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

by F. Paul Wilson

  As Jack approached for a closer look, he saw a figure standing at the corner of the house looking out at the ruins. It was Mr. Canelli. His shoulders were slumped and quaking. Sunlight glistened off the tears on his cheeks. Jack knew little about Mr. Canelli. He was a quiet man who bothered no one. He had no wife, no children or grandchildren around. All he had was his yard: his hobby, his work of art, the focus of what was left of his life. Jack knew from his own small-time landscaping jobs around town how much sweat was invested in a yard like that. No man should have to see that kind of effort wantonly destroyed. No man that age should be reduced to standing in his own yard and crying.

  Mr. Canelli’s helplessness unleashed something inside Jack. He had lost his temper before, but the rage he felt within him at that moment bordered on insanity. His jaw was clamped so tightly his teeth ached; his entire body trembled as his muscles bunched into knots. He had a good idea of who had done it and could confirm his suspicions with little difficulty. He had to fight off a wild urge to find them and run the Toro over their faces a few times.

  Reason won out. No sense landing himself in jail while they got to play the roles of unfortunate victims.

  There was another way. It leaped full-blown into Jack’s head as he stood there.

  He walked over to Mr. Canelli and said, “I can fix it for you.”

  The old man blotted his face with a handkerchief and glared at him. “Fix it why? So you an’ you friends can destroy it again?”

  “I’ll fix it so it never happens again.”

  Mr. Canelli looked at him a long time without speaking, then said, “Come inside. You tell me how.”

  Jack didn’t give him all the details, just a list of the materials he would need. He added fifty dollars for labor. Mr. Canelli agreed but said he’d hold the fifty until he saw results. They shook hands and had a small glass of barbarone to seal the deal.

  Jack began the following day. He bought three dozen small spreading yews and planted them three and a half feet apart along the perimeter of the corner lot while Mr. Canelli started restorative work on his lawn. They talked while they worked. Jack learned that the damage had been done by a smallish, low-riding, light-colored car and a dark van. Mr. Canelli hadn’t been able to get the license plate numbers. He had called the police but the vandals were long gone by the time one of the local cops came by. The police had been called before, but the incidents were so random and, until now, of such little consequence, that they hadn’t taken the complaints too seriously.

  The next step was to secure three dozen four-foot lengths of six-inch pipe and hide them in Mr. Canelli’s garage. They used a post-hole digger to open a three-foot hole directly behind each yew. Late one night, Jack and Mr. Canelli mixed up a couple of bags of cement in the garage and filled each of the four-foot iron pipes. Three days later, again under cover of darkness, the cement-filled pipes were inserted into the holes behind the yews and the dirt packed tight around them. Each bush now had twelve to fifteen inches of makeshift lolly column hidden within its branches.

  The white picket fence was rebuilt around the yard and Mr. Canelli continued to work at getting his lawn back into shape. The only thing left for Jack to do was sit back and wait.

  It took a while. August ended, Labor Day passed, school began again. By the third week of September, Mr. Canelli had the yard graded again. The new grass had sprouted and was filling in nicely.

  And that, apparently, was what they had been waiting for.

  The sounds of sirens awoke Jack at one-thirty a.m. on a Sunday morning. Red lights were flashing up at the corner by Mr. Canelli’s house. Jack pulled on his jeans and ran to the scene.

  Two first aid rigs were pulling away as he approached the top of the block. Straight ahead a black van lay on its side by the curb. The smell of gasoline filled the air. In the wash of light from a street lamp overhead he saw that the undercarriage was damaged beyond repair: The left front lower control arm was torn loose; the floor pan was ripped open, exposing a bent drive shaft; the differential was knocked out of line, and the gas tank was leaking. A fire truck stood by, readying to hose down the area.

  He walked on to the front of Mr. Canelli’s house, where a yellow Camaro was stopped nose-on to the yard. The windshield was spider-webbed with cracks and steam plumed around the edges of the sprung hood. A quick glance under the hood revealed a ruptured radiator, bent front axle, and cracked engine block.

