Death Benefits (28 page)

“You're a special woman, Rachel. May God be with you tonight.” And then he hung up.

I pushed the antenna down and put the phone under the car seat. Leaning back in the seat, I sighed.

“So you really like this guy, huh?” Benny asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You don't think you're moving a little too fast?”

“Too fast?” I looked over at Benny. He was gazing out the windshield.

“What's so fast?” I asked. “I met him on Thursday. We had a soft drink together at Kiener Plaza. In broad daylight. On Friday I went to dinner with him
and
with Melvin Needlebaum. And then, to top off that romantic evening, we were together again last night along with you and those two guys from Customs.”

Benny rubbed his chin. “Well, that sure sounds to me like three times in four days.”

“For goodness sake, Benny. You sound like my father.”

He looked over at me. “If I were your father, I'd be reminding you that Mr. Salazar wasn't Jewish.”

“Jewish? Who says we're getting married? C'mon, Benny. And look who's talking about Jewish: the original shiksa maven himself.”

That forced a sheepish grin from him.

***

Close to an hour later we were sitting on two swings in the playground behind my old elementary school, sort of killing time and sort of going over the evening ahead of us. I had the blueprints spread out on my lap. I was studying the portion of Section D that ran under Forest Park.

“I've been thinking,” Benny said.

“Yes.”

“Let's say Remy Panzer decides to get there early. To case the joint.”

“Okay.”

“Let's say he's there right now.”

“Okay.”

“He's looking around, trying to figure out where we're going to emerge. Right?”

“Right.”

“Maybe we're going to come up that riverbed, he thinks. Maybe we're going to walk out of one of the warehouses, he says. But probably, we're going to come out of one of those tunnel openings. Right?”

“That's probably what he'll think,” I said.

“So he says to himself, ‘Hmmm. I see three tunnels. I wonder which one they're going to come out of?' Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And let's imagine he's got a couple thugs with him to help out. ‘Cause Remy Panzer isn't exactly Ward Cleaver, okay?”

I looked over at Benny. “Go on.”

“He doesn't know which tunnel we're going to come out of. He doesn't have blueprints for any of the tunnels, so he doesn't exactly know where each of those tunnels is coming from, either. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“The guy's no dummy, right?”

“Right.”

“So maybe he says to himself, or says to his thugs, ‘Let's hide somewhere around here. Because,' he says, ‘whatever comes out has got to first go in.'” Benny raised his eyebrows. “You following me?”

I nodded.

“Think about it,” he continued. “According to Stoddard Anderson, Montezuma's Executor is hidden in the top of one of those arched passageways. You said those archways are one hundred yards apart, right?”

“Right.”

“So that means we're going to have to walk six hundred yards down that tunnel. That's going to take some time. Then we're going to have to find out where the hell he hid the damn thing, unlock the box, and carry it out. That's going to take some more time. Right?”

“Right.”

“You have to meet him at eleven o'clock sharp. You know we're going to want to go in that tunnel hours before then to make sure we can find that thing and get it out of there. Right?”

“Go on.”

“If Remy Panzer and his thugs are hiding out there, they're going to see us go in. They're going to see which tunnel we enter. Shit, they might just follow us in there, wait till we get that goddamn Aztec dildo, and then kill us.” He shook his head in disgust. “No wonder he agreed to meet you there. Jesus, Rachel, we fucked up.”

“It's worse than that,” I said.

“Huh?”

“He told me I had to be alone. He told me if he saw me with anyone else, he'd
never
show up. Think about that for a moment. If he's hiding out there, he not only sees
me
go in the tunnel—he sees
you
, too.”

Benny shook his head. “We're really a pair of idiots.”

“What do you mean ‘we,' keemosabe?”

Benny looked at me with a puzzled frown. “What?”

“We can't enter through those tunnel openings. It's way too risky.”

“Agreed. But how are we supposed to get in?”

