Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (38 page)

“How so?”

She was silent for a moment, then
said, “If you were a spy or a saboteur, you would have shown more
enthusiasm for the plan. You wouldn’t have pointed out what I freely admit
appear to be flaws. If the plan is flawed, doomed to failure, your side,
whatever side that might be, would win. And we would lose. But you pointed
out the defects.” She paused. “Only someone committed to the operation, or
at least the idea of the operation, would do that. So here’s my question to
you, Charlie Welles. Do you trust me?”

“I believe that you want to get rid
of the skeeters as much as I do,” I said. “I believe that you think you’ve
closed all the loopholes and covered all the bases with this Lexington
Project of yours. I believe you’re being as straight with me as you can
with somebody you don’t really know.” I shrugged. “Trust? Maybe if and when
I know how you’re going to get around those flaws and make this work, I
could trust you.”

“You’re a hard man to convince,”
Schleu said.

“I’m a man who’s heard a lot of
talk that didn’t match up with what happened later.”

“Good enough,” she said. “Another
question. What part do you want to play in all this? Should I give you a
machete and have you join the other recruits?”

“If you think that’s the best place
for me, who am I to argue?”

It was a calculated risk. I felt
like I’d said all the right things to make Schleu think that I was somebody
smart, somebody worth having close. But I couldn’t be too obvious about it,
too anxious to make her think that I wanted to walk the halls of power
beside her. That would trigger red flags and either get me sent out with a
machete or planted in the basement.

Neither would put me in place to
kill her.

So I played it out. The good
soldier who wants to be where he’s most needed. Putting the decision in her
lap.

“I’m sure you’d do very well with a
machete,” she said. “But that might be a waste of your talents.” She
paused. “My uptown expert was recently assassinated by cowards who would
rather wait for the skeeters to go away on their own. Much of this plan was
his, many of the solutions to the problems you mentioned were
his.”

Randall Shepard, her second in
command. Shot down on the Ryer Avenue subway platform a week earlier. Her
mention of cowards made it likely that it had been Redmond’s people who
killed him. Which meant the drive-by shooting at the Beacon warehouse the
next day was retaliation.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I
said.

“We were all sorry,” she said, her
voice curt. “He spent almost three years on the Lexington Project, and we
are close to success only because of his dedication. But these things
happen in war. He wasn’t the first to fall, and he won’t be the last.” She
paused. “His death leaves a hole that needs to be filled. Shep knew more
about uptown than any of us, and there’s not enough time to replace him and
his knowledge. You, based on what you’ve said tonight, clearly have the
knowledge we need.”

“Like I said, I’m willing to
believe that you mean what you say and that you may even have a way around
the obvious issues. Beyond that, anything I can do to drive the skeeters
out of the city, I’m in.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll need to
discuss it with my command staff, of course. You return to your apartment
and get some sleep.” She smiled. “I promise, you won’t be disturbed for the
rest of the night. And in the morning, I’ll be able to tell you what role
you’ll play, and perhaps share more of the operation with you.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Maybe you
ought to get some sleep yourself.”

“I haven’t slept much in the past
five years,” she said. “Catnaps. Just enough to think clearly and stay on
my feet.” She paused. “When the skeeters are gone, when the war is over and
the humans in our country walk free, I’ll be able to sleep through a
night.”

“Whatever works for you,” I said.
“So I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Correct.”

I hesitated for a moment. Lee
didn’t seem ready to go.

“Do I need an escort, or do I just
go back to the apartment?” I asked.

Schleu smiled. “Why would you need
an escort, Charlie?” she asked. “You’re a member of the Humans First Front
now.”

“Good,” I said. “Then I’ll see you
in the morning.”

Lee nodded to me and I nodded back.
Schleu was already looking down at the photograph of uptown
again.

I turned and walked out of her
apartment. The guard outside the door didn’t give me a second
look.

Everything was going about a well
as I could have wanted. I’d probably be her new uptown expert by morning
and not long after, would find out exactly what she had planned.

More importantly, I’d be working
closely with her. And sooner or later, before the Lexington Project kicked
off, I’d find the right moment to give Schleu the sleep she was waiting
for. Eternal sleep.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

I was shoveling grits and chunks of
meat into my mouth the next morning when the knock came. I left the bowl on
the coffee table and went to the door.

Schleu stood in the hall, Lee a
couple of steps behind her.

“May I come in?” she
asked.

“Sure,” I said stepping to the
side.

She walked into the living room.
Lee followed.

I closed the door and went back to
the table. “Just eating my breakfast.” I dropped into the chair and lifted
the bowl.

“Please, finish,” she said. “I’ve
decided to offer you a position on my staff. If you’re
interested.”

“What position?” I asked around a
mouthful of food.

“You’ll manage the uptown portion
of the Lexington Project,” Schleu said. She was silent for a few seconds,
then added, “I should tell you that not all members of my staff are happy
about this. You haven’t been with us long, and that makes people
nervous.”

“I’d probably feel the same
way.”

“Were the circumstances different,
I would probably agree with them. But time is not on our side. We have one
window of opportunity, and it begins in less than twenty-four
hours.”

I’d guessed right. Sunrise on
Christmas Day was when it would start. That meant time wasn’t on my side
either. I had less than twenty-four hours to put her down.

“I guess I better think it over
pretty quick,” I said. Before she could reply, I grinned. “I’ve decided.
Tell me what to do.”

“Finish your breakfast,” she said.
She looked at Lee. “You stay with him till he’s ready to go. Catch up
with me at the station.”

