Ground Zero rj-13

by F. Paul Wilson

  Jack couldn’t help laughing. “I love it! That’s my Weez!”

  “What—?”

  The conductor’s voice interrupted, crackling over the speaker to announce Jackson Heights coming up.

  Jack said, “Sit tight.”

  “But it’s our stop.”

  “We may have company.”

  His eyes widened. “You mean followed?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Come on. No one’s going to—”

  “Think about it, Eddie. Your sister’s in a coma. Someone stole her bag. Whoever did has keys to her house but doesn’t know where her house is because she’s not listed anywhere as an owner or a tenant. A stranger was just asking about where she lives. We didn’t tell him. So the only way to find out is to follow us.”

  Eddie leaned back and shook his head. “No wonder you and Weez were such good friends.”

  As the train slowed to a stop, the bleached blond head appeared again, then pulled back.

  Yep. They had a tail. Not the guy calling himself Bob Garvey. Strictly amateur to have a familiar face try to follow, which would have given Jack a certain amount of comfort. Instead he’d sent a second guy.

  Which led to the question: How many were involved here? How big was this?

  Worst-case scenario for Jack: the government. In most cases, if they wanted Weezy’s address they’d just flash a badge at Eddie and demand he tell them. But what if Weezy had stumbled onto some covert operation?

  Listen to me, he thought. I’m cooking up a Jason Bourne plot here.

  But he couldn’t ignore the possibility, because for a guy who didn’t pay taxes or even have a Social Security number, feds were, if not a worst-case scenario, then at least very, very bad.

  But if not government, then who? And why?

  Weezy, my dear old pal, what the hell have you got yourself into?

  “What’s the plan?” Eddie said as the train lurched into motion again. His tone dripped sarcasm. “Put on wigs and mustaches? Or do we climb between the cars and jump off as it’s moving?”

  “Do I detect a note of skepticism?”

  “You detect a whole orchestra.”

  “O ye of little faith.”

  “What do you expect? You’re Jack from Johnson, New Jersey, who repairs appliances, and you expect me to believe you’ve spotted someone following us?” He gestured at the sparsely populated car. “Who? Point him out.”

  Jack wasn’t so sure that was the thing to do. “I said we may have a tail. I didn’t say I’d spotted one.”

  “Right. Because there isn’t one. These are just regular folks minding their own business. They don’t care about us.”

  Jack couldn’t blame him. Were positions reversed, he’d feel the same way.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. But humor me, okay? We’ll get off at the Elmhurst stop and train back.”

  “Not as if I have a choice now.”

  “We can always pull the emergency stop and jump onto the tracks.”

  Eddie stared at him a long moment, then barked a nervous laugh. “You know, for a minute there you really had me going. I mean, I thought you were serious.”

  “I was,” Jack said, deadpan, then laughed. “Are you kidding me?”

  14

  As the train pulled into the 90th Street–Elmhurst Avenue stop they rose and stood before the nearest door. From the corner of his eye Jack saw the blond guy take another peek. When the train stopped and the door panels split, they stepped out onto the platform. One car down, the blond guy stepped out too. As they headed for the stairs down to the street, he followed. But then, he’d do that even if he wasn’t following them.

  “All we’ve accomplished is to prolong the trip,” Eddie was saying.

  “Yeah, I suppose so. But it gives us a little extra time to discuss the elephant in the room we’ve been ignoring.”

  “You mean, ‘burn my house.’ ”

  Jack had been thinking about it while watching for a tail but could make no sense of it.

  “Yeah. What’s up with that?”

  “I’ve turned it over and over and upside down and inside out and still can’t make sense of it. She loves that house. It contains all her worldly possessions—and believe me, she has a lot of worldly possessions.”

  “I thought you said she lives very simply.”

  He smiled. “She does. And her possessions are simple, but there’s lots and lots of them.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “You’ll see when you get there. It’s easier to show than tell.”