  Mr. Canelli stood on his front steps. He waved Jack over and stuck a fifty-dollar bill into his hand.

  Jack stood beside him and watched until both vehicles were towed away, until the street had been hosed down, until the fire truck and police cars were gone. He was bursting inside. He felt he could leap off the steps and fly around the yard if he wished. He could not remember ever feeling so good. Nothing smokable, ingestible, or injectable would ever give him a high like this.

  He was hooked.

  5

  One hour, three beers, and two kirs later, it dawned upon Jack that he had told much more than he had intended. He had gone on from Mr. Canelli to describe some of his more interesting fix-it jobs. Kolabati seemed to enjoy them all, especially the ones where he had taken special pains to make the punishment fit the crime.

  A combination of factors had loosened his tongue. First of all was a feeling of privacy. He and Kolabati seemed to have the far end of this wing of Peacock Alley to themselves. There were dozens of conversations going on in the wing, blending into a susurrant undertone that wound around them, masking their own words and making them indistinguishable from the rest. But most of all, there was Kolabati, so interested, so intent upon what he had to say that he kept talking, saying more than he wished, saying anything to keep that fascinated look in her eyes. He talked to her as he had talked to no one else he could remember—except perhaps Abe. Abe had learned about him over a period of years and had seen much of it happen. Kolabati was getting a big helping in one sitting.

  Throughout his narrative, Jack watched for her reaction, fearing she might turn away like Gia had. But Kolabati was obviously not like Gia. Her eyes fairly glowed with enthusiasm and… admiration.

  It was, however, time to shut up. He had said enough. They sat for a quiet moment, toying with their empty glasses. Jack was about to ask her if she wanted a refill when she turned to him.

  “You don’t pay taxes, do you.”

  The statement startled him. Uneasy, he wondered how she knew.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I sense you are a self-made outcast. Am I right?”

  “’Self-made outcast.’ I like that.”

  “Liking it is not the same as answering the question.”

  “I consider myself a sort of sovereign state. I don’t recognize other governments within my borders.”

  “But you’ve exiled yourself from more than the government. You live and work completely outside society. Why?”

  “I’m not an intellectual. I can’t give you a carefully reasoned manifesto. It’s just the way I want to live.”

  Her eyes bored into him. “I don’t accept that. Something cut you off. What was it?”

  This woman was uncanny! It was as if she could look into his mind and read all his secrets. Yes—there had been an incident that had caused him to withdraw from the rest of “civilized” society. But he couldn’t tell her about it. He felt at ease with Kolabati, but he wasn’t about to confess to murder.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  She studied him. “Are your parents alive?”

  Jack felt his insides tighten. “Only my father.”

  “I see. Did your mother die of natural causes?”

  She can read minds! That’s the only explanation!

  “No. And I don’t want to say any more.”

  “Very well. But however you came to be what you are, I’m sure it was by honorable means.”

  Her confidence in him simultaneously warmed and discomfitted him. He wanted to change the subject.

&
nbsp; “Hungry?”

  “Famished!”

  “Any place in particular you’d like to go? There are some Indian restaurants—”

  Her eyebrows arched. “If I were Chinese, would you offer me egg rolls? Am I dressed in a sari?”

  No. That clinging white dress looked like it came straight from a designer’s shop in Paris.

  “French, then?”

  “I lived in France a while. Please: I live in America now. I want American food. “

  “Well, I like to eat where I can relax.”

  “I want to go to Beefsteak Charlie’s.”

  Jack burst out laughing. “There’s one near where I live! I go there all the time! Mainly because when it comes to food, I tend to be impressed more by quantity than by quality.”

  “Good. Then you know the way?”

  He half-rose, then sat down again. “Wait a minute. They serve ribs there. Indians don’t eat pork, do they?”

