an accident done by the crew removing trolley tracks half a century ago, who never knew they’d done it.
Finally, Mackey said, ‘I think we can try it, anyway. If more of it starts to fall in, though, I’ve got to tell you, I’m going back to the library, and anyone who wants my share can have it.’
‘Listen, we can do it,’ Angioni said. ‘Come on, Tom. A couple you guys go get tables.’
Williams and Mackey went away, pleased to go, taking one of the flashlights. Parker held the other, and the remaining three moved slowly forward, at first kicking bricks and debris to the side, and then, when it got to be more than that, scooping the file drawers into the slope of the debris mountain, dumping dirt and stones into the wastebaskets. They stacked bricks to the sides, and carried heavy baskets back along the tunnel to empty into little pyramids of trash. From time to time, the slope ahead of them made small shifts, and they could hear stones pattering down its side, but then it would be silent again.
By the time Mackey and Williams had made three round-trips, bringing one of the eight-foot-long tables back with them each time, lining the tables up in a long row, the other four had progressed into the trash mountain, which was loose and easily disassembled. Parker had spelled Kolaski, and then Kolaski had given the flashlight to Angioni, and now Marcantoni had it.
Above them, they were now at the serious part of the rupture, where the tear in the ceiling was a dozen bricks wide and where, when the flashlight beam was aimed up there, it was all a dark emptiness, like a vertical cavern. But nothing else seemed to want to come down out of there, so they kept working, and now Mackey and Williams joined them, and from that point on three cleared debris while two carried the full wastebaskets back to empty, and one held both flashlights.
They worked for more than three hours, from time to time sliding the tables forward. They didn’t try to clear all the trash out of the way, just enough so they could keep moving forward and bringing the tables along after them.
Finally, Marcantoni said, ‘Listen!’
They all listened, and heard the faint sound, the rustle of dirt sliding down a slope, and Angioni said, ‘Is that the other side?’
‘You know it is,’ Marcantoni told him. ‘We’re almost through.’
Still it took another half hour to finish this part of it. When they moved the tables forward now, the easiest way was to go on all fours underneath and juke them along that way. Soon they could start emptying the wastebaskets into the cleared area ahead, which made things go faster.
And it looked as though Marcantoni’s estimate of the length of the collapse was right. The length of the three tables would total just a little longer distance than the rupture above them. Nothing additional fell while they worked, but the tables gave them a sense there’d still be a way out if things went bad.
Williams had the flashlights when they first broke through. ‘Hey, wait,’ he said. ‘I can see it. Tom, there’s your damn door.’
They were looking through an ellipsis, less than a foot wide, brick and rupture above, rubble below, at a dark continuation of the tunnel. At the far end, just picking up the gleam from the flashlights, was the black iron door.
At this end, the rupture in the ceiling had narrowed again, with less debris having fallen down. They moved more quickly, wanting to get this part over with, and then Marcantoni strode on ahead, not bothering about a flashlight. When he reached the door, he had his wrench-and-bit assembled, and with one move he had the door unlocked; one kick, and it was open.
A dry breeze whispered through the tunnel, maybe for the first time. A few pebbles rattled onto the tables.
On the far side, the iron door led to a nearly empty storage room, thick with dust. A few old glass display cases had been shoved haphazardly against the side wall, along with an upright metal locker with a broken hinge, a jeweler’s suitcase with a broken wheel, and other things that should have been thrown away. Whatever the army had used this space for, if anything, Freedman Wholesale Jewel used it, when they remembered it at all, as a garbage dump.
Crossing this room to the door in the opposite wall, Marcantoni said, ‘I was only here during the rehab, so I don’t know the layout now. I only know the plans didn’t have a lot of interior alarms, because they counted on the building to take care of that.’ He tried the knob and cursed. ‘What the hell’d they lock it for?’
Kolaski said, ‘That’s a rare antique suitcase.’
‘Shit,’ Marcantoni said. ‘Gimme a minute.’
It didn’t take much more, and then they moved on into a broad dimly lit area; the employees’ parking lot under the main store, empty on a Sunday night. Exit lights and a few fire-code lights led them diagonally across the big concrete-floored room with its white lines defining parking spaces to where an illuminated sign, white letters on green, read STAIRS.
The stairs were also concrete, with a landing at the top and a closed firedoor that was also locked. ‘Shit,’ Marcantoni said, and reached for his tools.
Parker said, ‘That door is going to be alarmed.’
Angioni said, ‘Why? I thought the whole idea was, these people don’t give a shit about security because they’ve got this whole armory around them.’
Mackey said, ‘No, Parker’s right.’
‘Damn it,’ Marcantoni said, ‘this is the only way in. This, and the front door. Front door for customers, this door for employees that park their cars downstairs. No other way in.’
Williams said, ‘This is also gonna be a firewall. Concrete block. So we don’t bypass the alarm by going through the wall.’
Marcantoni said, ‘We come this far. Now what?’
‘We go in,’ Parker said.
Marcantoni gave him a surprised look. ‘But you just said it’s alarmed.’
