Boxer took the flashlight and, without a glance at the weenies around him, hoisted himself up the collapsed pile of bricks and into the hole the excavator had cut into the wall. He knelt atop the broken bricks, shining his light into the cavity. Below was a long, low tunnel. Cracks doglegged up through the walls and across the ceiling. It looked just about ready to collapse. He hesitated.
“You going in, or what?” came the voice of the foreman.
He heard another voice, a whiny imitation. “But it’s not in my
He went in.
Bricks had spilled down in a talus to the floor of the tunnel. Boxer half scrambled, half slid in, raising clouds of dust. He found his feet and stood up, shining the light ahead. It lanced through the dust, not getting far. From inside, the place seemed even darker. He waited for his eyes to adjust and the dust to settle. He heard conversation and laughter from above, but faintly, as if from a great distance.
He took a few steps forward, shining the beam back and forth. Threadlike stalactites hung from the ceiling, and a draft of foul-smelling air licked his face. Dead rats, probably.
The tunnel appeared to be empty, except for a few pieces of coal. Along both sides were a long series of arched niches, about three feet across and five high, each crudely bricked up. Water glistened on the walls, and he heard a chorus of faint dripping sounds. It seemed very quiet now, the tunnel blocking all noise from the outside world.
He took another step, angling the flashlight beam along the walls and ceiling. The network of cracks seemed to grow even more extensive, and pieces of stone jutted from the arched ceiling. Cautiously, he backed up, his eye straying once again to the bricked-up niches along both walls.
He approached the closest one. A brick had recently fallen out, and the others looked loose. He wondered what might be inside the niches. Another tunnel? Something deliberately hidden?
He shined the light into the brick-hole, but it could not penetrate the blackness beyond. He put his hand in, grasped the lower brick, and wiggled it. Just as he thought: it, too, was loose. He jerked it out with a shower of lime dust. Then he pulled out another, and another. The foul odor, much stronger now, drifted out to him.
He shined the light in again. Another brick wall, maybe three feet back. He angled the light toward the bottom of the arch, peering downward. There was something there, like a dish. Porcelain. He shuffled back a step, his eyes watering in the fetid air. Curiosity struggled with a vague sense of alarm. Something was definitely inside there. It might be old and valuable. Why else would it be bricked up like that?
He remembered a guy who once found a bag of silver dollars while demolishing a brownstone. Rare, worth a couple thousand. Bought himself a slick new Kubota riding mower. If it was valuable, screw them, he was going to pocket it.
He plucked at his collar buttons, pulled his T-shirt over his nose, reached into the hole with his flashlight arm, then resolutely ducked his head and shoulders in after it and got a good look.
For a moment he remained still, frozen in place. Then his head jerked back involuntarily, slamming against the upper course of bricks. He dropped the light into the hole and staggered away, scraping his forehead this time, lurching back into the dark, his feet backing into bricks. He fell to the floor with an involuntary cry.
For a moment, all was silent. The dust swirled upward, and far above there was a feeble glow of light from the outside world. The stench swept over him. With a gasp he staggered to his feet, heading for the light, scrambling up the slide of bricks, falling, his face in the dirt, then up again and scrabbling with both hands. Suddenly he was out in the clear light, tumbling headfirst down the other side of the brick pile, landing facedown with a stunning blow. He vaguely heard laughter, which ceased as soon as he rolled over. And then there was a rush to his side, hands picking him up, voices talking all at once.
“Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”
“He’s hurt,” came a voice. “He’s all bloody.”
“Step back,” said another.
Boxer tried to catch his breath, tried to control the hammering of his heart.
“Don’t move him. Call an ambulance.”
“Was it a cave-in?”
The yammering went on and on. He finally coughed and sat up, to a sudden hush.
“Bones,” he managed to say.
“Bones? Whaddya mean, bones?”
“He’s not making any sense.”
Boxer felt his head begin to clear. He looked around, feeling the hot blood running down his face. “Skulls, bones. Piled up. Dozens of them.”
Then he felt faint and lay down again, in the bright sunlight.TWO
NORA KELLY LOOKED out from the window of her fourth-floor office over the copper rooftops of the New York Museum of Natural History, past the cupolas and minarets and gargoyle-haunted towers, across the leafy expanse of Central Park. Her eye came to rest at last on the distant buildings along
Almost time for the meeting. She began to check a sudden swell of anger, then reconsidered. She would need that anger. For the last eighteen months, her scientific budget had been frozen. During that time, she had watched the number of museum vice presidents swell from three to twelve, each pulling down two hundred grand. She had watched the Public Relations Department turn from a sleepy little office of genial old ex-newspaper reporters to a suite of young, smartly dressed flacks who knew nothing about archaeology, or science. She had seen the upper echelons at the Museum, once populated by scientists and educators, taken over by lawyers and fund-raisers. Every ninety-degree angle in the Museum had been converted into the corner office of some functionary. All the money went to putting on big fund-raisers that raised more money for yet more fund-raisers, in an endless cycle of
