Underground

CHAPTER 6

We staggered and slipped our way west on the frosted sidewalks of Jackson Street—my knee twinging—until we were a half block from Occidental where Jay took a sharp right turn into an alley beside the newly rebuilt Cadillac Hotel. Parts of the brick frontage had tumbled down in the earthquake of February 2001 and the old place had been slated for demolition. Like the titular phoenix—or “Fenix”—of the nightclub that had once graced its basement, the building had somehow risen from the ashes and reopened as the new Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in 2005. How a museum entirely contained in a building was a national park still confounded me, and I wasn’t sure how they’d rebuilt the place from the wreck that had stood on the corner of Jackson and Second for years.

I was pretty sure that there were no unguarded openings on the building, but Jay ducked down in front of a sunken window on the opposite side of the alley, glancing up and down the brick roadway, and pulled a bit of grillwork loose.

Then he disappeared into the resulting hole as slick as an eel. Quinton waved me forward and showed me the tiny ledge at the bottom of the window frame on which to place my foot. From my half-sunk position it was easy to slide down into the dark gulf below the buildings.

A rush of unnatural cold washed over me as I descended, like plunging feet first into a pool of Grey. I felt like Alice gone down a haunted rabbit hole. Quinton came down behind me, hanging onto the ledge for a moment as he pulled the grille back into place, and dropped to the floor of cracked and tilted concrete and compacted dirt.

Quinton brought out his flashlight and directed it at the ground, keeping the beam from reflecting into the glass of the window we’d entered through. I’d expected to land in a basement, but the space proved to be a gallery built of brick and rusting iron girders that held up part of the alley above. I looked around in the dim light and felt a little dizzy. Here below the street the world was in the unending grip of gelid fire and inhabited by ghosts, fairly writhing with the incorporeal mass of deceased humanity. Their phantom bodies flowed through and around us like chill water, making me shiver and gasp in their unexpected tide. Long dead men, horses, and dogs—even a mangy cat—still went about their business here while the roaring flames of the Great Fire consumed all and nothing.

Quinton’s beam spotlighted a more lively animal—a brown rat that scuttled into a deeper darkness with a squeak of outrage. Then the blinding light moved over my face and quickly back down to the ground.

“Are you all right? You look sick.”

“Just adjusting. The atmosphere’s a little… heavy here,” I panted, getting my equilibrium back.

Then I whispered to him, “Have you ever… seen any zombies… down here?”

He looked at me and blinked. Then he answered slowly. “If by zombie you mean ambulatory dead, then yes. I have.” He fell into a wary silence, as if he wasn’t sure what I was going to make of the answer.

“That sounds like a nutty question, doesn’t it?”

“From most people, I guess. From you, I think it means there’s something more going on. So, what is it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Sandy—the woman I was talking to at the Union Gospel Mission—said she’d seen zombies and found body parts around Pioneer Square since the storms, and I had a… run-in with a zombie last night. A walking corpse, to be more precise. Just before I saw it, I saw a fox—just like Jay did and in the same area. Probably the same fox.”

“I thought that spooked you.”

I nodded. “Here was the strange thing—well, one of several strange things…” I felt myself frowning about that and shook it off.

“What strange things—stranger than zombies, that is?”

“This zombie was animated by its own spirit—or two spirits—which was trapped in the corpse by a—a kind of web.” I was having a little difficulty with a more precise description without going into ridiculous detail that wasn’t relevant. “Magic energy—one of those things I can see and touch. But the important point was that I found the same sort of material on the hole in the tunnel wall where you found Go-cart yesterday. I’ve never seen anything quite like it elsewhere, so I think it’s the same thing in both cases, which would imply a connection to a common source or cause between the dead man and the zombie. And Sandy’s talking about missing people and zombies made me wonder.”

Jay had moved farther down the buried alley and whispered back to us from the dark. “Up here. There’s people in here. They took Bear’s stuff.”

Quinton linked one of my arms with his free one and tugged me gently forward.

