Chapter Nineteen: Close Encounters

 

While the man with the steel-blue eyes trained Sue’s gun on them, Jorge took Ellen’s purse and stuffed it, along with Sue and Tanya’s, into Brian’s backpack. Then Jorge frisked Brian, who still lay unconscious across his brother’s chest, before doing the same to Ellen and her friends. He took Sue’s phone, turned it off, and slipped it into his pocket. He snatched Ellen’s map and threw it on the ground.

Then Jorge put on the backpack and kicked Brian. “Wake up, man!”

“You don’t have to hurt him,” Ellen scolded. “We’re cooperating.”

Brian moved his hand to the back of his head and sat up. When he saw the gun pointed at him, he climbed to his feet, standing between the gun and Ellen and her friends.

“What do you want?’ Brian asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Help your brother up,” the man with the gun said, ignoring Brian’s question. “You’ll have to help him walk. He’s probably dehydrated.”

“No thanks to you,” Brian muttered as he did what the man with the steel-blue eyes said.

“No thanks to him,” the man insisted. “We were bringing him food and water every day. Then he escaped and got lost in these tunnels.”

“We’ve been looking for him for almost two weeks, man,” Jorge said. “It’s his own fault.”

Ellen wanted to point out the flaw in Jorge’s logic, but she held her tongue and led the way back in the direction they had come. She should be frightened, she thought, but she was angry, nearly overcome with rage. It took every ounce of self-control to keep from screaming at the two men about how stupid, selfish, and inhumane they were behaving. Desperation drove people to do terrible things, but these men had a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and a chance for a better life with the help of the Blanchet House. Why on earth would they throw that away? Greed? The need for power? Drugs?

“Where do you think we are now?” Tanya muttered to Sue.

“I guess we’re headed back toward Pine Street,” Sue said. “Why?”

“Pine Street and Fourth Avenue, right?” Tanya said.

Sue nodded.

“How are you holding up, Mike?” Brian asked his brother. “I’m so happy to see you. I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’ve been better,” Mike mumbled. “Is Marcia all right? And the kids?”

“Everyone’s fine. Just worried sick about you.”

“I thought I was going to die in here,” Mike said as tears rushed to his eyes. “I haven’t eaten in days.”

“I’ve got snacks in the backpack,” Brian said to their captors. “Please, let me give him something to eat.”

“Just shut up and keep walking,” the man with the gun said.

When Ellen came to the fork, where the five-foot-by-five-foot iron grate had revealed a passageway to the east, she asked, “Which way do I go?”

“East,” the man with the gun said. “We’re going to the river.”

“They’ll shoot us as soon as we get there,” Mike, who was being half dragged by his brother, mumbled.

“Shut up, old man!” Jorge hollered. “This is your fault. We never meant to take it this far.”

“I can give you money,” Brian said. “If you shoot us, you get nothing. If you let us go, I can give you fifty thousand dollars each.”

“It’s too late,” the man with the gun said. “You’ve seen our faces. We can’t trust you.”

“I’ve made the same offer to them a dozen times,” Mike said.

“If you didn’t want money, then what was the point in taking Mike in the first place?” Sue asked, with a tinge of superiority in her tone.

“Just shut up and keep walking,” the man with the gun said.

“Where are we now?” Tanya whispered to Sue, just behind Ellen.

“They took my phone,” Sue said. “Why do you keep asking me?”

“If you had to guess?” Tanya whispered.

“I remember the iron grate being about a block away from Voodoo Doughnut.” Sue said.

“So, we’re heading east toward the river, and we’re somewhere near Voodoo Doughnut,” Tanya said.

“We can’t let them take us to the river,” Ellen whispered to her friends.

“Stop whispering up there!” Jorge shouted.

“These men, they’re victims of extortion,” Mike mumbled. “They wouldn’t say who, but someone threatened to kill them if they didn’t cooperate.”

“That’s enough!” the man with the gun said.

