As Michael drove off, Underhill began describing their visit to Milwaukee. Underhill had always been a good describer, and while Poole drove down Seventh Avenue he saw the Spitalnys’ sad kitchen, and George Spitalny’s attempt to seduce Maggie with an old photograph; he saw an enraged man pounding a tire iron against the back of a bus, and snowdrifts like little mountain ranges.
“Michael!” Maggie screamed.
He twirled the wheel just in time to avoid ramming a taxicab. “Sorry. My mind was back there in that terrible house. And I hate the idea of giving up when there’s some chance that Harry is still alive.”
“And Dengler too,” Underhill said. “Murphy said that New York is full of caves. Maggie, I don’t suppose that you can think of anything in Chinatown that might even faintly resemble a cave?”
“No,” Maggie said. “Well, not really. I used to go to this place with Pumo that was in an arcade. I suppose it was as close to a cave as you can get in Chinatown.”
Poole asked where it was.
“Off Bowery, near Confucius Plaza.”
“Let’s go take a look at it,” Underhill said.
“Do you want to?” Poole asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Well,” Poole said.
“You can’t give up now, Poole,” Maggie said. “You ate bad kielbasa in George Spitalny’s kitchen. You waded through Salisbury steak at the Tick Tock Restaurant.”
“I’m the explorer type,” Poole said. “Conor? Ellen?”
“Do it, Michael,” Ellen said. “We might as well try.”
“You can tell she never met Harry Beevers,” Conor said.
When Michael drove past Mulberry Street in the thick traffic on Canal Street, Underhill peered past the upturned collar of his huge coat and said, “Our friends are out in force. Take a look.”
Poole glanced through the side window into Chinatown. Down on Mulberry Street, red lights spun on top of police cars drawn up to the curb; other red lights bounced off shop windows on Bayard Street. Poole glimpsed a group of policemen trotting diagonally across the street in a cluster, like a platoon.
“They’ll find him,” Conor said, sounding as if he wanted to make himself believe it. “Look at all those cops. And we don’t know Beevers tried anything funny with Koko, not really.”
Now they were passing the entrance to Mott Street. “I don’t see anything down there,” Poole said.
“It looks like two cops are going door to door,” Underhill said. “But we really don’t have any proof that Harry is down here, do we, or that he tried to double-cross us and Dengler?”
“He wanted Murphy to stop us before we got any further than the airport,” Poole said. He looked sideways into Elizabeth Street, which was emptier than the others. “That’s proof of something. He wanted us out of the way.”
Poole turned with the traffic toward the tall white towers of Confucius Plaza.
“There it is,” Maggie said, gesturing to the far side of the street. Poole looked sideways and saw an opening in the row of shops and restaurants along Bowery. Light penetrated the opening for about five feet, then melted into shadow. Maggie was right. It did look like a cave.
Poole found a parking spot in front of a fish market on Division Street. When he got out of the car, he saw frozen fish guts and shiny puddles of ice on the sidewalk. “Let’s just try to stay out of Murphy’s way. After we check out the arcade we can go to Saigon, and I can begin figuring out where I’m going to live.”
They began moving up Bowery in the stiff cold wind that came around the curved towers. A single policeman emerged from Bayard Street onto Bowery, and Michael realized that he did not at all want the policeman to walk into the arcade. Murphy and the rest of the policemen had Mulberry Street, Mott Street, Pell Street—all Poole wanted was the arcade.
The policeman swiveled toward them, and Poole recognized him—he was the fat-necked young officer who had led Michael upstairs to the meeting on the morning of the line-up. The man looked idly at Poole, then glanced down at Maggie’s legs. He turned his back on them and walked down Bayard Street.
“Oink,” Maggie whispered.
Poole watched the young policeman waddle down Bayard Street toward a patrol car beside which a band of uniformed men gazed into the windows of a grocery store while they stood around looking vaguely official.
Seconds later the five of them stood before the arcade. Maggie took the first step, and as they walked in they fanned out to cover both sides.
“I wish we were looking for something specific,” Underhill said. He was moving forward slowly, trying to take in every inch of the floor.
“There’s another level downstairs,” said Conor, who was with Ellen on the arcade’s right side. “Let’s check that out when we’re done up here.”
“I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Ellen said. “Don’t you think your friend would have arranged to meet Koko—this Dengler—in a park, or on a corner someplace? Or in an office?”
Poole nodded, looking at a dusty display of women’s underwear. “If he just planned to meet him, that’s what he would do. But this is Harry Beevers we’re talking about.” He moved past posters for a rock club, and looked back at Conor, who was leaning on the railing of the stairs with his arm around Ellen Woyzak’s shoulders.
“And the Lost Boss wouldn’t do anything simple,” Conor said. “He’d cook up some plan. He’d tell him to meet him somewhere and plan to meet him somewhere else. He’d want to take him by surprise.”
They went past the angle in the arcade and stood for a moment looking at cold grey Elizabeth Street.
“Let’s say Koko finally answered his ads,” Poole said. “It’s not impossible.”
“Tina always answered my ads.”
“That’s probably where he got the idea,” Poole said.
“Okay, but why would he want to meet Koko in a cave?” Ellen asked. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because this is the only place Maggie could think of in Chinatown that looks like a cave?” She looked at each of the three men, who did not answer her. “I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense to get him to walk past a certain building and jump out at him? Or something like that?”
“Harry Beevers once had the time of his life in a cave,” Underhill said. “He went inside it, and when he came out he was a famous person. His whole life had changed.”
“Let’s check out the stairs,” Conor said. “Afterward we can go back to Saigon and wait for Murphy to tell us what happened.”
Poole nodded. He had lost heart. Murphy would eventually come across Beevers’ corpse in some tenement room. He would have a card in his mouth, and his face would be mutilated.
“Shouldn’t there be another light down there?” Maggie asked.
They were at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness.
“Burned out,” Conor said.
Weak light came out into the lower level of the arcade from the barber shop. Further back, the light from another shop cast a fan-shaped gleam out onto the tiles.
“No, it was taken out,” Maggie said. “Look.” She pointed at the empty socket set into the ceiling at the bottom of the stairs.
“Took it out because it was burned out,” Conor said.
“Then what’s that?” Maggie asked. In a corner of the bottom step, a nub of brass was just visible to them.
“Looks like the bottom of a light bulb to me,” Ellen Woyzack said. “So somebody—”
“Not somebody. Harry,” Poole said. “He unscrewed the bulb to conceal himself. Let’s go down and have a look.”
Strung out along the top step, they began to move down the stairs in unison. Harry Beevers had hidden on these steps, after having arranged a police reception for them at the airport. What had happened then?
“It’s the whole bulb,” Maggie said. She held it to her ear and shook it. “Nothing rattles in there.”
“Well, looky here,” Conor said.
Poole took his eyes from the light bulb and saw Conor holding out toward him a shiny pair of handcuffs.
