Brush Back

I tried shining the light into the depths of the room, but my flashlight was puny and the space was vast. The entrance looked like the one I’d seen in one of Mr. Villard’s photos, the tu

As I played the light around, a movement overhead made me jerk my neck back: red eyes stared down at me, then turned to saunter a short distance off along the pipe: We own this space, we own the night, we’re leaving because we want to, not because you scare us.

I jumped back involuntarily, then stomped forward, loud. “Bernie, are you in here? Come out, it’s V.I.! You’re safe now, let’s go home.”

I shut my eyes, concentrated on sound. Creaks and clanks in the ancient pipes. Feet whispering overhead, those were the rats. Gurgles and clangs along the pipes, all the sounds of an aging building.

A hard hat was hanging on a hook inside the door. I pulled that over my wool cap and started into the tu

The pipes curved away in front of me, following the shape of the stadium. I rounded the first bend and heard the door slam shut behind me. I turned on my heel, jogged back to the exit, turned the inside knob. The door had been locked again from the outside. I took out my picks, worked the tumbler, shoved hard. The door was wedged shut. Those mops, they had been put there to keep someone inside.

I drew back my hand to pound on the door, stopped. I’d been locked in here on purpose. Begging would waste time, energy.

I turned back into the tu

I put the flashlight into my belt, pulled out my phone. No signal in here, of course, but it had a brighter light than my pencil flash. I kept it in my left hand, the Smith & Wesson in my right, safety off. I kept my mind on small things: overhead pipes, flooring, shelving. Tried not to breathe too deeply around the sheets of asbestos that had unpeeled from the overhead pipes. I sidestepped the cables snaking along the floor, looked behind pillars, little things to keep bigger things like rats, or Uzbeki mobsters, at bay.

I paused every few yards and called Bernie’s name. I thought I heard noises louder than vermin would make, steps retreating from me up the tu

My fingers had lost all feeling, my forehead ached with cold. I couldn’t tell if I was moving forward or if the damp, slime-coated walls were sliding past me. Time had disappeared, everything, my life, the planet, the Universe, all compressed to this tiny point, numb body in a cavern.

The wall angled past me again and great steel cantilevers slid into view, bracing wall and ceiling. I looked up and saw steel nets holding slabs of concrete. Above them more pipes, joists, a faded box of Cracker Jacks. Water dripped past the slabs of concrete and spread along the floor. I turned to shine the light farther ahead of me, wondering how much farther the tu

Near me I heard creaking, the ceiling net or the joists or the wood panel, they all could be giving way. I imagined an army of rats gathering on the overhead pipes, preparing to hurl themselves onto my head. I drew my knees up to my face, arms clutching them, sweat coating the slime on my face.

Lâche, Bernie had called me. I was a coward if I was going to give in to night noises. A coward to let a few rats drive me to gibbering. Let loose your fingers, spread your arms, ignore the jolt of pain through the right shoulder, take in a breath, a slow deep breath, let it out, unlock the brain. The phone and gun had slid away from me. Reimagine the sound, figure out the direction they’d gone. In front of me. All I had to do was go forward on hands and knees and feel the ground; I’d come to them.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, hand patting sludge, hand touching snakes, hand recoiling. Not snakes, V.I., cables.

“Vittoria, vittoria, vittoria, mio core,” I started to sing.

My voice came out in a reedy quaver. Not good at all. Gabriella and Jake would be so disappointed, all their careful coaching coming to nothing. I sat up on my haunches, took a deep breath and belted it out. Victory, my heart! No more weeping, no more vile servitude! My voice bounced against the walls and pipes, creating a ti

Back onto my hands and knees, a hand out, patting the slime. And a crash, and a cry of pain somewhere behind me. No rat created that noise.

“Bernie?” I said. “Are you there?”

No response.

“Are you alive? Can you move your arms and legs?”

Muffled groaning. I moved cautiously toward the noise. Banged into a steel panel. The sounds were coming from behind it. I felt my way around. Ran into the soft warm body that was Bernie.

“Hey, girl. Hey, I’m here.” I was so sick with relief I could hardly speak.

I felt along her body. Her hands were tied behind her and there was duct tape across her mouth. I pulled that off. She gave a little whimper of pain, swallowed it.

“Vic? Vic? Is it you? Oh, help me, help me. He’s crazy. Where is he?”

“Let’s see about getting you untied, carissima. Let’s make that happen. I don’t know who ‘he’ is or where he is. I think he locked us in here, but one thing at a time.”

The knots were tight. My numb fingers kept slipping on them. “You’re going to be okay, girl, it’ll be all right,” I crooned. I took out my picks and finally managed to pierce the heart of one of the knots. Hours went by or perhaps minutes—in the cold dank dark it wasn’t possible to count—but the threads came loose. I moved Bernie’s arms to her sides and began chafing her forearms and wrists, get the blood moving.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, “but it will help if we can find my phone and my gun.”

Bernie’s teeth were chattering. She was clinging to me, smelling sickly sweet, the symptom of shock.

“Who is he? Did you arrange to meet him here?”

“Non! Non, j’ai été stupide—”

“Bernie, my French is primitive. Tell me in English.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she whispered. “That I would show you—but I didn’t imagine—and the stadium, it’s so big and so dark. And then I saw the open door, and it was like the photo you brought home, and I thought, I will prove to her—to you—that she was a coward and a fool, I will find the journal of this A

She gave a hysterical gulp and clung more tightly to me. “Then I heard you calling and I tried to get free, tried to call to you, I was so frightened, I thought you would leave and never know I was here, and then I fell off the shelf where he tied me.”

A homeless man in the bowels of Wrigley Field? Not so strange, maybe: I’ve encountered homeless families camping in the bottom of elevator shafts and in cardboard shanties by the river. Why not underneath a baseball park?

“Where’s your flashlight?” I asked.

“He stole it from me. He said his own flashlight is dead and mine is a good one.”

If he had set up housekeeping back here, he had to have some source of light. I gently removed Bernie’s clutch on my arms, moved her into the circle of my left arm, used the right hand to grope amid the detritus on the shelves. Something sticky, a mess of cloth that stank of stale grease. A matchbook. Yes, a matchbook.