He saw a Kinney Park sign and accelerated toward it.
The success of all his efforts for the past two months might hinge on what he did in the next few minutes.
3.
Powder from Alicia's latex gloves left white smudges on Hector's latest chest X ray as she held it up to the window. She didn't need a lightbox to show her how bad it was. His lung fields were almost entirely opaque. Only small dark pockets of uninfected lung remained, and those were becoming progressively smaller with each successive film. Soon even the ventilator would be unable to force oxygen to his blood cells.
She turned and faced the comatose child, who seemed to have shrunk since she'd last seen him yesterday morning. Naked, spread-eagle on the bed, Hector seemed to be made more of plastic tubing than flesh—two IV lines, one in an arm and one in a leg, the ventilator tube down his throat, a catheter running into his penis to his bladder, the CVP line running under his clavicle, the cardiac monitor leads glued to his corduroy chest. His skin had a mottled, bluish cast. Sorenson was wiping the crusts from his eyes.
Tuning out the ICU Muzak of beeps and hisses, Alicia picked up Hector's chart and read his latest numbers in dismay. His O2 saturation was dropping, his WBC count had been 900 this morning, and his blood pressure was in the basement.
He's slipping away, she thought. And there's not a damn thing—
A change in the beeps from Hector's cardiac monitor caught her attention. She checked the screen and saw the dreaded irregular sine-wave pattern of ventricular fibrillation.
Sorenson looked up, eyes wide above her surgical mask. "Oh, shit."
She reached a gloved hand toward the code button.
"Wait," Alicia said.
"But he's in V-fib."
"I know. But he's also in immunological collapse. He's got nothing left. We can't save him. The Candida's in his brain, in his marrow, clogging his capillaries. We can break a few more ribs pounding on his chest, submit him to a few more indignities, and for what? Just to prove we can delay the inevitable for a couple of hours? Let the poor boy go."
"You're sure?"
Was she sure? She'd tried everything she knew. All the subspecialists she'd called in had attacked Hector's infection with every weapon at their disposal. All to no effect.
I can't seem to be sure of anything else in my life, but of this one thing I am absolutely certain: No matter what we do, Hector will not survive the morning.
"Yes, Sorenson. I'm sure."
Stepping aside from all her emotions, Alicia watched the sine waves slow, then devolve into isolated agonal beats, then flat line.
Sorenson looked at her. When Alicia nodded, the nurse checked her watch and recorded the time of death of Hector Lopez, age four. As Sorenson began removing the tubes from Hector's lifeless body, Alicia ripped off her surgical mask and turned away.
Staggering under the crushing futility of it all, she leaned against the windowsill and looked down at the street. The cheery glare of the morning sun seemed an affront. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. She could not remember feeling this low in all her life.
What good am I? she thought. Who am I kidding? I'm useless. I might as well call it quits now and end this charade.
When she caught herself eyeing the cars below and wondering how it would feel to plummet toward them, she pushed herself away from the window.
Not yet, she thought. Some other time, maybe, but not today.
4.
Jack had debated going home and changing, but Ernie had let him borrow a razor to shave and had made sure that his hair in the photo on the brand-new Ronald Clayton New York State driver's license was combed a little more neatly than Jack's usually careless look.
He'd passed the ID check, the bank officer had used her key along with Jack's on the double-locked safe deposit door, and now he was alone with box 137.
He flipped up the lid and found a stack of bulging manila envelopes, maybe half a dozen of them, each sealed with fiber tape. As much as Jack wanted to rip them open, this wasn't the place. It might take some time to sift through these and find the one that answered all the questions. Besides, he was double-parked outside. Better to bring them home and take his time.
He gathered them up, made sure he wasn't missing anything, then headed for the street. The car was where he'd left it—not something one took for granted in the city—but a meter maid had stopped her scooter at the corner and was working her way down the street toward the Chevy. Jack dashed to his car, hopped in, and took off.
He was just congratulating himself on how smooth the morning was going when he sensed movement behind him. Before he could react, something cold and metallic pressed against the back of his skull.
Jack stiffened in shock and gripped the wheel. He wasn't being car-jacked—he'd been followed, damn it! He raged at himself for being so careless. First getting caught flat-footed in the Clayton backyard last night, and now being in such a big hurry that he hadn't bothered to check the backseat. He cooled as he seined his mind for options.
An accented voice said, "Please keep driving."
Please?
Jack glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a thin Oriental face, clean-shaven, late thirties maybe, eyes hidden behind fashionably round lightweight shades.
"And please do not try to accident the car or attract the police. These are hollow-point bullets filled with cyanide. Even a scratch will murder you."
Despite his weird verbs, the gunman's English was pretty good. He had the L's almost right.
"Hollow points and cyanide," Jack said. "Kind of overkill don't you think? If you were a good shot, you wouldn't need all that."
"I am a very good shot. But I do not leave anything to chance."
Jack believed him!
He forced himself to relax. At least the guy wasn't one of the Arab's men—or didn't appear to be. And then something occurred to him.
