of the livin’. Come in, come in.”

Bimbo ushered them into a living room overstuffed with cast-off furniture rescued from the streets. The Dogs of Hell were there waiting. Willie had been able to round up only eighteen of them, but a dozen and a half people in Calhoun’s apartment was more than a crowd.

“I’d show y’all into the ballroom, Willie, but we’s havin’ a cotillion in there tonight.” Bimbo laughed.

“Being here’s good enough, Bimbo. Thanks for the use of the hall.” Willie’s voice fell a half-tone and his back automatically straightened as he talked. He was on his best behavior; he was now acting in his official capacity as revered leader of Dogs of Hell. “This here is Detective Frank Corelli of the TA, in case you don’t recognize him. He needs our help… bad.” Putting it like this was the only way to enlist his men’s support. Most of them had no use for die TA.

“We got a problem in the subway the likes of which we ain’t never imagined. Now, before I go any further, I want you to know this is a volunteer job. If any of you wants out, that’s okay by me. It don’t mean nothing, and it won’t stand against your record.”

“Dogs of Hell don’t never backs down,” someone shouted.

The cries of affirmation brought a smile to Willie’s face. “That’s good to hear, brother, ’cause we got a ball-buster on our hands. Now, dig this…”

Quickly, expertly, Willie summarized the problem. He expected no resistance and he got none. Willie’s men had grown up in a world where death came in every conceivable form and size. The uncommon was common for them; the bizarre, comfortably familiar. Willie talked about the creepers like they were run-of-the-mill muggers who happened to live down under the ground and also happened to like eating human flesh. He talked about Baker’s death dispassionately and Slade’s death angrily.

“These bastards took out one of our own men. They chewed Ted Slade up like Gravy Tram. I think we owe them one, what say?” The roaring cheer was unanimous. “Now, I want you to listen to Detective Frank Corelli, if you please.”

Corelli sensed the animosity in many of the men, but he ignored it. He didn’t have the time to prove to them that he was one of the boys. Hoyte’s stamp of approval would have to do. “Your friend Slade died on the tracks of the Seventh Avenue IRT line down below Ninety-third Street. He probably discovered something there, and I want to know what. Willie and I will be making a sweep down the tracks starting at midnight. We want you to stand guard at every station between Ninety-sixth Street and Seventy-second Street. You’ll be divided into teams.”

“What we looking for, man?” Miguel Esperanza chimed up from the front row.

“We want to capture one of these things alive, if that’s possible.”

“Then what?”

“Then we have the proof. Then we have the power.”

“Sounds good to me,” Willie joked, and everyone laughed.

“This is the plan; it’s nine-thirty now. At midnight, all the teams of men will go to each subway station. Two or three of you go in the uptown side, same number on the downtown. The point is that we don’t want to attract attention. The leader of each group will have a walkie-talkie.”

“And what if something goes wrong? What if we don’t bear nothing? What if you don’t find one of these things, or the cops get you?” Miguel asked argumentatively.

“Then save your own asses. There’s no room in this operation for heroes. Go home. Forget you ever heard my name, or Willie’s,” Corelli said grimly. If the cops did catch him, he was as good as dead, anyway.

After the Dogs of Hell left, Corelli grew restive. With less than an hour left before going into the subway, he still felt uneasy; it wasn’t like him. He knew it wasn’t fear of what he might confront in the abandoned station where Slade had met his death. It was something else. Something not directly connected with the creeper operation. He closed his eyes and focused all his energy on deciphering his apprehension.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Louise’s face assembled itself in his imagination, and he knew that was it. She’d said she was okay; they both knew she was lying. Maybe he shouldn’t have left her, maybe he should have stayed at Willie’s until Lettie lean came back. Well, there was one way to deal with that guilt. He called Willie’s number immediately, bracing himself for Lettie’s voluminous alto voice. After ten rings he hung up.

“Willie, what’s Lettie Jean’s home phone number? She and Louise must be over at her place.” But even as he dialed, Corelli knew he was deluding himself. Things never worked out that easily. Human nature wasn’t as straightforward as people liked to believe. Frank knew he wouldn’t call Lettie’s, ask to speak to Louise, and a moment later hear her soft, soothing voice.

“How de do?” Lettie’s voice boomed into his ear.

“It’s Frank Corelli. Is Louise handy?”

“She should be right by your side, Mr. Corelli.”

“Oh?” So, human nature hadn’t failed him, after all.

“Sure ’nuff. I stopped over to chew the fat awhile, and Louise was jes’ as restless as a cat on a hot tin roof. She finally picked up the phone and called you-’least I thought it was you.” The shadow of a doubt crept into her voice.

“Then she went out?”

“Like a bat outta hell. Shoot, I figured you whispered some lovin’ words in her ear, Frank.” Lettie’s voice definitely meant to be more than friendly.

“Dammit,” Corelli swore under his breath. “If you see her, Lettie, don’t let her outta your sight.”

“Sure thing, Frank,” she cooed again before hanging up.

Corelli grabbed his coat and was at the front door before Willie had a chance to ask where he was going. Frank wasn’t exactly sure where Louise had gone, but he had a good idea. Goddammit! He should have kept closer watch on her. She’d been acting flaky ever since last night… ever since she’d first heard about the creepers… and imagined her daughter with them.

“Where the hell you goin’?” Willie yelped as Corelli opened the door. “It’s gettin’ late.”

“I’ll meet you at Ninety-sixth Street at midnight.”

“And if you ain’t there?”

“I'll be there,” Corelli insisted.

“Jes’ speakin’ hypothetical-like…if you ain’t?”

“Then you and your men get the hell outta there. You got that?”

Willie thought a moment, then calmly began toying with the gold chain around his neck. He got it, all right. If Corelli wasn’t there, there wasn’t going to be a party. Well, this time, Willie Hoyte was going to look out for number one. He was going into the tunnel, Corelli or no Corelli. “Hopes you find her,” he said benignly.

“That makes two of us,” Corelli said as he ran out the door, closer to panic than he wanted to admit.

Louise had finally broken. The nightmare had finally become reality for her. And she’d fled, irrationally, terrified, from the safety of Willie’s apartment out into the night. And if her final destination was where Frank feared, her life was in more danger than she’d ever know.

As he leaped into his car, Corelli only hoped it wasn’t too late to save her.