All that remained was the darkness of the tunnels.

CHAPTER 22

Keith and Heather spent the entire morning downtown, moving from one public building to another, showing their identification and passing through the metal detectors so often that the process had become automatic. Everywhere they went, they met the same response- or, more accurately, the same lack of response.

To the city bureaucracy, it was as if the homeless problem had simply been solved. "Oh, there are still a few of them," they were told over and over again by blandly pleasant faces-both male and female-who sat behind bulletproof screens designed to keep them safe from the public they were employed to serve. "It's the strong economy, you know- anyone who wants to work can find a job. There just aren't as many as there used to be."

Or they heard: "The tunnels under the city? Are you nuts? You'd have to be crazy to live down there! I mean, there's no light, or water, or anything, is there?"

Eventually they gave up, grabbed hot dogs from one of the kiosks between the Municipal Building and Police Headquarters, then went down into the subway to head uptown.

"You know, they're right," Heather said as she glanced around the platform where they waited for a train. There was one person softly strumming a guitar, its case open in front of him, but everyone else seemed to have somewhere to go, something to do. "There really aren't as many of them as there used to be-a few years ago there were panhandlers everywhere. You couldn't get away from them."

A train rolled into the station, and they stepped into a half-empty car. As they sank down onto a bench, Keith said, "I think maybe I owe you an apology."

Heather's brows rose. "Me? Why?"

"Well, you know I wasn't too crazy about Jeff going out with you-"

"We weren't just going out," Heather cut in. "We were going to get married."

Keith sighed. "And it didn't matter what I thought, did it?"

Heather shook her head. "We'd made up our minds."

"Well, as it turns out, I guess Jeff was right, and I was wrong." His face flushed. "I guess that's what I wanted to apologize for-I thought you were just a spoiled rich girl. I even thought you might have been using Jeff as a way to piss off your father-a little rebellion before you settled down with a Park Avenue lawyer named Skip. But that's not it at all, is it?"

For the first time since Jeff had disappeared, Heather found herself smiling. "Daddy'd hate to hear you say that. To hear that maybe he failed after all the years of trying to spoil me…" She almost laughed, but her smile faded as she remembered where they were going, and why. "What if we don't find him?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Keith had no answer. The silence that fell over them wasn't broken until they emerged from the subway at Sherman Square and started west on Seventy-second toward the Hudson. The wind off the river put a snap in the air, and Heather buttoned up her light Burberry trench coat as they crossed West End Avenue. A quarter of a block farther they came to the foot of Riverside Drive. Directly ahead lay the entrance to the West Side Highway, and beyond the end of the ramp was the highway itself, a rush of traffic streaming in both directions. To the south lay one end of the huge new Trump development that stretched for nearly a mile along the river. To the north, Riverside Park stretched away into the distance, a belt of green that ran two and a half miles up to 125th Street.

"She said she'd be south of the marina," Heather said, ignoring the light and crossing Riverside Drive. "Come on."

Keith followed her into the park. She took them along a path that wound under the West Side Highway, and as they emerged at the top of a steep incline falling away to the river, Keith's eye caught some movement on the railroad tracks that he could glimpse to the south. There were several pairs of them, running under the highway and the park, only partially visible through the columns that supported the highway that covered them. Though there was a tall fence separating the tracks from the narrow strip of parkland between them and the river, the concrete wall behind the tracks was covered with graffiti.

"Those are the tracks from Penn Station," Heather told him. Two shabbily dressed men who were sitting at the base of one of the columns looked up at them. "And those must be two of the people who live in the tunnels." As if in confirmation, the two men lurched to their feet and walked along the tracks toward the mouth of the tunnel. Just before they disappeared from view, one of the men raised his left hand and extended its middle finger.

The gesture was enough to tell them how they could expect to be received by the locals.

They went down a steep ramp to the right. Halfway down Heather paused and pointed to a small tent that had been pitched on a level patch no more than fifteen feet off the path, separated from it by a metal railing. In front of the tent was a rickety-looking table holding a Coleman stove and a chipped enamel dishpan.

A woman clad in a long, mud-stained skirt and a much-mended man's flannel shirt was carefully sweeping the dirt in front of the tent.

Keith felt embarrassed even to watch her attempt at housekeeping. The woman looked up as they passed, but when Heather smiled at her, she quickly turned away, pretending not to have seen them.

Fifty or so yards ahead they saw Eve Harris. She was sitting on a bench, talking to a woman wearing a paisley skirt, a purple blouse, and a tattered Navy pea jacket. As Keith and Heather approached, the councilwoman rose to her feet, but the woman with her eyed them suspiciously. "These are the people I was telling you about," Eve said to her, reaching out to take Heather's hand and draw her forward. "Heather Randall and Keith Converse. And this," she went on, turning to her companion, "is my good friend, Tillie." She glanced at her watch. "I've told Tillie what you want to talk to her about, and she says she'll listen. But there's no guarantee she can help you. Understood?"

"Understood," Keith agreed.

Apparently satisfied, Eve Harris leaned down, gave Tillie a hug, and kissed her on the cheek. "You take care of yourself now, hear?"

Tillie made a shooing gesture. "Don't you worry ‘bout me," she said. "I been taking care of myself more years than I can count." But despite the gruffness of her words, she smiled, exposing a mouthful of ruined teeth. "You stay out of trouble, okay?"

"Don't worry about me," Eve assured her. "I can take care of myself as well as you can take care of yourself."

"Well, if that's the best you can do, you're in trouble. Now get on out of here and let me tend to these two." Tillie's smile vanished along with Eve Harris, and when she turned to survey Keith and Heather once again, her eyes were filled with suspicion. "She said you're lookin‘ for someone. Who?"

"My son," Keith said, sitting down on the bench beside her. "His name is Jeff Converse."

Tillie pursed her lips, then shook her head. "What makes you think he's in the tunnels?"

"A man named Al Kelly told me," Keith replied. "He saw him going in with a man called Scratch."

Tillie shook her head again. "I don't think so," she said. "No, I don't think I know a thing about either of them."

A girl wearing jeans and a flannel shirt appeared at Tillie's side. She eyed Keith and Heather closely. "They messin‘ with you, Tillie?"

Tillie shook her head. "It's okay-they're just looking for someone." She reached deep into an inside pocket of her pea jacket, and when her hand came back out, it was filled with money. She shoved it at the girl. "You take Robby shopping after school, okay? Get him what he needs so the other kids leave him alone." The girl took the money, peered at Keith and Heather one more time, then started away. "Jinx?" Tillie called out. The girl stopped and looked back. "You bring receipts, and change. And they better match, too." Rolling her eyes, Jinx darted away, and Tillie heaved herself to her feet. "Better be gettin‘."