Chapter 52
We waited. The silence was driving me insane. I had never been good with silence.
“I’m good,” Pascal finally answered, his voice coming from impossibly far below. “There’s a set of stairs. It was easy.”
“Stairs?” I said. “Stairs to where?”
“Do you think this is it?” Pascal called from below with a tone something like wonder. “What if I find Capone’s treasure, Doll? Can I have Ned’s job? Carne asada?”
“You’re hired, buddy,” I said, relieved. “See if you can find a way out.”
Pascal shuffled off into the dark, and I looked at Quin. “If there’s gangster gold down there, you and your friends can take it,” I said. “I just want them out safe. And Alex, safe. Promise me.”
“Doll, I’m not one of them,” Quin said. “I swear.”
“What are you, then?” I demanded. “You’re not hanging out at a Jefferson Park tavern all day for weeks, just for Wednesday night music club. You must have your reasons, like your friend Jim.”
“Did you say something to me?” Lumpy Jim called from the next room.
“Hush,” I hissed. “I meant the other Jim.”
“What?” Lumpy said.
“Not you, Jim.”
The silence from the gaping opening in the wall was a presence, watchful. I got close and peered down, though there was nothing so see.
At last Pascal’s voice came from below again. “Dahlia?”
I let out a shaking breath. “Yes, Pascal. Yes, I’m here. Did you find anything?”
“What is this place?” Pascal said.
“Did you find a way out?”
“Sort of,” he said. “There’s a hole in the ceiling and light coming through.”
The ceiling? The ceiling would be—the hatchet job to the floors at ground level in the space next door. Was that a way out, though, or would we end up with guns pointed as us again, Alex’s Hail Mary wasted? Dahlia McPhee, look at yourself.
“That’s the empty storefront next door,” I said to the room. Marisa, for one, didn’t look thrilled about revisiting that half of the building. “They broke through the floors over there. Pascal, you listened hard for voices? You didn’t hear anything?”
Quin leaned into the opening. “Could you fit through it, Pascal? The hole you found?”
“I could, if I could reach it,” he said.
Quin and I conferred with a look. “If we can get a few more people down there to boost Pascal up, he’d be able to get out to the street and get help,” I said. “If you’re not going to stop him.”
“I want everyone to get out safe, Doll,” Quin said. “That’s why…”
“That’s why what?”
“I’ll go,” Lourey said, stepping into the room. “Rooster and I can lift him.”
“Let’s do this,” Quin said. “All the ladies. Jim, big man? You keep watch at that door for now, but we’re going to get out of here, too. You and me, I promise you.”
Jim said nothing. He would be rethinking his stance on drinking at home.
“Pascal,” I called through the gap. “We’re sending down some people to get you through that opening you found. Help them find their footing, all right?”
Lourey, Suzy, strong from drumming, Rooster, no problem from lugging that bass around. They all slipped down easily. They caught Shanny, nervous and shaking, as she came down and then she took over as guide while the rest of the band went off to lift Pascal out.
“What?” Lourey exclaimed down below.
“Hey,” I whispered loudly. “Keep it quiet down there.” I turned to see who was next. “Sis, come on.”
Marisa was fussing at her, but I cut her off and turned Sis over to Quin. He helped her up into the sink and through. She grasped at my hand at the last second, and Quin and I shared the duty of lowering her out of sight as Marisa sniffled behind us. I listened for her feet on the floor below.
“She’s down,” Shanny said from below.
Then it was Marisa’s turn. Quin helped her up, but once her foot was through the hole, she panicked. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do it.”
“Sis is already down there,” I said. “You have to. You can do this.”
Marisa reached out and grasped my forearm. “I—I have to say, just this one thing—”
“Suck it in, Marisa,” I said. “I’m not going to forgive you at the eleventh hour for an abusive childhood. Just go.”
“I wasn’t abusive,” she said, the spot between her eyebrows creased. “Who said I was ever abusive?”
“Let’s talk about it later,” Quin suggested.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not going into this hole, possibly to my death…” She took a shaking breath. “I’m not going without knowing what you’re talking about.”
“I showed up in Chicago with a child-sized cast on my left arm,” I said. “A parting gift from you.”
She was shaking her head. “No. No, that’s not true.” She looked around but found only Oona. “You’re not remembering it right,” Marisa said. “It was Alex who let you get hurt.”
“No—”
“I do think,” Oona said, “that Alex would want to be here to speak for himself.”
“You fell, playing,” Marisa said. “In some dark corner of this pub you love so much. You’d only been with him a few months, and it didn’t help his case. That’s why you ended up not staying here after I … after…”
She stuttered to finish, to find words that didn’t indict herself. I had opened my mouth to do it for her when Quin cut in.
“I think I do need to insist,” he said evenly. “That, uh, your mother? That she go now.” He raised a hand in surrender when I turned on him. “You can certainly fight later, after we all survive this.”
Fine.
Marisa allowed Quin to hand her into position. But she wasn’t done having her say. “I didn’t do you harm,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t do you any good, either. Or myself. But I … I never meant you harm, Dahlia.”
Oona came up behind me, backing me up. Marisa had her nice leather boots through the opening. “I loved you,” Marisa said. “I do. Love you. That’s what I wanted to say.”
She was stuck. That hindquarters she’d passed down to me was wedged in the narrow bit. I watched as she wriggled and kicked and Quin tried to avoid touching any indelicate spot as he stuffed her down.
Finally gravity did its work and Marisa broke through with a little scream. Quin put his head through to check on her, and Shanny called up, confirming she’d landed and was fine.
“Next,” Quin said to Oona.
Oona climbed up into the sink. “Alex will know what really happened, Dahlia. He’ll clear it up. When … when.”
But that was a prediction she couldn’t bear to make.
“You’re coming, right?” she said, hesitating as she put her Doc Martens through the opening. Her hairy sweater plucked at the plaster. “He’ll never forgive me…”
“Get as many of the group up into daylight after Pascal,” I said. “Everybody work together. No matter what happens, Oona, get them out.”
Quin eased Oona down into Shanny’s care, then turned to me.
“I can’t,” I said.
“You have to.”
“What about you and Lump—Jim?”
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Quin said.
“Are you anything but tricks up a sleeve?” I gestured toward the torn sleeve of his jacket. The white cuff of his shirt was soaked, red, bright. Fresh. “That’s … a lot of blood.”
“I’ll be okay,” he said.
“That is seriously not a scratch.” I stretched for his arm. He reared back, twisting away and grimacing in pain, sucking in a breath. I had a hand on his back, high on his shoulder.
He’d gone still, watchful.
My hand was flat on him, an intimacy. I felt the same shift in the air around us as in the office that afternoon. The same closeness, the same mingled breath.
And then through his jacket, I felt … a harness?
“I can explain,” he said.
“Is that? Is that a holster?” I said. “Are you carrying a gun?”