Twice

“New at this, huh?” Charlie had said, sitting beside him, pulling his cart possessively to his side.

Jed had just nodded, eyeing him suspiciously. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken to him of his own accord. He wondered briefly if Charlie was an undercover cop. But decided he was just too disgusting; he smelled of years of being on the street, irregular bathing. No cop was that good.

“I’m Charlie,” he said, offering a moldy hand, his long fingernails caked with dirt. Jed didn’t offer his in return. Charlie withdrew his without emotion.

“Well, it’s gonna start to rain soon,” he said with an air of authority. “Soon it’s gonna get real cold. You got a plan?”

Jed shook his head.

“I know a place where you could go and be safe… well, safer than the shelters anyway. You could find a little place to call your own, you know? Got any money?”

“A little,” said Jed, curious.

“Can you help an old man out?” asked Charlie, looking like he was jonesing a bit, his foot tapping, his mouth moving as though he were chewing an invisible piece of gum.

So they made a deal… though it didn’t quite turn out for Charlie as he had expected. After Charlie told Jed about the tunnels, how to get in, who to see when he got there, Jed pretended to reach into the pocket of his coat for money and instead took a blade and plunged it deep into the old man’s throat. Charlie never made a sound and Jed thought the old man had looked at him with relief, as if he’d been done a favor. Jed sat beside him until the life drained from him and his eyes stared off into the world beyond. You could never trust a junkie.

So Jed had finally found a home, a place where he could be safe in the mad world that loomed above him. Catacombs, webs of tunnels that stretched for miles, wound down into the earth some said ten, some said twenty levels deep. There were nooks, rooms, bridges, ledges, catwalks, a million places where you could make yourself a nest, free from the hassles of the city above. He’d been a little afraid at first, a little uneasy. But then the dark and the silence had seduced him… and really, of whom exactly should Jed McIntyre be afraid? Who was sicker, more evil and twisted, more homicidal than himself?

He turned off into another tunnel before he reached the group of bottom-feeders that were gathered around the fire under a vent that led to the street. There was a community under here that Jed did not wish to be a part of. He only participated enough to be connected to the information web when he wanted, directions, secrets of the tombs. He had a few things they did not. Money, for one; intelligence, for another. Then there was the fact that people knew somehow to be afraid of him. Those who lived down here hadn’t survived without a certain kind of animal instinct. They smelled his evil like an odor. All these things had served so far to get him what he needed. That was how he had figured out a very important thing about the tunnels.

He would rest awhile in the little space he’d created for himself and then he’d continue his exploration of the catacombs, as he liked to call them. It reminded him of Paris and the networks of tunnels lined with bones beneath Denfert-Rochereau in Montparnasse. Comte d’Artois, later Charles X, threw wild parties in the catacombs just before the revolution. He, like Jed, must have been very comfortable with the idea of death- other people’s deaths, of course.

It was totally silent by the time he’d reached home. He climbed the metal stairs with a light jog, removed a key from his pocket, and unlocked the padlock he’d bought at the Big K up top. The door creaked loudly as it opened, and the echo sounded in the tunnels like a human scream.

Inside, he lit one of his battery-powered lanterns, placed the padlock on the interior latch, and left the key in place, in case he needed to get out in a hurry. It was the only door in or out of his cozy little space, so he felt relatively safe. But one could never be too careful.

He’d also purchased an AeroBed from the same Big K where he’d picked up the padlock and lanterns, along with some lovely sheets, blankets, and pillows from the Martha Stewart Collection. The floor along the wall was lined with books, Lydia’s books, books about the history of New York City and its subway system, computer manuals so that he could keep up with his trade. He kind of liked his little nest.

