Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies

by F. Paul Wilson

  He wanted to get together tonight but she couldn't. She had a meeting scheduled with Jack and that new lawyer, Sean O'Neill, tonight. Will pressed her for Monday night—an Armenian place called Zov's with a super rack of lamb—and she gave in.

  She was becoming more and more comfortable with him. She didn't know if that was a good thing.

  3.

  Jack didn't return any of Jorge's three calls this morning. The man kept wanting to thank him for returning the full six thousand Ramirez had owed him, and kept asking why Jack hadn't taken his cut. Jack had told him once that his fee had come out of the "interest" he'd charged Ramirez. He didn't want to go over it again.

  One call he did return was to his father in Florida, and they went round and round again—Dad urging him to come down and cash in on all the "fantastic opportunities" waiting for him in Florida, Jack dodging this way and that, finally promising to come down for a visit "real soon."

  That done, he took a moment to send five hundred dollars in cash to Dolores, care of the Hudak Agency, with an unsigned note stating simply: "For your trouble."

  And then it was out to pick up some of the equipment Milkdud had told him he'd need. After that he was looking forward to some time alone with Gia while Vicky was at her art lessons.

  4.

  "Hi, Ma," Sam Baker said as he entered his mother's room.

  "Stay away from the fence!" his mother shouted, looking past him.

  She was a thin, angular woman, with glistening blue eyes. The nursing home staff had secured her into her chair with a nylon mesh vest they called a "posy." Her bony fingers worked incessantly at the hem of the blanket wrapped around her legs.

  "I brought you flowers, Ma," he said, showing her the half dozen short-stemmed roses he'd picked up in the city.

  "And get Janey away too!" she called.

  Baker sighed and sat on the bed—gingerly. His back still throbbed like some giant goddamn infected tooth from that kidney punch on Thursday night. He unscrewed the cap from the bottle of seltzer he'd brought along. He hated seltzer, but it was better than drinking straight water.

  He took a sip and stared at the woman who'd raised him. She'd be sixty-eight next February. Not so old in body, but her mind had begun to slip away about ten years ago. Now it was completely shot. He'd had to move her into this nursing home two years ago, and it was sucking him dry.

  He'd heard Alzheimer's ran in families, and that scared the shit out of him. Every time he forgot something he should have remembered, he wondered, Is this the start?

  Gave him the creeps. He hoped he'd have the wherewithal to swallow the business end of a Tec-9 before he got like her.

  "I'm warning you, Janey!" she shouted.

  "Who the hell is Janey, Ma?" he said softly.

  "It's her latest imaginary playmate," said a voice behind him.

  Oh, shit, Baker thought. Karen.

  He turned to see his older sister standing in the doorway. And she took up most of that doorway. Christ, his sister the eternal hippie had really let herself go to hell lately. She'd had a second chin for some time, but now it looked like she was well on her way to a third. And if she was going to dye her hair, at least keep it up. Long gray roots and long red ends—was that a look for aging hippie chicks?

  Karen said, "You'd know all about Janey if you visited more often."

  "Lay off," he said. "I get here when I can. I don't see you coming up with a check every month."

  It was an old argument, and he was sick of it. The nursing home was in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Karen lived in the next town. Baker had to trek out from the city.

  She pointed to his seltzer bottle. "You on a diet or something?"

  Yeah, he thought. I bet you know all about diets.

  "No. I'm just thirsty."

  He wasn't about to tell her that he was treating a badly bruised kidney. He kept drinking because it kept him running to the head. And every time he took a leak, he saw red—in the water and in his mind. He hadn't checked with a doctor but he figured anything that flushed the blood out of his aching right kidney couldn't be all bad.

  Karen stepped closer and stared at his face. "What happened to your nose?"

  Broken—for about the fifth time. But this was a bad one.

  Another thing he owed that guy, that cabbie or whatever he was. He'd done a real number on him.

  Serves me right for letting myself get caught flat-footed, he thought, but it won't happen next time. And there will be a next time.

