Jeff Jacobson - Sleep Tight

David shook his head, finally said, “Fuck. Fuck!” He went to the empty aquarium and pulled out a baggie of fine white powder.

Sam took that as well. “Now, tell me the truth. Don’t you feel better?”

Back in the car, Ed took the passenger seat and chuckled. “That kid.” He split open a Swisher Sweet with his pocket knife, scooped out the sweet smelling tobacco, and sprinkled some of the weed in its place as Sam pulled out onto the Drive. “He gets any dumber, we’re gonna have to call Social Services.”

“Well, I suppose there’s a good reason they call it dope,” Sam said, weaving the cruiser through traffic. He rolled down the driver’s window as Ed lit the blunt. Ed passed it to him, but Sam shook his head and laughed. “You fucking hippies. I’m driving, dammit.”

Ed took another hit.

Sam pulled a flask out of his jacket and took a long sip. He hit the lights and the gas and sped south through the blowing snow on Lake Shore Drive.

CHAPTER 9

2:14 AM

December 28

“Rule number one. Get yourself some decent boots. Those, they go to what, the top of your ankle?” Don asked as the truck rolled down West Ogden, passing three buildings, liquor stores, and vacant lots filled with nothing but snow. The avenue was nearly deserted at three-thirty in the morning. Parts of the West Side looked abandoned at the best of times; tonight it looked damn near apocalyptic.

They’d been at the bar close to five hours, shooting the shit, watching basketball and hockey. Don introduced Tommy around to most of the regulars. When Don mentioned Lee’s name, guys would invariably wince and offer their condolences. Then they changed the subject. Quickly.

Tommy lifted his foot to his knee and peered at it skeptically. He’d had the boots for nearly five years. Heavy-duty leather with thick soles, he couldn’t see what was wrong with them.

“Nah. They’re no good,” Don said. “You want something that’ll go up to your knees. Like some snake hunting boots, you know? Might have to hit some of the motorcycle stores, or the farm and hunting stores down in Indiana. I’ll see if I can dig up an extra pair of pads for now. When you get ’em, make sure they’re big enough that they’ll fit over your jeans. Had a rat run up inside my work pants once. Whoo boy, lemme tell ya, that was fun.”

The crossed Cermak, then South Pulaski.

“Rule number two. Don’t waste your time chasin’ rats with bait. Mr. Rat, he’s too goddamn smart. And there’s just too many of ’em. So you find a colony, and you poison the living shit out of it.”

“We’re heading for a colony?”

“We’re heading for the biggest, baddest colony you ever seen. Just you wait. We could kill rats until Christ comes back, and we wouldn’t make a goddamn dent in their population.”

Tommy considered this for a moment. “You ever been to Palmisano Park in Bridgeport?”

Don shook his head.

“It’s a nature park, got a lake, some paths and shit. Used to be the Stearns Limestone Quarry.”

“Oh sure, sure.”

“My dad told me, back in the day, when they were done hauling limestone out, somebody had the bright idea to fill half of it up with garbage, then make a park out of it.”

Don laughed. “Bet they got more than they bargained for.”

“Dad told me that the rats got so bad, they had to burn the garbage. Guess they had to stand around the place, killing rats as it all burned. Heard they switched to construction junk to fill it in.”

“Where we’re headed, it’s a little off the beaten path,” Don said with a sly grin. “Like everything else our esteemed commissioner has got his fingers in, it’s in that gray area in between of not exactly legal and a fuckin’ war crime.”

Don turned off into an industrial wasteland. “Take a deep breath. Just south of here, there’s the biggest raw sewage treatment plant you’ve ever seen. You ever hear of the Deep Tunnel?”

“Storm runoff?”

“Yeah. It’s so all the water has somewhere to go, so all our shit, and I mean that literally, understand, doesn’t wash out into the lake.” He turned into an industrial section, followed a few of the smaller streets that wove through the warehouses and deserted factories until they came to a shipping yard. Don nodded to the gate’s watchmen and followed a gravel road that wound around the trucks and down into a surprisingly deep quarry.

Down at the far end was a tunnel.

A set of narrow gauge train tracks that hadn’t felt steel wheels in decades, nearly obliterated in dirt and gravel, stretched into the darkness. Don didn’t even slow down and before Tommy could say anything, they were hurtling into the tunnel. Rough-hewn rock whipped past his window.

“Huh.” Tommy swallowed. “Didn’t realize we were actually headed underground.”

“Well, you wanna catch rats, you ain’t gonna catch ’em sipping cocktails at the Drake.” Don considered this for a moment. “Well, that’s a different kinda rat now, isn’t it?” He caught sight of Tommy’s wide eyes. “Relax. We got a ways to go. You’ll get used to it.”

The Streets and Sans truck shuddered as it rumbled down the tunnel. The headlights trembled, throwing crazy, flickering shadows across the uneven surfaces. The tunnel was big enough that two medium trucks could drive along side by side. Don kept the needle at a steady thirty-five miles an hour. “Believe it or not, we make better time down here than up top. No goddamn stoplights.” He laughed.

“How far are we going?”

“All the way back to downtown. ’Course, we’ll be a half-mile under the streets, at least. Some of the old-timers claim there’s tunnels that go down damn near a mile or more. See, the whole thing’s like goddamn Swiss cheese. You wouldn’t believe how many abandoned rail lines, storm drains, and God knows what else crisscross under the city. The Deep Tunnel engineers, they knew this, and they connected a bunch, so when it rains the lake doesn’t turn into a goddamn Porta-Potty.”

They passed a few intersections, and Tommy caught a quick glimpse of smaller tunnels before they were swallowed in the gloom. “You sure we shouldn’t be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs or something?”

“I wouldn’t want to be down here without a flashlight, that’s for goddamn sure. But I been coming down here, once a week or more, for, let’s see now, over two years now. Something like that.”

After about fifteen minutes, the tunnel opened up. There were no lights save the headlights, so Tommy couldn’t tell how large it was. But he couldn’t see the ceiling, and the place was full of rusting El cars. The truck bounced over a dozen sets of tracks, then followed the road as it ran down between the long lines of derelict hulks. The spill of the headlights briefly illuminated the dusty, opaque windows, reflecting distorted, ghostly images of the truck. It gave Tommy a skittish feeling.

He found he was having a hard time taking a deep breath. The thought of all that rock above, the weight of the entire city pressing down, down . . . He dried the palms of his hands on his jeans. The motion led him to his boots and he remembered that he wasn’t wearing the right kind of boots and that made things worse.

The El train corpses passed out of sight and the walls swallowed them up again. This one was shorter though, before long they came to a circular area, with a number of smaller tunnels branching off. It was clear which tunnel to use; the tire tracks had crushed the gravel into two easy-to-follow paths. Don pulled off to the side of the tire tracks and shifted into park. He pointed to an empty ring on the wall next to the tunnel. “Flag’s gone. That means somebody’s down in there. Tunnel isn’t wide enough for two vehicles. ’Specially garbage trucks.”