He sat on the floor and removed his foie gras and Carr’s Water Crackers from the Balducci’s bag. He had other little treats in there, too, but he’d save them for later. He spread the foie gras on a cracker with a plastic knife and savored the spicy, meaty taste on his tongue while he gazed up at the wall. Taped up on the wall were long sheets of brown paper towels that he had drawn upon in charcoal pencil. It was here that he was making maps of his wanderings in the catacombs, charting how the tunnels and levels connected to each other, and what corresponded on the streets above. By his calculations, his little nest was almost directly below Lydia and Jeffrey’s Great Jones Street loft.

The rumor of the tunnels was that some of them led to concealed entrances to buildings, passageways created during the Prohibition Era so that bootleggers could move their product to the city’s speakeasies beneath the sight of the law. He’d yet to find any of these entrances, and he wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that they even existed. But he liked the romance of the idea, the idea of a dark netherworld connected by secret portals to the world above, small unguarded spaces where demons could move from hell into the light and back again, carrying their prey on their backs. He fairly shivered with the thrill of it.

Dax Chicago loved Lydia Strong. Not in any kind of romantic or sexual way. She’d drive him absolutely insane. But in the way of friendship, which for Dax was the most powerful love of all. He loved Jeffrey Mark in the same way, with a fierce loyalty and deep affection. Because they were threatened, because their lives and their happiness were in danger, he felt threatened and very much as though he’d let them down that night in Riverdale when Jed McIntyre had gotten away.

Jeffrey had been right when he’d warned Dax. “Don’t underestimate him,” he’d said. “He’s not as stupid as he looks.” Dax hadn’t listened. Of course, Jed McIntyre had some help that night. But still, if Dax had been a little more cautious, Lydia and Jeffrey wouldn’t be in this mess. Dax considered it his personal responsibility to fix it up right. And fast.

He drove his Range Rover slowly down Tenth Avenue. The night was turning frigid and the cold had crawled in beneath his sleeves and down his collar and he felt it in his bones, in spite of the fact that heat was blasting from the Rover’s vents. He felt badly for the prostitutes and she-males who strutted their stuff in fishnets and miniskirts. He’d always had a soft place inside himself for the strays of the world, the broken, the damaged. Some people, he knew, just never had a chance.

He watched as they gyrated and preened underneath the orange glow of the streetlights. Their sparkling and brightly colored clothes were a garish contrast to the dark, gray buildings and empty doorways. Some of them looked okay from a distance, but they were skanks, every last one of them, dirty, looking ten years older than they actually were, covered in track marks, wreaking of sex. But there was no one who knew the streets like these people, knew what was going down when and on whom.

He fiddled with the heat, adjusted the vents, though he knew it couldn’t blow any harder; he couldn’t stand the bloody cold. His thick, strong hands gripped the wheel as he scanned the women and wanna-be women, looking for one in particular. They catcalled him as he drove by, walked slowly toward his vehicle. A tiny woman with orange hair and red leather pants gave him the finger when he didn’t stop for her. He couldn’t tell how old she was and he tried not to think about the fact that she looked like an adolescent. He’d been moving slowly enough and she’d come close enough for him to see her eyes. There was the deadness there of someone lost, someone who’d already been marked for a tragic end.

He saw her, finally, huddled by a Dumpster with a long bleached blond wig hanging to her thin waist, long, shapely legs in red tights and black patent leather platform shoes and matching hot pants, a big pink faux fur cropped jacket unzipped to reveal a leather bustier. He pulled the car over to the sidewalk and rolled down the widow. She sauntered over and leaned her arms on the door in typical ho fashion.

“Dax. I missed you,” she said, her voice deep and husky.

“You got a little bit of a five o’clock shadow going there, Danielle,” said Dax, with a smile, unlocking the door.

“It’s been a long shift,” the transvestite complained, sliding her six-foot frame into the Rover with the grace of a duchess. Dax handed her a hundred-dollar bill, which she immediately stuffed into the little pink clutch she was carrying.

“Oh, honey,” Danielle said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s the least I could do,” answered Dax, not quite making eye contact with her. Danielle made Dax uncomfortable; she was a black hole of need and misery and Dax knew there was only so much he could do for