by English, Ben
He reached the mullioned skylight and swung it up on its anodized aluminum hinge, then dropped the rope into the dark, empty space below him.
Jack held tightly to the line as he lowered himself through the vent, breathing only when he felt solid flooring beneath him. He sighed and sat heavily into one of the wide, overstuffed couches. Jack smiled against the darkness. If not for a slight problem with heights, there was still time for him to run away with the circus when it next came to town.
He coiled the rope again, then tossed it up through the skylight. Later, probably tomorrow morning while Gessner was still fixated on his daily two-hour coffee break, Jack would close the overhead window by tapping gently on its hinge with a telescoping dust broom.
Kate and the other two college girls who worked at the pool loved to see him lurching around with the dust broom, anyway. They got a special, practically vindictive pleasure out of watching the boys do the housecleaning. Jack didn’t care; the girls kept the lounge looking good, toning down the stale, black-and-yellowing-white posters of lifesaving techniques by adding half-a-dozen potted plants with thin, frothy leaves to which Jack had never bothered to learn the names.
He retrieved his bag from the deck and flipped on the reading lights he’d installed in the lounge. A trip to the fridge the city had donated, and Jack had a carelessly thrown-together pastrami sandwich from his brown paper bag of supplies. He briefly considered turning on the radio, but he had studying to do and had never felt comfortable trying to learn while music was playing. Something about introducing new knowledge to his brain cells along with the weekly top 40 bothered him. Jack liked to concentrate fully on things. He’d read once that Einstein had kept a closet full of identical suits because he didn’t want to waste any brainpower on unnecessary decisions, like, does this tie go with these socks? Jack was no Einstein (he snickered at the thought), so all the more reason not to confuse his mind with DJ lingo-bingo as he held ideas up to the inquiring light of his meager wits. Wouldn’t want to imprint the wrong stuff.
He selected the more comfortable of the two worn couches, then carefully arranged the night’s reading material on the cushions around him and took a bite out of the sandwich. Good thing you could never max out a library card, he thought. He’d spend fifteen minutes apiece on each book before deciding if it was worth his time, then go back at the end of two hours and read until he felt sleepy. Not like he had anywhere else to go. Mercedes had gone off a few hours earlier with her cousins to shop in Lewiston, an hour’s drive down the river and the biggest town in over a hundred miles. Jack smiled as he imagined her expression upon seeing the Lewiston mall. You could throw a frisbee from one end of the “mall” to the next.
Jack mentally tore his mind away from the girl’s smile and stared at the books in front of him. Ugly. Beginning Italian, by Annalisa Lavecchia, Ph.D. Italian for the Real World–hey, that one came with a CD-ROM in a sleeve in the back. Cool. Too bad Jack didn’t have a computer. The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. The Insight City Guide’s book on San Francisco. Strange Highways by Dean Koontz. Odds were, he’d end up reading that one until he fell asleep. It sounded a lot more fun than Tracing Your Scottish History. Jack sighed. He’d also picked up a few books on comparative religion that no doubt would cost him a few dollars in overdue fines before he got around to them. You just couldn’t do everything now, could you?
“Best thing I can do is try,” Jack answered aloud as he hefted the first book. “Alright, Annalisa Lavecchia, Ph.D. You don’t scare me.”
—and Jack’s eyes opened at the grating breath of wood on wood, immediately noting the slight change in air currents that stirred the leaves of the plant a few feet from where his cheek rested on the open page of a book. He always came awake like this; he couldn’t explain it. One second’s worth of the sensation that he was swimming upward towards consciousness, then the next, fully alert.
A papery taste in the back of his mouth told him he’d been asleep at least a few hours, though darkness still pressed against the big windows that looked out on the pool area.
More wind now, lifting the pages of another open book on the floor, scattering a damp scent of —new-mown grass? —from the park below. Jack wished he could see around the corner of the lounge, into the darkened front. The cash register was up there.
A foot scraped against the front stoop.
Jack sat up.
There was a hinged section of the white countertop that ran the width of the reception area, right in front of the door. You had to unhook it and push it up to get into the pool’s main area, or to reach the cash register. Had he left the countertop down and locked? If so, he’d hear it squeak as it was pushed up. What an idiot I am, he thought, looking around sharply. Not a thing in sight he could use to defend himself.
Another whisper-thin footfall on the concrete floor. Up there in the dark.
Suddenly, Jack was sure, positive, that whoever’d broken into the pool would investigate the lounge. He’d fallen asleep and left the lights on. Idiot, idiot! With no cash in the register of course they’d come back and look around the corner, down into the lounge. Whoever it was had to already be able to hear his heart slamming away against his ribcage. This was bad.
He felt exposed. Paralyzed. Nothing around he could use as a weapon–wait, what about one of the trophies? Sure, they’d be big enough, and most had either a hard wood or a marble base. If he swung one of those–
But all the trophies were set up high on a shelf above the doorway between the two rooms, and what was worse, the shelf faced out towards the front counter. In order to get his hands on a potential weapon, Jack would have to enter the same room as the intruder, turn around, and jump up high enough to grab a trophy. Not likely. He licked his lips. But if the trespasser was busy trying to open up the till, with his back to the door, maybe Jack could pull it off.
He brought himself up short then, wondering if the intruder had a baseball bat.