  When they hit the street they crossed Roosevelt Avenue to the Manhattan-bound entrance. As they reached the turnstiles, Jack stepped ahead of Eddie and swiped his MetroCard through the reader.

  “Since I’m the reason you’re here, my treat.”

  Eddie laughed. “Jack, I can well afford—”

  Jack made a flourish toward the turnstile, saying, “I insist,” and used the move as an opportunity to peek behind them.

  The blond guy was standing at the bottom of the stairway across the street looking baffled.

  Jack swiped the card for himself, and then he and Eddie climbed the stairs to the platform. Jack guided him to a spot that would put them on the middle of the train. The sun was hot so they stood back in the shadow of the partial roof.

  “So you have no idea why she’d want us to burn her house?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Not a clue. But I assume it has something to do with her idea that she’d turn up ‘missing.’ ”

  “Well, she was missing for a while.”

  “Because she ran out in front of a car—not because someone abducted her. And not because someone was following her—if you get my meaning.”

  He gestured around the near-empty platform just as the blond guy emerged from the stairwell and stood thirty or so feet away. Eddie glanced at him but didn’t react.

  Clueless, Jack thought as he forced a heavy sigh.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  The Manhattan-bound train pulled in half a minute later. Jack and Eddie boarded. Uptrack to his left, Jack saw the blond man step on as well.

  “Let’s stand,” Jack said, stopping just inside the door. “It’s only one stop.”

  Eddie shrugged. “Sure.”

  Jack waited a few seconds, then grabbed the back of Eddie’s jacket and yanked.

  “On second thought . . .”

  “Hey!” he cried as he was pulled through the closing doors. “What are you doing?”

  As the train began pulling out, Jack gestured at the empty platform. “Just making sure we weren’t followed.”

  “Jesus, Jack! You’re crazy, you know that? You and Weezy always had this . . . this rapport, where one seemed to know what the other was thinking. And now you’ve bought into her paranoia.”

  “I don’t know about that. But one thing I do know: Your sister was way smarter than I ever was. I think that counts for something.”

  He remembered his continuing wonder at the breadth of her knowledge and her photographic memory.

  “She’s still smart—smarter than both of us put together, I’ll bet—but that’s not going to bring the next train any faster.”

  Jack couldn’t decide whether it would be easier to leave Eddie in the dark about the tail or clue him in. He decided a wake-up call was in order.

  “Keep your eyes on this train,” Jack said as it gathered speed. “In one of the cars you’ll see a guy with bleached-blond hair combed forward. When he spots us out here he won’t be happy.”

  Sure enough, the next-to-last car carried the blond man who stared out at them with an angry, befuddled expression.

  “Wave to the nice man.” Eddie didn’t. Jack began pulling him toward the stairway. “Now walk with me.”

  Eddie came along but was staring at him with an uncomfortable expression.

  “You think that man was following us?”

  “Just walk.”

  He hoped seeing them heading t
oward the exit would convince the blond guy that Elmhurst had been their destination all along.

  “Seriously, Jack—”

  “He was peeking at us from an adjoining car all the way out from the city. When we doubled back, so did he. Draw your own conclusion.”

  Eddie stopped at the entrance to the stairwell. “So it’s true? Someone was really following us?”

  “Looks that way to me.”

  “You’re . . . you’re not an appliance repairman, are you.”

  Jack had been afraid of this.

  “As you said yourself, I’m just Jack from Johnson.”

  “Yeah, and I knew that Jack, and that Jack would never settle for being an appliance repairman.”

  “Why not? It’s honest work. You have the satisfaction of accomplishing something. You’re your own boss, you set your own hours, and you leave the job behind at the end of the day.”

  Not an untrue word there—except he wasn’t talking about himself.

  “But how does a simple appliance repairman spot a tail and outsmart him like you just did?”

  “Well, maybe I am a bit paranoid—after all, I was watching for a tail. And I’ve read my share of thrillers.”