  Baker would make sure of that.

  And then his little filleting knife would come into play…

  "Ran into a door."

  "No, Sam. You got hurt." Her face showed concern, but he knew it wasn't for him. "What about Kenny? Did he get hurt too?"

  "Kenny's fine."

  In fact, Baker wished Kenny had been driving the van instead of Chuck. Kenny wouldn't have gotten suckered by that cabbie.

  "He'd better be. I don't know what you've gotten him into this time, but if anything happens to him…"

  I cut him in on a sweet deal, Sam thought. Because he's family. Because you look out for your own.

  Same with the other guys in the crew. He'd worked with them all at one time or another. They formed a small fraternity. If something like this Clayton thing fell into their laps, they'd call him.

  "He's a grown man, Karen."

  "He's still my baby!" she said, her face screwing up.

  Oh, no, he thought. Not another crying scene.

  "He's my baby and you made a monster out of him. I'll never know why he looked up to you."

  "Maybe because I was the only man who stayed in his life for more than a year or two."

  "You made him join the marines!"

  "I didn't make him do anything. He didn't want to be like all those creeps who kept coming and going through that revolving door in your place. He wanted a little stability. The marines made a man out of him."

  "Some man! He's a goddamn mercenary! If anything happens to him, Sam, I'm holding you responsible."

  "Don't worry. I'll take good care of him. Better care than you ever did when he was growing up."

  She let out a loud sob and hurried from the room.

  Baker sat and stared at his mother. Go ahead, Karen. Say it like it's a dirty word, but this gig is going to assure that Mom's taken good care of for the rest of her life. And even if something happens to me, my life insurance policy will do the same thing.

  You look out for your own. Whatever it takes.

  He rose, wincing at the pain in his kidney. He took another swig of seltzer. He'd switch to beer when he got back to his place in the city. If he hurried he could catch the Giants-Cowboys kickoff.

  "Bye, Ma. See you next week."

  Mom looked around. "Where's Janey?"

  5.

  Yoshio Takita could not locate Sam Baker, so he chose Thomas Clayton as his surveillance subject for the day. He consumed a bag of Krispy Kreme donuts as he sat outside Clayton's apartment building on Eighth Avenue. They were all delightfully heavy, but the blueberry glazed were the best.

  He was about to give up and call it a day when he spotted Clayton stepping from his building. He walked east. He seemed to be in no hurry.

  Yoshio followed him to the West Twenties where he saw him enter a club called Prancers—"All Live! All Nude! All Day!"

  Yoshio sighed. He knew this routine.

  He spotted the sign for a dojo spread across a set of second-floor windows down the block. To kill some time, he climbed the steps and peeked in. After only a few minutes of watching the lazy, overweight instructor, Yoshio left in a fury. If this was a representative example of the way the martial arts were being taught in America, then… then…

  Then they needed someone who really knew what he was doing. Someone like…

  Me. Yoshio grinned at the thought. My students would be the best in the country. My dojo would kick the rice out of every other dojo.

  And I would have all this delicious
food at my fingertips, every day, for the rest of my life.

  It was a thought worth pondering…

  6.

  "You're really going to Florida?" Gia said.

  Jack lay on the couch in his apartment, content and thoroughly spent after a leisurely hour of lovemaking with Gia. She lay curled against him, her head on his shoulder, her breath warm on his chest.

  "Just to make him happy."

  "And maybe just to shut him up?"

  "Hopefully, that too."

  "What happened to this firm resolve to tell him in no ' uncertain terms that you would never move to Florida?"

  Jack shrugged, and the motion lifted Gia's head.

  "I tried," he said, "but I just couldn't do it. The poor guy is so sincere. He wants so badly for me to succeed."

  "Does he think you're such a failure?"

  "Not so much a failure as a guy with no plan, no agenda, no rudder, so to speak. And in that sense I think he feels he failed me." Jack felt his contentment slipping away. Why had Gia brought this up? "That's what makes it so hard. It'd be easy to blow him off if he'd been a bad father. But he was a good one, always making an effort to be involved with his kids, and he can't understand where he went wrong with his youngest. So he keeps trying, figuring sooner or later he'll get it right."

