Vespers Read online

  It was good to see Moreaux. He still had his son Jonathan’s framed second-grade history report on the wall, a one-pager on the origin of the wordcop. Gentry hadn’t known until he read that when the New York state legislature gave the city its first police force in 1845, the officers had refused to wear uniforms. As a compromise, they agreed to wear copper badges to identify themselves as peace officers-hence the name.

  Jonathan Moreaux was now a “copper” cadet himself.

  Gentry explained to the captain that he wanted to take Dr. Joyce out to the tracks where the guano had been found. Moreaux had no objection and asked the desk sergeant to radio Officer Stiebris. The rookie was told to meet Detective Gentry and Dr. Joyce at the main information booth in half an hour.

  Gentry thanked Moreaux and they agreed to have dinner the following week. Moreaux said he’d picked the spot, someplace he could get a burger instead of the stomach-burning shit Gentry ate. Then the detective went downstairs to wait beside the small kiosk.

  As Gentry stood there, he watched the midmorning crowd. The people were mostly commuters hurrying from the tracks on the north side of the station to subways and exits on the south, west, and east. Very few of them bothered to look up at the constellations.

  That’s what the world is all about,Gentry thought. Rushing. Rushing to work, rushing from work, rushing to entertainment and shopping and eating. It was ironic. Gentry had the siren at his disposal, but he rarely rushed anywhere. His life on the force had been about patience and waiting. Cooling off arguments when he was on the beat. Nurturing the trust of gang members when he was undercover. Taking part in stakeouts. When he was off duty all he wanted to do was relax. With a lady if possible, but alone was fine too.

  Gentry saw Nancy Joyce coming toward him from the east side of the terminal. That was where the Number 5 subway train would have dropped her. She was moving briskly against the human wave, ducking and weaving gracefully. The scientist was slightly shorter than he’d expected, about five-foot-five. She was carrying a bright orange shoulder bag and was still dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing on television the night before.

  Gentry stepped away from the kiosk to greet her. She had a firm handshake. She made and held eye contact. She really did have beautiful eyes.

  “Thanks for coming,” Gentry said.

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “I don’t know if you heard, but there’s been some kind of bat uprising at the Central Park Zoo,” Gentry said.

  “I know. That moron Berkowitz called as I was leaving. I sent my assistant Marc to have a look.”

  “How bad is it over there?”

  “It must be pretty bad if Berkowitz called,” Joyce said. “He’s not really a bat guy, he’s a rodent guy. Handles everything from chipmunks to chinchillas. He waited five hours before calling-doesn’t like anyone messing with his fiefdom, especially if it’s a woman.” Joyce shook her head. “The joke is, if Berkowitz’s rich wife hadn’t given so much money to that place through all her not-for-profit charities, he’d probably be writing flash cards instead of helping to run a zoo.”

  “You know, I never realized that about-”

  “Berkowitz?” Joyce said. “Oh, yeah. The man’s great at self-promotion. He brings his cuddly little animals to schools and goes on TV, but he doesn’t know half as much as he should for that job.”

  “No,” Gentry said. “I never realized that chinchillas are rodents.”

  Joyce looked at him. Then she looked down, embarrassed. “Yeah. They are.” She suddenly seemed to have the weight of all those constellations on her back.

  “Y’know, when I was a kid I used to love learning things like that,” Gentry said.

  “Me too. Look, I’m sorry.”

  “About?”

  “I shouldn’t have gone off like that. Patronage in science is a major sore spot with me.”

  “Patronage bothers me, too,” he said. “The worst thing about it is when we have to do their jobs plus ours because they’re incompetent.”

  She looked back at him. There was a hint of a smile in her eyes. “Right. I’m also very tired, which isn’t helping my mood any.”

  “Understood.”

  Joyce seemed a little peppier now. “You want to get going?”

  “We’re waiting for Officer Stiebris. He knows the way. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

  Joyce nodded. She leaned heavily against the information booth.

  “You want some coffee?”Gentry asked. “Maybe a bottle of water? We’ve got a long hot walk ahead.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, though.”

  “So, the last day’s been pretty tough?” Gentry asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatdo you think is going on?”

  “I wish I knew. The only universal explanation I can think of is that we’re seeing some kind of bat dementia, though there’s no precedent for it and I have absolutely no idea what could be causing it. The initial lab results from the two patients and the deer carcass came in just as I was leaving. Unfortunately, they don’t tell us very much.”

  “What do they tell you?”

  “In terms of the two people, nothing more than we already knew. In terms of the deer, only that there’s definitely bat saliva in the blood. But it’s possible the vespers simply lit there-”

  “I’m sorry. The who?”

  “The vespers. Vespertilionids,” Joyce said. “That’s the breed of bat we’re dealing with.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s possible they landed on the deer after it was already dead,” Joyce continued. “But vespers very rarely eat meat, and they definitely aren’t scavengers.”