"That wouldn't happen to be a small caliber job, would it?" Jack said. "Like a twenty-two?"
"This is correct."
"And did you happen to use it on Thirty-eighth Street last night?"
"That is also correct."
"And can I assume that you're not working for Kemel?"
"Correct again… although I do not understand how you are so familiar to use the first name of a man you should not even know about."
I'm so familiar with him, Jack thought, I've been assuming it was his last name.
He settled back in his seat as he turned onto Broadway and joined the downtown crawl. He'd wondered who Kemel had meant by "the wrong hands," and had assumed he'd meant Israel. But this guy was anything but Israeli. He looked Japanese.
"I tell you these things," the gunman went on, "because I do not wish to be placed in the condition where I must kill you. Condition—that is the correct word?"
Swell, Jack thought. He's got a gun on me and he wants me to help him with his English.. But then, he does have the gun.
"'Position' might be better."
"Position… yes, that is better. Because I am very admiring of how you disposed of your attackers last night. You are very clever."
That's me… Mr. Clever.
"Was that you following me to the Clayton house last night?"
"You saw me?"
He sounded offended. Time to repay a compliment in kind.
"No. Not once. Sensed you but didn't see you. You're very good."
Let's form a mutual admiration society, he thought.
"Thank you. What is your name?"
"Jack."
"Jack what?"
He thought a moment. "Jack-san."
Jack saw the gunman's eyes narrow, then crinkle as he smiled. "Ah, yes. Jack-san. That is very humorful."
"I'm a bundle of laughs."
"And now you will please give me the envelopes you brought from the bank."
So polite… but despite how "admiring" this guy said he was, Jack had no doubt he'd end up like the two corpses outside the Clayton house if he tried
anything. Might end up like them anyway.
With that pleasant thought bobbing through his brain, Jack handed the envelopes over the seat.
The pistol muzzle was removed from his neck. Jack watched the gunman glance down at his lap as he fumbled with the envelopes. This might be his chance… but he vetoed the thought. No sense in precipitating something right now. Take it easy and see how this played out.
More rustling as other envelopes were opened.
That's what I want to be doing, Jack thought.
He kept glancing at the rearview trying to read the gunman's expression. His narrowed eyes, his grimace, as if someone had shoved a rotten fish under his nose.
The blare of a horn jerked Jack's attention to the road and he saw that he'd been drifting toward a Volvo with a very frightened-looking woman behind the wheel.
"I warned you," said the gunman.
"Sorry," Jack said, giving the Volvo an apologetic wave. "Not on purpose. It's just that I was really looking forward to poking through those envelopes myself."
"Then, these are not yours?"
He checked out the gunman's expression as he opened more envelopes. The nearest Jack could describe it was… disgust.
What was going on?
"Well, they were for a few minutes. Now they're yours, I guess."
"How did you acquire them?"
Should he tell, or play dumb? He had a feeling dumb wouldn't work with this guy, and what harm in telling him what he'd probably figured out on his own?
"From old man Clayton's safe deposit box. I found the key in the house last night."
"Then, these belonged to Ronald Clayton?"
Why do I feel like I'm on trial? "Yes."
"And this was all you found?"
"Absolutely."
"And you do not know what is in them?"
"I was hoping to find out."
"You wish to see them?" the gunman said.
Something strange in his voice. Almost… fatigue.
"Uh… yeah." Where was this leading?
The envelopes dropped unceremoniously onto the front seat.
"Then you shall. Find a place to stop where no one will see us and you may look all you wish."
Normally that would have set off a chorus of alarm bells in Jack's head, but strangely enough, it didn't.
Something weird going down here.
He turned off Broadway in the Thirties and headed west. He found a deserted stretch of curb past the post office and stopped, but left the engine idling. He glanced into the rear of the car and saw the gunman staring out the window, but he didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular. His pistol was out of sight. Farther behind them, on the corner, an Oriental woman stood on the sidewalk with her video camera trained on the columned front of the post office building.
Lady, he thought, moving pictures were designed to record things that move. That's why they call them "movies."
Jack picked up the top envelope, reached inside the open flap, and pulled out a pile of negatives and three-by-five photos. He let the negatives drop back in and checked out the prints.
His stomach turned.
"Oh, jeez."
Children… naked children… having sex with each other.
He dropped them onto his lap, then picked them up again for a closer look at the little girl.
"Aw, no."
Alicia… no question about it… seven years old, maybe eight, the face was pudgy, but it was she. And the boy she was with looked about twelve, and he was unquestionably Thomas.
He let his head drop back and closed his eyes. He swallowed hard, afraid he'd lose his morning coffee.
When was the last time he'd cried? He couldn't remember. But he felt like crying now.
That innocent little face looking out at him as her brother…
The sheer monstrousness of it, the utter evil, the mind-numbing rottenness of a soul that could besmirch the innocence of any child like that… but your own daughter… someone who trusts you, looks up to you, depends on you for guidance and protection from the nastiness of the world… to take that trust, that responsibility and do… this…
Jack had run across the scum of the earth in his day, but Ronald Clayton took the prize. If he weren't already dead, Jack might consider correcting that situation.