  "He did leave you a rudder of sorts," Gia said, staring at him with those blue wonders. "You've got a moral compass, a value system. That must have come from someone."

  "Not him. He's a citizen. A white-collar, churchgoing, taxpaying veteran of Korea. He'd have a stroke if he knew the truth."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "Absolutely, positutely, one hundred percent sure."

  "And so you're going down to Florida."

  "Sure as hell looks that way."

  "Can Vicky and I come along? At least as far as Orlando?"

  "Hey, now there's an idea," he said, brightening. He kissed her forehead. "Disney World. We've never been there. And the Universal place. I want to see 'Terminator 3-D.'"

  Maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all. For a week.

  "Let's do it."

  And then it was time to get dressed and pick up Vicky.

  But "3-D" stuck in Jack's brain for some reason, and he treated Gia and Vicky to a late-afternoon IMAX 3-D movie.

  Vicky loved it, but Jack came away disappointed. All that screen, those neat 3-D glasses… you'd think they could do something better than close-ups of bugs and fish. Why not a real movie—like a 3-D IMAX haunted house? That would be something to see.

  They found a restaurant called Picholjne nearby, where they had dinner and made plans for going to Florida. Vicky was ready to bounce off the walls with excitement, and Jack found himself beginning to look forward to the trip.

  What better way to see Disney World than with a child? he thought, drinking in her smile and her bright eyes.

  The only time Vicky stopped talking about Mickey and Donald was when the fabulous dessert tray came by. She had two.

  7.

  Thomas Clayton had emerged from the strip joint after two hours and walked directly back to his apartment.

  This, Yoshio had learned, was one of the patterns of Thomas Clayton's life. Very sad, he thought. He didn't know much about him, but felt sorry for him. This was a lonely, lonely man.

  And with this Yoshio himself felt a rare pang of loneliness, a sudden yearning for home. Not for family, for he had none, and not for Tokyo, for New York had given him his fill of big cities. No, he wished he were booked into a little ryokan on Shikoku, overlooking the misty vistas of the Inland Sea.

  He realized that he had wasted the day. All of the principals seemed to be in a holding pattern, as if waiting for something. But for what? Tomorrow, perhaps?

  If so, Yoshio would wait with them.

  His stomach didn't feel right. Perhaps the grease from that shish kebab meat—supposedly lamb—he had eaten while waiting for Thomas Clayton this afternoon. He decided to take a break from American food. He stopped at a restaurant in the East Fifties with a superior sushi bar. He spent a number of hours there, sipping Sapporo Draft, nibbling sashimi, and speaking Japanese.

  Then he returned to his apartment and watched Kemel Muhallal and his superior hovering around that lamp in the back room of Muhallal's apartment, looking at their mystery object.

  8.

  Jack dropped off Gia and Vicky, then hurried over to Alicia's for a meeting with her and Sean O'Neill, her new lawyer.

  As he stepped through the door, Jack handed her an envelope. He liked her wide-eyed look when she opened it and pulled out Mr. Sung's fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. He told her it was a donation to the Center. She thought it was from him, but he assured her it wasn't. He told her the donor was a very caring real estate investor who wished to remain anonymous.

  "He wants you to buy some 'fun things' for the kids," Jack told her. "You decide."

  Jack then spent an hour or so with Sean and Alicia working out the plan for Monday morning. Sean had called Gordon Haffner at HRG on Friday and arranged a nine-thirty meeting there with his new client, Alicia Clayton. He'd made it clear that his client did not under any circumstances want her brother present. They would confer with Mr. Haffner alone, and he would convey the substance of the meeting to Thomas Clayton afterward.

  And then with everything set and in place for tomorrow, Jack had gone home, ready to end this exceptionally fine weekend with another installment of the Dwight Frye festival. The Vampire Bat, perhaps.

