Ghostbusters (14 page)

When they had what they needed they all hurried out of their “office”—Erin had to use that term lightly or lose heart; it was just temporary, she told herself. They had pluck on their side, and “pluck” was “luck” that had peed on itself, or so her uncle used to say. Which, now that she thought about it, made absolutely no sense. Anyway
,
as they went down the stairs out of the Chinese restaurant onto the street, she realized what a pleasure it had been to listen to Patty talk; she was a voracious reader, thoughtful and well spoken, and that made Erin think fondly on the good old days at Columbia where she was surrounded by articulate, bright, nonchaotic people.

Not that Holtzmann and Abby weren't intellectually curious. It was the expression of that curiosity and their lack of traditional boundaries that left something to be desired. As they accompanied Patty to the scene of the incident, Erin found herself walking beside a collection of gear that looked like it had been ripped straight out of a low-budget science-fiction movie. Holtzmann was wheeling a large metal cart piled with equipment as well as their silver duffel bag with its
HIGH VOLTAGE
shoulder strap, modded with an array of decals patches: a cute skull and crossbones; a biohazard warning; an embroidered toxic waste circle. There were various probes and remote sensors that looked like electronic harpoons and prods meant to herd Paul Bunyan's ox.

As they clattered along, New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, pretty much ignored them, but a couple of young women in ripped jeans and stylish padded jackets—one black, one charcoal gray—trailed right on their heels, murmuring to each other and giggling.

Erin hung back a little, allowing the girls to catch up to her. Ahead, Holtzmann and Abby were peppering Patty with questions, and although Erin knew she probably should be listening, she recognized what could be a teachable moment for her and a learning moment for the two young women. They were smacking gum and wore tons of heavy sparkly eye makeup and enormous matching earrings that spelled out Fuck You in rhinestones, but still …

“That is extremely precise, very cutting-edge scientific equipment,” Erin informed them, gesturing at Holtzmann's cart. “We are all high-level researchers. Breaking new ground. Big ideas.”

The girls pulled in their chins and raised their brows. The shorter one's mouth twitched. Erin could read their expressions: they were skeptics. Doubting that a team of women scientists could be so empowered.

“Girls can be scientists, too, you know,” she insisted. “Do you know what STEM is? Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Women are underrepresented in these fields in part because they lack sufficient numbers of role models. I'm from Columbia and we have a program to encourage…” She felt a little sick to her stomach as she heard herself talk. She was not at Columbia. Not anymore. There was no “we” there.

“It's cool,” the taller girl said. “Whatevah.” She had a thick Jersey accent. She slid a glance at her friend. “Actually, we was just wonderin' if you lost a bet or something.”

Erin blinked, caught off guard. “Lost a bet?”

“Yeah, and that's why you're dressed like that,” the short one said, and they both cracked up.

Why is everyone always dissing my clothes?
Erin plucked at the sleeve of her blazer. “See, that's the problem,” she said. “We women focus so much on appearance when really—”

“Well,
you
sure don't,” the tall one cut in, and the short one said, “Woo!” in approval. The tall one head-bobbed in recognition of the compliment.

“Well, at least I'm not dressed like a
hooker,
” Erin snapped.

The two young women stopped laughing. They glared at Erin, faces hard, eyes narrowing.

“What did you say?” the taller one bit off.

Erin's synapses began firing. Her brain was giving her mixed messages: flee, fight, mouth off some more, shut the hell up. She started to reply, but before she could get a word out, Abby broke into the conversation.

“Sorry, ladies,” she said to the girls, “what we are doing is highly classified and we must ask you to move away.”

“This is our street, bitch,” the short one informed her.

The tall one slipped her hand into her jacket pocket.
Oh god, she's going to pull out a switchblade or even a gun
. Adrenaline zipped through Erin's body as she looked for someplace to run.

But instead of a knife or a gun, the girl pulled out a top-of-the-line smartphone and checked the screen. “Our Uber is almost here,” she announced to her friend.