“C’mon. We’ll talk about this later.”

I nodded and took a deep breath before falling in beside him. Moving helped, but I was thinking as we went. If Go-cart was part of a pattern of death and disappearance, were the strands of soft, neutral Grey part of that pattern? If so, then the pattern would link him to the zombie I’d had thrust upon me the night before, and that man had been dead quite a while. Who was he before he became a walking, rotting prison for his soul, and who had been along for the ride? I shuddered and carried on beside Quinton through the unseen throng of burning ghosts.

We caught up to Blue Jay at an underground corner, where the alley met an old sunken sidewalk of rotted boards and disrupted cement. Down the sidewalk to our left there was a light and gathered around it were three people.

Jay pointed into the dark at the near corner and spoke in a raw whisper. “I found the blanket there a couple days ago. Bear’s hat was there, too, but it didn’t fit me, so I left it. Now it’s gone. You see the man with the braids? Tall Grass.”

“Did he take Bear’s hat?” Quinton asked.

“I don’t see it on him.”

“Do you see Lass or Tanker?”

“No. Just Tall Grass and his girlfriend and… looks like one of the People.”

I shot a questioning look at Quinton, who whispered back, “He means another Indian.” Quinton peeked around Jay’s shoulder and studied the group. “They look OK. Let’s go ask them what they’ve seen. If they’ve seen Bear or his stuff. Or Lass or Tanker.”

Jay dug in his heels. “I won’t go.”

“Why not?” Quinton asked.

“Moths. And that bird. There shouldn’t be birds down here. That’s bad.”

I backed up so I could lean against the other building corner and see down the sidewalk better. Through the fog of Grey shapes I spotted the more solid, moving flickers of large moths. They were acting strange for moths—staying away from the light in favor of fluttering around the heads of the people in the circle.

“I don’t see a bird,” I said.

Jay pointed into the shadow where the light began to fade away into darkness again. A gleam of something dark and shiny showed me the eye of a good-sized bird. As I concentrated on it the shape became more clear. It was a small crow—much smaller than the ones I’d seen at the tunnel mouth, but still a crow. It hopped and flapped its wings, flying farther into the shadows, and I knew this was screwy—birds don’t fly in the dark. The gleam of the light touched several more pairs of bird and rat eyes that blinked from the darkness.

“What is it with crows and moths?” I muttered.

“Moths carry messages from ghosts. Crows and ravens, they’re specially magical. Those guys are talking to ghosts. I don’t want nothing to do with ghosts. Bad, bad magic.” Jay began backing away, past Quinton and me. Then he turned and ran into the darkness in the opposite direction.

I didn’t like the feeling of being abandoned, but fleeing myself wouldn’t help.

There was something more than ordinarily eerie to the situation—perhaps it was the setting, though. The hidden sidewalk and its sun-deprived landscape populated by the shapes of memory and broken slabs of time over equally broken concrete had an otherworldly feel that encouraged an anticipation of something uncanny breaking through at any moment.

“Well,” I muttered to Quinton, “I talk to ghosts all the time. This doesn’t look too bad. You know any of them?”

Quinton pointed to each one, his voice edged in distaste as he spoke. “The woman is Jennifer Novoy—Jenny Nin. Small-time grunge rocker, got into drugs, fell out of the regular world and into this one. Whores for drugs, alcohol—you name it. Probably why Jenny’s down here with Tall Grass. He’s big-time trouble, small-time crook. Most of the shelters won’t let him in since he’s been caught stealing, dealing, and messing with the kids. Criminal record as Thomas Newman.

He’s from a local tribe—Nisqually—on his mother’s side and makes a big deal of it when it suits him to play the victim. He’s one of the most politically aware of the undergrounders, though he mostly uses it to his own ends.” His tone went neutral. “That other guy—Grandpa Dan—I don’t know much about him except he’s older than dirt and he seems to polarize the Indians around here—they love him or hate him.”

