Kolchak The Night Strangler by Richard Matheson, Jeff Rice Page A

here? This is a police operation.”
    “I can see that. Where did he go?”
    “What did you say your name was, buddy?”
    “Kolchack. Daily Chronicle .” I flashed my police pass.
    “Hell, I don’t know. He could have gone anywhere. Up. Down. Anywhere.”
    Up. Down… that set me to thinking.
    I made my way back to the Blue Banjo and checked on tour times. There was one due at 1 a.m. I called Louise at Omar’s Tent and told her to get over to the Banjo as soon as possible, and to bring along a flashlight if she could find one. While waiting for Louise I called the Chronicle and gave rewrite my copy and had them send a messenger boy for my film. Louise came in just as he was leaving.
    “You look terrible! Every time I see you, you look as if you’ve been rolling around in the gutter.”
    “Correction. Alley and gutter. Did you bring the flashlight?”
    “Right here. What are you up to?”
    “High adventure. Or low,” I chuckled, sipping my White Horse. “In pursuit of hard facts for my old friend Vincenzo.”
    We watched as a toothless old man who must have been pushing eighty struggled valiantly, but without dignity, to accompany the Banjo Band as a young man in a red blazer and plastic skimmer mounted the stage.
    “Wasn’t that just wonderful, folks? Well, it’s almost time. Now …
    “The Forgotten City Which Lies Beneath Seattle’s Modern Streets: That mouthful of a title was devised by author-journalist Bill Speidel. He’s the unofficial major of that city, being the founder of the Underground Tour and the only man in Seattle who’d care to be the mayor of sixteen square blocks of subterranean rubble.”
    As he talked I watched Louise. She was fascinated. She had been Seattle for some time but had never been on the tour. Confession: My having her with me had little if anything to do with my chasing after a story.
    I paid for our drinks and we got in the last spot in line as it filed slowly out of the club and down the street. The tour was supposed to take about two hours for the dollar ticket price, but it was curtailed a bit by a police sergeant who told our guide that the above-ground area was being cordoned off temporarily. Apparently no one else on the tour knew what I new and I tried to fill Louise in as we descended into the Stygian gloom through the entrance to that same building I had seen from the hot-dog stand. Every so often a dim, 25-watt bulb would break the darkness and you could see the bricks and stone of what had once been building walls, glistening with dripping water pipes, conduits, and more bricks. In some places there was less than six feet in head room. Except for the lack of wind it was just as cold down below as it was on the street level. It had gone down almost to the freezing level.
    We came to what seemed to have been a cross street at one time, abandoned and looking much as it must have always looked save that it had a brick ceiling cutting it off from the sky. The only incongruous item in evidence was a bright, shiny, new trash can. The guide’s voice came drifting back: “Those kids from Cleveland High School spent five successive Saturdays in the spring of 1965 cleaning out no less than ten tons of debris so people on these tours wouldn’t break their necks while walking around… brace yourselves… here it comes again… ‘The Forgotten City Which Lies Beneath Seattle’s Modern Streets.’”
    There was a general noise that passed for laughing approval and we moved on.
    We reached another clearing after about five or six minutes and I could hear the guide droning: “Twice a day, when the tide came in, the sewer flow backed up and came in with it, converting every toilet into a fountain. Kids in those days weren’t raised on Dr. Spock. They were raised on tide tables.”
    Another moment of appreciative laughter, this time a bit more enthusiastic. The tour moved on, but I took hold of Louise’s arm and hung back.
    “What are you up to, Carl?”
    Whatever it was