Natalie turned to me and swore. “I can’t pick that, and even if I could, I don’t have the tools.”
I looked around for another way in. Sometimes when a lock is impossible, the gods will smile and the hinge will be on your side of the door. Hammering out a hinge pin is heavy work, and we didn’t have mallets, but it didn’t matter. Scars on the doorframe showed where the door had been reset, the hinges safely inside the house proper.
I shook my head. “It’s locked up tighter than a Baptist virgin. Come on.”
We took our time moving around the cellar, searching for any sign of another way in. We had given up and were about to leave when Nat saw it. She lowered to her knees, groaning only a little, and pushed aside a stack of magazines. A few rodent bones went flying and I slapped them away.
“If I never see another bone, it will be too soon,” I said, kneeling beside her. “What have you found?”
She was working her fingertips around a panel set into the rock wall. It was no more than three feet square, flimsy wood that gave way as soon as she pushed. Air, stale and clammy, rushed out from the dark cavity behind.
“Natalie, if you have just opened the seventh seal and kicked off the End Times, give me a heads-up,” I told her.
She flashed a light inside the opening, her head and shoulders disappearing. When she popped back, she was grinning.
“It’s a utility chase. Plumbing,” she informed me, pointing to where the tangle of pipes snaked through the darkness. “I’m going to follow it. Stay here, and if I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, go for help.”
“Go for help? Shouldn’t I come and get you?”
“Nope,” she said, wriggling through the opening. “If I’m not back it means I got stuck, and if I got stuck, you’re definitely not fitting through there.”
“Did you just call me fat?” I asked her ass as she disappeared. The small glow of her light disappeared and I sat back, checking the luminous dial on my watch. I clicked off my light and sat in the darkness. There was no point in wasting the batteries. The only threat down there might be an overzealous mouse or a spider that mistook my wig for a handy place to hang out.
I checked my watch every five minutes, testing myself to see how accurate my sense of time was. It’s easy to lose track when you’re not relying on visual cues. There was no sign of Natalie as the minutes ticked past. I had already decided to ignore her instructions to go for help—how exactly was I supposed to explain this to the authorities? And neither Mary Alice nor Helen were good with tight spaces. I didn’t much care for them either, but I never stepped away from a job that required pushing myself, testing the edge of that tiny tendency towards discomfort when I couldn’t move freely. It was a way of toughening myself up, and I had just about made up my mind to go after her when I saw the glow coming back. She was a mess, poncho shredded and sneakers covered in cobwebs, but she was smiling.
“Got it?” I asked, putting out a hand to haul her back through the opening in the wall.
“Got it,” she said, smiling even bigger. “And he’ll never see it coming.”
We scrambled out of the cellar, through the wine cave, and back to the catacombs, following the grubby yarn trail I’d left until we reached the gate. The trip back was much faster, maybe twenty minutes now that we knew the way. We took off our torn ponchos, rolling them up neatly and stashing them in our pockets. Fresh ones went over our clothes, hiding the worst of the stains, and we dusted off our wigs, cleaning the streaks of dirt from our faces with baby wipes. We were pink-cheeked and only a little the worse for wear when we emerged from the catacombs into the gift shop, chattering in German about the atmosphere. A sleepy staff member made two clicks on their counter and we gave a little smile and wave.
As we took the long way back to the hotel, strolling casually down the Boulevard Raspail, Natalie outlined the plan. I poked holes in it wherever I could, but she had an answer for everything.
“It’s a damned good idea,” I admitted finally. “But it’s going to be hard.”
Natalie grinned. “Just like old times.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
We slept most of the next day before the four of us set out in the late afternoon for the catacombs. We were dressed in fresh jogging suits with plenty of supplies stashed in various pockets. Food, water, and new Eiffel Tower ponchos from our favorite vendor. Mary Alice and Helen came with us to make a group of four. We had already explained to them the necessity for a couple of extra bodies the night before when we gathered for dinner and a council of war in Helen and Natalie’s hotel room. Nat and I had each showered twice and our hair was still wet as we dug in.
“The catacombs staff tracks entries and exits with those little silver clickers,” Natalie said over cartons of carryout Vietnamese food.
Mary Alice frowned into her bún bò huê. “Like they do for the carnival Tilt-A-Whirl?”
“Exactly,” Natalie told her. “It’s low-tech. They have cameras, but there’s no reason for them to check the feed so long as the numbers match up.”
Helen was picking listlessly at an order of gòi cu?n. “Mary Alice and I should take care of that. It’s the least we can do since we can’t do the actual hit.”
“I did the last one,” Mary Alice pointed out as she grabbed one of Helen’s spring rolls to dunk in her beef broth. She eyed my food and I put a protective hand over the container.
“Touch my bún cha and you’ll draw back a bloody stump,” I warned her as I scooped up another pork patty.
She grumped but settled back into her chair. “Why can’t you”—she pointed at me with a spring roll—“and you”—the spring roll swiveled to Natalie—“just do what you did tonight and come out through the catacombs? Then the clicker will be accurate.”
“Because the catacombs close at eight thirty pm and we won’t be able to get to work until well after midnight,” I told her. “If this is going to work, Carapaz needs to be asleep.”
Natalie ran through the rest of the plan and we worked out the details over tiny coconut jellies in the shape of smiley faces. Mary Alice made a long list of supplies we’d have to restock and which stores would have what we needed. But Helen didn’t say much. Most of her coconut jelly was left on the plate, and Mary Alice gave me a look when we got back to our room.
“What?” I was dog-tired and I realized there was a faint, nasty smell in the hotel room.
“I’m worried about Helen. She’s still hardly eating. It’s like the light has gone out.”
“She’s in mourning,” I said. I breathed in again. There was definitely something hanging in the air. I moved to the curtains and sniffed. Nothing.
“It’s more than that,” Mary Alice said, dragging a sleep shirt over her head. She’d lost her Snoopy shirt on the Amphitrite, but she’d replaced it with a soccer jersey that stretched to her knees. “But I don’t know what the problem is.”
“She’s got the yips,” I said absently.
“The yips?”
“It’s a baseball term. Sometimes pitchers will lose a pitch. Maybe they’ve always been able to hum a fastball right over the center of home plate. But one day they wake up and it’s just . . . gone. No matter what they do, they can’t find that pitch. They’ve got the yips. Helen has the yips.”
“You think this is about work?”
I went to the bed and started sniffing sheets. “I know it is.”
I looked up and Mary Alice was giving me a quizzical look over her half-glasses. I sat down on the bed. “Fine. I didn’t say anything at the time, but in Jackson Square, I gave Helen the signal to hit Sweeney.”
Mary Alice blinked. “You did?”
“Yes. And she balked. She froze up. That’s why I took him out.”
She gave a low whistle. “Damn. But we accused you of poaching him. Why didn’t you say anything?”
I shrugged. “Calling Helen out isn’t exactly going to do her any favors. You have to be careful with the yips. The yips are delicate.”
I picked up the pillow and sniffed it. Nothing but detergent.