Mind the Gap

Jazz faltered. She gripped the strap of the bag and swore under her breath. Flashing the light around, she tried to de-cide her next step. Part of her thought Terence a dangerous man and did not trust anything he'd said. But there were so many other things to consider. Her life had been nothing but a terrifying puzzle since her mother's murder —a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Terence clearly had some of those pieces. Then there was the fundamental question of her fu-ture. Her mother had wanted her to hide forever, but there was more than one way to hide.

Her pulse raced with indecision. She didn't want to de-ceive anyone, and she refused to betray the kindness of those who had given her a place to belong. But she had to think of herself. No one is to be trusted, her mother had told her so of-ten. And sometimes you can't even trust yourself. Jazz knew what she meant. Emotions could get in the way of the smart deci-sions.

She needed more time to think.

Slipping the bag from her shoulder, she glanced around. The torch picked out a square metal door, about three feet wide and waist high. The metal was rusted. Jazz went to in-vestigate. She paused to listen for any sound that might indicate she was not alone in the corridor, but the only sounds were the rumble of a train above her head and the steady drip of water from somewhere nearby. Then the muffled sound of laughter reached her. It came from the Palace, but there were two doors and thirty feet of winding stairs separating her from the United Kingdom. For the moment, she was alone.

Shifting the torch to her left hand, she grabbed the handle on the rusted hatch and pulled. The door jerked. Rust sifted down. She tugged it again and it slid to one side. Jazz shone the torch into the hole and frowned. Searching with the light, it took her half a minute to realize what it was she was looking at.

Though the pulleys must be just as rusted and any ropes rotted away by now, once upon a time this little three-foot-square box had been a lift of some kind, like a dumbwaiter in an old hotel. Whoever had built this retreat to keep bombs from raining down on the monarchy must have used the lift to bring down supplies and equipment. On the surface, it would have long since been covered over by something else. The mechanism was useless, but for the moment it would serve her well.

Unzipping her bag, she slid out the two framed photo-graphs and put them inside the rusty metal box.

The blade followed. She looked at it for several seconds, trying to make sense of the hole in the metal —big enough for her to slip her hand through—and the jagged teeth at the end of the thing. It might do someone a wicked bit of damage, but now that she studied it, the thing didn't really seem like a dagger or sword at all, rather a part of something else, some other. ..apparatus.

A screech of metal came from down the arched corridor.

Jazz thrust the blade into the old lift and slid the door closed as quietly as she could, pulse racing madly. She zipped the bag and put it over her shoulder, then pointed the torch down along the corridor in the direction of the sound —which had to have been the door that led to the spiral stairs down to the Palace.

"Nothing up my sleeve," a voice whispered behind her.

She spun around just in time to see something tumble to the stone floor. Her torch caught it as it struck the ground —a top hat with a thick brim. It rolled in an arc along the stones. When it came to rest, something moved inside. Jazz held her breath. A tiny rabbit poked its face out from inside the hat, sniffing querulously at the rust-flaked air. The little creature emerged, paused a moment, then darted toward the wall, where it vanished.

Jazz's throat felt dry. It had looked so real, not like a phan-tom at all. She crouched and reached for the brim of the top hat, but it faded out as her fingers passed through it.

She raised her torch and pointed it back into the darkness the way she'd come. The magician again.

She had seen him more and more frequently, and he seemed to be growing more tangible somehow. Yet like the rest of the spirits of old London that lingered in the Underground, he had always been just an echo, never showing anything resembling awareness. So if he was a ghost, either a manifestation of the resonance that past events had left on the city or actually the spirit of a person who had once lived, why did he show up more than the other ghosts? The other specters haunted the Underground, but it had begun to feel as though the magician haunted her.

A cough sounded from the direction of the Palace. Jazz swung her torch round.

"Who is it?" came a voice from along the corridor. The orange glow of a cigarette burned in the shadows. "Who's there?"

She sounded afraid. Jazz couldn't blame her after those men had discovered their previous shelter —after Cadge's murder.

"It's just me," she said, hurrying toward the other girl, bag over her shoulder.

"Jazz?"

"Yeah."

