as if I were the Phantom prowling the realms beneath the Paris Opera
House, though I lacked his cape, cloche hat, scars, and insanity.
Recently, I’ve preferred to keep to the surface. Like everyone born into
this world, I’ll take up permanent residence underground soon enough.
Now, after we passed another culvert without being assaulted, Orson
suddenly picked up his pace. The trail had gotten hot.
As the riverbed rose toward the east, it gradually grew narrower, until
it was only forty feet wide where it passed under Highway 1. This tunnel
was more than a hundred feet long, and although faint silvery moonlight
glimmered at the farther end, the way ahead was dauntingly dark.
Apparently, Orson’s reliable nose didn’t detect any danger. He wasn’t
growling.
On the other hand, he didn’t sprint confidently into the gloom, either.
He stood at the entrance, his tail still, his ears pricked, alert.
For years I have traveled the night with only a modest amount of cash
for the infrequent purchases I make, a small flashlight for those rare
instances when darkness might be more of an enemy than a friend, and a
compact cell phone clipped to my belt. Recently, I’d added one other
item to my standard kit, a 9-millimeter Glock pistol.
Under my jacket, the Glock hung in a supple shoulder holster. I didn’t
need to touch the gun to know that it was there, the weight of it was
like a tumor growing on my ribs. Nevertheless, I slipped one hand under
the coat and pressed my fingertips against the grip of the pistol as a
superstitious person might touch a talisman.
In addition to the black leather jacket, I was dressed in black
Rockports, black socks, black jeans, and a black long-sleeve cotton
pullover. The black-on-black is not because I style myself after
vampires, priests, ninja assassins, or Hollywood celebrities.
In this town, at night, wisdom requires you to be well armed but also to
blend with the shadows, calling as little attention to yourself as
possible.
Leaving the Glock in the holster, still straddling my bike but with both
feet on the ground, I unclipped the small flashlight from the
handlebars. My bicycle doesn’t have a headlamp. I have lived so many
years in the night and in rooms lit mostly by candles that my
dark-adapted eyes don’t often need assistance.
The beam penetrated perhaps thirty feet into the concrete tunnel, which
had straight walls but an arched ceiling. No threat lurked in the first
section of that passage.
Orson ventured inside.
Before following the dog, I listened to the traffic roaring south and
north on Highway 1, far above. To me, as always, this sound was
simultaneously thrilling and melancholy.
I’ve never driven a car and probably never will. Even if I protected my
hands with gloves and my face with a mask, the ceaseless oncoming
headlights would pose a danger to my eyes. Besides, I couldn’t go any
significant distance north or south along the coast and still return
home before sunrise.
Relishing the drone of the traffic, I peered up the broad concrete
buttress in which the river tunnel was set. At the top of this long
incline, headlights flared off the steel guardrails that defined the
shoulder of the highway, but I couldn’t see the passing vehicles.
What I did seeor thought I saw from the corner of my eye, was someone
crouched up there, to the south of me, a figure not quite as black as
the night around him, fitfully backlit by the passing traffic. He was on
the buttress cap just this side of the guardrails, barely visible yet
with an aura as menacing as a gargoyle at the corner of a cathedral
parapet.
When I turned my head for a better look, the lights from a dense cluster
of speeding cars and trucks caused shadows to leap like an immense flock
of ravens taking flight in a lightning storm. Among those swooping
phantoms, an apparently more solid figure raced diagonally downward,
moving away from me and from the buttress, south along the grassy
embankment.
In but a flicker of time, he was beyond the reach of the strobing
headlights, lost in the deeper darkness and also blocked from view by