“Right here,” I said, placing my index finger on the blueprint. “That's what I've been doing for the last fifteen minutes, you bozo. Trying to figure out an alternate route into the tunnels.”

Benny stood up and leaned over my shoulder to stare at where I was pointing. “Where is that?”

“Near Union Boulevard. On the north part of Forest Park, just off Lindell Boulevard.”

“What is it?”

“A way to get into the underground portion of the River Des Peres.”

“No, I mean what is it? What's there?”

I looked up at Benny, who was peering over my shoulder. “I have no idea. It says ‘Surface Access to Section D.' Let's drive over and find out what that means.”

***

I drove east into the city along the northern edge of Forest Park, passing the stately nineteenth-century mansions of Lindell Boulevard on my left. The light was red at Union.

“We should be almost there,” Benny said, studying the maps.

The light turned green. I turned south onto Union and drove slowly into Forest Park. There were ponds and interconnected waterways on both sides of the road, part of the canal system built for the 1904 World's Fair.

“It should be on the left,” Benny said. “There!” He pointed. “That must be it.”

I slowed down long enough to spot the long black cage before the driver behind me leaned on his car horn. I pulled ahead and turned left onto a road that crossed over one of the ponds.

“Keep going,” Benny said. “Park it up there. We can walk back real casual, like we're just out for a late afternoon stroll.”

I drove another two hundred yards down the park road and pulled over. We were north of the Muny Opera in an open part of the park. There were two elderly black men fishing in the pond nearest us. They had long bamboo poles and were both smoking pipes.

Benny and I crossed the road and walked down the footpath along the pond back toward the arched bridge. When we reached the end of that pond, just before the bridge, we turned right and walked along the edge of the larger pond toward the black cage we had spotted from the road into Forest Park.

About twenty yards from the cage I slipped my arm through Benny's and gently pulled him to a stop.

“Let's look at the pond,” I said, glancing back down our path. No one was following us. “Pretend like we're out for a stroll.”

“Ah, yes, such a lovely pond,” Benny said as he casually looked around. The stagnant pond was covered with a greenish gray growth. “Can you imagine what would happen to you if you fell into that thing?”

“The skin fungus from hell?”

“At least,” he said with a shudder.

“I don't see anyone.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you hear a waterfall?”

“It's that thing,” Benny said, gesturing at the square concrete embankment rising out of the water near the edge of the pond. It had an opening right at water level, and a steady flow of water was passing over the concrete lip.

“It's a sluice,” Benny said. “That's where the water drains out of these ponds. That way the ponds never overflow.”

The black cage was just beyond the end of the pond and to the right of the concrete sluice.

“Shall we, my darling,” I said, nodding toward the cage.

“Yes, my sweetness. Let us promenade.”

The cage was four feet wide, five feet tall, and thirty feet long. It covered a cement stairway down into the sewers. We slowed as we passed. The stairs disappeared into the darkness. Cool air drifted up from below. The sounds of the sluice waterfall echoed from somewhere down there.

We continued maybe fifty feet beyond the cage and turned back. This time I studied the cage door as we passed.

“A padlock,” I said.

“I think we'll need to pay a visit to our friendly hardware man before we descend into the sewers.”

“I know just the place. We'll need some other supplies, too.”

“Let me ask you something,” Benny said as we approached the car.

“Shoot.”

“We cut the lock and go down those stairs,” he said, turning back toward the cage. “Once we get into the sewer tunnels, how long of a walk is it?”

“About three miles.”

“Three miles? We gotta walk three miles through that sewer tunnel?”

“Yep.”

“Shit.”

“There'll be plenty of that,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Snap
.

“Got it,” I said, laying the metal cutters on the ground and removing the padlock.

I was crouched by the gate of the black stairway cage in Forest Park. Benny was standing in front of me, using his bulk to shield me from the view of any passerby—although at eight-thirty on a Monday night there were no passersby, and hadn't been since we arrived thirty minutes ago. We had waited in the car until it started to get dark.

