Children of the Underground Read online

  “Anything else?” he asked as he whisked the last bit of shaving cream off of his face with his razor.

  “Yes,” I answered, my voice weak.

  “What is it?”

  The last page. “He’s the one who decided to have your mother and father killed.” I watched Michael’s face in the mirror. I didn’t want to see him any more hurt than he already was, but his expression didn’t change.

  “They gave me some crap to rub on the blisters on my back,” he said, ending a painful silence. “I can’t reach back there.”

  “I’ll do it,” I told him.

  “After that, we’re going to have to find you another place to stay.” He said the words so casually that it took a second for them to sink in. Even when I finally understood the words, they did nothing but confuse me. I thought he was kicking me out because of something I said.

  “What?” I mumbled. “Why?”

  “You can’t stay here,” Michael answered. “They were here. They went through our things. They came once already. They’ll come again. We were lucky that you weren’t here this time. If they find you, it’s all over.” Michael came over and sat on the bed with his back to me. He handed me a tube of some sort of antibacterial gel. I squeezed some out onto my fingers and rubbed it gently on the raised skin on Michael’s back. I could feel the muscles in his back tense up and then relax as I touched them. “I’ll stay here,” Michael said. “Leaving would look suspicious. We’ll have to find you someplace where you can stay cheap, where we can pay in cash. We can’t leave any paper trail.” I didn’t care where I stayed. I’d been staying in flea-bitten, pay-by-the-hour motels for most of the past seven months. I could deal with the lack of amenities. All the same, I didn’t have any desire to be alone again. I didn’t tell Michael that, though.

  “Why don’t you stay with me?” I asked. “You can keep this hotel room, but you can stay with me. If they come looking for you, you can say that you were out.”

  “We’ll see,” Michael answered. My fingernail caught on the edge of one of his blisters. His back tensed but he didn’t flinch. “Let’s find you your place. Then let me do this first job. Then we’ll see.”

  “Okay.” I had to settle for what I could get. “Can I ask you a question?” Michael nodded. “Do you know why they gave you this person to kill? Why now?”

  “They’re trying to retrain me,” Michael said. “It’s like I’m eighteen again. The first job they give you is someone utterly unsympathetic, someone who clearly deserves to die. If they can make it personal”—Michael paused—“all the better. The first person that I ever killed was a sixty-five-year-old man. Before the job, they showed me a video of the guy killing an unarmed nineteen-year-old girl with a crowbar. That’s all I knew.” I finished rubbing the gel onto his back. He stood up and walked over to his bag to get some clothes. “So I killed the old bastard. Hopefully, there’s no video of what I did to that old man to inspire any of their soldiers.”

  Michael got dressed. We found a place for me to stay, a small apartment in Alphabet City that the owners are basically running as an unlicensed hotel. They didn’t ask questions. We paid for four nights up front and told them that I’d probably be staying longer. Michael went back to his hotel room. He promised that he’d stop by in the morning to check on me.

  I can’t sleep. My mind keeps racing back to the pictures of the fat man. He looks harmless. If he wasn’t so fat, he’d look like a million other people you might see on the street. One of the pictures was taken through a store window. The fat man was inside, talking to the woman behind the counter. He was smiling, reaching into his pocket for money. Sensing that sleep wasn’t coming, I took out the baby-development book. Since I met Michael, you’ve crossed over into another month. You’re more than nine months old now. You’re probably standing up. I should sleep. Hopefully, it will be your image that haunts my sleep and not the fat man’s.

  Seventeen

  I made Michael go over his entire plan with me. “It’s sweet. You’re worried about me,” he said when I pressed him.

  “I’m worried that you’re not taking this seriously enough.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Just go over the plan one more time.”

  “I’m going to go at night,” he said. “According to our information, he leaves two of his guard dogs outside at night and keeps one in the house. I’m going to bring some hamburger meat for the dogs outside and use it to drug them. I’ll bring some rope with me so that I can tie them up once they’re drugged.”

  “Why do you need to tie up the dogs if you already drugged them?” I asked.

  “I’m going to give them tranquilizers. I’ll tie them up while they’re unconscious so that I can get out without having to deal with them if the drugs wear off. The dog on the inside will be a bit harder, but I think that I can collar him and lock him in another room.”

  “It seems like a lot of work for a couple of dogs.”

  “I’m not killing any fucking dogs,” Michael said. It was clear from the look on his face that it wasn’t up for discussion.

  “Won’t the fat man hear you by the time you get rid of the third dog?”

  “Sure, but that dog stays on the ground floor and the mark will be on the second floor, so there’s no way for him to escape without going through me. He’s a fat man with no fighting experience. Maybe he’ll take out a gun that he doesn’t know how to aim. If he does, he’ll end up shooting at shadows. Once the dogs are out of the way, the fat man doesn’t scare me.”

  “How are you going to kill him?” I asked. The question made me queasy until I reminded myself what the fat man did for a living.

  “Knife,” Michael answered.

  “Isn’t that messy?”