“How do you know some of this? Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing most people would tell.”

Quinton shrugged. “I do things. I get to know them, or I look into records. I snoop when I have to—I want to know who’s going to do what. Some of these guys I know better than their parents did. I wish I didn’t, to be honest.”

I knew that feeling. It may be part of my job, but sometimes digging around in other people’s lives seems dirty—it is dirty. Everyone in the business has a justifying excuse and some limit beyond which they won’t go, but there are times when it seems there’s not enough soap and hot water to remove the muck.

I stood up straight and took a long, bracing breath. Then I caught Quinton’s eye. “Let’s go find out what they know about John Bear,” I said. “And the rest of this.”

We came around the corner and began a slow walk toward the group near the light.

A tumbling knot of energy rolled in the air around them, and a scent of burning wood and pot with a hint of rust and mold met us as we neared. The auras around Tall Grass and Jenny wove into each other in shades of black, blue, and green just like a bruise, while Grandpa Dan’s was more like a reflective silver mist that bulged with the shapes of ghosts momentarily caught in its surface.

Tall Grass saw us coming and as his attention centered on us, it pulled Jenny Nin’s gaze around to us, too. Dan, weathered and gray, pushed back into the shadows a bit more, wary at our approach and drawing himself away from our attention.

“Hey, the Mighty Quinn,” Tall Grass drawled.

“I don’t see you jumping for joy.”

“Got the joy part covered my own self.” He put his arm around Jenny’s shoulder and pulled her possessively tight. She put her cap-covered head on his shoulder.

The dim light of their tiny fire in a large metal pail threw a yellow shine on Jenny’s unfocused brown eyes. There was something more than just pot in her blood stream, I’d be willing to bet.

“We were looking for John Bear and Little Jolene, or Lass, or Tanker. You seen any of them?”

Dan just grunted, but Jenny spoke in a slurry, waltz-time voice. “Those guys were here. We’re all partying and Lass was all hitting on me and then the dog comes around the corner and—wham! — the dog’s all like a rabid monster, yipping and howling, and then mean ol’ Tanker’s all mad. The dog’s all mad and growling and we’re all like, ‘Shut up, man.’ Tanker’s all in my face and then Lass’s. Then he ran off. Asshole. Didn’t like our party, so he left, too.”

I was confused as to which of the men was an asshole and which didn’t want to party. Unless it was Bella, but it was fairly obvious she hadn’t been in a party mood.

Quinton looked stormy. “Damn it. I told Lass not to tag that dog.” He turned to me. “Didn’t I tell him to stay away from Tanker?”

“Yes, you did,” I affirmed.

“See, that’s what I was afraid of. They both said they were coming down here and sure enough Lass has to act like a jerk.”

“Hey, dude, don’t be so rough,” Jenny said, giggling, and turning the Grey mist around herself a drunken shade of magenta. “The dog started it.”

Quinton sighed. “If you say so. So Bear and Jolene were down here, too?”

“Nah, stupid. Just Dan, here, and Lass and Tanker. And monster dog.”

“When did Bear give you his hat?”

Jenny sat up, sending a moment’s red flare into the tangled energy around them, and yanked the earflaps of the kooky leather and fur hunter’s cap down so the bill rode onto her eyebrows. “Fuck you.”

“Don’t hassle my girl, Q,” Tall Grass warned, leaning into the light so he looked like a monster from a silent film. “We found it down here with some crappy broken stuff someone dumped over there.” He pointed into the dark just behind my right shoulder where the street wall was. “Isn’t that so, Grandfather?”

Dan didn’t actually answer, but Tall Grass took his silence for confirmation before going on. “Just keeping it until Bear comes around again. Haven’t seen him in weeks. And not Jolene, either. Lot of folks gone to warmer places, I think. Bear probably got smart and went, too.”

“Not hassling you, Grass. Just trying to find some people. Seems like there’s a lot of people missing and dead this year.”