Then they were close enough to make out each other's face in the illumination of the torchlight. Leela stood gaping at her, cigarette dangling from one hand. The girl's exotic beauty transformed into a fool's grin and she rushed to em-brace Jazz.

"Fuck's sake, girl. We've been worried sick. Harry's out of his mind." With a laugh Leela stood back and looked Jazz over. "None the worse for wear, are you? Let's get you home, then."

The girl tossed her cigarette down and ground it under-foot. She took Jazz by the hand and hurried her back to the metal door, and they descended the spiral staircase to the United Kingdom's lair. When Leela opened the door at the bottom and they stepped out into the monarchy shelter, most of the others didn't even look up. Hattie and Gob were play-ing cards on the floor. Switch, Bill, and Marco were eating big bowls of pasta with red sauce at a round table. Off to the right, near the shelves of books that were their mentor's own personal library, Harry and Stevie were talking quietly, drink-ing from tumblers of whiskey.

"Harry," Leela said.

"Back so soon?" Harry asked as he turned. Then he saw Jazz and his eyes lit up. "Well, now, my pets, didn't I tell you she'd be back? Come in, Jazz girl! Come in!"

The others started calling her name. Bill remained silent, as always, but gave her a smile and a thumbs-up sign. Gob and Hattie jumped up and rushed toward her, but Harry beat them to her. The old man wrapped her in his arms. Jazz couldn't help smiling, and she loved the musty scent of his clothes and the dash of cologne he sometimes used. His stub-bly cheek scraped hers. Then Harry stepped back, holding her at arm's length.

"Let me look at you! Still in one piece. Good. Good."

"Glad to see you, Harry."

"Glad to see me, she says!" he crowed, looking around at the others. "We were worried sick about her, weren't we? I sent 'em all out looking for you, Jazz girl, but no sign of you at all. Even kept an eye on the police station myself, just in case they'd brought you in."

Stevie drifted up behind Harry during this speech. He had his arms crossed, betraying no interest in hugging her, much to her dismay.

"I told him not to panic," Stevie said. "You were off and running."

Hattie came up beside Jazz and bumped shoulders with her. The girl wore a purple French beret, hair tucked under-neath it, and smiled saucily at her. "Don't listen to a word, Jazz. Our Mr. Sharpe was even more worried about you than Harry. Thought you'd been hurt or lost or fell down a hole or something. Jazz through the looking glass."

"Well," Stevie said, glancing awkwardly away before meeting her gaze again. "Had to come up with some reason for you to have been gone so long. What I said was, I knew you hadn't been nicked. And the bloke with the bag who was chasing you, we slowed him down enough so he just gave up. Wanted to get out of there even quicker than us —hopped in a cab and was gone."

Harry linked arms with Jazz and escorted her to the table. The others all gathered round as she sat down. The old man had seemed spry enough, but as he leaned on the back of a chair, she saw how much the injuries from his beating still pained him. His smile faltered but he did not let it vanish.

"What about that gent, love? I'm afraid when Stevie told me about the fellow, I couldn't make any sense of it. You all saw the mark leave the house and set the alarm. Far as we know, nobody else lives there, so where did this mysterious man come from?"

Jazz fought to keep her smile on her face. Harry talked about the mark —about Uncle Mort—like the house was cho-sen at random. But from what Terence had said, and what Jazz herself had seen in that house, that was simply too much coin-cidence for her to swallow. One of the thugs the mayor had sent into the tunnels had been a BMW man who worked for the Uncles, and now one of the wealthy men they'd stolen from had been an Uncle, a man present at the murder of her mother.

The temptation to confront him with her questions that very moment was strong. But Jazz felt sure that Harry wouldn't make it so simple. She had no doubt his concern for her was genuine, but there were many things she suspected he wasn't telling her, and that troubled her.

"No idea who he was," she said, putting on a mystified expression as she gazed around the gathered faces of the United Kingdom. "But he's a thief too."

She proceeded to tell the story of her break-in to Mortimer Keating's house, including the moment the motion sensors clicked off and her flight from the premises upon be-ing discovered by the house's other intruder. But Jazz didn't mention that Terence had caught up to her, and she told Harry she hadn't even gotten a good look at the man's face.