  Michael laughed. “You sound like Joe.” The words weren’t an insult. They were full of nostalgia. “Look, everyone has their preferred methods for this stuff. Joe was a strangler. He strangled people because it was neat. He strangled people because he didn’t like messes. Knives are bloody, but if you know how to use them, they’re quick. You can reduce your victim’s pain and terror. It’s a trade-off. I’ve always been okay dealing with the mess.”

  “Why not a gun?”

  “We don’t use guns—not if we think there’s any other way. Guns are hard to cover up and easy to trace. If you want me to get back in their good graces, then guns aren’t an option.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “Will you call me when the job is over?” Michael shook his head. “Then how am I going to know that you’re okay?”

  “See? I knew you were worried about me,” Michael answered, smiling. “You have to have a little faith, Maria. They’ll be monitoring this job to see how I do. I can’t take chances contacting you. You stay here. I’ll come back as soon as it’s safe.”

  “If you wait until it’s safe, you’ll never come back,” I said, only half joking. Michael half chuckled in response.

  “I have something for you,” he said to me, changing the subject. He reached into his pocket.

  “Don’t give me anything. I’m already asking too much of you. I don’t want to owe you any more than I already do.” Michael pulled a wallet-sized picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was one of Joseph’s old class pictures. It was a bit scuffed at the edges, but even though I’d never seen this picture before, I recognized Joe’s eyes immediately. “Wow. How old is he in this picture?”

  “Thirteen,” Michael said, “three years before I met him. I nicked it from his mother’s dresser the first time I was ever invited to his house.” I smiled at that, knowing that Michael deserved the photo so much more than Joe’s mom ever did. “It sounds weird, but when I was a kid, I used to like to pretend that me and Joe had been friends ever since we were little kids. I used to like to pretend that it was more than the War that brought us together.”

  I he
ld the photo in my hand. “Why are you giving this to me?”

  “Because I know that you don’t have any pictures.”

  “Of Joseph?” I asked.

  “Of Christopher,” Michael answered. “I thought you might be able to see some of Christopher in Joe’s picture.”

  I felt a knot twist in my throat. I could see you. Looking at that picture was like looking into a time machine and seeing you in twelve years. “Do you have any other pictures of Joseph?” I asked. Michael shook his head. “Then I can’t keep this,” I said, even though I wanted to keep it. “It means too much to you.”

  “You can give it back to me when you find your kid and you don’t need the picture anymore.”

  “I will,” I promised. “Thank you,” I added, hoping that Michael realized how much I was trying to thank him for. I keep the picture in this journal. I look at it frequently. I can’t wait to give it back.

  Eighteen

  I avoided looking at the clock on the stove until a couple minutes past eight, when Michael was probably crawling through the woods toward the back of the fat man’s house. It’s hot, hotter than it should be in April in New York. This apartment doesn’t have air-conditioning. I brought a fan to try to get the air moving around the place. It helps a little. It doesn’t cool the air down, but it feels good blowing over my skin. It’s too hot to close the windows. I can hear the incessant sounds of traffic outside. Horns honk. People shout out of car windows. In between the blaring of horns and the sounds of car engines, I can hear people talking out on the sidewalk. I’m alone, sitting here, trying to keep cool.

  I memorized Michael’s plan so that I can watch the clock and know what he’s doing at any given moment. The crawling through the woods behind the fat man’s house is more dangerous than it sounds. The fat man lives on the edge of acres and acres of rocky cliffs and trees. Some of the rock ledges rise over three feet above the ground with nothing on the other side but air. Michael has a small flashlight to help him navigate through the darkness, but he also memorized his approach and his escape route to try to avoid the cliffs, in case he has to run.

  I watched another hour slip by on the clock. Michael should be coming up to the fence behind the fat man’s house. He’s supposed to flick his flashlight off before getting too close to the fence so the dogs won’t notice him. He’s supposed to stop in the woods and pack the tranquilizers in the hamburger meat and then make his way toward the house, following the light from the fat man’s windows. Without his flashlight, Michael will have to feel his way through the darkness, reaching from tree to tree, listening for the dogs so that he knows he’s headed in the right direction. The dogs will smell him before he can see them. They’ll start to bark into the darkness. The barking should help. Michael can follow the sound of the barking. He just has to be sure to move fast enough to throw the meat over and head back into the woods before the barking gets too suspicious.

  My mind keeps racing with every possible thing that could go wrong. I feel like I don’t have control over my own thoughts. I’m worried about Michael, for you, for us, for him too. I keep imagining him tripping in the darkness, falling over a cliff, or even more ludicrous scenarios like him being eaten by a bear or a mountain lion. I’m also worried about the practical problems like making sure that each dog eats the right amount of the tranquilizers. If one dog eats too much, instead of two sleeping dogs, Michael’s going to have to deal with one dead dog and one very angry dog.

  It should take about forty-five minutes for the tranquilizers to go into effect. Michael is supposed to sit in the woods and listen for the dogs to go quiet. It’s ten o’clock. He should be making his way toward the house now. The top of the fence is lined with barbed wire, so Michael is planning on cutting a hole in the fence with some wire clippers. Then he’ll crawl through the hole and tie up each dog. He has two long lengths of rope so that he can tie the dogs to different parts of the fence.