  “Unless they were suffering from dementia, as you said.”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, though we haven’t exhausted all the tests, we didn’t find any kind of microbe in the saliva that might cause the bats to act this way. In fact, except for rabies there reallyisn’t a condition we know of that would do this. And rabies wouldn’t cause the kind of-I’ll call it cooperation, for lack of a better word, that the witnesses reported.”

  “So you really haven’t got much to go on, have you?”

  “No. Though there was something else-what look like several large teeth marks in the deer carcass. They’re about two to three inches long. They look like a mountain lion could have made them, but there were no footprints anywhere. Dr. Nadler made a mold from a gnaw mark in one of the shoulder bones. When Marc is finished at the Central Park Zoo, he’s going to run the mold over to Dr. Lowery at the Museum of Natural History. Maybe he can identify it.”

  “I didn’t realize big cats live in the region.”

  “They do. The problem is they wouldn’t be strong enough to haul a deer up a tree.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about bats or cats, but I can’t help thinking this deer thing is a prank. Some kind of antienvironmentalist statement.”

  Joyce shook her head. “The wildlife commissioner up there said he knows those groups. They print leaflets and bitch on-line. Besides, nobody’s taken credit for killing the deer. But if and when they do, I want to know how they got the damn thing up there.” She looked at Gentry again. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re so concerned about this?”

  “Like I told you on the phone, I had a late-night run-in with bats myself. They chased a couple hundred cockroaches from my neighbor’s wall.”

  “But you didn’t actually see any bats.”

  “That’s right.When I took a look behind the switchplate they were coming from, I found bat guano.”

  “How much?”

  “I probably could’ve filled seven or eight sandwich bags.”

  “Actually, Detective, that’s pretty consistent-”

  “Robert,” he interrupted.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You call me Robert and I’ll call you Nancy.”

  “All right,” she said. “Anyway, that much guano is consistent with transient bat habitats in the city’s tunnels and sub
ways. Manhattan has always been a stopping-off point for bats migrating from Canada and New England to the warmer states in the South.”

  “It’s funny,” Gentry said. “I never thought of any animals migrating except for birds.”

  “Bats do, and for exactly the same reason as birds. Insects are extremely scarce during the winter. Bats usually start the trip in late summer and get where they’re going by midfall.Whenever bats are en route, they’ll usually duck into a shelter to stay cool, eat or drink, stay out of the wind, and hide from predators like cats, hawks, snakes, and owls. That could be the case here.”

  “As far as I know, we’ve never had a bat problem or even a bat sighting in my building before.”

  “Did you ever have a cockroach problem?”

  “Not much of one. And I’m right on the Hudson.”

  “I’m not a bug expert, but they could have been chased into your building from somewhere else. A small colony of bats in a subway tunnel might have found a pocket of them. Or they could have been chased in by an upswing in predation near the river.”

  Arvids Stiebris arrived as Joyce was speaking. The tall, powerfully built railroad officer clasped Gentry’s hand tightly. Arvids had been a rookie pitcher on the Metro North softball team during the season that just ended. Gentry had played left field from Midtown South and whiffed during three at bats in the last, crucial playoff game. The kid had an unhittable sinker. Robert Gentry was an okay loser and he admired talent, but the “Heroes from West-chester” profile Kathy Leung had done on Arvids really rankled him-“Hartsdale’s gift to Grand Central…and the pitcher’s mound.”

  Gentry introduced the officer to Dr. Joyce. Arvids fixed his dark eyes on her.

  “I saw you on TV last night with Kathy. That was great spin you put on the bats. Makes you almost want one as a pet.”

  “That wasn’t spin, it was the truth,” Joyce said. “If bat diets were compatible with captivity, they’d make wonderful pets.”

  “Maybe,” Arvids said. He started toward the ramp that led downstairs. “But I wouldn’t want one unless it was housebroken. That is one potent stench they produce.”

  “It’s no worse than that of any other animal,” she replied, “including humans. You’re just not used to it.”

  “I’ll take your word for that,” Arvids said.

  Gentry thought Joyce was being a touch defensive. But then, he didn’t like it when anyone outside of the department criticized cops. Stereotypes could be frustrating to people who knew better.

  “Anyhow,” Arvids went on, “I checked with station maintenance. No one’s been back in the tunnel to clean up the mound. Because this whole thing involved a medical situation, the health inspector has to do an on-site report. You know, tell everyone there’s no danger before they can clean up the guano. That’s supposed to happen later this afternoon.”

  “Not that I’m complaining but why are they waiting so long?” Gentry asked.

  “They just did a major rat sweep in the north end of Central Park,” Arvids said. “Quiet operation, ethyl chloride-every effective. But a lot of people are still in the field cleaning up the bodies.”

  Arvids led Gentry and Joyce to the lowest platform on the east side of the subway terminal. The clerk buzzed them through the service entrance. As they entered and made their way across the crowded ramp, Gentry got the same feeling he’d had earlier-that there was something “off” down here. Subdued. He couldn’t explain why he felt that way.