  Then Milkdud called, saying he'd just returned from successfully rehacking the Hand Building. Jack thought that was great until Milkdud explained what Jack would have to do tomorrow…

  MONDAY

  1.

  "You rested and ready for this?" Milkdud said as he and Jack walked down Forty-fifth Street in their suits, carrying their briefcases.

  "No."

  As they neared the entrance to the Hand Building, Jack said, "You're sure there's no other way to do this?"

  "If there is, I don't know it."

  "I must be crazy."

  Milkdud laughed. "Don't worry. You'll be fine."

  Jack wished he was as sure about that.

  They pushed through the revolving door into the lobby, looking like they belonged there, and breezed past the security counter where a pair of uniforms were sipping coffee and raptly checking out yesterday's football scores in the morning paper.

  "Kind of gives you a new appreciation of the value of organized sports, doesn't it," Jack said as they approached the elevators.

  "Especially football pools." Milkdud checked his watch. "Quarter to eight. The shifts are changing. That helps too."

  "As does the lack of those dreadlocks you sported when I first met you."

  He smiled. "I learned the hard way that dreads and hacking don't mix. They kept getting caught on things in tight spots. Besides, a big part of hacking is going unnoticed."

  "Yeah. And I imagine that's kind of hard to do when you've got what looks like a hairy octopus hanging on your head."

  A bell chimed to their left, and the center elevator opened its doors. Jack stepped toward it but Milkdud held him back.

  "Uh-uh. We're taking the one over there on the left."

  "What's the difference?"

  "That's the one that's going to put you closest to where you want to go."

  "I'm all for that," Jack said.

  Milkdud reached inside the center cab and pressed a button, sending it back up.

  Half a minute later, the doors to the left elevator opened.

  "That's ours," Milkdud said.

  As they started toward it, Jack spotted a red-haired woman rounding the corner. She headed their way.

  "Move it, Dud," he whispered. "Company's coming."

  They'd shown up early to ensure that they'd be able to ride an empty elevator car. This redheaded early bird was going to mess up their plans.

  They scrambled through the doors. As soon as he got inside, Milkd
ud hit "7" and then leaned on the door close button.

  "Hold it, please!" the woman called from outside.

  "Sorreeee," Milkdud said softly as the doors slid closed and they started up. "But we need this one all to ourselves."

  "Close," Jack said.

  He could feel himself tensing up as the floor numbers climbed the display. He wasn't relishing the next few steps.

  Milkdud squatted and opened his briefcase. He pulled out a curved piece of metal about the size of a coat hanger hook. A length of slender cord trailed from its end.

  "All right. Here's your hook. You remember how to work it, right?"

  "Yeah. I think so."I hope so.

  "Just like we practiced last night." He handed Jack the hook and cord, then snapped his briefcase shut. "And you've got your change of clothes, flashlight, headlamp, and cell phone, right?"

  "Right."

  "Okay. Let's do it."

  Jack swallowed. "Which floor?"

  "Seven. A new tenant is renovating before moving in. The workmen probably don't arrive until eight, so—"

  "Probably?"

  Milkdud shrugged. "I did my thing here yesterday. They don't work on Sunday, so what can I say?"

  "Okay. Let's assume they're not there yet."

  "Right. Which is good. That way you won't be too rushed."

  The car eased to a stop.

  Milkdud gave him a thumbs-up. "Okay, Hacker Jack, go to it. I'll start back down—and don't let the alarm bell rattle you."

  A bell is the least of my worries, he thought.

  With the hook and cord in one hand and his briefcase in the other, Jack stepped through the open doors.

  The seventh floor was indeed under construction, a clutter of lumber and wallboard, all coated with a fine layer of sawdust and plaster.

  And no workers yet.

  As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, Jack dropped his briefcase and began working the hook through the space between the metal lintel and the top of the elevator doors. He and Milkdud had practiced this a dozen times last night on the elevator in Milkdud's building. The top space here was narrower.