“So how do pitchers fix the yips?”
“They don’t. You wait them out and hopefully one day you wake up and they’re gone.”
“And if they never leave?”
“Then you get busted down to the minors where you sit on the bench until the end of your contract and you wind up coaching Little League to six-year-old assholes.”
“Six-year-olds can’t be assholes,” Mary Alice says. “The fact that you think they can says a lot.”
“Yeah, it says that you’ve clearly never met a six-year-old.” I reached for the corner of the bedspread to give it a good sniff.
“Billie, I care about you, but this is an intervention. That smell is you. Go take another shower.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The next day we followed the routine Mary Alice had laid out. We ate well and worked our way methodically through the shopping list and preparations. Natalie and I stuffed our pockets as full as we could of all the supplies we needed, and wore double fanny packs, hiding the extra bulk under our windbreakers. The weather had turned cold and damp and we huddled together in line, each of us wearing one of the brightly patterned ponchos. We put our steel-grey wigs back on and a few minutes with a contour kit aged us up about a decade. A group of Italian teenagers cut in line in front of us and I stared down the leader of the little wolfpack as he stepped on my sneaker to get to his friends. I was just reaching for my knitting needles when Mary Alice gripped my arm.
“Play nice,” she murmured.
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” I muttered back. “But a little light stabbing might teach him some manners.”
“Focus on the job. I’ll trip him when we get inside,” she promised.
“That’s real friendship,” I told her.
We passed through the security screening and made our way through the exhibition and into the rooms of bones. Helen was pale, her breath shallow, and I gave Mary Alice a nudge. “Hurry her to the end. The air is shit down here and she doesn’t look good.”
Helen overheard and managed a tight smile. “I’m fine, Billie. It’s just a little smelly.”
“Moldy bones,” Nat said cheerfully. She looked around. “Ready?”
“Ready,” the rest of us said. Mary Alice and Helen gave us one last look and moved away, slowly circling the stacks of bones. It took a while for them to find the right marks, but about half an hour later, a pair of younger women wearing Disneyland Paris sweatshirts wandered in. They were fussing about the dirtiness of the place and I could practically feel Mary Alice beaming from across the room. They were perfect. She approached with the extra ponchos and spent a few minutes chatting brightly. The women looked wary at first, probably expecting she’d want money, but after a bit they accepted the ponchos and put them on. The plan called for Mary Alice and Helen to jostle the counter out of the staff member’s hand at the exit. It would be child’s play to pick it up and add two quick clicks as they were handing it back, but if that failed, and they realized two guests were still in the catacombs, they’d pull the video. And video would show four women going in wearing Eiffel Tower ponchos and four Eiffel Tower ponchos coming out. They’d do a sweep at that point and when the catacombs staff didn’t find anyone, they would probably shrug and lock up for the night.
We waited for a bit, letting the last rush of guests move through before the quiet of the dinner hour. There would be another rush of evening tours, but we were long gone before that, using the break between groups to slip through the gate again. It was much more difficult to relock than it had been to pick it in the first place, but it was essential to leave no indication anyone had come that way.
We wound our way through the tunnels, up and down and around, always bearing northwest. We stopped in a cozy little nook to hunker down under space blankets—it was cold down there—and pack in some nutrition. We played word games and took turns dozing off until it was time to head off again. When we got to the d’Archambeau wine cave, we stopped and checked our gear one last time, then entered the cellar. A quick look around showed that nothing had been moved since the day before. The spiderwebs were intact, the stacks of Paris Match still teetering. Natalie whipped off the wooden panel and we paused long enough to strap headlamps on. Then we eased into the utility chase, Natalie in front leading the way.
There wasn’t much room and we had to move sideways, backs against the stone walls as our fronts brushed the pipes. After we’d gone twenty feet or so, they took a vertical turn and so did the chase. This part had clearly been a chimney at one time, lined with old bricks, the mortar in between crumbling. I pulled out a chalk bag and dipped my fingers in before passing it to Nat. We both wore climbing shoes, thin-soled and grippy, and as we made our way up, finding hand-and footholds in the gaps between the bricks, I could almost imagine I was on the gym’s climbing wall. We didn’t have far to go—only fifteen feet or so—before Nat stopped, wedging her feet on a ledge. The pipes bent at a ninety-degree angle; we were just outside a bathroom. In front of Natalie was a cutout, about the same size as the opening from the cellar, blocked with a piece of metal that was held in place with a series of clips.
Nat took out a Swiss Army knife, flicking it open to the flathead screwdriver attachment. She had just raised her hand to wedge it under the first clip when we heard the whistle. Nat froze, tool in hand, and gave me a wide-eyed stare. It was just one low note at first, then it slid into a loose melody. It took me a minute to place it, but when I did, I almost laughed out loud.
“?‘Uptown Funk,’?” I mouthed to Natalie.
We waited until the notes trailed off. There was a pause, a rattle of something metal, and then a whoosh as the toilet flushed. The wastewater rattled down the pipe next to us and Natalie made a gagging motion. “God, I hope that was just pee,” I muttered. She flapped her hand at me and I made the universal gesture for zipping lips. She tapped her watch and I nodded. It was just past one am and hopefully that late-night bathroom trip meant Carapaz would be out again soon.
To be safe, we gave it half an hour before Natalie started to work again. She took ages, prying open each little metal clasp. She alternated sides, then did the top. When that was finished, she motioned to me, and I squeezed in next to her. The metal panel wasn’t just a sheet, it was a box—the medicine cabinet of Carapaz’s bathroom. Together we eased it forward slowly, working it free. The hardest part of the entire job was maneuvering the medicine cabinet into the bathroom and setting it on the vanity in perfect silence. The opening where the medicine cabinet had been was a vacant rectangle and Nat popped her head through, surveying the bathroom. She gave me a thumbs-up and we moved on to phase two. I laced my hands into a cat’s cradle for Nat, giving her a boost over the edge of the opening. She shimmied through, and after a minute, a hand came back through, giving me another thumbs-up.