“Well, that’s sad, but it’s the cycle of life, brother. Some go, some come. Like those guys with the wagon and like that crazy lady in the park—you know, the one who laughs at everything?”

“Yeah, I know. She’s native, right?”

“First Nations, white eyes.”

“What’s with the politically correct Candianism? I thought you were a Washington Nisqually.”

Grass tried to look noble but didn’t carry it off. “We are all one great people, without boundaries. It’s your people who want to cut everything up and make countries and territories and reservations out of it.”

Quinton did not take the bait. “I just wondered if she was from a local tribe. I hadn’t seen her around before Thanksgiving.”

“I think she’s Kwakiutl—funky accent like Bella Coola Valley. Y’know—in Canada,” Tall Grass added with a sneer at Quinton.

“Dudes, you’re bringing me down,” Jenny whined. She pulled a sloshing bottle of brown liquid from the shadows by her side and waved it. “Sit down, drink up, shut up. Or fuck off.”

“All right.” Quinton squatted down near the pail of burning junk and held out his hand.

Jenny leaned forward, trashed and unsteady, and slapped the bottle into his hand. “S’better.” She petted his hand a second. “You loosen up good. Hey… you wanna screw? S’quiet down here…”

Quinton took a swig from the bottle, but I noticed he didn’t swallow. “Nah. Gotta work tonight,” he added, handing the bottle back to Jenny.

Jenny pouted insincerely and took the bottle, drinking and passing it to Tall Grass, who made a show of looking me over as I squatted down between Quinton and the silent Dan.

“Working,” Grass said with a laugh. “That’s not work, brother. That is a long, slow pleasure ride.”

“Can’t ride what you can’t catch,” I started, then was cut short by a soft snort from my left. Tall Grass just laughed, hearing nothing of the sound and not even noticing the old man getting to his feet.

He was still bent even standing and the light made red rivers on his creased face. It almost seemed as if only I could see him, for all the notice the others took. He just stared at them and then looked around at the fluttering insects and deeper into the blackness beyond the fire’s light. I watched him, tuning out the conversation on my other side as I noticed a silvery shadow clinging to his form.

“Fools,” Grandpa Dan muttered at last, the ghost shape gleaming on him. “The ravens say death comes here.” He glared at the air. He paid none of us any heed as he started off into the dark, disrupting the fluttering moths that swung in crazy circles, making odd eddies in the Grey mist that almost took form before collapsing into nothingness. A rustle of feathered wings trailed away behind him, and the shadows of crows closed him into the dark.

I stared after him, wondering what that meant. Then I was jarred from my thoughts by a hand on my back. I turned to see Quinton, his brows drawn down and a small orange light outlining his form as he peered at me in the waning light of the fire.

“Did he say something?”

A rattle of wings from the darkness made me cover a shiver with a shrug.

“Something about death and fools. I think he’s unimpressed.”

“Grass and Jenny and I have made a list of who’s missing.”

I’d lost a few minutes in my reverie. I glanced at Tall Grass and Jenny, who both appeared a lot more trashed than before. I shot a questioning look at Quinton. He pointed at the empty bottle on the ground.

Jenny tittered. “Good stuff, Maynard.”

“Jet fuel is what it is,” Quinton corrected.

“S’good though,” she replied, and broke into half-swallowed guffaws that sounded like whale hiccups.

Tall Grass wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into his chest, kissing drunkenly at her head and mostly getting the hat under his lips. He growled and jerked it off, revealing messy, butched-out brown locks. He managed to snare her short hair in his fist and yank her head back, exposing her thin face to his slobbering assault. They tumbled sideways into the ice-coated wall, groping and pawing at each other.

I rolled my eyes and pushed to my feet, banishing the complaints of my knee to a back compartment of my attention. I hoped those two wouldn’t get frostbite or set fire to anything, but that was about as far as my concern for Jenny and Grass went. “How do we get out of here?” I asked Quinton.

