Pest control? Bugs. Fuck. She thinks they’re going to bug her.
Technology elevated everyone’s game. I handled a lot of freelance jobs for lowlifes who wanted to monitor their workers or enemies. I had a special love for the mini cameras. People could put things anywhere and monitor a person’s every movement. But the smart gangs used this too and it appeared the Russians were on point.
Me: Then, we meet at X’s. My place is a no for tonight.
I knew she wouldn’t want to get Xavier involved. She always felt guilty with him. But more people needed to be involved. Whether she understood it or not, the bodies were already piling up. And goddamn it, I needed help keeping secrets.
Emily: Let’s not get X in this. Why not your place? I don’t care if it’s a mess. We’re not having high tea, Max! We need to talk.
Me: Doesn’t matter. Not my place. I’ll see you at X’s in an hour.
I shut the phone off and headed to Darryl’s, hoping I could swing by to see Kennedy too. She said she was sick. I thought it was bullshit. Kennedy knew something, more than I did. Darryl was hiding something, and Emily was a goddamn nuclear weapon with a shattered mind.
Fuck that. I can’t deal with all this by myself.
Chapter 5
Emily
Kazimir left my office.
He mentioned he represented the lion in that painting and I was the mouse. I didn’t doubt it. He damn sure looked like a lion to me—a ferocious one ready to eat me alive. I’d dealt with dangerous people, but this was out of my league.
Every second, minute, hour, and day had to run perfectly. There could be no slip ups, and there weren’t many to trust. Not even Darryl; he’d just end up getting me into more bullshit.
The art showing went on, but I was barely there mentally.
In my office, I changed out of my Cynthia personality, leaving the wig, heels, and outfit there. My afro was braided into a valley of small cornrows formed into tiny designs—spirals and swirls going around my head and then down. The many ends dangled well past my shoulders and curled at the tip. I had a girl in the projects that could braid hair any way. She could braid a person’s name on the right side of the head and put a bunch of hearts on the left.
I put on jeans, sneakers, and a black jacket. I pulled out my desk drawer and stared at my gun.
Should I bring it with me?
I sighed and shut the drawer. The chances of my using it would be low. If these Russians wanted me dead for some reason, they would be better at pulling out their guns and shooting than me. I thought of what Uncle Xavier had told me years ago.
“You’re not a shooter. Put the gun down. Besides, you’re the most dangerous weapon on the block—a woman with a brain that can outthink anybody.”
I shut the drawer.
I shifted into my new persona. The only thing I kept on me was my heart locket—the one my Uncle had given me for Christmas last year. While he wasn’t really my Uncle, he’d been there for me more than anyone had.
“Keep this with you, Em.” He placed it around my neck. “I want to always be with you.”
I headed off to meet Maxwell at Xavier’s. After I closed the event, I spied two cars across the street. I checked the back of the building and two Russians stood outside, talking to each other and smoking cigarettes.
He already has them watching me. That makes sense.
Too bad I didn’t like being watched. I shut off all the lights in the gallery, opened the utility closet, lifted the hatch on the floor, grabbed my trusty flashlight, and climbed down into the abandoned tunnel under my property. It was the main reason why I’d bought it.
Working with criminals wasn’t an easy feat. Some came to me drugged up on power, ego, or whatever they’d sniffed, smoked, or injected. Sometimes, it was better to have several escape routes mapped out for a safe departure.
This lion is keeping me in the dark for now. He doesn’t need to know my movements or where I am tonight.
I slammed the latch closed and traveled in the direction of Xavier’s lair.
When people thought of the New York City underground, the vast subway system, sewers, and water tunnels came to mind. Far lesser people knew of the obscure and lesser documented tunnels—often running from building to building and throughout Manhattan. When we were kids, Maxwell, Darryl, and I had found the first hidden tunnel by accident. That night, I’d checked the records on it at the library, overly obsessed with the idea of secret tunnels and hidden passageways that many didn’t know about.
It was the Farley-Morgan tunnel right under 9th avenue. The records had reported that it was an old postal tunnel that ran under the east side of 9th avenue between the Morgan mail sorting facility and the basement of the famous James A. Farley post office. The heavily secured road tunnel was used to move mail to and from Penn Station, where letters and packages would be transported on Amtrak trains. Apparently, Amtrak even had a special mail only train for a few years, running along the northeast corridor. They stopped using the passageway in the 2000s. That tunnel became our playground—our haven from the gangs trying to recruit us, the social workers searching for us, and the creepy guys taking too much of an interest in little kids alone on the streets.
Regardless, I became obsessed with finding secret tunnels throughout New York, spending weeks reading through books in the library and then dragging Maxwell and Darryl to search them out. There were the McCarren Pool tunnels in Brooklyn. McCarren was the borough’s biggest public pool. The tunnels had been built for behind-the-scenes passages for maintenance employees, boiler room access, etc. It was a huge network leading all over the place. We must’ve run through those for weeks.
People wouldn’t believe how many passageways had been built and hidden right under them. There was the East New York freight tunnel more widely known among graffiti artists. Columbia University had an old steam tunnel system that dated back to when the campus was an insane asylum. There were even ones under Rockefeller center.
However, Harlem had a labyrinth of tunnels not on record. I couldn’t find one ounce of information in the library and later online of why they existed. The most I could think of was that the tunnels must’ve been made back in the 1800s and the records were lost.
With the latch shut, only a black quiet surrounded me.
I turned on the flashlight and finished my journey down the ladder.
Under the city, there was only silence, darkness, and rats. They scurried along, so unused to humans they steered clear of me when I walked forward. At times, I made my walk through here, instead of dealing with the hustle and bustle of the streets. Kennedy came down once and went right back up, scared out of her mind of being down here.
But for some reason, this labyrinth had been my home. And at the scariest times of my life, I sought the tunnel’s hidden comfort over anything else.
Down here, I contemplated the craziness that had just happened.
As usual, Darryl had brought trouble to my door.
“Like the lion in this painting, trapped by rope and other things, I need your help. I need you to be a little mouse and nibble away the problem,” he said. “And when you do this for me, you’ll find there will be many rewards.”
Kazimir had asked a question about money laundering. Clearly, he wanted me to clean his dirty money.