“I can help you,” Brian said to their captors. “Tell me who’s threatening you. I’ve got the best lawyers in the country.”

“I already told them that,” Mike said.

Jorge turned to the man with the gun. “Maybe we should listen to him, Abel.”

“He can’t help us,” Abel, the man with the gun, said. “It’s us or them. That’s how it is.”

“Man, I told you we should have worn the masks,” Jorge complained.

“It’s too damn dark in here for masks,” Abel said. Then, to Ellen, he shouted, “Keep walking!”

Ellen fumbled in the darkness, trying not to be obvious about taking her time. She estimated that it had been forty-five minutes since she and her friends and Brian had entered the underground from the Lan Su Chinese Garden. If they arrived at the river in less than fifteen minutes, Kirk wouldn’t know to call the police. Jorge and Abel were probably planning to shoot all five of them and drop them in the river. Their only hope of survival was Kirk.

“Who’s threatening you?” Brian asked again. “If you’re going to kill us anyway, why not tell me?”

“I don’t like that logic, Brian,” Sue complained. “We might have a better chance of staying alive if we don’t know.”

Ignoring Sue, Brian asked, “Is it someone from the PBC?”

“We don’t know,” Abel said.

Ellen stopped and turned to face the men. “How could you not know?”

“He leaves notes,” Jorge explained. “Slides them under our door at the Blanchet.”

“What do the notes say?” Brian asked.

“Time for another smoke,” Abel said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Brian asked.

“Jorge and I like to smoke out behind the Blanchet. One night, I fell through the sidewalk into an old basement.”

“The deadfall,” Ellen muttered.

“I got down on my belly,” Jorge said, “and tried to give him a hand when someone grabbed me and pulled me down, too.”

“They wore masks,” Abel said. “They said they’d spare our lives if we brought them one strong man every two months. They said if we didn’t, we’d be dead meat.”

“What do they do with the men?” Sue asked.

“We don’t know,” Jorge said. “But they have to be young and strong.”

“Then why’d you take my brother?” Brian asked. “He might be strong, but he’s not young.”

“No one cares when a homeless man goes missing,” Abel said. “But a wealthy one?”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Brian asked with a tone of incredulity.

“We couldn’t risk it,” Abel said. “We got eyes and ears on us.”

“Then we heard a guy from the streets got kicked out of the old Ladd place,” Jorge said. “He’d been squatting there for over two years.”

Abel explained, “We know, because we stayed there, too, before we got in at Blanchet.”

“We knew how to disappear into the tunnels when the cops came to kick us out,” Jorge added.

“So, when we saw on the news that the McManius brothers were fixing it up,” Abel said, “I got an idea, a way to get the police to investigate the tunnels. That’s why we took him.”

“They finally did look in the tunnels, but they didn’t find anything,” Jorge said. “What a waste of time.”

“So, you did this?” Brian shouted angrily. “No one forced you to take my brother?”

“We were gonna let him go, man,” Jorge said “But you showed up before we could help him out. And then he saw who we were, because of you.”

“Get going!” Abel shouted at Ellen. “No more stalling!”

Ellen stumbled forward in the darkness, taking her time, ruminating over what she’d just learned. If Brian hadn’t gotten Ellen and her friends involved, he and his brother might have been better off. It was her idea to search the tunnels. If they hadn’t, Mike might already be free. She began to tremble as her anger turned into fear. Maybe these men were really going to kill them.

“I don’t understand something,” Sue said. “How did you know where to deliver your victims if you didn’t know who was threatening you?”

“We take them for a smoke, make sure they’re standing in the right place at the right time,” Abel said.

“That was our only job,” Jorge said. “Take the new man for a smoke. The other guys did the rest.”

“Did you take Alani?” Ellen asked from up front. “Did you kill Sam?”

“No way,” Jorge said. “Alani’s our friend.”

“And Sam might have been looney, but he was all right,” Abel said.

