Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [163]
Below them, at street level, was the alleyway between the Treasury and Assay buildings. To the right and left, at either end of the alley, illuminated by klieg lights, infantrymen manned the wrought-iron gate. The soldiers were facing out to the street, their backs to the alley. Gesturing to the pulleys and hitches, Littlemore asked quietly, “You know how to use this stuff, Doc?”
Younger nodded.
“All right then,” said Littlemore.
The two men knelt down and fitted rope ends through the pulleys. Rappelling is not very difficult even without special equipment; with a friction hitch, which allows the descending man to play out rope at his discretion, it’s simple. Younger, who had learned the skill in the army, formed a loop with a short length of his rope and stepped into it with his heel.
Littlemore, picking up the crowbars, followed suit.
The two men rappelled down the side of the Treasury Building, kicking off the wall every ten feet or so in the darkness. The well-oiled pulleys made almost no sound as the rope played through them, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they had creaked. The wind’s howling would have covered the noise in any event.
“Over here,” whispered Littlemore when they reached the cobblestones. He led Younger to a large manhole cover, which he had first seen the day of the bombing. “Let’s try the crowbars.”
The manhole cover bore the familiar logo of the New York City sewer department.
“We’re going into the sewers?” asked Younger.
“This is no sewer,” whispered Littlemore. “I checked the city maps yesterday. This is how they got rid of the gold—down this hole. That’s why there was no getaway truck.”
The manhole cover had two small slats into which Younger and Littlemore each inserted the bent tip of a crowbar. They tried to pry it up, but the iron circle wouldn’t budge.
“Didn’t think that would work,” whispered Littlemore. “It’s locked from the inside; you can’t open her up from out here.”
“Hence the acid,” replied Younger.
“Yeah—hence,” said Littlemore.
Younger withdrew three slim cases from his coat. The first contained an empty glass beaker, a pencil-thin glass tube, and a pair of laboratory gloves. Inside each of the other two cases, lined with crushed blue velour, was a well-stoppered vial of transparent liquid. Wearing the gloves, Younger opened these vials and poured a portion of each into the beaker, creating the acid he’d described to Littlemore. No chemical reaction attended this admixture—no change of color, no precipitation, no smoke. To the mouth of the beaker Younger now attached the burette—the thin tube—and began drizzling the acid along the perimeter of the manhole cover. Angry bubbling commenced at once on the iron surface, with an accompanying acrid reddish smoke.
“Don’t get it in your eyes,” said Younger.
By the time he was halfway around the manhole cover, Younger had exhausted the beaker’s supply. He had to mix another few ounces of the aqua regia, requiring him briefly to hand over to Littlemore the two glass vials, unstoppered, while he took apart his apparatus. At that moment, a particularly savage gust of wind blew through the alley.
“Shoot,” whispered Littlemore. Younger looked up. White bubbles were sudsing on the top of the detective’s black shoe. Somehow keeping his voice to a whisper, Littlemore gasped, “It’s going through my shoe! Do something, Doc—it’s on my foot. It’s burning into the bone!”
“That’s not my acid,” said Younger.
Littlemore’s gasping came to an abrupt halt.
“What is that,” asked Younger, “baking soda?”
“Anyone else would have fallen for that,” said Littlemore, genuinely annoyed.