  “You were awfully smooth giving him the slip.”

  “Learned everything I know from Jake Fixx.”

  Eddie smiled. “You read those novels? Me too, I’m ashamed to say.”

  “Ashamed?”

  “Well, they’re just plain silly. And that character, that Jake Fixx, he’s preposterous.”

  “But you keep reading them.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s something about the guy . . . he may be ridiculous but—this is going to sound crazy, but I almost feel as if I know him.”

  You have no idea, Jack thought.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Eddie frowned. “But if we really were being followed, that changes everything.”

  “Ya think?”

  “No, seriously. It means—”

  “—that Weezy might not be as paranoid as you thought.”

  “Yeah. Which is not a comfortable thought.”

  Welcome to my world.

  “I agree. But first thing we do is check out her house. And we’ll cab it from here. My treat.”

  15

  The cabby dropped them off at the address Eddie had given him.

  A narrow residential street, lined with parked cars; quiet as expected on a Tuesday afternoon in summer. The surrounding houses had small front yards sporting lawns and plantings that spanned the bell-shaped curve in terms of care and quality. A couple of Asian kids shot baskets in a driveway a few doors down. A woman in a sari wheeled a little shopping cart up from Roosevelt Avenue.

  Jack stood on the front walk and stared at the house: Two stories tall, it sat cheek by jowl with its identical neighbors, with what looked like the original postwar, asbestos-shingle siding painted Broomhilda green.

  “She rents Archie Bunker’s house?”

  Eddie, a few steps ahead of him, stopped and stared for a second, then laughed.

  “You know, I never saw it before, but you’re right. Not a whole lot of single-family houses around here. This is one of the few blocks that’s got any.”

  Jack had been through Jackson Heights countless times over the years. It sat in northwest Queens—not as far north or west as Astoria where the Kenton brothers lived, but convenient to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and with good subway service in and out of the city. Back when Jack was born, white middle-class folks like Archie and Edith peopled its ubiquitous garden apartments. But then, like Astoria, it morphed into an ethnic polyglot, home of Little India with its myriad South Asian shops and restaurants, and loads of Africans and Latinos as well. And then, as real estate prices began soaring in Manhattan, the whites had started moving back. But not too many yet.

  Mostly working folks in Jackson Heights, but gangs reared their ugly heads every so often. And more and more of those gang members seemed to be wearing Kicker Man tattoos.

  Jack noticed Weezy’s windows. Heavy sunshades inside the glass screened the interior from view; wrought-iron bars protected all the first-floor windows—not all that unusual. Then he spotted more on the second floor over the front-porch roof.

  He did a slow turn to check out the neighborhood again: seemed quiet enough. Why was Weezy’s house the only one secured like a jewelry store?

  He caught up to Eddie at the front door as he was unlocking the second of three deadbolts.

  Okay, Jack had multiple locks on his door too. Nothing wrong with that.

  “What’s with all the window bars?”

  “When you think you might go ‘missing,’ it’s only logical to take precautions, right?”

  “True that. Nothing to do with the fact that she appears to be the only Caucasian on the block?”

  Eddie gave him a sharp look and his tone took on an acid edge. “You should know better than that.”

  “That’s just it—I don’t. I don’t know a thing about the adult Weezy.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you don’t. But trust me on this: The grown-up Weezy is very much like the Weezy you knew before they started . . . medicating her. She doesn’t notice race—or at least that’s not the way she categorizes people. She has her own unique criteria.”

  “As in the parts they play in the Secret History of the World?”

  “Bingo.” He turned the key on her last deadbolt and looked at Jack. “Get ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He pushed the door open and an unusual odor wafted from the dark interior. It threw Jack for a second until he recognized it. Old paper—it smelled like an antiquarian bookstore.

  Eddie stepped inside and flipped a light switch. Jack followed but froze on the threshold.

  “What the—?”

