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beyond Jensen’s, a thick steel door held a bright orange NO ADMITTANCE notice. To the right, a narrow tunnel led slightly uphill. He nodded contentedly to himself, tilted the map in his hand, found where he was and then rotated it in his hand so that Jensen’s Provisioners was on his left. If the map were to be believed, and if he hadn’t seriously fucked up, those ought to be the stairs at the base of Yesler Street. He looked to the right again. Seventy yards that way ought to be the Underground entrance directly across the street from the bus tunnel. He’d thought it over and decided that one was too risky. Better to have a look from down here first, he’d decided, and then play it by ear from there.
    As he rechecked his bearings, something in the darkness squealed. Corso frowned, jammed the map into his pocket and began climbing the stairs. Once at the top, he twisted the brass handle on the lock and eased the door open. Slowly. A quarter inch at a time, until finally there was room to poke his head through the opening.
    Second Avenue was awash in metallic blue police cars. He listened for a moment. Heard nothing and then wondered why. No wailing sirens. No static crackle of radio transmissions. The only sound splitting the night was the whop whop of rotor blades. He poked his head out a little more and looked up. A pair of police helicopters circled lazily in the night sky. He craned his neck in a circle and wondered where the news choppers were. Why they weren’t up there giving their “eye in the sky” perspective. “High above downtown Seattle” and all that crap.
    A pair of Seattle’s finest stood whispering, no more than thirty feet away, their attention riveted half a block uphill on Yesler, between Second and Third, where what little he could see of the bus tunnel appeared to be covered in plastic. Whatever was going on in the street outside the tunnel entrance was blocked from view by a pair of fire trucks parked nose to nose across Yesler Street. Another pair blocked the street farther up the hill, making sure nobody came blundering down from the freeway.
    And then he heard the voices. Raised voices coming from his left. He pushed his head farther out the door. A KING-TV remote truck sat angled into the police barricade two blocks up Second Avenue, its yellow lights blazing. The guy with the red hair. What was his name? The one who was always broadcasting from the summit at Snoqualmie. The snow conditions guy. In his mind’s eye, Corso could see the red ski jacket…the collar flapping in the stiff breeze. Parka Boy Something they called him. He was standing out in front of the truck, trying to talk his way past the cops. The cops looked like they were hoping he’d step around the barricade so’s they could kick his ass.
    Corso pulled his head back inside and snapped the lock. Took a deep breath. No doubt about it. If he was going to get a look at what was going on, he was going to have to walk up and poke his nose out smack in the middle of it.
    He looked down the passage. Overhead lights threw oblong pools of yellow light along the floor of the tunnel. At the far end, he could just make out the landing and the half a dozen stairs rising to the street. Something disturbed one of the tin cans in Jensen’s long-ago store, bouncing a mettalic ping around the walls and sending Corso on his way.
    He walked quickly up the corridor, moving from light to darkness and back again a dozen times as he covered the seventy or so yards up to the next Underground entrance.
    End of the line. It was either walk up the stairs and open the door or retrace his steps back to the foot of Yesler Street. He climbed the stairs. Put his ear to the door and listened. Nothing. Not surprising. The doors were steel and solid. Kept the winos from turning the place into the Homeless Hilton. He grabbed the knob on the brass lock and twisted. The door stuck in its warped wooden casing. He pulled harder. And then harder still, until