The Tomb Read online

  Jack went over to the small wooden platform he had built for himself and did some stretching exercises, then went into his routine. He did his push-ups, sit-ups, jumped rope, practiced his tai kwon do kicks and chops, always moving, never stopping, until his body was slick with sweat and his hair hung in limp wet strands about his face and neck.

  He spun at footsteps behind him.

  "Hey, Jack."

  "Oh, Neil. Hi. Must be about that time."

  "Right you are."

  Neil went over to the pole and reverently lowered his black flag. He folded it neatly, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the steps, waving as he went. Jack leaned against the generator and shook his head. Odd for a man who despised all rules to be so punctual, yet you could set your watch by the comings and goings of Neil the Anarchist.

  Back in the apartment, Jack stuck six frozen egg rolls in the microwave and programmed it to heat them while he took a quick shower. With his hair still wet, he opened a jar of duck sauce and a can of Shasta diet cola, and sat down in the kitchen.

  The apartment felt empty. It hadn't seemed that way this morning, but it was too quiet now. He moved his dinner into the tv room. The big screen lit up in the middle of a comfy domestic scene with a husband, a wife, two kids, and a dog. It reminded him of Sunday afternoons when Gia would bring Vicky over and he would hook up the Atari and teach the little girl how to zap asteroids and space invaders. He remembered watching Gia putter about the apartment; he had liked the way she moved, so efficient and bustling. She moved like a person who got things done. He found that immensely appealing.

  He couldn't say the same about the homey show that filled the screen now. He quickly flipped around the dial and across the cable. There was everything from news to reruns to a bunch of couples two-stepping around hip-to-hip like a parade of Changs and Engs dancing to a country fiddler.

  Definitely Betamax time. Time for part two of Repairman Jack's Unofficial James Whale Festival. The triumph of

  Whale's directorial career was ready to run: The Bride of Frankenstein.

  16

  "You think I'm mad. Perhaps I am. But listen, Henry Frankenstein. While you were digging in your graves, piecing together dead tiss-yoos, I, my dear pupil, went for my material to the source of life… "

  Earnest Thesiger as Dr. Praetorius—the greatest performance of his career—was lecturing his former student. The movie was only half over, but it was time to go. He'd pick up where he left off before bedtime. Too bad. He loved this movie. Especially the score—Franz Waxman's best ever. Who'd have thought that later on in his career, the creator of such a majestic, stirring piece would wind up doing the incidental music for turkeys like Return to Peyton Place. Some people never get the recognition they deserve.

  He pulled on a T-shirt with "The Byrds" written on the front; next came the shoulder holster with the little Semmerling under his left arm; a loose short-sleeved shirt went over that, followed by a pair of cut-off jeans, and sneakers—no socks. By the time he had everything loaded in his mini-shopping cart and was ready to go, darkness had settled on the city.

  He walked down Amsterdam Avenue to where Bahkti's grandmother had been attacked last night, found a deserted alley, and slipped into the shadows. He hadn't wanted to leave his apartment house in drag—his neighbors already considered him more than a little odd—and this was as good a dressing room as any place else.

  First he took off his outer shirt. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out the dress—good quality but out of fashion and in need of ironing. That went over the T-shirt and shoulder holster, followed by a gray wig, then black shoes with no heels. He didn't want to look like a shopping-bag lady; a derelict had nothing to attract the man Jack was after. He wanted a look of faded dignity. New Yorkers see women like this all the time, in their late fifties on up toward eighty. They're all the same. They trudge along, humped over not so much from a softening of the vertebrae as from the weight of life itself, their center of gravity thrust way forward, usually looking down, or if the head is raised, never looking anyone in the eye. The key word with them is alone. They make irresistible targets.

