The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Au contraire. I come with goodies in hand, and money in pocket.”

  “Did you—?” Abe peered over the counter at the white box with the blue lettering. “You did! Crumb? Bring it over here.”

  Just then a big burly fellow in a dirty sleeveless undershirt stuck his head in the door. “I need a box of twelve gauge double-O. Y’got any?”

  Abe removed his glasses and gave the man a withering stare.

  “You will note, sir, that the sign outside says ’Sporting Goods.’ Killing is not a sport!”

  The man looked at Abe as if he had just turned green, and went away.

  For a big man, Abe Grossman showed he could move quickly when he wanted to. He carried an easy two hundred pounds packed into a five-eight frame. His graying hair had receded back to the top of his head. His clothes never varied: black pants, short-sleeved white shirt, shiny black tie. The tie and shirt were a sort of scratch-and-sniff catalog of the food he had eaten that day. As Abe rounded the end of the counter, Jack spotted scrambled egg, mustard, and what could be either catsup or spaghetti sauce.

  “You really know how to hurt a guy,” he said, breaking off a piece of cake and biting heartily. “You know I’m on a diet.” Powdered sugar speckled his tie as he spoke.

  “Yeah. I noticed.”

  “S’true. It’s my own special diet. Absolutely no carbohydrates—except for Entenmann’s cake. That’s a free food. All other portions have to be measured, but Entenmann’s is ad lib.” He took another big bite and spoke around it. Crumb cake always made him manic. “Did I tell you I added a codicil to my will? I’ve decided that after I’m cremated I want my ashes buried in an Entenmann’s box. Or if I’m not cremated, it should be a white, glass-topped coffin with blue lettering on the side.” He held up the cake box. “Just like this. Either way, I want to be interred on a grassy slope overlooking the Entenmann’s plant in Bay Shore.”

  Jack tried to smile but it must have been a poor attempt. Abe stopped in mid-chew.

  “What’s eating up your quderim?”

  “Saw Gia today.”

  “Nu?”

  “It’s over. Really over.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “I knew it but I didn’t believe it.” Jack forced himself to ask a question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. “Am I crazy, Abe? Is there something wrong in my head for wanting to live this way? Is my pilot light flickering and I don’t know it?”

  Without taking his eyes from Jack’s face, Abe put down his piece of cake and made a half-hearted attempt to brush off his front. He succeeded only in smearing the sugar specks on his tie into large white blotches.

  “What did she do to you?”

  “Opened my eyes, maybe. Sometimes it takes an outsider to make you see yourself as you really are.”

  “And you see what?”

  Jack took a deep breath. “A crazy man. A violent crazy man.”

  “That’s what her eyes see. But what does she know? Does she know about Mr. Canelli? Does she know about your mother? Does she know how you got to be Repairman Jack?”

  “Nope. Didn’t wait to hear.”

  “There! You see? She knows nothing! She understands nothing! And she’s closed her mind to you, so who wants someone like that?”

  “Me!”

  “Well,” Abe said, rubbing a hand across his forehead and leaving a white smear, “that I can’t argue with.” He glared at Jack. “How old are you?”

  Jack had to think a second. He always felt stupid when he had to remember his age.

  “Uhh… thirty-four.”

  “Thirty-four. Surely you’ve been ditched before?”

  “Abe… I can’t remember ever feeling about anyone the way I feel about Gia. And she’s afraid of me!”

  “Fear of the unknown. She doesn’t know you, so she’s afraid of you. I know all about you. Am I afraid?”

  “Aren’t you? Ever?”

  “Never!” He trotted back behind the counter and picked up a copy of the New York Post. Rifling through the pages, he said, “Look—a five-year-old beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend! A guy with a straight razor slashes eight people in Times Square last night and then disappears into a subway! A headless, handless torso is found in a West Side hotel room! As a hit-and-run victim lays bleeding in the street, people run up to him, rob him, and then leave him there. I should be afraid of you?”

  Jack shrugged, unconvinced. None of this would bring Gia back; it was what he was that had driven her away. He decided he wanted to do his business here and go home.

  “I need something.”

  “What?”

  “A slapper. Lead and leather.”

  Abe nodded. “Ten ounces do?”

  “Sure.”

  Abe locked the front door and hung the “Back In A Few Minutes” sign facing out through the glass. He passed Jack and led him toward the back, where they stepped into a closet and closed the door after them. A push swung the rear wall of the closet away from them. Abe hit a light switch and they started down a worn stone stairway. As they moved, a neon sign flickered to life:

  FINE WEAPONS

  THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS THE

  RIGHT TO BE FREE

  Jack had often asked Abe why he had placed a neon sign where advertising would do no good; Abe unfailingly replied that every good weapons shop should have such a sign.

