They did, and moved on. In the rear wall, next to a coin-slot copying machine, was a broad wooden door marked NO ADMITTANCE. Marcantoni handed his flashlight to Williams, then got down to one knee and brought out his picks. ‘This one’s nothing,’ he said.
Angioni and Williams shone light on the lock, Marcantoni worked with smooth speed, and he pushed the door open in just under a minute. The others waited while he put his picks away and stood, then Williams gave him back the flashlight. Carrying the wastebaskets and file drawers, they entered a storage area lined with rows of metal shelving.
‘There’s no windows down here,’ Marcantoni said. He closed the door they’d just come through, then hit the switch beside it. Fluorescent ceiling fixtures lit up to show a deep but narrow room with the metal shelves on both sides and across the back. ‘It’s down there,’ Marcantoni said, and led the way to the rear, where the shelves were stacked with copier supplies.
Even with all the light on it, the door was hard to see, through the shelves stacked with boxes and rolls. It was painted the same neutral gray as the wall and the metal shelving.
Marcantoni said, ‘These shelves aren’t fixed to the wall. I just pulled one end out, the other time.’
There was not much clearance between the rear and side shelving. Williams tugged on the shelving’s left end and its legs made a shrieking noise on the floor, so he lifted the end instead. Mackey went over to help, and they wheeled the shelving out till it faced up against the right-side shelves.
Angioni was studying the door, featureless metal with barely visible hinges on the right side. In its middle, at about waist height, was a round hole less than an inch in diameter. Angioni said, ‘That’s the keyhole?’
‘That’s it,’ Marcantoni said. Walking over to the door, he took from his pockets a small socket wrench and a star-shaped bit. As he fitted them together at right angles, he said, ‘The last time, I didn’t want to mess up this door so somebody might notice something. I looked at the lock on the door at the other end, and I figured this one would be the same. It’s a double bar that extends beyond the door to both sides, hinged in the middle so it’ll pivot to unlock it. This works.’
Bending to the door, he inserted the bit into the hole, with the wrench extended to the right. With both hands on the wrench, he lifted. The wrench barely moved upward, and from beyond the door they could hear the scrape of metal on metal. ‘It’s goddam stiff,’ Marcantoni said, ‘but I got it last Here it comes.’
Slowly he pulled the wrench upward until it was vertical above the hole. ‘That should do it.’
He pulled the bit out, separated the wrench into its two components, and put them away in his pocket, bringing out a short flat-head screwdriver instead. Going down to one knee, he said, ‘Here’s where I pulled it out before. I figured nobody’d notice.’
Down close to the floor, where the bottom shelf would have covered it, the edge of the door and its wooden frame showed scratches. Marcantoni forced the screwdriver in there, levered it, and all at once the door popped an inch inward. He got to his feet, putting the screwdriver away. ‘There,’ he said. ‘From now on, it’s easy.’
To show that, he put the fingers of both hands onto the protruding edge of the door and tugged. More metal- on-metal complaint, and then the door grudgingly came open. The old hinges didn’t want to move, but Marcantoni insisted, and at last the door was wide open, angled back away from the entrance.
Now they could look through into the tunnel, illuminated for the first several feet by the fluorescents in the storage room. It was narrow, about the width of an automobile, with brick floor and brick walls up to an arched brick ceiling. Angioni shone his flashlight, but it didn’t show much more than the fluorescents did. ‘It’s angled down,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Marcantoni agreed, ‘it slopes down, not steep, then levels out, then slopes up again on the other side.’
‘Well,’ Angioni said, ‘shall we go?’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Mackey pointed out.
Marcantoni said, ‘Let me get the tape off this flash.’ He and Angioni peeled the electric tape from the flashlight lenses, and then they started into the tunnel, moving in loose single file, carrying the wastebaskets and the file drawers.
Had the tunnel ever been used? If so, the people who’d been in here left no marks. At the time this had been built, gaslight was common in this part of the world, but it hadn’t been installed in here. If someone had been in the tunnel, using some kind of torch for light, there might be smoke smudges on the curved ceiling, but none appeared. It looked as though the tunnel had been built simply because that was the way the plans had been laid out, then it was locked and forgotten.
They walked down the easy slope, the tunnel absolutely straight, then headed along the level section. There was no sound but the brush of their feet. The air was cool and dry, with a faint mustiness. Every twenty feet or so there was a large iron ring jutting from the right side wall at about shoulder level. For sconces? For a guide rope, to be followed in the dark? There was no way to tell.
‘There it is,’ Marcantoni said, and they all came up to cluster at the beginning of the collapse. Just ahead of them, the ceiling had started to fall, three bricks wide at the peak to begin with, then wider. On the floor were the bricks, some broken, and a little debris. Farther on, the two flashlights showed that the collapse had become wider, with a combination of dirt and stone fallen from the hole. By twenty feet from the beginning of the rupture, the debris made a steep mountain slope that completely blocked the tunnel, top to bottom and side to side.
Marcantoni said, ‘My idea is, the bricks we can push against the side walls, and the rest of it we scoop into the wastebaskets, carry it back a ways, dump it out, leave room to get by.’
Williams said, ‘What if more comes down, when we start moving this shit?’
‘It’s an old fall,’ Marcantoni said. ‘Whatever happened was a long time ago. It’s stable now.’
Parker said, ‘When we start to move it, it won’t be stable any more.’
‘Well,’ Marcantoni said, ‘this is the route. This is the only way in. And we’re here.’
They took turns with the flashlights, looking up at the early part of the rupture. The remaining bricks to both sides were solid, hadn’t been loosened at all by whatever had happened to the part that fell. Here in its narrowest section, there was shallow emptiness just above where the bricks had been, and then compacted earth. Farther on, more dirt and stone had fallen from above the displaced bricks, so maybe Marcantoni’s idea was right, that this was