  And Jack was going to be one of them tonight. As an added inducement, he slipped a good quality paste diamond ring onto the fourth finger of his left hand. He couldn't let anyone get a close look at him, but he was sure the type of man he was searching for would spot the gleam from that ring a good two blocks away. And as a back-up attraction: a fat roll of bills, mostly singles, tight against his skin under one of the straps of his shoulder holster.

  Jack put his sneakers and the sap into the paper bag in the upper basket of the little shopping cart. He checked himself in a store window: He'd never make it as a transvestite. Then he began a slow course along the sidewalk, dragging the cart behind him.

  Time to go to work.

  17

  Gia found herself thinking of Jack and resented it. She was sitting across a tiny dinner table from Carl, a handsome, urbane, witty, intelligent man who professed to be quite taken with her. They were in an expensive little restaurant below street level on the Upper East Side. The decor was spare and clean, the wine white, dry, cold, the cuisine nouvelle. Jack should have been miles from her thoughts, and yet he was here, slouched across the table between them.

  She kept remembering the sound of his voice on the answerphone this morning… "Pinocchio Productions. I'm out at the moment"… triggering other memories further in the past…

  Like the time she had asked him why his answerphone always started off with "Pinocchio Productions" when there was no such company. Sure there is, he had said, jumping up and spinning around. Look: no strings. She hadn't understood all the implications at the time.

  And then to learn that among the "neat stuff" he had been picking up in second-hand stores was a whole collection of Vernon Grant art. She found out about that the day he gave Vicky a copy of Flibbity Gibbit. Gia had become familiar with Grant's commercial work during her art school days—he was the creator of Kellogg's Snap, Crackle, and Pop—and she had even swiped from him now and again when an assignment called for something elfin. She felt she had found a truly kindred spirit upon discovering that Jack was a fan of Vernon Grant. And Vicky… Vicky treasured Flibbity Gibbit and had made "Wowie-kee-flowie!" her favorite expression.

  She straightened herself in her chair. Out, damned Jack! Out, I say! She had to start answering Carl in something more than monosyllables.

  She told him her idea about changing the thrust of the Burger-Meister placemats from services to desserts. He was effusive in his praise, saying she should be a copywriter as well as an artist. That launched him onto the subject of the new campaign for his biggest client, Wee Folk children's clothes. There was work in it for Gia and perhaps even a modeling gig for Vicky.

  Poor Carl… he had tried so hard to hit it off with Vicky tonight. As usual, he had failed miserably. Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn the volume up and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound like they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.

  But Vicky hadn't been turned off this afternoon. Jack knew how to talk to her. When he spoke it was to Vicky and to no one else. There was instant rapport between those two. Perhaps because there was a lot of little boy in Jack, a part of him that had never grown up. But if Jack was a little boy, he was a dangerous little boy. He—Why did he keep creeping back into her thoughts? Jack is the past. Carl is the future. Concentrate on Carl!

  She drained her wine and stared at Carl. Good old Carl. Gia held her glass out for more wine. She wanted lots of wine tonight.

  18

  His eye was killing him.

  He sat hunched in the dark recess of the doorway, glowering at the street. He'd probably have to spend the whole night here unless something came along soon.

  The waiti
ng was the worst part, man. The waiting and the hiding. Word was probably out among the pigs to be on the lookout for a guy with a scratched eye. Which meant he couldn't hit the street and go looking, and he hadn't been in town long enough to find someone to crash with. So he had to sit here and wait for something to come to him.

  All because of that rotten bitch.

  He fingered the gauze patch taped over his left eye and winced at the shock of pain elicited by even the gentlest touch. Bitch! She had damn near gouged his eye out last night. But he showed her. Fucking-ay right. Bounced her around good after that. And later on, in this very same doorway, when he'd gone through her wallet and found a grand total of seventeen bucks, and had seen that the necklace was nothing but junk, he'd been tempted to go back and do a tap dance on her head, but figured the pigs would've found her by then.

  And then to top it all off, he'd had to spend most of the bread on eye patches and ointment. He was worse off now than when he'd rolled the bitch.

