My shoulders slumped. Sully wasn’t like me after all. I should have known—Sully had seen a bright light, but I never saw anything when I died, only an unending darkness. Maybe there wasn’t anyone else like me. Maybe I was unique, some kind of mutation, an accident of nature, and there were no answers. That was the way the world worked, wasn’t it? It didn’t give a damn about anyone, it just kept turning like some inexorable machine.
Bennett leaned forward from the backseat until his face filled the rearview mirror. “Maybe you’ve got a lucky streak going, just like Sully did. But you gotta ask yourself, errand boy, when’s your luck going to run out? You can only cheat death for so long before it comes to collect.”
I ignored him, turning the car onto Empire Boulevard. Normally a major thoroughfare jammed with traffic, it was deserted at this hour—3:21 a.m. by the clock on the dashboard. I was able to drive the length of the boulevard quickly, passing darkened storefront churches, closed beauty salons, and West Indian restaurants with their gates down. When I saw the gas station coming up, I slowed the car.
The Shell station was a derelict from another decade, shuttered for going on twenty years. The pumps were dry, and the only things on the shelves inside the convenience mart were cobwebs and rat droppings. It was what was under the station that mattered. Back in the 1960s, the original owner had bought into the Red Scare so fully that he’d built a fallout shelter beneath it. It made the perfect base of operations for someone like Underwood who didn’t want to be found. I pulled up to the chain-link fence and got out of the car to unlock the gate. I glanced up at the sign that towered over me. The
I drove around the back of the station, locked the gate again behind us, and then opened the back door of the car. I grabbed Bennett’s shoulders and hefted him out.
He squirmed out of my grasp. “Get your hands off me, you freak.” He took a deep breath and held his chin high. His attempt at dignity would have been a lot more impressive if we hadn’t been standing in an abandoned gas station parking lot. “Which way?”
“This way,” I said. I guided Bennett around the back of the station to the storm doors at the base of the rear wall, keeping one hand on the plastic tie between his wrists in case he tried to run. Then I said, “I’m going to let go for a second. You’re not going to try anything, are you?”
“What if I did?” he asked. “Would you kill me like Maddock?”
Not like Maddock, I thought.
I let go of the plastic tie and pulled open the storm doors. Below, cement steps descended into a murky darkness. I guided Bennett down the steps until we reached the dirt floor at the bottom. Before us was a metal door embedded in a cement wall. The old fallout sign was still bolted next to the door, three yellow triangles inside a black circle, faded and dented with age. I gave the special knock Underwood had taught me, then heard the sound of a bolt being pulled back. The door swung inward. A hulking shape stood in the doorway—Big Joe, one of Underwood’s enforcers. He was six foot five with shoulders that looked broad enough to scrape the walls of the narrow hallway behind him.
Big Joe sized up Bennett, then turned to me with an all-too-familiar glare of hostility. “Took you long enough, T-Bag.” There’s a cliche about organized crime henchmen being men of few words. It’s a cliche for a reason. We’re not exactly eloquent. “Underwood was expectin’ your sorry ass half an hour ago.”
“There were some complications,” I said.
“Big surprise. There’s always complications with you.” Big Joe stepped aside to let us in, then closed and locked the door. “He’s waitin’ for you inside.”
I escorted Bennett past Big Joe and into the hallway.
Bennett snickered. “T-Bag? Really?”
Annoyed, I kept my mouth shut and pushed him forward.
“Do you even know what tea bag means?” Bennett pressed. “He must really hate you.”
Hate wasn’t a strong enough word for the way Big Joe felt about me. He blamed me for the death of Ford, Underwood’s collector before me. Ford and Big Joe had been tight. If Big Joe thought he could get away with it, he would slit my throat as payback in a heartbeat. Not that I would stay dead, but he was the kind of guy who’d do it anyway just to blow off steam.
A string of work lamps lit the hallway, clamped along the seams between the walls and ceiling. As we walked deeper, the constant hum of the portable generator grew more audible. Bennett shivered and hugged himself for warmth. Our breath clouded in front of us. For some reason, Underwood kept it freezing cold in the fallout shelter, using the generator to power several portable air-conditioning units set up throughout the space. Just one of his many peculiar eccentricities. The hallway emptied out into a large, cement-walled room that was lit by bright standing lamps and a ceiling fixture. The walls were stained with a brownish-yellow tinge from cigarette smoke. Dark circles from extinguished butts spotted the red and tan Oriental rug on the floor. There were two gray metal doors in the right wall and another door in the left. The black door. I averted my eyes from it. In the middle of the room, a wide table stood cluttered with empty pizza boxes, drained liquor bottles, and a couple of small crates of stolen goods. Directly under the table was a big steel lockbox containing a cache of handguns.
Underwood’s second enforcer, a muscular, neckless bull of a man who went by the name Tomo, was sitting on a folding metal chair. He stood up as soon as he saw us enter. He straightened his shirt’s hem over the butt of the gun tucked into his pants.
Underwood himself sat on a reclining easy chair on the far side of the table. He had his legs up and his arms folded behind his head like he was enjoying a lazy afternoon in his backyard. Dark black sunglasses masked his eyes. He was never without them, even inside or at night. When I first met him, I thought he might be blind. He wasn’t. He was just the kind of guy who always wore sunglasses because he thought it made him look intimidating, imposing. In the Brooklyn crime world, appearances were everything.
“There he is, the man of the hour,” Underwood said, getting up and coming around the table. As he came closer, the smell of his cologne was overwhelming. Underwood practically bathed in Obsession for Men, another of his eccentricities, but of course no one dared tell him to dial it down. “Did our friend here give you any trouble, Trent?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I replied.
Underwood turned to Bennett. “So glad you could join us, Mr. Bennett. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
“Go fuck yourself, Underwood,” Bennett spat.
Underwood smiled a thin, closed-mouth grin. “Tomo, would you take our guest in back, please?”
Tomo stepped forward. He grabbed Bennett by the arm and dragged him toward the black door.
“You’re not going to get what you want, Underwood,” Bennett shouted. “I don’t care what you do to me.” Tomo opened the door and pulled Bennett inside. Before the door slammed shut again, I caught a glimpse of a single wooden chair in the middle of a bare room. The chair had straps across the armrests and on the two front legs. There was a drain in the cement floor beneath it. I felt cold all over.
Underwood turned back to me and noticed the bullet hole in my shirt. “So it happened again,” he said. I nodded. “And it was just like before? You’re okay?”
“I’m not dead yet,” I said, and handed him Bennett’s snub-nosed revolver.
Underwood pocketed the gun. Then he laughed and tapped me lightly on the cheek with his open palm. The potent, musky scent of his cologne tickled my nose. “Good dog. See, what did I tell you? You’re a miracle, Trent. We’re going to do amazing things together, you and me. So do me a favor and lose the long face, okay?” He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a few, and handed them to me. “Get some rest, you’ve earned it. Once I get what I need from Bennett, I’m going to have a big job for you. Your biggest yet. There’s a lot riding on this one, and I’ll need my best man on it. You’re my best man, aren’t you, Trent?”
“Sure,” I said. I pocketed the money. The black door glared at me like the eye of the devil.
Underwood made guns out of his fingers and pointed them at me. “I knew I could count on you. You’re my go-to guy!” He opened the black door and went inside, blocking my view of whatever was happening in there. When the door slammed shut again I was left standing alone in the room.
I sighed and approached the first of the gray doors in the opposite wall, the one that led to my room. With no home of my own, Underwood had given me the room rent-free. At the start it had struck me as a generous act of friendship, but now, suddenly, I wondered if it was something else. If maybe he wanted me close so he could