  Once he’s taken care of the two dogs outside, Michael is going to have to break into the house through one of the basement windows. He’ll cut the phone lines and the power. Even though the fat man is in his own house, Michael claims that having a flashlight in the darkness will give him an advantage. Michael will also have to deal with the dog inside the house. He brought a hood with him with a cinch at the bottom. The hood is similar to the ones Clara made me and Michael wear when they drove us back to D.C. in the van. Michael’s plan is to get the hood on the third dog and to lock it in a separate room downstairs.

  The night air has gotten cooler, but it’s still hot. I have the fan in the window, trying to pull the cool air in from outside. Michael should be tying up the dogs now. The whole job is only supposed to take another hour to an hour and a half at most. The fat man’s life was forty-seven years in the making and is about to be unraveled by three and a half hours of work, and I’m sitting here. Michael is the only person in the world who knows where I am, and he’s wandering through the darkness over two hours away. I wonder how many jobs he’s going to have to do before Jared contacts him. Two? Ten? Every job is one more person that will die because I convinced Michael to help me.

  What is that? Somebody’s knocking on my door. How is that possible? Nobody’s supposed to know I’m here.

  Nineteen

  I put the journal down. The last time I’d heard an unexpected knock like that, strangers came into my home, killed your father, and stole you from me. I wasn’t about to let something horrible like that happen again. I stopped writing. My eyes scanned the apartment to gauge how quickly I could run. I had barely bothered to unpack my bag. It was sitting on top of the bed in the other room. I looked over at the fan buzzing in the window. The fire escape was on the other side of the window. I stood up, trying to move fast without making any noise. I took four quick steps into the bedroom. I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder leading up to the bed and pulled my duffel bag off the mattress. I threw the journal into the bag. Anything else not in the bag, I was prepared to leave behind. I heard another knock as I pulled my duffel bag off the bed. This one was louder. I felt sweat rising on my skin due to the heat and the adrenaline. I took a quick look around the bedroom to see if there was any other way out. The window in the bedroom had locked bars on it. Even if I could get through the bars, it was a four-story drop to the street.

  I moved quickly, stepping back into the kitchen. I had opened the window to pry the fan out so that I could get to the fire escape. It was an old, squeaky window and it was no more than ten feet from the apartment door. I put my palm on the bottom of the window, getting ready to push. I heard a third louder, more forceful knock. Whoever was out there was less than ten feet away from me and was losing their patience. I pushed up on the window and it screeched like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. The banging on the door grew louder and more intense. The door shook. I grabbed the fan and moved it out of my way. I threw my duffel bag onto the fire escape and swung a leg over the window ledge. I looked down. I could climb down three stories and then jump from there. The city was buzzing beneath me. Lights were shining everywhere. I had forgotten all about Michael. I had forgotten about the fat man. If people found out who I was, none of that would matter. I was about to swing my other leg over and run when I heard a voice shouting through the door.

  “Maria,” the voice yelled. “I know you’re in there. You don’t have to be afraid.” It was a woman’s voice. I recognized the voice from somewhere. She knocked again. Then she shouted, “It’s safer to stay than to run, Maria.” I stopped. The voice didn’t scare me. I straddled the window and tried to think of what to do. I tried to imagine what your father would have done, but your father wasn’t there. Michael wasn’t there either. I was alone.

  “I’ll be right there,” I yelled toward the door. I pulled myself back into the apartment, leaving my duffel bag on the fire escape in case I had to jump for it. Then I walked toward the apartment door. I left the chain lock strung acro
ss the door and opened it the two inches the chain lock would allow. Then I looked outside.

  A woman was standing outside the door. She was bigger than me but not by much. She was wearing cargo pants and a black tank top. She had a bulge in the pocket of her cargo pants that I was sure was a weapon. I recognized the woman. It wasn’t so long ago that this woman had brought me breakfast when I was hungry. “Dorothy?” The woman nodded. What was she doing outside my door? It had been only a week since I was never going to see her again. “Are you alone?” I asked her.

  “I’m the only one standing here right now,” she answered.

  “Okay,” I said. Then I closed the door and unhooked the chain.

  Dorothy stepped inside. Without asking, she began a silent examination of the apartment. Despite the heat, she closed the bedroom window as she passed it. Then she came back into the kitchen and looked out the window leading to the fire escape. She grabbed my duffel bag from outside and handed it to me. “You probably want this,” she said. Then she closed the kitchen window too. With the windows closed, the apartment heated up like a greenhouse and the sounds from the city were muffled into little more than white noise.

  The way Dorothy was moving made me nervous. She caught the look I was giving her. “You can’t be too careful,” she responded.

  “Am I in danger?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” she replied. I wasn’t going to second-guess her. She helped people hide for a living.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We’ll get to that,” she replied. She looked over at me. “How are you?” she asked. I think she was trying to stop me from asking more questions. It didn’t work.

  “How did you know I was here?” I remember thinking how innocent Dorothy looked when I first met her. She didn’t seem so innocent now.