  They walked to the end of the platform. When they reached the far side, Arvids hopped down. Joyce jumped down after him. Gentry sat on the concrete and slid off.

  A moment later they were in another world.

  Ten

  Grand Central Station is the largest train terminal in the world. It covers nearly fifty acres in the heart of Manhattan and is laced with tunnels stacked seven levels deep in places. The lowest of these tunnels lies more than two hundred and fifty feet underground.

  Dozens of the tunnels are used for either commuter or subway trains. Most of those are on the top two levels. On the other five levels are dozens more tunnels, many of which were begun but never finished. They were abandoned, sealed off, and forgotten when funds ran out, when walls or ceilings or floors leaked, or when needs or technologies changed. At least half of these dark, damp labyrinths are unmapped. Over the years, homeless people opened many of the tunnels and began living there.

  Joyce knew a little of this history from her studies of urban bats and their habitats. But she had never imagined she’d be down here. Like the night, it was fascinating.

  Arvids slid a flashlight from a loop in his belt and shined it ahead. They could see about ten feet down the tracks.

  “Stay behind me, single file,” he said.

  They walked nearly toe-to-heel, with Joyce in the middle. She looked back. Leaving the station was like pushing off in a rowboat.The land sunk away quickly, and the sense of being in a new and dangerous element, on an adventure, quickly took hold. Apart from Arvids’s flashlight and the dull, yellowish bulbs stuck in the ceiling every ten feet or so, there was no illumination down here. No hint of daylight. No fresh air.

  “What do we do if a train comes along?” Joyce asked.

  Before Arvids could answer, Joyce felt the ground begin to quake. It wasn’t like the gentle rumble a rider felt on the platform. It rattled up her ankles, rolled to her waist, and crawled down her arms. She felt it in her fingertips. A moment later the iron columns and tracks began to brighten and glow to the left. Then everything was washed out in a blast of white light from the headlight of the train. The sound was painfully loud.

  Arvids had motioned for them to stand to the right, closer to the wall. They stopped walking and covered their ears as the train lumbered past. It squealed loudly as it stopped at the station. Joyce’s body was still trembling, fine and fuzzy like a tuning fork.

  Arvids shouted back through the cottony silence, “What we do is just step aside!”

  “I see,” she said.

  When the train left the station, the platform was empty and the sense of isolation was even more pronounced. The white-tile wall continued for another few yards. When it ended there was only darkness to the right, to the left, and beyond the glare of the flashlight. Walking here was a little like descending a staircase without looking down.

  Gentry leaned close to her ear. “In case you were wondering, you’re nowhere near the third rail.”

  “That did cross my mind,” Joyce admitted. “Where is it?”

  “Over to the left, underneath the current bar. See it?”

  She looked. She craned. She squinted.

  “That raised, L-shaped piece outside the running rail,” Gentry said, leaning close and pointing.

  “Got it,” she said. “Have you spent a lot of time down here?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” Gentry said. “When I was on the narcotics squad.”

  “You were a narc?” Arvids said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Why did that bring you down into the tunnels?” Joyce asked.

  “Dealers from Connecticut used to toss stuff from the trains, just in case cops were waiting for them in the station,” Gentry said. “They had goons down here to pick the stuff up.”

  “Man,” Arvids said. “I’m impressed. You were a narc. I don’t see much action here and I’ve been thinking about a change. Narcking, Violent Predator Task Force, Worst-of-the-Worst Task Force-those are the kinds of thing you do toreally test yourself. To do some good, too, but also to see if you’ve got the stuff. You know what I mean.”

  “I do. That’s one of the reasons I did it.”

  “It’s like when my dad was in the army and he said he wanted to get some combat in,” Arvids went on, “even though he didn’t really. He just wanted to see how he’d do. He ended up in Vietnam, and it turned out he had more steel in him than he thought.”

  A second train charged by, its light harsh in the deepening darkness. The train was fart
her from the station and was moving faster than the first train. This time Joyce didn’t hum when it passed. She rattled.

  When the train had receded, Joyce tapped Arvids on the shoulder and stopped. “Would you shine your light up for a second?”

  “Sure thing.” Arvids turned his flashlight toward the top of the tunnel.

  The ceiling was about twelve feet above them. There were concrete ledges, iron girders, and discoloration from water seepage. There was a lightly metallic odor coming from the damp metal. Beneath it, in the distance, Joyce could already smell the distinctive odor of the guano.

  “What are you looking for?” Gentry asked.

  “Cockroaches,” she said. “If bats moved in somewhere ahead, the roaches would have moved out. Like at your apartment.”

  Arvids shined the flashlight slowly along the ceiling. “I don’t see any, but they travel pretty fast. And they could have gone in about a million different directions. This is a very long tunnel.”

  “How long?”

  “This particular trunk heads up to the middle of Central Park, which is about two and a half miles north. Then it doubles back and heads southwest to Penn Station.”