  Eddie’s comment about Weezy having a lot of worldly possessions suddenly made sense.

  The walls of the front room were lined—as in spackled—with books, but the shoulder-high piles of newspapers dominated the front room. Row upon row of stacks with narrow passages between forming the equivalent of an English hedgerow maze.

  “Amazing, isn’t it,” Eddie said, navigating a lane toward the rear.

  Jack closed the door and followed.

  “Well, it’s not on the scale of the Collyer brothers—”

  “Who?”

  “Two recluse brothers who were found dead in their Fifth Avenue brown-stone with a hundred tons of junk, much of it old newspapers.”

  “No junk here, as you will note.” Eddie sounded a little defensive. “And everything neatly stacked.”

  Jack had noticed that. The tabloids were stacked together, as were the full-size papers. They weren’t tied into bundles. He wondered if they were in any special order. He stopped and checked out a few. A 1968 Post lay atop a 1975 Daily News. In the next stack a 1993 Times atop—

  “Wow. Check this out—a Journal-American from nineteen sixty-two. Where’d she get these?”

  “God only knows.”

  “Looks like they’re all New York papers.”

  “They might be. I wouldn’t know.”

  The maze extended into the next room. Yes, she had a dining set, but the table was piled high with papers and more stacked beneath. The same with each of the four chairs. Her china cabinet was stuffed with books.

  “It’s the same upstairs—the extra rooms, the hallway, even her bedroom.”

  Jack glanced at the living room ceiling and thought it appeared to belly downward.

  “She hasn’t filled the basement, but that’s not to say she couldn’t. It’s damp down there and she’s afraid the moisture will mildew the papers.”

  “Well, she could get the walls and floor treated—”

  “And let workers in? You must be joking.”

  “Sorry. What was I thinking?”

  “I’ve begged her not to store anything in the kitchen and apparently she’s listened. The thought of an ope
n flame and all these papers . . .” He gave a visible shudder.

  “ ‘Burn my house,’ ” Jack said, looking around at the astounding amount of paper. “As easily done as said.”

  “Not that she does any cooking anyway.” Eddie stepped into the kitchen. “She lives on takeout and microwaveables.”

  The kitchen looked more like an office—scanner and printer on the counter next to the microwave, computer on the kitchen table. Jack checked out the refrigerator: Lean Cuisine entrées in the freezer on top; milk, cheese, condiments below.

  No beer. Damn. Could have used a beer.

  He lifted the shade and peeked out the kitchen window into the wildly overgrown backyard. A well-weathered six-foot stockade fence ran along the perimeter.

  “Doesn’t she ever cut her grass?”

  “Not in back,” Eddie said. “I asked her once and she said she never went out there, so why bother?”

  No sign of a bunny hutch—a long shot anyway—so Jack dropped the shade and looked back into the dining room at the piles of papers.

  “Why would she want to burn all this? Must have spent half her life collecting it.”

  “Only the last three years or so, actually. Started some time after Steve died.”

  Jack shook his head. He’d assumed it was a longtime obsession. How had Weezy amassed this collection in only three years?

  “Did she ever give you a reason?”

  “She refused to say. As I told you, she said I could be in danger if I knew. She was pretty serious about it.”

  “Ah. So then it’s a good bet that her perceived threat is linked to the newspapers.”

  “That was the impression I got.”

  Jack grabbed a copy from the nearest pile and handed it to Eddie.

  “Okay, then. We’d better get started. I hope you’re an Evelyn Wood graduate.”

  Eddie gave him a baffled look. “Huh?”

  “Speed reading. We’ve got to go through every one of these to see why she’s been saving them.”

  Bafflement turned to shocked disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Jack held his gaze for a heartbeat or two, then said, “Psych!”

  Eddie looked ceilingward and burst out laughing. “Oh, man, does that take me back!”

  It took Jack back too. They had put each other on so many times growing up, always ending with Psych!