  He hoped she was hurting now… hurting real good. He knew he was.

  Should never have come east, man. He'd had to get out of Detroit fast after getting carried away with a pry bar on that guy changing a tire out by the interstate. Easier to get lost here than someplace like, say, Saginaw, but he didn't know anybody.

  He leaned back and watched the street with his good eye. Some weird-looking old lady was hobbling by on shoes that looked too small for her, pulling a shopping basket behind her. Not much there. He passed her over as not worth the trouble of a closer look.

  19

  Who am I kidding? Jack thought. He had been trudging up and down every West Side street in the area for hours now. His back was aching from walking hunched over. If the mugger had stayed in the neighborhood, Jack would have passed him by now.

  Damn the heat and damn the dress and most of all damn the goddamn wig. I'll never find this guy.

  But it wasn't only the futility of tonight's quest that was getting to him. The afternoon had hit him hard.

  Jack prided himself on being a man of few illusions. He believed there was a balance to life and he based that belief on Jack's Law of Social Dynamics: For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction wasn't necessarily automatic or inevitable; life wasn't like thermodynamics. Sometimes the reaction had to be helped along. That was where Repairman Jack came into the picture. He was in the business of making some of those reactions happen. He liked to think of himself as a sort of catalyst.

  Jack knew he was a violent man. He made no excuses for that. He had come to terms with it. He had hoped Gia could eventually come to understand it.

  When Gia had left him he'd convinced himself that it was all a big misunderstanding, that all he needed was a chance to talk to her and everything would be straightened out, that it was just her Italian pig-headedness keeping them apart. Well, he had had his chance this afternoon and it was obvious there was no hope of a common ground with Gia. She wanted no part of him.

  He frightened her.

  That was the hardest part to accept. He had scared her off. Not by wronging her or betraying her, but simply by letting her know the truth… by letting her know what Repairman Jack fixed, and how he went about his work, and what tools he used.

  One of them was wrong. Until this afternoon it had been easy to believe that it was Gia. Not so easy tonight. He believed in Gia, believed in her sensitivity, her perceptiveness. And she found him repugnant.

  A soul-numbing lethargy seeped through him.

  What if she's right? What if I am nothing more than a high-priced hoodlum who's rationalized his way into believing he's one of the good guys?

  Jack shook himself. Self-doubt was a stranger to him. He wasn't sure how to fight back. And he had to fight it. He wouldn't change the way he lived; doubted he could if he wanted to. He had spent too long on the outside to find his way back in again—

  Something about the guy sitting in the doorway he had just passed… something about that face in the shadows that his unconscious had spotted in passing but had not yet sent up to his forebrain. Something…

  Jack let go of the shopping basket handle. It clattered to the sidewalk. As he bent to pick it up, he glanced back at the doorway.

  The guy was young with short blond hair—and had a white gauze patch over his left eye. Jack felt his heart increase its tempo. This was almost too good to be true. Yet there he was, keeping back in the shadows, doubtlessly well-aware that his patch marked him. It had to be him. If not, it was one hell of a coincidence. Jack had to be sure.

  He picked up the cart and stood still for a moment, deciding his next move. Patch had noticed him, but seemed indifferent. Jack would have to change that.

  With a cry of delight, he bent and pretended to pick something out from under the wheel of the cart. As he straightened, he turned his back to the street—but remained in full view of Patch, whom he pretended not to see—and dug inside the top of his dress. He removed the roll of bills, made sure Patch got a good look at its thickness, then pretended to wrap a new bill around it. He stuffed it back in his ersatz bra, and continued on his way.

  About a hundred feet on, he stopped to adjust a shoe and took advantage of the moment to sneak a look behind: Patch was out of the shadows and following him down the street.

  Good. Now to arrange a rendezvous.

  He removed the sap from the paper bag and slipped his wrist through the thong, then went on until he came to an alley. Without an apparent care in the world, he turned into it and let the darkness swallow him.

