'Jeez!' I cried, recoiling from the foul-smelling breath behind the voice, splattering my mocha across the table. 'Spleen, don't do that!'
Life had cursed Diego 'Spleen' Spillane to look like a rat-long, pointed nose, thick, scattered, grey-brown hair, and one yellowed, fake eye. Generally he played above type. Today he was full of himself, and apparently couldn't resist working it.
'Come on,' he said, curling his head around my shoulder, breath foul. 'Be a sport.'
And then I saw his hand hovering over the table, held out for five. 'Garlic,' I snapped, grabbing his hand and pulling him round to deposit him in the opposite seat, nearly losing the rest of my mocha when I brushed it again. 'Don't be such a fucking sneak-'
'Cops give you crap?' he said, grinning.
'No-how did you know-wait, how the fuck did you find me?'
'Mary's,' he said. 'I showed up just in time to see ya snatched. You weren't in cuffs-'
'I tried,' I said, but Spleen didn't take the bait.
'-so I figured you were all right, but I tailed them anyway, figuring-'
'What do you have for me that couldn't wait?' I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. 'I keep telling you, no one needs an emergency tattoo-'
'Ah,' Spleen said, suddenly knowing. 'But this time you're wrong.' He got up and held his hand out to me. 'Let me take you on a little trip.'
I got up from the table. 'This is a bad idea.' I started to leave the mocha and the book. Then I stopped, and looked down at the book, stained on one corner where I'd splattered it. The ghetto library had given me what I wanted; but I wasn't a college dropout anymore. In a good year I made over fifty thousand dollars tattooing. And besides, it was a clearance book, probably about to go out of print; I'd be a butt if I pointed Rand or the Fed to it and it turned up gone.
'Just let me pay for this,' I said.
'Need it for reee-search,' Spleen said, 'or just wanking?'
I glared at him. 'What do I 'wank,' Spleen?'
'Anything that moves,' he responded.
'You're moving,' I pointed out.
'Touchy,' he said, though it sounded like he meant touche. 'Let's tango.'
We tore south on Moreland at what felt like two hundred miles an hour in Spleen's battered old Festiva, though we couldn't really have been doing over forty. He'd bought the car off of me, well-used, five years ago and had not treated it well. The engine squealed like a worn-out carnival ride. At one point we hit a tiny bump and my hair scrunched against the roof.
'Spleen!' I said. 'Thought of new shocks?'
'Shocks?' he said. 'Just another mechanic's scam-'
We bumped on, getting a brief panorama of downtown Atlanta as we crested Freedom Parkway. I stared over at the glittering spires, glowing with fairybook promise denied to those of us who lived across the canyon of the Downtown Connector. Somewhere in there was the real Five Points, financial heart of Atlanta, but the view was quickly cut off by the King Center. We kept going, and I kept staring to the right, as if by keeping my eyes turned away, to the city, to the King Center, to John Hope Elementary, oh hey, look, there's Javaology-that I would not notice when we crossed Auburn Avenue.
'Thinking about her?' Spleen said, suddenly serious.
'No,' I said. 'We split two years ago, Spleen-'
'Never too late to catch up on old times,' he responded, livening up a bit. 'I could whip it back around, take a little detour down Auburn to Old Wheat-'
'You do, I get out and roll.'
'This is the vampire district,' he reminded me. 'Nasty to have a scrape-'
'I don't care. And I thought you said this was an emergency?'
'I'm not saying we should stop, just, it's not out of our way-'
'If you really cared about making time you'd have taken Glenn Iris-' and I suddenly drew a breath. Glenn Iris turned into Randolph 'That would have taken you right past her front door, dipshit.' Spleen said, scowling again. 'Give me a little credit. I was just needling you.'
True to his word, he kept driving, taking us onward, south of Auburn, south of Decatur and the tracks, growing perilously close to the foggy, haunted tombs of Oakland Cemetery-Margaret Mitchell, Bobby Jones, Reb and Union soldiers from the Battle of Atlanta- before finally hooking round the Mill Lofts back up north into Cabbagetown.
'I thought you said we were going to the Krog Street Tunnel-'
'Not Krog Street, babe,' Spleen said. 'Just Krog. The Krog Tunnel-'
'Oh, hell,' I muttered. 'The Underground.'
To most locals, 'the Underground' means 'Underground Atlanta'-a subterranean tourist trap downtown near Five Points, reclaimed from turn-of-the-last-century storefronts that had been covered over by modern streets and buildings, rediscovered in the 60's. An ordinary historian might know that before then, 'the Underground' referred to the Atlanta sewer system. But ask an Edgeworlder… and they'll tell you that the real Underground is a series of tunnels beneath Atlanta, covered over by the Confederates just prior to the burning of the city, and forgotten to the wider world since the Civil War.
Spleen parked on a side street off Wylie and led me through someone's back yard downstairs to an ancient, crumbled well, half hidden in the curve of the slope by a newer upper room held up by rusted pipes. Scattered around were magical tags-wards and wayfinders scribbled on walls with chalk or spray paint. The magical Edgeworld was alive, here.
Something fragile crunched under my boots when I stepped back to let Spleen lift the grating, and I scowled. I didn't want to look down to see whether they were crack bottles or blood vials. I'd thought this area was coming back-I often ate a block or two away at the Carroll Street Cafe-but it's amazing what even an Edgeworlder like me can miss.
We climbed down a rusted steel ladder about one floor before stepping off into a damp tunnel. The air was foul, and the floor was piled with garbage. I heard the rustle of something moving and, in the distance, the clink of a bottle falling to the stones. Spleen looked off sharply into the darker part of the tunnel, eyes narrow; I saw nothing, not even a rat, but after a brief moment Spleen saluted the darkness, then turned his back on it and marched on.
The garbage trailed off quickly as the tunnel brightened. This part looked new, with utilitarian lights that were part of the actual sewer system, but with tags hidden in corners and on sills that marked this as the border of the Underground. We went north for maybe a quarter mile until we could hear the squeal of a train overhead, and then Spleen pried open a dingy, metal door and gestured down a dirt-encrusted, well-warded stairwell.
'After you, my dear,' he said.
'Fuck that,' I said.
'I'm just messin with ya,' he said, and led the way down.
Here, there was no light other than a dim, yellow, fluorescent wand he carried as he stumbled down worn steps. The stairwell switchbacked through a grim, cinderblock shaft-one flight, two flights, three flights, four: by my count, three stories beneath the streets, maybe more. The door doubled back the way we came, revealing a wider, vaulted tunnel, paralleling the one above us, filled with still, black water. A rowboat floated in the bile, waiting.
'You have to be kidding,' I said, as Spleen got in the boat.
'The old Confederate runoff tunnel,' he said, looking down into the water. 'Or maybe a secret train tunnel that got flooded. Everyone who knows… is looong dead.'
'Let's get this over with,' I said, getting in behind him grumpily.
'Ready? Ready. Ready!' Spleen said, pushing off and clambering forward to grab the oars. 'You sit yourself back and enjoy the ride.'
'Whatever you say, Spleen,' I sighed.
The bastard grinned, and then started singing.