“Good. 'Cause I am not letting Anderson exercise my proxy at that meeting,” the short one said. She rolled her Cleopatra eyes. “Selling short. What a dirtbag.”

Abby took Erin's arm and urged her backward. Erin came along willingly. “Hey, are you guys investors?” Abby said as they retreated. “Because you can get in on the ground floor of something
enormous
here.” She bobbed her head, oh yeah. “We are changing all the rules. What you see isn't what you get.” She nodded at Erin and Holtzmann. Holtzmann nodded back, her curls of blond hair bouncing like springs.

“Abby,
no,
” Erin hissed. “We can't involve strangers. We don't even know
what
we know yet.”

“Oh yes, we do. We do know what we know,” Abby insisted. “We know that ghosts are re—”

“Uber's here,” the short one said to the tall one. They headed for the curb as a Fiat stopped in the street and the traffic zoomed around it. The tall one glanced at Abby over her shoulder. “Try
Shark Tank
. That's what we did.”

“Awesome, what is your product?” Abby called after her as they headed for the waiting car.

“Glow-in-the-dark eye makeup,” the girl replied. She and her companion both opened their eyes as wide as they could, and then closed them.

“Now you see us; now you
really
see us,” they said together.

It had to be a marketing slogan.

“We're breaking sales of six million this year,” said the tall one. She looked at Erin and clucked her tongue in disapproval. “We're nakedeyes.com. Use the contact form and ask for Tonya. That's me. We can fix you up.”

“You must be a librarian,” the short one added as she slid in beside Tonya.

Then the door closed and the Uber sped away.

“I can't believe that,” Erin said in exasperation.

“I know. Six million dollars? For glow-in-the-dark eye makeup?” Abby whistled.

“No, they thought I was a librarian,” Erin sputtered. With an effort she gathered her dignity. “Not that there's anything wrong with that.”

“Come on and I'll show you some real glow-in-the-dark,” Patty said, stepping up beside them. “And for the record? I don't believe those two. If you have six million dollars, you dial up your limo, not an Uber.”

“Also, I think your dress looks very nice,” Abby assured her.

They made their way across town on foot. Not for the exercise—no cabbie would stop for them. When they finally reached the entrance to the Seward subway station, they left the busy streets and headed down the stairs. Patty helped Holtzmann lug the unwieldy proton box and duffel to the mezzanine, where they piled it back onto the cart liberated from Kenneth T. Higgins. She pointed out her ticket booth as they hurried past. “That's me!” she said, waving energetically at the clerk on the other side of the window. “Hey, Milt!” she called out to him. “We got a ghost on track three.”

He made a sour face and looked away.

“Nice,” Patty said. “Real nice.”

The subway platform was thinly populated, and although they drew stares from the sprinkling of commuters, they had no trouble weaving their way to the far end.

Erin looked at the black maw that loomed before them and could not repress a shudder. But Abby, Holtzmann, and Patty had no problem. Abby turned on the PKE meter. Holtzmann pushed her cart. And Patty led the way into the darkness.

“I told my supervisor and he insisted I take a drug test,” she said. Her harrumph echoed down the tunnel. “You know the old York prison used to be right up there above us? That's the first place in New York they fried people in the electric chair. But I always knew something was weird down here.”

The dim and widely spaced lights flickered and Erin looked around nervously. She wasn't alone. Even Abby seemed a bit skittish.

“Strong correlation between negative incidents and paranormal presence,” Abby said authoritatively. “It's very difficult for anything to pass through the barrier back into our world. So any spirit determined enough to pull that off, well, that's likely an angry ghost.”

Staying as close to the others as she could, Erin reviewed the details of Patty's story about the apparition. She claimed to have seen a man floating above the ground wearing an old-timey prison uniform and a sparking skullcap designed for electrocutions. Patty had described his angry, evil smile. Gertrude Aldridge's smile had been angry and evil, too. Erin doubted that Mrs. Barnard had ever smiled a day in her life, but she had angry down. And there was also the strange electronic device Patty said had exploded in the tunnel at the same time she had her encounter.