  “No. You’re thinking of Pakistanis. They’re Moslems and Moslems don’t eat pork. I’m Hindu. We don’t eat beef.”

  “Then why Beefsteak—?”

  “I hear they have a good salad bar, with lots of shrimp. And ’all the beer, wine, or sangria you can drink.’ “

  “Then let’s go,” Jack said, rising and presenting his arm.

  She slipped into her shoes and was up and close beside him in a single liquid motion. Jack threw a ten and a twenty on the table and started to walk away.

  “No receipt?” Kolabati asked with a sly smile. “I’m sure you can make tonight deductible.”

  “I use the short form.”

  She laughed. A delightful sound.

  On their way toward the front of Peacock Alley, Jack was very much aware of the warm pressure of Kolabati’s hand on the inside of his arm and around his biceps, just as he was aware of the veiled attention they drew from all sides as they passed.

  From Peacock Alley in the Waldorf on Park Avenue to Beefsteak Charlie’s on the West Side—culture shock. But Kolabati moved from one stratum to the other as easily as she moved from garnish to garnish at the crowded salad bar, where the attention she attracted was much more openly admiring than at the Waldorf. She seemed infinitely adaptable, and Jack found that fascinating. In fact, he found everything about her fascinating.

  He had begun probing her past during the cab ride uptown, learning that she and her brother were from a wealthy family in the Bengal region of India, that Kusum had lost his arm as a boy in a train wreck that had killed both of their parents, after which they had been raised by the grandmother Jack had met the night before. That explained their devotion to her. Kolabati was currently teaching in Washington at the Georgetown University School of Linguistics and now and again consulting for the School of Foreign Service.

  Jack watched her eat the cold shrimp piled before her. Her fingers were nimble, her movements delicate but sure as she peeled the carapaces, dipped the pink bodies in either cocktail sauce or the little plate of Russian dressing she had brought to the table, then popped them into her mouth. She ate with a gusto he found exciting. It was rare these days to find a woman who so relished a big meal. He was sick to death of talk about calories and pounds and waistlines. Calorie-counting was for during the week. When he was out to eat with a woman, he wanted to see her relish the food as much as he did. It became a shared vice. It linked them in the sin of enjoying a full belly and reveling in the tasting, chewing, swallowing, and washing down that led up to it. They became partners in crime. It was erotic as all hell.

  The meal was over.

  Kolabati leaned back in her chair and stared at him. Between them lay the remains of a number of salads, two steak bones, an empty pitcher of sangria for her, an empty beer pitcher for him, and the casings of at least a hundred shrimp.

  “We have met the enemy,” Jack said, “and he is in us. Just as well you don’t like steak, though. They were on the tough side.”

  “Oh, I like steak. It’s just that beef is supposed to be bad for your karma.”

  As she spoke her hand crept across the table and found his. Her touch was electrifying—a shock literally ran up his arm. Jack swallowed and tried to keep the conversation going. No point in letting her see how she was getting to him.

  “Karma. There’s a word you hear an awful lot. What’s it mean, really? It’s like fate, isn’t it?”

  Kolabati’s eyebrows drew together. “Not exactly. It’s not easy to explain. It starts with the idea of the transmigration of the soul—what we call the atman—and how it undergoes many successive incarnations or lives.”

  “Reincarnation.” Jack had heard of that—Bridey Murphy and all.

  Kolabati turned his hand over and began lightly running her fingernails over his palm. Gooseflesh sprang up all over his body.

  “Right,” she said. “Karma is the burden of good or evil your atman carries with it from one life to the next. It’s not fate, because you are free to determine how much good or evil you do in each of your lives, but then again, the weight of good or evil in your karma determines the kind of life you will be born into—high born or low born.”

  “And that goes on forever?” He wished what she was doing to his hand would go on forever.

