Beatrice bit her lip. “Oh, I’m sure there’s a bus stop nearby.”

“Like hell. Let me call you a cab, okay?” He grabbed her by the arm and led her back toward the lounge.

“I can’t go back in there!” She shook her arm free and searched the empty street.

“You’re with me.”

“No! Just let me stay here. I’ll stay in the alley out of sight, I promise.”

Ramone dropped her arm and kept walking toward the entrance, shaking his head. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”

She waited until he vanished around the corner. Heart pounding, she turned and ran to the shadows in the alley away from Ramone and the Lancer Motel.

CHAPTER 66

Eleven blocks later, Beatrice finally stopped to catch her breath. She was on Chester Avenue and twenty-five blocks east of the bank. The freezing air burned her lungs. Her hands and feet stung from the cold, and there wasn’t a cab in sight. She hid between the pools of yellow light from the streetlamps, searching the road for a bus, a taxi, anything. Behind her, there was no sign of Ramone or anyone else.

She hoisted her suitcase and kept moving. Chain-link fences and empty buildings flanked the sidewalk. She rushed past a bashed-in storefront. Broken glass was scattered on the floor inside the abandoned store. There were no open stores, no restaurants, no cars in that part of town. Boarded-up buildings lined the street one after the other. Beatrice paused at a bombed-out row of townhouses and shivered.

Making her way closer to Public Square, she hoped to find a cab or someplace warm to thaw out. She fantasized about the lobby of the Stouffer’s Inn and the big cushy bed overlooking the alley.

Then it occurred to her. She had no way to pay for it. After the hotel room the night before, she had less than five dollars cash to her name. All of her money was stuck in her checking account at the bank. In her panic to leave the building, she’d forgotten to get it out. How could she be so stupid?

The cold wind cut through her coat as it whipped down the empty street. The suitcase banged against her leg as her feet pounded up Chester toward the tall buildings.

Twenty blocks later, her freezing hands felt as though their skin had been scraped off with a saw blade. Her toes were so numb she could barely walk. The suitcase dangled from the raw meat of her fist until it finally fell to the ground. She doubled over, trying to warm herself. God was punishing her. She shouldn’t have run. Behind her, she almost hoped to see Ramone shaking his fist, but she’d run too far and several streets north. He wouldn’t find her. There were no cars in sight.

Her dazed eyes circled the street. The buildings had grown taller. The First Bank of Cleveland was only six blocks away. It was the last place she wanted to go, but she had nowhere else. An unlit sign hung over her head. The dead bulbs spelled out “State Theater,” and she remembered reading the name on a plaque on the wall in the tunnels.

There was a side alley to the left of the entrance. She dragged her suitcase into the narrow passage between the buildings, searching for a doorway, a manhole cover, anything that might lead her out of the cold. Teeth chattering, she stumbled deeper into the alley between snow-covered dumpsters. She debated climbing inside one to get out of the wind, but then at the back of the alley she saw it. A small shed with a blank door was tucked next to a standpipe. It looked remarkably like the one behind Stouffer’s Inn. She reached into her purse and pulled out Max’s keys. Her stiff fingers could barely grip the icy metal, and they tumbled into the snow at her feet.

Beatrice crouched down and dug through the razor blades of ice to retrieve the keys from the slush. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. A large shadow in a hooded jacket lurched to a stop on the sidewalk fifty paces behind her. It turned in her direction. Beatrice gasped and snatched the keys from the snowbank. They jingled loudly in her shaking hands as she struggled to slide one into the lock. It didn’t fit. The freezing keys stuck to her wet skin as she wrestled another one free. The shadow was moving toward her.

She shrieked in the back of her throat and forced a key into the lock with two raw hands. The door swung open mercifully, and she threw herself inside.

The room was pitch black. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it. The warmth of the room sharpened the stabbing pain of frost in her fingers and toes. She breathed hot air into her hands. Something thudded loudly against the door. She jumped away from it with a yelp. Her purse hit the ground as she fell onto something big and metal. The doorknob rattled back and forth.

“Go away,” she whimpered.

Thump. Thump. Then the noise stopped.

Beatrice held her breath, listening until she was certain whoever it was had given up and left. She slowly picked herself up off the metal box she’d landed on and felt around on the clammy ground for her purse. Only then did she realize she had left her suitcase in a pile of snow on the other side of the door.

“Oh no!” she gasped, spinning toward the door. There was no way she was opening it up again. Whoever it was on the other side probably stole the suitcase anyway.

A thin thread of light leaked in through the doorframe. As her eyes adjusted, she could just make out the bulky thing on the floor. She reached down. It was a hatch. She felt her way to a handle. The cover swung up, and she knew what lay beneath it. It was a ladder.

Beatrice felt her way blindly down into the tunnel below. The darkness swallowed her whole. Not even the glimmer of light from the doorframe could reach her at the bottom. She didn’t have a flashlight, or a match, or anything. It didn’t matter. It was warm, and she was hidden from the world above. She wanted to lie down so badly, she no longer cared where she did it. She crouched to touch the ground below her and cringed. It was wet. A drop of water fell in the distance. Then another. She crept slowly toward the sound with her hands held out in front of her.

The pain in her fingers and toes slowly receded as she inched her way down the tunnel. After five minutes in the dark, she could no longer tell if her eyes were open or closed. Her breathing grew more and more thunderous in the infinite black. The dripping sound led her to a fork in the tunnel. She followed it to the right and down another narrow passageway. She felt her way, searching for a dry place to sleep, until she no longer had any idea how far she had gone.

Hysteria began to take hold in the back of her brain stem. She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t see. She was growing more disoriented and convinced she would never be able to find her way out. Her pulse quickened to a dizzying pace. Her throat tightened as her breathing grew more rapid. She sucked in air frantically and stifled a scream. She was drowning in a black sea. She was buried alive. She stumbled forward, no longer even holding up her arms to protect her face. Out. She had to get out.

She was nearly running when her foot caught on something. She yelped as she toppled to her knees. Fetid water seeped into her stockings. The air was close and stale, like rotting leaves. Her hands crawled along the swampy concrete floor, feeling for her purse. Everything was cold and wet, until her fingers grazed something warm and soft. It was a hand.

CHAPTER 67

Friday, August 28, 1998