The guy ahead of me is just as blind, but he knows the drains. Been down here I don’t know how many years. Since he was a kid most probably. Since someone kicked him loose to make his way on his own and he realized the tunnels might be dark, but they were a better place for not getting fucked with than the streets. In the land of the lost, no one empties a gas can over you and lights a match just to see what happens next. Sure people kill each other, but not for no reason other than you’re sleeping in a gutter in their neighborhood. Everyone down here has slept in more than one gutter. They got nothing to prove. When they kill down here it’s for something that matters. Stove fuel. A bottle of wine. A dead guy’s good boots.

What the guy breathing out carbon dioxide up ahead of me killed the cripple over I can’t say. What it was made me take off after him is a little easier to figure.

Figure it was because he did it near the mouth of Freedom Tunnel not far from where the graffiti kids come crawling around to see the work that Amtrak never bothered to paint over when they started running trains through there again. Figure there’s no telling if one of those kids might have seen it happen and might be up top right now talking to the cops about murder in the tunnels. Mostly the cops are pretty fucking happy not to do any enforcing down here. Let justice take its own course. But a nasty slashing witnessed by a Columbia fine arts student might encourage them to put together a squad of troopers with helmets and shields to come down here, break up the shanties, club some skulls and drag some asses up top for a grilling and a few days in one of their holes.

Not that I’m any too likely to get caught up in a sweep like that, but I have an interest in the moles maintaining something like a stable community. More stable it is down here, the less likely they’ll get spooked and spread out. More stable it is, the more moles get drawn in. The more moles, the more camouflage for someone looking to be lost.

And the more to eat.

I’m not fattening up or anything. Far from it. Rarely been leaner have I. But in a population dominated by drunks and junkies, it’s generally not too hard to find someone passed out or on the nod who you can tap for a pint in the darkness. Don’t get greedy and you can hit a vein just about any time you need one.

So figure that’s one reason I took off after the guy. To keep my good thing from getting fucked with. But figure it was probably more about all that blood hitting the wall in a spray. The smell of it was a punch in the face. My eyes and my mouth watered and I was on my feet and running after the guy before I even thought about cops. Before I thought about anything else, I was thinking how nobody was gonna care what I did to this guy. How it was gonna be dark in the tunnels while I ran him down. How good it was gonna be to rip a hole in him and drink until I was so full I was gagging on him. How I wanted a damn drink after all the sipping I’d been doing.

No, I don’t know why he killed the cripple. And I don’t much care. I just care that I’m blind right now and he knows the drains better than me and he’s just there, him and his blood. Question is, did he stop because he hit a dead end, or because he thinks he’s got a play he can make.

Cold shit is bumping against my ankles and flowing toward him. There’s a loud gurgle and suck a few yards ahead.

My first month down here, I found myself in a drain like this, just trying to map out the new turf, thought I was as deep as it goes, took a step and found out it goes deeper. Dropped straight about eight yards, hit brick and cobbles, a shard of rust snagged the back of my thigh and ripped it knee to ass. Lost enough blood before the wound started to clot that I went spinny-headed. That time I had a flashlight on me. Hadn’t been using it because I wanted to learn how to work the dark, but I had it on me. If I hadn’t, if it had broken in the fall, I’d maybe never have found my way out.

I don’t have a flashlight this time. I go down a suck hole and I’ll be gone. Little fucker up there, laying for me, thinking he’s got this wired now that we’re on his turf, he’s got me wanting to make things hard for him. But I got to know where he is first.

I wonder how crazy he is.

And I make a play to find out.

– Hey.

Nothing.

– Let me ask you something.

Still quiet.

– Why’d you go and kill the cripple?

He inhales, like a guy about to say his piece, then lets it out, says nothing.

I keep up my end of the conversation.

– Mean, just because he was a cripple, that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a reason for killing him. Just ‘cause the guy didn’t have a lower body, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do something to deserve it. I knew a guy, blind, blind as a bat blind, couldn’t see shit. Know what being blind did for his personality? Nothing. Guy was a prick. A blind prick. A drunk, blind prick. Closing time at this bar I used to work the door, someone had to always walk this blind prick home. When I drew that short straw, I’d walk the fucker to a vacant lot, let him pass out on the ground. He’d come in the next night, be a prick about the deal, tell people what I’d done. Know what they did? They patted me on the back. All of them knew he deserved it. A guy’s a cripple, that doesn’t mean he’s charming.

I hear him licking his lips, just dying to say something. But he doesn’t. I do.

– Maybe not, though. Maybe your cripple was a great guy. Could be you’re a crazy asshole who lost his shit and cut up a perfectly good cripple for no reason other than you got tired of listening to his wheels squeaking.

– He stole my fucking girlfriend.

That was really all I need, just the sound of his voice, the echo behind it as it bounced off the drain walls and ceiling, that pretty much pins him down for me. Close enough I can jump over anything between us, a few yards maybe, no worry about going down a suck hole. Once I’m on him there won’t be anything at all to worry about.

But my curiosity gets hold of me.

– He stole your girl?

– Yeah. Motherfucker. We’ve been shacked five months. Fucker, that chair, man’s got not just no legs, got no stomach, nothing, fucking pathetic. Sits up on Fifth Ave and just rakes it in. Everyone else going broke, legless motherfucker always has a bottle to wave at the ladies. Asked her, what he’s got I don’t got. Already know what he ain’t got. Got no fucking dick.

– What she say?

I hear his spit hit water.

– Says he got class.

We both think about that for a second. His curiosity gets hold of him.

– Why the fuck do you care? Fuck you run after me? Seen you around, one-eye, never had a beef. Never saw you chum up with the cripple. Why the fuck you chase me down here? Motherfucker, into my drains. Been in the tunnel how long? You know shit down here. Come after me. You’re fucking the crazy one. Come after me in the drains. Why’d you do that?

I check my footing, make sure there’s nothing to slip on under the soles of my boots.

– You got something I want.

He laughs.

– Motherfucker, you got the wrong man, I ain’t got shit. All I had was a girlfriend. Cripple got her. Now all I got is a blade. You want to come and get it?

– No, you can keep that, I got my own.

I jump, push off, arms out, leaving my feet as if to make a tackle in a football game, except leading with a fifteen-inch amputation blade I found in the rusted tangle of an old shopping cart at the mouth of an outlet three months ago. I used a river stone to hone away the rust, losing about two millimeters of the blade’s width in the process, but after wrapping a quarter of a roll of yellow friction tape around the tang to replace the bone handles that had rotted away, I had a serviceable piece of cutlery that could fend off most trouble just through the act of slipping it from the drop sheath I’d rigged inside my jacket with a section of bicycle inner tube and more tape.