  “No. Your atman can be liberated from the karmic wheel by achieving a state of perfection in life. This is moksha. It frees the atman from further incarnations. It is the ultimate goal of every atman. “

  “And eating beef would hold you back from moksha?” It sounded silly.

  Kolabati seemed to read his mind again. “Not so odd, really. Jews and Moslems have a similar sanction against pork. For us, beef pollutes the karma.”

  “’Pollutes.’ “

  “That’s the word.”

  “Do you worry that much about your karma?”

  “Not as much as I should. Certainly not as much as Kusum does.” Her eyes clouded. “He’s become obsessed with his karma… his karma and Kali.”

  That struck a dissonant chord in Jack. “Kali? Wasn’t she worshipped by a bunch of stranglers?” Again, his source was Gunga Din.

  Kolabati’s eyes cleared and flashed as she dug her fingernails into his palm, turning pleasure to pain. “That wasn’t Kali but a diminished avatar of her called Bhavani who was worshipped by Thugges—low-caste criminals! Kali is the Supreme Goddess!”

  “Woops! Sorry.”

  She smiled. “Where do you live?”

  “Not far.”

  “Take me there.”

  Jack hesitated, knowing it was his firm personal rule to never let people know where he lived unless he had known them for a good long while. But she was stroking his palm again.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  6

  For certain is death for the born

  And certain is birth for the dead;

  Therefore over the inevitable

  Thou shouldst not grieve.

  Kusum lifted his head from his study of the Bhagavad Gita. There it was again. That sound from below. It came to him over the dull roar of the city beyond the dock, the city that never slept, over the nocturnal harbor sounds, and the creaks and rattles of the ship as the tide caressed its iron hull and stretched the ropes and cables that moored it. Kusum closed the Gita and went to his cabin door. It was too soon. The Mother could not have caught the Scent yet.

  He went out and stood on the small deck that ran around the aft superstructure. The officers’ and crew’s quarters, galley, wheelhouse, and funnel were all clustered here at the stern. He looked forward along the entire length of the main deck, a flat surface broken only by the two hatches to the main cargo holds and the four cranes leaning out from the kingpost set between them. His ship. A good ship, but an old one. Small as freighters go—twenty-five hundred tons, running two hundred feet prow to stern, thirty feet across her main deck. Rusted and dented, but she rode high and true in the water. Her registry was Liberian, naturally.

  Kusum had had her sailed here
six months ago. No cargo at that time, only a sixty-foot enclosed barge towed three hundred feet behind the ship as it made its way across the Atlantic from London. The cable securing the barge came loose the night the ship entered New York Harbor. The next morning the barge was found drifting two miles off shore. Empty. Kusum sold it to a garbage hauling outfit. U.S. Customs inspected the two empty cargo holds and allowed the ship to dock. Kusum had secured a slip for it in the barren area above Pier 97 on the West Side, where there was little dock activity. It was moored nose first into the bulkhead. A rotting pier ran along its starboard flank. The crew had been paid and discharged. Kusum had been the only human aboard since.

  The rasping sound came again. More insistent. Kusum went below. The sound grew in volume as he neared the lower decks. Opposite the engine room, he came to a watertight hatch and stopped.

  The Mother wanted to get out. She had begun scraping her talons along the inner surface of the hatch and would keep it up until she was released. Kusum stood and listened for a while. He knew the sound well: long, grinding, irregular rasps in a steady, insistent rhythm. She showed all the signs of having caught the Scent. She was ready to hunt.

  That puzzled him. It was too soon. The chocolates couldn’t have arrived yet. He knew precisely when they had been posted from London—a telegram had confirmed it—and knew they’d be delivered tomorrow at the very earliest.

  Could it possibly be one of those specially treated bottles of cheap wine he had been handing out to the winos downtown for the past six months? The derelicts had served as a food supply and good training fodder for the nest as it matured. He doubted there could be any of the treated wine left—those untouchables usually finished off the bottle within hours of receiving it.