Tenth Man

by Tamara Sheehan

Chapter 6

Howie was pacing.

He’d made a passable appearance at work, then tried to sleep. He had been tired before Saul’s phone call, been ready to call it a night, but now the thought of trying to sleep was ridiculous.

He looked down at the map laid out on his bed. He knew the tunnels so well he sometimes dreamed of being in them. They ran on endlessly, a rabbit warren full of graffiti, of people, of objects under the city. A child’s paradise, a treasure island.

Like anything so enticing, the network was as dangerous as a web to a fly. Floodwaters could drown the unwary in its pits and tunnels that led nowhere. There were creatures living in the dark, incubi among them. Cave-ins happened along the older passages, while the newer ones were flooded and flushed out. Junkies and madmen and punk kids with razor blades and knives and too much heroin. Dealing dens and black-market trading posts. Howie wrung his hands.

The pipes could get small, too. The openings were just big enough to squeeze hips and shoulders through. Sometimes terror and claustrophobia threatened panic, and panic could mean being lost deep under the city for days, could mean drowning, death. His finger traced the black line of the modern rain outflow pipes, a concrete system put in place in the seventies.

His finger lingered on the chamber where the sea would rush in, fill the place with water, conceal entrances. He thought of Saul and winced and worried.

As soon as Howie had come home, he’d called Bridget, but she wasn’t answering her phone. He knew she was there. It was getting late and she, of all the people he knew, worked a regular shift at a regular job. She wouldn’t be out past ten and was always up before eight. He dialed her number again.

The machine clicked to life, but he forwent leaving another cryptic message in a faux-calm voice. If Saiid was there, Bridget would have no time for the phone and less for Howie’s messages.

He thought of the tall, Asian man, with his laconic voice, his quiet way of speaking and his easy smile. He was a dull man, and Howie was vaguely irritated by how he captivated Bridget. But now was no time to be captivated. Howie would have to get her attention, and that meant seeing her face to face.

He took his map, his coat and his keys. Someone had left the door to the apartment building open again, the filthy red carpet was lit by the neon signs from the street. He stepped over a brown smear and out into the street. The fog was lifting. Instantly he regretted its slow dissipation, the removal of cover he was beginning to feel he needed. He hugged the shadows of buildings and cars as he ran toward Bridget’s place.

Passing through the almost empty streets of outer China Town, Howie shinnied up and over a black metal gate at the entrance to an alley and ran silently between the twisting brick buildings. Away from shops and into tree-lined streets with apartment buildings and lawns stretching away toward the park and ultimately the sea.

He could see Bridget’s shared house. Grubby white paint peeling onto a lawn kept just well enough to keep the tenants of the apartment buildings on either side from complaining to the city. Her room faced the back, a small lawn, what once had been a vegetable garden when the city was young, and half a dozen apple trees which were all that remained of a once extensive orchard.

At the front was the buzzer, a roster of room numbers but no names. He could never remember which was hers. Swearing, he ran around to the back.

Lights were coming through the cream-curtains of her living room. Someone was moving inside the place, too short to be Saiid. Howie bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Bridge. Psst, hey, Bridge!”

The ground was cold, dew forming on the long grass. He groped in the shadow of the garden shed for pebbles to throw.

With a rumble, the balcony door slid open. Bridget pulled aside the curtains and turned back to her guests.

“No Mister Audel, I hadn’t,” she said suddenly. Howie’s hand froze around a fistful of suitable stones. He crouched, turned, clinging to the shadows around the garden shed like a rat seeking safety in a corner.

A man’s voice, quiet and reasonable, filtered out to him. He heard Bridget’s response: “Well that sort of thing is illegal, isn’t it?”

Howie held his breath. There was a note of irritation in Bridget’s voice that was usually directed at him. He wanted to scramble up the balcony and stand fast beside Bridget, but held his ground. It would only irritate her, and he could tell from her tone that she wouldn’t need it.