“They can see and hear everything at the Blanchet,” Jorge said. “I think the place is bugged.”

“I doubt that,” Abel said. “They must have someone else on the inside, to keep an eye on us. I don’t know.”

Ellen hoped and prayed that, by now, Kirk was calling the police. But she also knew that they wouldn’t know where to look for them.

“I swear to God I won’t tell anyone that you took my brother. Let us go, and I’ll give you each a hundred thousand dollars plus one-way tickets to the Bahamas—or anywhere in the world. You could start a new life. Think about it.”

“Abel, we should think about this, man,” Jorge said.

“Money don’t mean nothing to a dead man,” Abel said. “And that’s exactly what we’ll be if we try to leave Blanchet.”

“The homeless shelter won’t let you stay there forever,” Sue pointed out. “Don’t you think whoever’s doing this to you will kill you when you can no longer be of use to them?”

“I think whoever’s doing this can pull strings,” Abel said. “Jorge and I have been at the Blanchet doing their bidding for over a year.”

“Oh my God,” Ellen muttered, realizing that these two had helped shanghai a half dozen men.

“He ain’t got the money on him, Jorge,” Abel added. “If we let them go, you really believe they’ll come back and give us money? Hell, no.”

Ellen was surprised when Tanya, usually the quiet one, asked, “How did you take Mike? You said you knew the tunnels at the Ladd House. Are they connected to the parking garage? Is that how you enter from there?”

“No, the ash dump,” Jorge said. “That’s how we got in and out when we was living there.”

“Ash dump?” Ellen repeated. “What’s that?”

“It’s beneath the firebox,” Brian said. “It goes down into the slab beneath the fireplace. It’s usually not big enough for a man to climb through.”

“That one is plenty wide,” Jorge said.

Tanya stopped. “So, you can enter these tunnels through the fireplace at Ladd Carriage House?”

Ellen glanced back and noticed Abel giving Tanya a funny look.

“Jorge, make sure she ain’t talking to no one,” Abel said. “Do you have a phone?”

Tanya lifted her hands in the air. “You frisked me, remember?”

“Why do you keep repeating what I say and asking where we are?” Abel said accusingly. “You talking to someone?”

“How can I be?” Tanya asked. “I’m just scared and confused, that’s all.”

Jorge frisked her again.

With her headlamp trained on Tanya, Ellen noticed tears streaming from her friend’s eyes.

“She’s clean,” Jorge said.

“Let’s go!” Abel shouted. “Keep walking. No more bullshit.”

“You okay, Tanya?” Ellen asked her friend.

“Move it!” Jorge shouted.

Ellen picked her way through the dark, dank passageway praying that Kirk had already told the police to look for them in the tunnels, even though another part of her knew how unlikely it was that the police would ever find them.

When she heard her captors begin to argue in the back, she strained her ears to listen.

“We have to be back in time to serve supper,” Jorge was saying. “They’ll notice if we ain’t there.”

Abel growled, “We have to wait for nightfall.”

“Hombre, that’s four hours away.”

“I know. We’ll leave them and come back later tonight.”

“We can’t risk them escaping like the first one,” Jorge said.

“We won’t,” Abel said.

Ellen shuddered. The men meant to get them as close to the river as possible—probably so they wouldn’t have as far to drag their dead bodies—before killing them and leaving them there in the tunnels until dark. Then, after supper, Jorge and Abel would return to dump their bodies.

Sue came up close to Ellen and whispered, “He’s only got two bullets.”

“What are you whispering about up there?” Abel demanded.

“I was just asking Ellen if she was okay,” Sue lied. “She tripped on something.”

“No more talking, or I’ll shoot,” Abel shouted.

Ellen took in what Sue had just told her. If the men had only two bullets, there was a chance that she and her friends could overpower them. While it was true that Mike was weak and Ellen and her friends weren’t very strong, they had Brian’s strength, and five against two were decent odds.

Jorge had a knife. Ellen needed to remember that.