Erin tried not to breathe deeply. The air smelled bad and it was thick with the fine grit raised by the trains. Plus there had to be rats galore, so decomposed rat poop was in the mix. Between the overhead lights the passage was dark, and under the lights, dirty—more than a century of grime and grease deposits coated everything. She hoped she didn't accidently brush against something, or worse, trip and fall on the floor. Although if she fell, she'd have a good excuse to go shopping and she could buy some different clothes.

But I like my clothes the way they are.
Walking along, she had a thought:
No one started commenting on my attire until I was up for tenure. Aha.
That's
the problem. I didn't look conservative
enough.
I was too hip for that ship. That's why Abby likes my style.

The lights flickered again, plunging the tunnel into darkness for a fraction of a second. Everyone jumped, including Patty. Then she pointed at something just ahead. A guy—who looked human enough—was spraying paint on the tunnel wall.

“Hey! What did I say?” Patty asked him.

Wearing the guiltiest possible expression, the kid tried to pretend he was using a can of spray deodorant. Patty scoffed and advanced on him, arms swinging, jaw set.

“That is not spray deodorant! Have you yet again mistaken me for a stupid person?”

“Is he down here a lot?” Abby asked.

“Oh, this is his art studio.” Patty rolled her eyes.

Abby walked up to the kid. “Have you seen a Class Four semianchored entity around here?”

“You might want to try English,” Patty suggested drily, but Abby didn't seem to pick up on the joke.

“Have you seen a ghost?” Erin said.

The graffiti artist looked at them coolly. “Yeah, I've seen a ghost.”

A ripple of excitement coursed up Erin's spine. “Can you describe it?”

The guy thought about it for a moment. Then he spray painted the outline of a ghost on the subway wall.

“Don't you draw a ghost on that wall,” Patty ordered him.

He stopped. Then he added a few more touches, fleshing the image out—so to speak.

“Do not make me tell you again.” Patty was insistent.

He stopped. Then sprayed some more.

“I mean it,” her voice rising.

He stopped, finally and for real, and stepped aside so they could admire his masterpiece. It was a cartoony outline of a white ghost with a hand outstretched. Its face was winsome and at the same time a bit goofy. It didn't look at all like an evil electrocuted criminal.

“I don't want that damn ghost up there,” Patty said.

The kid grabbed another can of paint and quickly drew a red circle with a line through it over the ghost. When Patty grabbed the can of spray paint from his hand, he abandoned his art and ran back toward the station. Patty walked on, clearly pissed. Erin paused while Holtzmann snapped a shot of the kid's work with her phone, saying, “I can make a logo with that,” and then they followed.

She and Holtzmann struggled to push the proton box over the rail ties. Too much speed and the vibration as they bounced over the ties could damage the sensitive innards; too little speed and they lost momentum. Ahead of them, Abby had out both her PKE and EMF meters. Patty kept glancing farther down the tunnel; Erin assumed she was hoping to see the ghost again, or hoping that she wouldn't.

“We don't have much time,” Patty told them. “No one touch the third rail.”

She's more worried about a train coming than the ghost,
Erin translated.
If we get hit—or touch the third rail—maybe we'll start floating around down here.
As she pictured them as ghosts, trapped forever in a stinky black tunnel, something tapped her on the shoulder. She shivered and shut her eyes.
Just her imagination playing tricks.

It happened again.

She tipped her head back and looked up. Something was dripping from the ceiling, and had dripped onto her shoulder. She moved under the light. It was the same green slime that Gertrude Aldridge had barfed all over her. It was running down her blazer.

“Oh, c'mon, I just dry-cleaned this,” she protested.

Looking at the splotch of goo, Patty wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I figured you were gonna get your fancy clothes dirty down here. I should have given you some coveralls. My bad. The MTA won't pay your dry-cleaning bills. Trust me. I've tried. Cheap bastards.”

“We've got something over here.” Abby gestured to a large discolored splotch on the wall. It looked like something had scraped away the layers of grime. “Are these burn marks?”