He heard the rumbling answer of a man’s voice but could not distinguish the words. Bridget laughed, short and sharp: “No, sir, I don’t think you will.” Polite but cold. “My friends are my own business. If you want to include me in your charges you can go right ahead, but in court you’ll have to prove I knew and, if you want a little unsolicited advice, it’s probably not worth the trouble.”

More speaking. Howie crept toward the balcony. The stones in his hand dug into his fist. He squinted toward the light.

“It’s late and I’m not interested in discussing my friends with you any more. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

He was crouching, arms wrapped around his body, waiting for the first sound of alarm, of a struggle. Silence stretched out. He heard a car door slam, and then another, and the engine fired to life.

“Jick. Sucking snotbag.” Bridget had appeared on the balcony, muttering and swearing. She was such a small woman that he was always surprised how his memory made her seem bigger. Small and built on a delicate frame of bones, with impossibly tiny hands. She wore wigs, tonight, her red one off set the somber colors of her suit.

“Bridge,” he whispered. She started, looked around her. “Is he gone?”

She nodded.

Howie crept out of the shadows, letting the hand full of pebbles fall. He looked up at her. Her expression was strange, closed. She looked down at him with something like dread.

“What did the nasty bastard want?”

“What’s going on with Saul?”

“Bad news. Let me in?”

She nodded and he hurried around to the front.

Bridget met him on the stairs that spilled down from the shared house and became a path across the ragged lawn. Her face was pale, her lips pulled tight across her teeth, her arms folded over her small chest. She let him in.

Through the hallway he could hear the muffled music or laconic voices of her housemates. Her own suite was quiet; a neat, comfortable apartment with posters from the art gallery on the walls. All of her furniture, heavy and Victorian, was smothered with papers and books, her oatmeal carpet was littered with piles that could not be placed on any other horizontal surface. A half empty bottle of McCallan’s held court with an empty glass by the radiator. Howie went to the balcony windows and looked out.

“So tell me what’s going on with Saul.” Bridget said, going into the kitchen and clattering within.

“He got a bit of trouble with Nick.” Howie listened to the beat of her movements break and resume.

“Nick is bad news.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long time since he was bad news like this.” Howie toyed with flicking fossilized bird crap off the wooden rail. “Audel’s hunted him down, sent him off to find something for him, and you know Audel.“

“Yes, I’ve just had the pleasure of being threatened by him.” Bridget’s tone was light but forced. She emerged from her kitchen with two glasses of scotch.

“What did he want?”

“Told me if I didn’t cooperate with him he’d have me done for harboring terrorists.”

Howie’s mouth fell slack and Bridget shrugged.

“He thinks I’m still kid from the projects. He should have consulted his lawyer before he came down here with a ridiculous threat like that.” She smiled fleetingly. “It’s almost impossible to nail someone to that charge; He’d have to prove I knew, and I could protest that both of you were framed. It’s nothing to worry about.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it all out in a rush. “But someone followed me home from the office this afternoon, walking just behind me the whole way. I ducked into the ladies’ at the café to lose him. Now that is scary.”

Howie paused before speaking. “You point him out and I’ll kick his ass.”

She shrugged again, drank to conceal an expression that was not as neutral as she would have liked. Condensation dropped from her glass. “So where is Saul now?”

“Gone underground to do this job for Audel.” He took a drink and followed Bridget out onto the balcony. “Don’t see why he should bother, not like Audel’s going to hand him over all the pictures and the warrant and crap just because he’s finished. He’ll put the fear into him every time he needs something done.” He took big swallow of the scotch, felt a pleasant burning. He wanted some pleasure and being drunk would suffice.

“You handled him OK, eh?”

“Audel?” she asked. “I guess I did.”

They shared a smile and drank in silence for a while. Then Howie looked down at his glass. “Nick’s deep in trouble, Bridge. Can you get him out if he needs it?“

She grinned nervously and shook her head. “Probably not.”

To be continued...