Ferryman was still waiting in the long black Falcon as we walked out, his hands on the wheel, his face dead ahead under the shadow of his chauffer’s cap. The back door swung open and I ushered Evelyn in, then got in beside her.
“Take us to Him,” Evelyn whispered.
The lanky chauffer nodded and the car rolled away from the curb. Just like that, no questions, no backward glance. Like he’d expected nothing else.
For a while we wandered the streets again, lost tourists on a day trip through of hell. Maybe they were the same streets as before, maybe they were different, they all looked the same and I didn’t bother paying attention. It was late afternoon, but the low black ceiling of smoke and fog made it look like night had come early and planned to stay. The dirty clouds spat a feeble rain, just enough to give everything a slimy sheen. I couldn’t shake the feeling we were going down, twisting around into some low point in the city where the streets ran below the West River’s water line. The buildings all looked shut up and forgotten, two- and three-story brick jobs, their windows blindfolded with plywood, unhealthy yellow weeds poking out of their cracked foundations. I saw fat black smokestacks from some abandoned factory pointing like accusing fingers at the grimy sky. I kept thinking someone was watching, kept thinking I saw eyes staring down at us from the gaps in the planked-over windows, the shadows in the doors. But when I turned to get a good look all I saw was dark.
The car stopped at a corner and the back door swung open, although I don’t remember anyone actually touching the handle. I climbed out of the car with my gun in one hand, Evelyn’s fingers clasped in the other. She stepped out holding my hand like I was taking her to a show at the Century City Music Hall. Even here, even now, she couldn’t help being that kind of lady.
The Falcon’s door slammed shut behind us and the big car drifted away, silent as a boat on still water. A minute later the veils of tired drizzle swallowed it until even its staring red taillights were just a memory. I had a feeling deep in my gut that I’d never see that car or the man behind the wheel again. Somehow, I wasn’t relieved.
“Which way?” I asked.
But it was obvious, even as Evelyn pointed and said, “There.”
The sign carved into the concrete lintel over the gaping black maw at the bottom of the steps said Tartarus Station. The words were hard to read because someone had painted the word CLOSED across the sign in straggling black letters. I could smell a cold damp stink coming up from that place, something a hundred times as rotten as what I’d smelled in the other pits I’d visited in this wretched neighborhood. Even that underneath-odor of sweat and carnality smelled thick, putrid, like everything including lust itself had died and turned to carrion somewhere down there.
My snub-nosed .38 suddenly looked tiny in my hand, like a kid’s cap gun, and I felt almost stupid holding it, but it was all I had. I thought for a minute how stupid I was, going in there with nothing more than that one little peashooter and no plan at all. But something in my gut knew damn well that all the planning in the world wouldn’t add up to chipped beef on toast, that I could’ve been walking down those steps with a couple of Tommy guns in my hands and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference.
“You’ve gotten me far enough,” I told Evelyn, as I took a long look down the wide stairs. “I’ll take it from here.”
She shook her head. It was a small gesture, but unarguable.
“You’re only here because of me. Because I dragged you into my nightmare. I never meant to—Frank, you have to understand that. I never meant to get you caught up in any of this. You were my last hope … so I thought, anyway. I didn’t know when I first walked into your office that I had no hope left—that it was already too late. I’d hoped you could bring me back into the light. But instead, I dragged you into the dark.”
I said nothing. Waited.
“That’s not all,” Evelyn said, her voice flat now. Not even hurt, just … dead. “Somewhere down there is where … is where He murdered me. I asked you to find me, and you did. As much as you could. I think whatever I’m missing is down there. So I’m going with you. I really don’t want to. But I have to.”
Maybe I should’ve tried to talk her out of it. Maybe I should’ve put her lights out for her and left her slumped in a neglected doorframe like some well-dressed stew-bum, if she wouldn’t listen to me saying no. Maybe I should’ve trusted Cass’s warnings in the first place and let all this play out without me. Maybe a lot of things.
But what I did was nod at her and start down the steps.
I saw a rusting metal fence just inside the mouth of the old station, but off to one side the bars had been bent enough for even someone my size to slip through into the dark. I poked the gun in first then followed it through. Evelyn came after me, quiet as a breeze. I tried not to gag on the stale air sighing out of the derelict dark. Again I found myself wishing I’d gotten in the habit of carrying a flashlight with me. I patted my pockets and felt a square lump—the matchbook I’d grabbed from that nameless bar. I guess some part of my mind had known well enough I’d end up in the dark again. In the pale light at the edge of the subway gloom, I counted the white match-heads. Thirteen. Enough to get us inside, maybe, but not enough to get us out again. And I had a feeling I’d better save a few, in case of … Well, I wasn’t sure what. But it seemed like a good idea.
Feeling Evelyn close at my back, I took a few careful paces down the curving tunnel. Something under my foot squished loudly, but I ignored it. Another sound came from nearby, a slow thick sound, almost like a dog panting. It was so soft I could almost believe I was only hearing some weak breath of wind blowing through the station. I wanted to strike a match but I’d need two hands and wasn’t all that much in the mood to put my gun away then. I reached back to Evelyn, planted the matchbook in her hand.
“Only light one at a time, and only when I say.”
In the gloom, I could just see her silhouette nod.
I listened a minute. I couldn’t hear that breath sound anymore. That worried me.
“Now,” I whispered.
I heard her scratch the matchhead on the matchbook’s cover, then yellow light flared into the passage, shockingly bright in the black ink of the tunnel.
I got one good look at Jimmy the Doberman’s eyes, blazing with fury, and then the big goon was on me, like he’d been in my office that night.
This time, though, I saw him coming.