“Out’s easier than in.” He grabbed my hand and we went the same direction Jay had taken, away from Occidental, around the Second Avenue corner, and down the short stretch of tunnellike sidewalk to a recently installed metal door with a push bar on it. The door led into a tiny space with two more doors. The one on our right opened on a modern fire stair, and we went up it to exit on Second between the Cadillac Hotel and its neighbor.

We peered out of the doorway like frightened animals and found the cold street empty of all but ice and the unearthly chill of Grey mist. Quinton nodded. “OK. Let’s move. It’s too cold to stand here.”

We walked away toward my office. I felt a little disoriented, as if I’d missed something, so I kicked the conversation back into gear as we went. “All right. Who’s on the list?” I asked.

“The first of the strange dead bodies was a guy named Hafiz. No one was sorry to see him go. The Women in Black didn’t organize a vigil but just stuck him on the leaflets for the next time—that’s how much people didn’t like him.”

“Hafiz. Was he Muslim?”

“Not that I heard and certainly not that anyone cared. Being a mean-spirited ass seems to have universal application. Then Chaim Jankowski and now Go-cart. There’ve been a couple of other deaths, but they were from things like heart attack and drug overdose, so I’m not counting those. Just the weird ones.”

“Go on. Who else?”

“John Bear and Little Jolene, Tandy, Pranker Jheri—no idea what his parents were thinking with that name—and Felix.” He pronounced it the Spanish way:

Feh-LEEHKS. “There may be others, but that’s for sure. None of them would just take off or had anyplace else to go, and if they moved up, they’d have told someone. The Enhancement League tries to keep track of who makes it into housing, and there’s usually talk if someone’s been seen in another part of town. None of that’s true with those five.”

“So you’re thinking all of them are victims of vampires or whatever it was that killed Go-cart.”

“I’m leaning that way.”

We’d come to my parking garage and I stopped by the gate. “Sandy’s talk about the lack of blood gives me pause, but I’m still reserving judgment on the vampires. There is something going on, creating a pattern, and that’s disturbing. Even crazy ladies and homeless criminals are picking up on it—though I’m not putting too much store by any one set of remarks.”

“Smart. I live with these guys and I understand them, but most of them are at least a little nuts.”

“Crazy sounds like self-defense, here.”

“Yeah.” He looked at me for a moment in silence before continuing, his expression hidden by the shadow of his hat brim. “Better go home. Its too cold to stay out here.”

“Yeah. I’ll try to get some info from the medical examiner about Go-cart—Robert Cristus, right? — and look into cause of death on the others to see if there’s a real pattern or just an appearance. I’ll let you know what I find and see if that moves us anywhere.”

“All right. Then I’ll be seeing you.”

“Yeah.”

We stood and stared at each other for a moment. I felt exhausted and uncertain of a lot of things and Quinton seemed hesitant himself, but for a wavering second it seemed he might do or say something. But he didn’t and I wondered if my disappointment with Will was making me think all men were on the verge of untoward actions.

At last Quinton turned away a little and started to walk back toward First, lifting a hand to wave. “OK. Good night, Harper.”

“Good night,” I echoed and lingered a few frowning seconds before going to my truck and heading home to West Seattle.

It felt much later than it was and I was tired, cold, and distracted. I let Chaos out of her cage to romp around the living room while I took a shower and warmed up some soup for my dinner. The ferret followed me into the bathroom but had abandoned her post beside the tub by the time I got out.

I found her in the living room, curled up around a squeaky toy that was shaped like a small eggplant sporting Richard Nixon’s face. I scooped her up and put her in my lap while I ate dinner, but she didn’t want to stay there either and slithered down the chair leg to the floor to wander off and throw herself down on the living room carpet with a sigh, doing the flat ferret thing and staring at me as if I’d let her down by spending time outside her company. I just wasn’t measuring up to anyone’s expectations and I found myself irritated by it. I wanted to yell at someone and tell them off about what they could or couldn’t have from me. Chaos wasn’t the one who deserved it, but I wasn’t quite sure who did.