  “When you get right down to it, Jack,” Abe was saying, “what I think of you or what Gia thinks of you isn’t going to matter much in the long run. Because there isn’t going to be a long run. Everything’s falling apart. You know that. There’s not much time left before civilization collapses completely. It’s going to start soon. The banks’ll start to go any day now. These people who think their savings are insured by the FDIC? Have they got a rude awakening coming! Just wait till the first couple of banks go under and they find out the FDIC only has enough to cover a pupik’s worth of the deposits it’s supposed to be insuring. Then you’ll see panic, my boy. That’s when the government will crank up the printing presses to full speed to cover those deposits and we’ll have runaway inflation on our hands. I tell you…”

  Jack cut him off. He knew the routine by heart.

  “You’ve been telling me for ten years, Abe! Economic ruin has been around the corner for a decade now. Where is it?”

  “Coming, Jack. Coming. I’m glad my daughter’s fully grown and disinclined toward marriage and a family. I shudder at the thought of a child or a grandchild growing up in the coming time.”

  Jack thought of Vicky. “Full of good cheer as usual, aren’t you? You’re the only man I know who lights up a room when he leaves.”

  “Very funny. I’m only trying to open your eyes so you can take steps to protect yourself.”

  “And what about you? You’ve got a bomb shelter somewhere in the sticks full of freeze-dried food?”

  Abe shook his head. “Nah. I’ll take my chances here. I’m not built for a post-holocaust lifestyle. And I’m too old to learn.”

  He flipped another wall switch at the bottom of the steps, bringing the ceiling lights to life.

  The basement was as crowded as the upstairs, only there was no sporting equipment down here. The walls and floors were covered with every one-man weapon imaginable. There were switchblades, clubs, swords, brass knuckles, and a full array of firearms from derringers to bazookas.

  Abe went over to a cardboard box and rummaged through it.

  “You want a slapper or the braided kind.”

  “Braided.”

  Abe tossed him something in a Zip-lok bag. Jack removed it and hefted it in his hand. The sap, sometimes called a blackjack, was made of thin strips of leather woven around a lead weight; the weave tightened and tapered down to a firm handle that ended in a looped thong for the wrist. Jack fitted it on and tried a few short swings. The flexibility allowed him to get his wrist into the motion, a feature that might come in handy at close quarters.

  He stood looking at the
sap.

  This was the sort of thing that had frightened Gia off. He swung it once more, harder, striking the edge of a wooden shipping crate. There was a loud crack; splinters flew.

  “This’ll do fine. How much?”

  “Ten.”

  Jack reached into his pocket. “Used to be eight.”

  “That was years ago. One of these should last you a lifetime.”

  “I lose things.” He handed over a ten-dollar bill and put the sap into his pocket.

  “Need anything else while we’re down here?”

  Jack ran a mental inventory of his weapons and ammunition. “No. I’m pretty well set.”

  “Good. Then let’s go upstairs and we’ll have some cake and talk. You look like you need some talk.”

  “Thanks, Abe,” Jack said, leading the way upstairs, “but I’ve got some errands to run before dark, so I’ll take a rain-check.”

  “You hold things in too much. I’ve told you that before. We’re supposed to be friends. So talk it out. You don’t trust me anymore?”

  “I trust you like crazy. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “I’ll see you, Abe.”

  15

  It was after six when Jack got back to the apartment. With all the shades pulled, the front room was dark. It matched his mood.

  He had checked in with his office; there had been no calls of any importance waiting for him. The answerphone here had no messages waiting.

  He had a two-wheel, wire shopping cart with him, and in it a paper bag full of old clothing—woman’s clothing. He leaned the cart in a corner, then went to his bedroom. His wallet, loose cash, and the new sap went on top of his dresser, then he stripped down and got into a T-shirt and shorts. Time for his work-out. He didn’t want to—he felt emotionally and physically spent—but this was the only thing in his daily routine he had promised himself he would never let slide. His life depended on it.

  He locked his apartment and jogged up the stairs.

  The sun had done its worst and was on its way down the sky, but the roof remained an inferno. Its black surface would hold the day’s heat long into the night. Jack looked west into the haze that was reddening the lowering sun. On a clear day you could see New Jersey over there. If you wanted to. Someone had once told him that if you died in sin your soul went to New Jersey.

  The roof was crowded. Not with people, with things. There was Appleton’s tomato patch in the southeast corner; he had carried the topsoil up bag by fifty-pound bag. Harry Bok had a huge CB antenna in the northeast corner. Centrally located was the diesel generator everybody had pitched in to buy after the July ’77 blackout; clustered against its north side like suckling piglets against their mama were a dozen two-gallon cans of number-one oil. And above it all, waving proudly from its slim two-inch pole, was Neil the Anarchist’s black flag.

  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. Th
e 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.