“All clear?” I asked, picking up the metal cutters and the old padlock.

Benny glanced around. “Let's go.”

Still in a crouch, I swung the gate open, went down a few steps, and turned to wait for Benny. He ducked around the gate and pulled it closed behind him.

“You have the other lock?” I asked, my heart pounding.

“Yeah. Yeah.” He held it up for me to see.

It was a heavy-duty combination lock that I had purchased at the hardware store. Just in case someone was following us. Benny reached through the bars, hooked the new lock into place, clicked it shut, and spun the dial a couple times.

From where I stood on the steps, my eyes were just above ground level. I peered through the bars, anxiously surveying the area.

“You see anyone?” I asked.

Benny looked around. “Naw.” He turned to me. Although his face was partly shrouded by the growing darkness, I could see the smile. “We must be fucking nuts, huh?”

“Turn around and let me get the flashlights.”

Benny had on a backpack. The portable phone was in there, along with some of the blueprints, extra batteries, a white turtleneck for me to put on later, and three flashlights. We had bought two regular flashlights and one of those high-powered park ranger types that has a handle. I had insisted on the extra flashlight, just as I insisted on the extra batteries and the combination lock to replace the one we destroyed—just to be safe.

I pulled the high-powered flashlight and one of the regular ones out of the backpack, dropped in the metal cutters, and closed the strap. I handed Benny the high-powered flashlight and turned to face the stairway down.

“Ready?” I asked as I clicked on my flashlight.

“Let's do it.”

It was about forty steps down into the sewers. At the bottom of the stairs and to our left was the waterfall created by the run-off from the pond above. The water splattered onto the sloped cement floor about fifteen feet away from where we stood and ran down the center of the tunnel in a narrow stream that you could step across. We both shined our flashlights at the cascading water. There was nothing behind it but the back wall of the concrete sluice, which rose up to the water level of the pond overhead.

To the right of the stairs was a large tunnel that, according to the blueprint, ran at a right angle into the twin tunnels of Section D about one hundred feet further on. I pointed the flashlight down the tunnel. Sure enough, you could see where it intersected with a much larger opening.

“This way,” I said, moving along a low ledge near the side wall of the tunnel.

Benny followed.

We were both wearing jeans, dark cotton turtlenecks, and work gloves. I had on my Nike Airs (new), and Benny had on his Top Siders (battered).

The tunnel emptied into a huge area that marked the beginning of Section D and the end of Section E. The waters of Section E flowed into the twenty-nine-foot horseshoe-shaped twin tunnels of Section D. Section E was to our left—upriver. It was a thirty-two-foot tube of reinforced concrete that brought the storm water and raw sewage down from the northwest part of the city. We were standing at the edge of what was, according to the architect notations on the blueprints, the largest pipe joint in the world.

“Whew,” Benny said, waving his hand in front of his nose. “Help me get that phone out of there,” he said, turning his back to me. “Let's double check with your federal bodyguards. Make sure everything's set.”

I pulled the portable phone out of his backpack.

“You got Ferd's number?”

“Here,” I said, removing a small pad of paper from my back pocket. “First page.”

As Benny dialed, I looked around, flashing the beam of light this way and that.

The flood and sewage waters of Section E separated here and continued their flow downriver—to my right—into Section D. As shown on the blueprints, the two twenty-nine-foot arched tunnels had a common center wall that was several feet thick. The twin tunnels were enormous—you could easily drive a Mack truck down either one.

I shined my flashlight down the arched tunnel closest to me. Nothing but tunnel, stretching down as far as the beam of light could penetrate. Somewhere three miles down was the end of the tunnel. Two and a half miles down there, hidden somewhere in the ceiling of an arched passageway, was Montezuma's Executor.

“This piece of shit doesn't work,” Benny growled, shaking the phone.