This confirmed what he'd suspected about Alicia. Now he understood why she wanted nothing to do with her father or her brother or that house, why she'd looked ready to jump out of her skin last night.
What a thing to have trailing after you all your life.
"Are they all like this?"
"Yes," said the gunman.
"Poor Alicia."
"And these are all that you found?"
"Every last thing." He sure as hell wasn't going to tell him about the weird little Rover, even if it meant nothing.
"You would not lie to me?"
Jack fished the key out of his shirt pocket and tossed it onto the backseat.
"Go back and check yourself."
The gunman sighed. "No. That will not be necessary."
He's as frustrated as I am, Jack thought. And he knows more, damn it.
Which gave him a crazy idea.
"All right," Jack said. "Tell me what this is all about. What's so goddamn important about that house?"
What the hell? he thought. Can't shoot me for asking. Can he?
"I do not know."
"Come on. You've got to know more than me. How come it's a Japanese guy against the Arabs and not someone from Mossad? Tell me what you do know."
He watched the gunman's eyes as he stared back at Jack.
I'll be damned, Jack thought. I do believe he's going to tell me.
5.
Yoshio considered this ronin, this Jack-san.
Tell me what this is all about.
He immediately had dismissed the request as ludicrous. But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether it might be to his advantage to give this man some information. Not everything, of course, but Jack-san's purposes did seem to run contrary to Muhallal's, and that made him an ally… of sorts. A little information might make him a more irksome nettle against Kemel Muhallal's hide than he already was.
Above all, the important thing was to keep the Clayton technology out of Muhallal's hands.
"Very well," Yoshio said. "I will tell you. From what I have been told, it all began a few months ago with a most happy message to my employer from a trade delegate working with my country's mission to the United Nations."
"You mean the Japanese government, right?"
Yoshio hesitated. The answer should be no… but it could be yes… in a way.
What should he reveal? Certainly nothing about his employer. Kaze Group was a corporate entity with a shadowy board of directors that produced nothing under that name, yet had a hand in the manufacture of every part that went into every product produced in Japan.
Officially a holding company, Kaze Group had been founded shortly after the war and began buying shares in the companies that were leading the battered nation's economic recovery. As new companies came to the fore, it invested in those. It bought only the best. Kaze Group thrived during the economic booms, but it made good use of down times as well. It vastly increased its holdings during the recent economic slump, taking advantage of the tumbling Nikkei prices to snap up bargains. Through a web of dummy corporations it now owned controlling interest in Japan's "Big Six" keiretsus and most of the major corporations.
Kaze, Yoshio thought. The Wind. Such a fitting name. Keiretsus, the giant vertical and horizontal conglomerates that ostensibly ruled Japan's economy, were often compared to icebergs—a very small portion visible, the vast bulk hidden. But what determines the path of icebergs through the sea? The currents. And what dictates the currents? The wind… Kaze.
No, Kaze was not the government, but when Kaze Group spoke—always a discreet whisper directly into the ear—the government listened.
"Yes," Yoshio said. "Tha
t is correct." Better to let Jack-san believe he worked for the government. "And this trade minister was most excited. He said he had been contacted by a man who was most surely a messenger from God Himself, a man whose technology would make"—he stopped himself… he'd almost said Kaze Group—"make Japan first among nations. He claimed that the details were so astounding, so explosive—yes, that was his word—that he did not dare explain the details, even by diplomatic pouch. He said he was bringing this man directly to Tokyo to explain to the board in person."
"The board?" Jack-san said.
"Yes. The… National Board of Trade. But the plane carrying the trade minister and this mysterious man to Japan exploded in midair, killing all aboard."
"JAL 27," Jack-san said.
"Correct."
Yoshio was not surprised he knew. Alicia Clayton must have told him about her father's death.
"But what makes you think this messenger 'from God Himself' was Ronald Clayton?"
"We know from passenger records that he was seated next to our trade minister on the flight."
Jack-san nodded. "That would do it."
"And we also know…" Should I tell him this? Yoshio wondered. Yes. Why not? "We also know that the crash of the flight was not an accident."
Jack-san's eyes narrowed. "A bomb? But nobody's said anything about—"
"We have proof. Traces of explosive on what little floating debris we could find. We have chosen not to reveal what we know."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because we do not wish the people who planted the bomb to be aware of our knowledge, or that we have any involvement in this… situation."
"You mean…?" Jack-san's narrowed eyes widened now. "You're telling me the plane was blown up because of Ronald Clayton?"
"We believe that to be true, yes."
"But who? Why?"
"We have evidence that the bomber was Sam Baker, whom you have already met."
"I have?"
"I believe you broke his nose last week."
"Oh, him." Jack-san nodded. "Sam Baker… he bomb the lawyer too?"
Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies Page 29