Walls within Walls (19 page)

Brid woke to find a flashlight pointing directly in her eyes. The holder of the flashlight was an older man with heavy, tired eyes, and he was inches from her face. At first, she thought she was dreaming, but she wasn't. Joe Torrio was right in front of her—staring at her with a quizzical look on his face.

Brid shot up in her seat, ready to fight him if he moved closer. In the blackness of the subway car, he looked horrible, the wrinkles on his face deep and menacing.

“Don't take another step, Mr. Torrio,” Brid said, in a voice as tough as leather.

His face softened, and he smiled. “I thought I'd never find you children.” He sounded relieved, and to Brid's surprise, almost friendly. Torrio shone the light on Eloise
and placed one of his hands on the side of her neck, taking her pulse. “Is she okay?” he asked Brid.

“Of course she's okay, and so is the baby,” said Brid, confused by his concern. “If you don't mind, can you just let them sleep?”

“Phew. Let me sit down for a moment.” The man sighed heavily as he plopped down across from Brid. He untied his boots, removed his socks, and began wringing water out of them.

“The train tracks,” he said, “they're flooded everywhere. Almost the entire subway system is closed. I can't believe they didn't make you get off the train.”

“Oh,” Brid said. “I think they might have told people to get off; we just couldn't understand the garbled announcement.”

Brid was considering how Torrio could possibly have found them underground. Suddenly she had a terrible thought, what if he had done something with—

“Your brothers!” Torrio said suddenly. “Where are they?”

“Um.” Now was the moment she had to decide. Should she trust this man? “Um, they just, they'll be back in a minute,” she lied, wishing that were true.

“We really need to get you kids out of here. There's some dangerous flooding up ahead.”

“Who do you mean, ‘we'?” Brid asked, suddenly very worried for Pat and CJ. She hoped they had followed the
tracks to a station, gone aboveground, and were getting help.

“New York's Finest,” he said. “The police, the fire department, and your mother—who is so worried about you, I expect she'll have the mayor down here in a few minutes.”

“My mother knows we're missing?”

“Honey,” he said, “you've been gone all night. It's almost dawn. Your mother asked Ray if he had seen you, and Ray asked me.”

“How could you possibly know where we were?”

“Because I followed you. Not the whole way, but just to the subway station on the downtown side. That's when I left you. I walked home, and I assumed you'd gotten home, too. It wasn't until your mother asked Ray if he'd seen you, and Ray told me you were missing, that I realized you'd never come home. It was the fire department that was able to figure out where you might be, given how flooded things are from the melted snow and the fact the downtown six train was stuck here.”

“How dare you follow us! That is so creepy!” Brid said indignantly.

“It is sort of creepy,” Torrio admitted. “I didn't mean for things to turn out this way. I just wanted to talk to all of you. We have so much in common. We need to talk and to share information, and you never give me a chance.”

“Why would we want to talk to you? You're mean, and you hurt CJ's head.”

“Now, that was an accident,” Torrio said. “He slipped on the stairs when the lights went out and bumped his head. When I heard you all coming, I knew he was in good hands. I left because I didn't want you to blame me. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left.” Torrio sighed.

“If you want to talk to us, why don't you just talk?” Brid asked defiantly.

“Listen, child, it's a complicated story,” Mr. Torrio began. “Did you junior detectives and Eloise Post ever stop to think you've gotten this whole thing backward?”

“Got what backward?”

“The theory that Eloise's father and my father might not have really been friends. Did you ever stop to think you might not know the real story?”

“Eloise told us everything about your criminal family.”

“Did you ever think Eloise was wrong?”

“Eloise doesn't lie.”

“I'm not saying she lied, I'm saying maybe she doesn't know everything. And maybe the Torrios and the Posts just acted like enemies so that they could hide a secret,” Torrio said.

“You mean hide the fact that they kidnapped Julian? Some people think Eloise's little brother was taken by your family. She missed having a brother for most of her life. She should hate you.”

“Miss, with all due respect, I'm just saying you don't know everything.”

“Oh really?” Brid said. “Everything Eloise has told me makes me believe I shouldn't even speak to you.”

Torrio looked dejected, and, in spite of herself, Brid started to feel a little sad for him. “I don't know why you would choose to live at 2 East 92nd Street. You know you make Eloise very unhappy.”

Torrio kept fidgeting with the flashlight, throwing bursts of light around the subway car. Brid wished Eloise would wake up.

“I need to talk to Eloise,” Torrio said. “And she never lets me speak long enough to explain everything. I thought maybe you kids could convince her to just listen to me. She just thinks the Torrios are a bunch of hoodlums, and they're not. They never were.”

“If people think your relatives kidnapped her brother, why would she ever even talk to you?”

Torrio began putting his boots back on. “They never actually did that,” he said.

“Don't listen to this,” came a well-rested and feisty voice. It was Eloise, who had only pretended to be asleep for the past minutes. Moving stiffly, she sat up and adjusted her glasses. “I've listened to your whole bunch of hooey. What a story you tell!”

“Listen, Miss Post, it's not a story. I have a letter from your father, a letter that explains everything. It explains
that the Torrio and Post families were friends. If you would ever talk to me long enough, I'd like to read it to you.”

Brid could tell Eloise didn't believe Mr. Torrio for a second. She clearly thought he was trying to be friends with them to beat them to the treasure. Her voice sounded like a low hiss. “My father may have had secrets, but the last person he would confide in was someone from your family. Why would he ever have given anything to you?”

“Maybe the Torrios helped him out in his time of need and were prepared to spend the rest of their lives under a cloud of suspicion to protect the Post family,” Torrio replied.