“What's wrong?”

“My call won't go through.”

I looked around. “We're underground. These sewer walls must be several feet thick. Maybe you can't transmit a signal from down here. Go back to the stairs and give it a try.”

“Okay,” he said. He lumbered back down the smaller tunnel toward the waterfall and the stairs.

I looked around as I waited. There was a big pile of junk—logs, pipes, wire, sticks, oil cans, and other stuff-piled against the center wall at the entrance to the Section D tunnels. Floodwaters must have washed the debris downriver, and some of it got hung up against the center wall.

I flattened one of the blueprints against the wall and shined the flashlight beam on it. The Section D tunnels would gradually curve to the right as we went farther down them. I studied the blueprints, occasionally glancing at the tunnel entrances and then back to the blueprints for reference. The tunnel on the right was the storm-water tunnel. The tunnel on the left was the raw sewage tunnel. Although I couldn't see into it from where I stood, the stench alone was reason enough to do our trek through the storm-water tunnel.

“It worked,” Benny hollered as he came down toward me. “You were right.”

“Who'd you talk to?”

“Ferd. He said his men are all in position. He's got twenty sharpshooters out there waiting for us, along with about a half dozen air raid spotlights they're going to turn on as soon as Panzer hands you the money. Those guys are pumped.”

“That's good.”

I peered down the storm-water tunnel. There was a narrow stream of water running down the center. As the blueprints had indicated, the floor of the tunnel was concave, so that the middle of the floor was almost three feet lower than where the floor met the walls. I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Well, Mr. Kurtz? Shall we?”

Benny nodded. “Lead on, Marlowe. Let's exterminate the brutes.”

***

We started off like sewer tourists. We could have been strolling through some 20,000-Leagues-under-the-Park exhibit at Disney World—or at least that's how we acted, probably to keep our minds off what lay ahead.

Despite the tension we both felt, it was fascinating for the first mile or so. I was surprised—pleasantly surprised—by the animal life in the stream. I had expected—dreaded—rats, but we didn't see any. Instead, we spotted frogs, albino crawdads, snapping turtles, and even a pair of muskrats. Although the water was no more than four or five inches deep, there were places where the last flood had left logs or rocks or trash in the middle of the tunnel, which formed little dams. Hovering in the pools of water behind these dams were bluegill and catfish.

As we moved farther down the tunnel the original waterfall sounds faded but were replaced by new ones created by run-offs from the smaller sewer lines that fed into the main tunnels of Section D. First you would hear the waterfall sounds in the distance, muted at first, gradually louder as you approached, and then you would see it, shooting out of an opening in the arched ceiling, a spout of water splashing and splattering into the tunnel through a run-off from one of the feeder lines.

Occasionally there would be a shaft of light coming through what looked like a round vent in the ceiling. The vents were grates in the street above, the light from a street lamp. Once in a while there was a loud metallic bang, which was a truck running over a manhole cover overhead.

Because of the way the ceiling arched, there was no way to run a ladder all the way up to those manholes. However, sometimes we came across a metal ladder that went up the side of the tunnel and disappeared into a vertical tube, which presumably led to a way out of the tunnel.

We stopped at the first arched passageway we came to. It was about four feet wide and seven feet tall, and was cut into the common wall between the storm-water tunnel and the sewage tunnel. Since the common wall was almost three feet thick, there was ample room for both of us to stand in the passageway.

We stepped up into the passageway and peered across into the sewage tunnel. Benny slowly swept the beam of his high-powered flashlight back and forth along the surface of the water.

“Yechh,” he spat in disgust.

His flashlight beam illuminated a broad, slow-moving brownish river of raw sewage. The river was at least two feet deep—the water line was maybe eight inches below the bottom of the passageway we were standing in. Benny shined the beam at the water passing near our feet.

“That's definitely raw sewage,” I said.

Benny waved his hand in front of his nose. “Almost makes you feel sorry for sewer rats.”