I pulled the trigger once before we hit the ground, and then one more time while I was still sure I wouldn’t miss the thug and hit Evelyn. Then we were rolling and flopping across the floor, and he was slamming me hard against the cement, making all sorts of crazy lights flash and fade in my skull. And the whole time he was snarling like a rabid animal—like a dog that needed to be put down. I knew if that knife came out again I couldn’t stop him from slashing my throat, doing what pretty little Damia Nyx had only tried.
The Doberman tossed me to one side and I caught a glimpse of Evelyn, somewhere a few feet away, standing stock-still with the dwindling match over her head, as if she’d turned into some kind of statue. Then I was on my back again and in the last flicker of the flame I saw the fatal glint of metal and knew the Doberman was about to finish what he’d started with my face.
I jammed the gun up under his armpit and pulled the trigger and pulled it again and pulled it again, hoping my bullets would make more of an impression on him than they had on the bloodthirsty blonde.
The thug twisted off of me and went down, then lay there on the ground, flopping like a tuna in a fisherman’s net and cursing me and God and anyone who might be listening. Then he started to gurgle and spit and I knew he was finished, even if it might take a while. I thought about putting one more bullet—my last bullet—in him, to get it over with, but maybe it felt too cold-blooded. Or maybe not cold-blooded enough. Maybe part of me took some satisfaction in listening to him die, nice and slow, feeling every ragged inch of his descent into eternity. Either way, I didn’t finish him. I should have, but I didn’t.
Instead, I started on down the passage again, prodding my way through the dark with the Harpe’s blunt nose. One more shot, if I needed it. I hadn’t even bothered to grab the thug’s knife, but I really didn’t think it would help. Whatever waited up ahead—or down below—wasn’t going to care about bullets or knives.
A hand closed over my arm but I knew that touch too well to flinch away from it.
“Are you hurt?” Evelyn asked, close to my ear.
“Not as bad as the other fella,” I said. “Light another match, will ya?”
She struck another one and in the brief sodium-yellow glow that followed I could see that the tunnel curved again right in front of us, and started down another flight of stairs. Somewhere behind us, the Doberman’s flailing grew quieter, but not yet silent.
“Stay close,” I said, and in the dark Evelyn and I started ahead again. I trailed my free hand along the wet, broken tile wall and groped my way forward, through dark too solid for my eyes to adjust to. I felt Evelyn at my back, heard her shoes on the concrete. I wished I could catch just a whiff of her perfume but the rank stench of corruption blotted all other scents out of the stagnant air.
A minute later we emerged together into a space full of hard echoes that made it sound large and open. Evelyn lit another match and I saw we were at the old train platform, the turnstiles and token booths still in place, the city’s forgotten outposts. I thought I heard rats and maybe other things scuttling away from the light. In that heartbeat’s instant before the flame faded out, I noticed there was nothing else down here, only the platform and the tunnel where the trains used to prowl.
“Must be down the tracks,” I said.
“That way,” Evelyn said, and waved the guttering match at the tunnel that forked off to the left.
She lit another match and together we crept to the edge of the platform. For a minute I hung up there, looking up and down the tracks. I couldn’t quite chase away the thought that maybe these tracks weren’t disused, that as soon as we jumped down into that cement alley a light would blaze out of the shadows and hundreds of tons of metal would thunder down on top of us and spare us the trouble of ever facing the demon called Mr. Menace.
Probably we would’ve been lucky if it had.
I held my breath a second. Silence, except for the skittering of roaches and rats, and that familiar plink of water dripping. Even the Doberman’s agonies didn’t carry all the way down here—or maybe he’d finally given up the ghost. Either way I was glad not to have to listen to him.
Steeling myself against I didn’t know what, I sat down on the edge of the platform and jumped onto the tracks. The trough was deeper than I’d guessed and I hit hard, lost my footing, and fell across the rails, all three of them. I had a split-second’s anticipation of being fried like a strip of bacon. But this station and this train line were long dead and the third rail was just cold metal now. I picked myself up, wiping oily slime off my hands and coat, then helped Evelyn into the pit with me. Then we started walking again.
I can’t say how long we walked. Down there in the dark, in the long straight spaces between matches, time stretched out like saltwater taffy, lost all meaning. It seemed like an age, but it may’ve been five minutes. Either way, it ended when we came to another wide space, a place with its own sepia light. I looked around for the source but couldn’t find it.
There was another platform here, but nothing else to suggest this was another abandoned station. Instead, heavy crimson draperies dangled, moth-eaten and black with mildew, from the vaulted tile ceiling. Looking at the place, I couldn’t figure it for the hideout of a mob boss, a man with money who’d want folks to see that as far as he was concerned, crime did pay. All the same, I knew He was there, behind those moldering curtains. The man with a thousand eyes, the man with ears in every dive and back-alley in the city. The one who liked to make his enemies bleed.
Mr. Menace.
I grabbed the edge of the platform and started to haul myself out.
Evelyn’s hand snagged my shoulder and tugged me back down, back to her.
“Frank—don’t. This … we should get out of here. You should. You don’t … you don’t want to know what’s behind that. Oh God, you don’t want to see. I know … I know things you don’t. Please, get out of here while you still can.”
And I knew she was right. Some black instinct in my gut knew for an absolute certainty that I didn’t want to find out what was on the other side of that curtain.
Whatever waited back there would destroy me. Probably both of us.
But I had to go. I was in too deep, that was all. I was in too deep to turn away. If I didn’t end this now it would never end.
I wanted to kiss Evelyn for a final bit of reassurance, but instead I turned away and climbed up onto that platform. When I turned to help Evelyn, she followed. Her face had an expression I’d never seen before. That horror, that loss was still written in her dark eyes, but all the sadness and misery had gone. She’d surpassed all that, and now the only thing left in her was fatality.
I turned away from her, and pushed through the red curtains.