Lee smiled. “Going to do some
speechifying?”

“This close, a little extra morale
boost can’t hurt,” Schleu said. She looked back at me. “I’ll see you soon,
Charlie.”

As she left the apartment, Lee
looked around the living room. “Kind of spartan, but at least you have
plenty of room.”

“More than I need,” I said. “I’ll
be done in a couple of minutes.” I nodded at the couch. “Have a
seat.”

“I’ll stand, thanks,” he said. “My
knees aren’t what they used to be.”

“So, are you one of the First
Nineteen that I’ve heard about? The commander’s original crew?”

Lee shook his head. “I’m a local.
East side born and raised.”

“They pick you up in a
bar?”

“No, I had a place in midtown when
they tracked me down,” he said. “Little apartment on Maxwell. I was working
for the city, road maintenance. One morning before work, there’s a knock at
the door. I open it, and Kat’s standing there.” He smiled. “You know, she’s
a handsome woman, and at my age, I don’t get many lady visitors, so I
invited her in. An hour later, I called the city barn and quit.”

“What do you mean, they tracked you
down?”

“Just that,” he said. “After they
came up with their plan, they knew they needed somebody like me. I was
alive and around, so they came calling.”

“What do you bring to their table?”

“Experience,” he said. “Spent most
of my adult life as a mining engineer. Worked all over the place. West
Virginia, British Columbia, Pennsylvania. Even did a stint in Alabama. Then
I came home and got hired on by the city for the E Line. Second Street to
the east side.”

“The Hole,” I said.

“The Hole was supposed to be the
eastside terminus,” he said. “Sampson Street station. We were in the middle
of the cut and cover on the station when they shut the project down. Dug
the hole for the station, but never got a chance to build it and cover it
up.” He paused. “Kind of shame, really. It was a good project. Paid good
too.”

 “So the E Line is part of
this Lexington thing?”

He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “As
you’ll see as soon as you finish eating.”

I put a last spoonful of food in my
mouth and stood. “I’ll wash the bowl and we’ll go.”

When we turned off the staircase in
the lobby and started down the hall, the hairs on the back of my neck
stood. The hall led to the basement. Had Schleu suckered me? Was the end I
was rushing toward my own?

“I thought we were going
somewhere,” I said. “Outside.”

“We are.”

“Okay,” I said. “How? The door’s
back in the lobby.”

“You’ll see,” Lee said.

Past the closet where they’d stuck
me after Johnny’s death. Past a pair of double doors with clanging pots and
laughter coming from the other side. The kitchen. To a door at the end of
the hall.

“You might want to breath through
your mouth,” Lee said, his hand on the doorknob. “It’s kind of rough down
here.”

He opened the door and the stench
hit me like a gravedigger’s shovel.

I know the smell of human
decomposition. I smelled enough of it as a cop, and later in the camp. But
this was different. This was musty and heavy, thick enough to coat the back
of my throat. Rot with a chemical, almost metallic, edge.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Yeah, it’s nasty,” Lee said,
starting down the metal stairway. “The quicklime helps slow down
decomposition, but it doesn’t stop it.”

“Why not just bury them outside?” I
asked as I followed him down the stairs.

“More work,” he said. “More chance
of exposure. This ain’t ideal, but it’s secure.”

The basement was dimly lit by
yellowing bulbs that hung from the ceiling. The larger part of the room was
hidden behind a brick wall that stretched from one side to the other. In
the middle of the wall was a door, flanked by two men who wore what looked
like old Army surplus gas masks.

Lee gave them a wave as we
passed.

“So where are we going?” I
asked.

“The back door,” he
said.

We reached the corner of the
basement and I saw a low doorway cut into the concrete wall.

“Watch your head,” Lee
said.

He bent and stepped through the
doorway into the darkness. I hesitated a moment, then went through behind
him.

I heard him fumble for something
and then the bright beam of a flashlight hit me in the face. As I raised my
hand to shield my eyes, Lee said, “Sorry.”

When he moved the flashlight, I
lowered my hand, blinked a couple of times, and looked around. We were in a
long, straight tunnel, maybe twice the width of my shoulders. Every few
feet, there was timber on the walls and the ceiling, holding back the
packed dirt. I couldn’t see the end.

“What the hell is this?”

“A way out when you don’t want to
use the front door,” he said. “It was here when Kat took the building.” He
moved the flashlight around, illuminating the tunnel. “Not quite
professional work, but it’s stable and it does the job.”

When I’d been at the
83
^rd
Street station before the war, we’d all wondered if Papa
Lazaro was moving people in and out of the Floresta without being seen. Now
I knew.

“Where does it go?”

“Hundred yards northwest. Basement
of an unfinished building,” he said. “They’d planned to make this block a
showcase. Three high-rise apartment buildings, a few blocks from the Samson
Street station. The perfect place for the young professionals who’d be part
of the eastside revival.”

He laughed softly. “So they built
the Floresta, and started work on the second one. Got the basement built
and some walls for the first floor. Then the city cancelled the E Line.” He
paused. “I guess the builders decided the east side renaissance would be
delayed. So they just abandoned the project.”

“You talking about the building at
58
^th
and Walton?”

“That’s it,” he said. “Let’s get
going. We’re on a fairly tight schedule here.” He turned and started down
the tunnel. I followed.

“Must have taken them months to dig
this out,” he said as we walked. “Digging by hand. Like The Great Escape or
something.”