I shined my flashlight up at the arched ceiling of the passageway. Right in the center of the arch, where the keystone would go, was a corroded light fixture.

“I bet that's where Anderson hid it,” Benny said.

I checked my watch. It was almost 9:40 p.m. We had at least another two miles ahead of us. “Let's go.”

***

We had walked in silence for twenty minutes. I had been counting passageways since the first one. According to my calculations, the sixth passageway from the end of the tunnel was also the thirty-ninth passageway out from where we had started.

“Thirty-five,” I said as we passed another one.

“How many more?”

“Four.”

Benny glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes after ten.”

“We're still on schedule,” I said.

“Did I tell you my latest brainstorm?” Benny asked a few minutes later.

“So you've given up on Breasts ‘R Us?”

“I've changed sex.”

“Boobs for men?”

“Better.”

“I'd sure hope so.”

“Balls.”

“Balls?”

“Balls.”

“As in testicles?”

“Actually, as in scrota.”

“As in what?”

“Scrota. The plural of scrotum.”

“You've got more than one?”

“One today. Millions tomorrow. Someday I could be the Sultan of Scrota. Play your cards right, Rachel, and you could be my Sultana.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Let's hear it.”

“Take your average, affluent, recently divorced, sixty-year-old guy, okay?”

“Go on.”

“He's squirting Grecian Formula on his hair, working out five times a week at the health club, maybe even hired his own exercise guru. Low-fat diet, lots of veggies, nice tan, new wardrobe. Cruising around in his Porsche or his red Beemer. All for one purpose, and one purpose only.”

“To feel young?”

“To get laid. Specifically, to get laid by some twenty-five-year-old potential trophy wife. It's what makes the world go around.”

“It already sounds ennobling. What's the gimmick?”

“I'm getting there. Got our guy in mind? Dyed hair, body whipped into shape, lots of dough, fancy car, great clothes. Everything's perfect—with one exception.”

“His scrotum?” I asked incredulously, caught up in Benny's goofy scheme even as I laughed.

“Do you have any idea what happens to a man's balls when he gets old?”

“I can't say that I do.”

“It's pathetic. Worse, it's an irrefutable sign of old age. That's the key, Rachel. Our sixty-year-old stud finds himself a twenty-five-year-old babe, squires her back to his newly decorated bachelor pad, pours her a glass of Dom Pérignon, pops a CD into his $50,000 sound system with speakers roughly the size of the ones the Stones used at Soldier's Field.”

“What's the album?” I asked. “Frank Sinatra?”

“Nah. Our hero's too savvy for that. He'd have asked some younger guy in his office what the chicks love these days. Probably Dire Straits. Sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to him, but he'd never let on. Anyway, at some point in the evening, he's going to have to take off his clothes. And things have sure as hell changed in that jurisdiction since the time he was married. These days the lights stay on. So when he takes off his underwear, there they are, lo and behold, dangling down around his knees.”

“His balls?” I was giggling.

“He can practically play soccer with 'em.”

“My God, you've got to be kidding.”

“I'm serious, Rachel. His balls are a dead giveaway. It's like they've got the words ‘old fart' branded on them, one word on each.”

“Let me get this straight: You see financial opportunities here?”

“A fucking gold mine.”

“I'm afraid to ask.”

“A scrotum lift.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I'm serious, Rachel. A scrotum lift. Like a face lift, or a tummy tuck. In a half-hour you can have the balls of a twenty-year-old.”

“For heaven's sake, Benny.” I was laughing. “That's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard.”

“That's where you're wrong, Rachel. Women just don't understand. Men are already obsessed with their dicks. With the right marketing pitch, I can make them obsessed with their balls, too. Then all I got to do is round up a bunch of plastic surgeons. Put together some franchises. Hire a spokesman. Someone like Johnny Carson. Or maybe Paul Newman. I could make a fortune.”