  Jack had moved maybe two dozen feet down the littered path when he heard the sound he knew would come: quick, stealthy footsteps approaching from the rear. When the sound was almost upon him, he lurched to the left and flattened his back against the wall. A dark form hurtled by and fell sprawling over the cart.

  Amid the clatter of metal and muttered curses, the figure scrambled to its feet and faced him. Jack felt truly alive now, reveling in the pulses of excitement crackling like bolts of lightning through his nervous system, anticipating one of the fringe benefits of his work—giving a punk like this a taste of his own medicine.

  Patch seemed hesitant. Unless he was very stupid, he must have realized that his prey had moved a bit too fast for an old lady. Jack did not want to spook him, so he made no move. He simply crouched against the alley wall and let out a high-pitched howl that would have put Una O'Connor to shame.

  Patch jumped and glanced up and down the alley.

  "Hey! Shut up!"

  Jack screamed again.

  "Shut the fuck up!"

  But Jack only crouched lower, gripped the handle of the sap tighter, and screamed once more.

  "Awright, bitch!" Patch said through his teeth as he charged forward. "You asked for it." There was anticipation in his voice. Jack could tell he liked beating up people who couldn't fight back. As Patch loomed over him with raised fists, Jack straightened to his full height, bringing his left hand up from the floor. He caught Patch across the face with a hard, stinging, open-palmed slap that rocked him back on his heels.

  Jack knew what would follow, so he was moving to his right even as he swung. Sure enough, as soon as Patch regained his balance, he started for the street. He had just made a big mistake and he knew it. Probably thought he had picked an undercover cop to roll. As he darted by on his way to freedom, Jack stepped in and swung the sap at Patch's skull. Not a hard swing—a flick of the wrist, really—but it connected with a satisfying thunk. Patch's body went slack, but not before his reflexes had jerked him away from Jack. His momentum carried him head first into the far wall. He settled to the floor of the alley with a sigh.

  Jack shucked off the wig and dress and got back into his sneakers, then he went over and nudged Patch with his foot. He groaned and rolled over. He appeared dazed, so Jack reached out with his free hand and shook him by the shoulder. Without warning, Patch's right arm whipped around, slashing at Jack with the four-inch blade protruding from his fis
t. Jack grabbed the wrist with one hand and poked at a spot behind Patch's left ear, just below the mastoid. Patch grunted with pain; as Jack applied more and more pressure, he began flopping around like a fish on a hook. Finally he dropped the knife. As Jack relaxed his hold, Patch made a leap to retrieve the knife. Jack had half expected this. The sap still hung from his wrist by its thong. He grabbed it and smashed it across the back of Patch's hand, putting all of his wrist and a good deal of his forearm behind the blow. The crunch of bone was followed by a scream of pain.

  "You broke it!" He rolled onto his belly and then back onto his side. "I'll have your ass for this, pig!" He moaned and whined and swore incoherently, all the while cradling his injured hand.

  "Pig?" Jack said in his softest voice. "No such luck, friend. This is personal."

  The moaning stopped. Patch peered through the darkness with his good eye, a worried look on his face. As he placed his good hand against the wall to prop himself up, Jack raised the sap for another blow.

  "No fair, man!" He quickly withdrew the hand and lay down again. "No fair!"

  "Fair?" Jack laughed as nastily as he could. "Were you going to be fair to the old lady you thought you had trapped here? No rules in this alley, friend. Just you and me. And I'm here to get you."

  He saw Patch's eye widen; his tone echoed the fear in his face.

  "Look, man. I don't know what's goin' down here, but you got the wrong guy. I only came in from Michigan last week."

  "Not interested in last week, friend. Just last night… the old lady you rolled."

  "Hey, I didn't roll no old lady! No way!" Patch flinched and whimpered as Jack raised the sap menacingly. "I swear to God, man! I swear!"