“Friends with bootlegging, lawbreaking thugs? I don't think so,” Eloise said. “You haven't a clue what you are talking about.”

All of a sudden, Carron sat up, looking sweaty and confused in her snowsuit, her hair sticking straight up. “Baby!” she said to nobody in particular.

“I hate to interrupt,” Brid said, “but can we please go find CJ and Patrick?”

“What! They aren't here?” Eloise exclaimed.

“Mr. Torrio,” Brid said, “I don't know whether to believe you or not, but I do know we have no time to waste. My brothers left last night to walk along the tracks, and we haven't seen them since.”

“What?” Torrio said.

“What?” Eloise echoed.

“It's true, and I'm sorry, but I didn't want to go after them and leave Eloise and Carron behind.”

“No, honey, you did the right thing,” Torrio said. “The firemen are in the next station down the line, so we can walk along the tracks. They cut all the electrical power, so it's safe. It's just going to be wet.”

“And filthy,” muttered Eloise.

Gingerly, they stepped out of the empty subway car and began sloshing their way slowly toward a distant light. Torrio carried Carron, while Eloise and Brid came behind him, holding hands.

They had trudged along for only a few minutes when they were confronted by a large fireman. He had
FDNY RESCUE
#2 inscribed on his helmet, and
O'ROURKE
written on his jacket.

“These the kids you were looking for?” O'Rourke asked Torrio.

“We're still missing two boys,” Torrio answered.

The fireman said, “We're going to head down the line a little farther toward the next station, but I kinda doubt we'll find anyone there. It's the City Hall station—been closed for years.”

“Well, where else could they be?” Brid asked, with panic in her voice.

“With miles of track to walk on? Could be anywhere,” O'Rourke said. He added kindly, “Those boys are probably
home in their beds by now. Let's get you kids up to the rig and get you home. We'll stay here and keep looking.”

“No!”
shouted Brid, louder than she had intended. Impulsively, she grabbed Torrio's flashlight and took off running into the blackness toward the next station.

“Get back here, kid,” said the fireman, but he was no match for Brid's speed. He carried many pounds of equipment, tanks, a helmet, boots, and rain gear. And nobody could run like Brid, even with a backpack on. She went splashing down the tracks into a black hole of darkness, the flashlight bouncing with every step she took. She knew the mud was splattering her white snow pants, but she didn't care. She was beginning to think something terrible had happened to her brothers.

When she came to the next station, she stopped. There were danger signs between unlit brass light fixtures. Brid heard a shuffling noise and aimed her light at a family of rats, skillfully avoiding the water as they scurried across four sets of train tracks. She could see stained-glass skylights that were letting in faint morning glow high above. Most of the glass was broken, and she recognized the twisted metal detailing as the beaux arts style, the style Eloise had told them about.

Far ahead, Brid thought she saw a light go on and off. “CJ!” she called, listening to the echo of her voice. “Patrick,” she hollered, hearing the sound carrying and bouncing, carrying and bouncing. The space reminded
her of Grand Central Terminal, with its rounded ceilings and no right angles anywhere. And then she heard a faint voice. “Brid?” She saw a little light come on, flicker, and go out, and she began to run again. “CJ!”

 

 

“Brid?”

It was her brothers—her pesky, bossy, silly brothers—and they were heading toward her. As she got closer, she saw that CJ had Pat on his back, piggyback style. She ran and caught up to them and hugged them harder than she ever knew she could.

“Where have you guys been?” she said, realizing that she was actually a bit mad at them.

CJ answered. “We had no light except my cell phone, so we must have passed the station stairs to the street. Then we got this far, and everything was chained shut. We couldn't get out of here.”

“Couldn't you have used the cell phone to call Mom?”

“There's no cell service in New York City subways.”

“What is this place?” Brid said, squinting as she looked around.

“We think it's an abandoned station, because we tried to walk up the stairs, but they're mostly crumbling, and the door to the street is barred. We couldn't get out of here,” Patrick repeated, sounding very scared.

“We followed the tracks until we realized they were going in a circle. It's like the trains turn around here or
something, so we were really walking nowhere,” CJ said. “And then Pat cut his leg on something.”

“Ew,” Brid said, seeing dried blood on Patrick's snow pants.

“So what did you do all night?” Brid asked.

“Shivered,” Pat said. And he wasn't even joking.

Brid shone her light on the white, green, and gold tiling that rose above them like the dome of an enormous church. Some skylight far above dimly lit the forgotten station, showing its giant leaded-glass windows.

“I think Guastavino built this station,” Patrick said. “It's been—”

“Roger that. Here they are.” Running toward them came the firefighter and a team of men, with Eloise, Carron, and Joe Torrio bringing up the rear. Helmet lights flooded the cavernous station, and Brid felt so happy to have responsibility pass on to an adult.

She heard CJ explaining, “Well, I was carrying him back, but he's so heavy, and when the tracks widened, we weren't sure which way we came from.”

The firefighter, Kevin O'Rourke, swooped Patrick off CJ's back and into his own arms while another man looked at Patrick's leg. “Kid needs this cleaned out. It's pretty dank and dirty down here.”

“What is this place?” asked CJ.

“City Hall station. Not many New Yorkers get to see this little gem. Been closed since 1945,” said O'Rourke.

“Why did it close?” CJ said, with a shiver in his voice. Brid reached out to hold his hand, and he didn't pull it away.

“The trains got longer and wider, so the platforms in this station couldn't get everyone on and off safely. This is where the empty number six train turns from the downtown to the uptown tracks, but people hardly ever get to see it. They're all told to get off at the Brooklyn Bridge stop.”