"He knew what he was doing," she said. "Had these little hi-tech gadgets that he attached to the keypad for the alarm to keep it from going off."

"What did he steal?" Gob asked.

Jazz shrugged. "No idea."

"Who cares? The question is, what did Jazz take?" Leela said, blowing plumes of smoke from her nostrils. Harry didn't like them smoking down here, but in the excitement, he didn't seem to have noticed.

"Excellent question," Harry said, eyeing the bag she'd set on the ground by her chair.

Jazz grinned and pulled the bag up onto her lap. Her pulse sped up again and she chided herself for being nervous. It wasn't as if anyone could tell that she'd had anything else in the bag.

"First and most importantly, there's this," she said, pulling Hattie's pink bonnet from the bag. Hattie squealed, grabbed the hat, and held it against her as though she were five years old and Jazz had just returned her favorite stuffed bear.

"Otherwise, not much, I'm afraid. Our mystery man was there almost immediately." She reached into the bag and pulled out several silk ties, a quartet of antique books, a couple of rings, and the wedge of cash she'd found in Mortimer Keating's sock drawer.

Marco reached for the money and Harry slapped his hand away. Picking it up, he counted silently, fanning the bills with the speed of a bank teller. Harry's smile grew wide.

"Over two thousand here. Considering the circum-stances, well done, Jazz."

"Who keeps two thousand pounds in their sock drawer?" she asked.

Switch laughed. "Rich fucking bastards, that's who."

"Language," Hattie snapped, and Switch looked properly chastened.

"There's also this," Jazz went on. From the bag she took a gold watch with diamonds set into the face. It sparkled in the dim light of the bunker.

"Now, that is lovely," Harry said, nodding. "You keep that for yourself if you like, Jazz girl. No less than you deserve for your quick mind and fleet feet today."

"I couldn't," she replied. "Besides, it wouldn't fit me. You take it."

Harry seemed overcome by the gesture, but she couldn't tell if his reaction was genuine or merely theatrics. He clutched the watch to his chest, nodding, and then looked up at her.

"What I'd really like to know, lass, is where you've been all this time. We truly did fear for you."

Jazz felt her face grow warm and wondered if the light was bright enough down there for Harry to see her cheeks flush pink. Did he suspect she had lied to him?

"I'm sorry to have worried you all. I'd just had such a fright that I needed to clear my head. I took the Tube to Covent Garden and wandered for a while, had a coffee, watched the mothers strolling with their babies. When I realized how much time had passed, I came back as quickly as I could."

Harry nodded as though he understood perfectly. "You had a close call today, and no arguing that.

But I hope it hasn't put you off our little endeavors."

Jazz smiled. "Not in the least. We still came out on top. And a coincidence like this —it couldn't happen twice, could it? Two people trying to rip off the same house at the same time. What are the odds?"

"Precisely," Harry said, but in his smile she saw a flicker of some doubt.

****

In the dark, late at night, Jazz felt as though she could hear the voice of the city coming up from deep beneath the ground. They were already so far down it was difficult to imagine anything deeper, but Harry had told those stories about tribes of people who had lived in natural-cavern forma-tions far below the Underground for generations without ever seeing the light of day. Perhaps what she heard was the chanting of some subhuman clan. But Jazz could not make herself believe that. What she heard didn't really come to her through her ears but in her mind and in her gut. It resonated in her like the low hum of electrical wires, but with the rise and fall of music. It pulled at her. Often, of late, she had felt as though something called to her from deeper underground, and the lure of it was even more powerful when everyone else had gone to sleep and she could do nothing but lie there and listen.

From time to time, she heard the distant shriek and rumble of trains passing by. The air vents brought the occasional sound all the way from the surface. But for the most part, the Palace was silent.

But Jazz couldn't sleep. Thoughts and doubts churned in her head, playing on her hopes and fears and loyalties, her love for her mother and her need for justice, and the exhaus-tion that had begun to weigh on her. Even now, when she should be resting, she could not. Living down here, hiding, drained her of strength and spirit.