Almost two years before, during Jack’s sophomore year, the body of a girl his age had been discovered on the local sheriff’s lawn. He shuddered thinking about it. The details of the autopsy had so captured the town’s collective morbid interest; no one living could remember such a monstrous crime. She’d been beaten with a baseball bat, raped repeatedly, and then dumped, broken, practically on the sheriff’s front stoop. Cecilia Montgomery had been alive, technically, when she was discovered the next morning, but died before she could regain consciousness. Jack and his best friend, Alonzo, had been on their way to lift weights early at school, had jogged past the policeman’s house in time to see the shrouded body being loaded into the coroner’s van by a solemn group of white-faced, thin-lipped, uniformed paramedics.
No one really knew Cecilia. Her family moved in right before school started, and she had been fairly shy. Both the boys had danced with her at the End of Summer Bash, and Jack had been particularly taken by her auburn hair, like a sheaf of dark fire, and her open, slow smile.
—that had been broken by an aluminum baseball bat. How could the police tell such things? Where was the justice in the fact that they could determine the exact weapon used but utterly fail to find any trace of the maniac who’d swung it? The police had all looked grim and ferociously busy for a few months afterward, and the parents of the town imposed an unofficial curfew which lasted almost the entire school year before Cecilia’s family moved away and it was forgotten.
There’d actually been some mention of the FBI, but the case slowly seemed to just go away. The only clue besides the body fluids typed B positive and A negative was the presence of wet red clay under Cecilia’s fingernails–clay found abundantly in any of over a hundred abandoned mines in the area.
The final conclusion deduced from the evidence was that the young girl had fallen victim to a couple of drifters unassociated with the town, a couple of psychopaths who’d picked the sheriff’s lawn and rosebushes by sheer chance.
Another idea, though unpopular, pointed an accusing finge
r at the college students returning in droves to any of the three universities within a hundred miles. Classes were scheduled to begin soon, and the highways were conspicuously full of out-of-state license plates. But ultimately, the authorities had nothing.
Jack and Alonzo had slowly walked the rest of the way to school that day shunted into a mute, impotent daze. Sure, the world was filling up with madmen perversely intent on chaos; yeah, the last few years before the turn of the millennium were turning out to be a barrage of howling senselessness, but that was T.V. That was CNN. Surely evil could not wander far enough off the beaten track to show up in Forge, Idaho. Surely.
But that had been the day Jack looked up the meaning of the word ‘misogynist.’ It had been the first time in his life he’d felt any sense of mission, of purpose. He’d been struck by a wild sort of idea, as he looked up from his suddenly meaningless homework and across the oak breakfast table at Alonzo’s house into his friend’s indignant black eyes, an idea that the two of them could someday make a difference. Jack had never been so pissed.
He felt a dim stirring of that anger now as he rose to his feet in the lifeguard’s lounge. He flexed his hands and prepared to move.
Patron Saint of the Unlikely
Gare du Nord station, Paris
7PM
Jack stood in a quiet pocket of air, just beyond the reach of the Parisian rain, alternately flexing and relaxing his hands. He stood by himself at the train station, as alone as he had ever been. Left solitary, a man can become as wretched as a sailor shipwrecked on a frozen, silent sea. Jack held the laminated photograph away from his body, catching enough light from the sodium vapor lamp a hundred meters away to make out the image smiling up at him. The rain beaded quickly on the hard, plastic square, sliding off too quickly to imagine it as tears on his wife’s face.
Was he ready?
Jack stood unmoving, barely in the shadows, barely inside the semicircle of dry ground defined by the overhanging roof of the Gare du Nord. Parisian rain fell solidly on the low buildings around him, thrummed against the skin of the steel train he stared at so intently. If not for the barest hint of steam as he breathed, if not for the occasional fleeting blink, he might never have been there. No one else stood on the deck beside him; this was a departing train, and the departure platform was one story below. The five men and one woman alone in the cabin had no inkling they were being observed. Jack studied each in turn, watching expressions, taking note of body positions and angles, of gestures both intentional and otherwise. He knew these men as well as anyone could, as well as they knew him. They were family of a sort.
Alonzo, hands clasped pensively before him on the table, sat next to the British woman he had met earlier in the day. The major was no doubt bringing the rest of the group up to speed on the latest kidnapping information; at least they were paying attention as she handed each a dossier. She looked fit enough. Not the kind of woman who’d ever need to wear much makeup, or want to, for that matter. Strong, obstinate jaw. Auburn hair cut in a short fashion like uncounted businesswomen and bureaucrats the world over. She sat rigidly, almost uncomfortably, on the edge of her seat, not resting her elbows on the table as she elaborated on the sheets of data each of the men had before him. The major never smiled. And why should she, Jack asked himself, considering the nature of the mission? Most likely she had her own set of personal misgivings about the little group before her.
Brad, for once without his ever present Stetson, sat across from her. With the opening of the mission folders he’d given up his mild flirtation with the major and lowered his eyes to the information before him. His black case of catburglar tricks lay at his feet. Jack watched his eyes as they flitted down the page. He was also on the edge of his seat, but more relaxed, calm. Brad was ready. He looked once at the huge man next to him, pointing at something in the document.
The other man smiled and flexed one enormous hand as dark as the mahogany on which it rested. Solomon, the bald giant, looked slightly out of place in his canary yellow jacket and red bow tie. He was listening keenly to the woman. Jack stared at his face. Solomon’s eyes were shimmering and alive, even in blank repose, the eyes of a wanderer, both geographically and intellectually. Was the man ready? Jack caught himself in the question. With Solomon, he never had to ask.
The man seated between Solomon and Alonzo shook his head at something the major said and pointed to a line on the page before him. Ian had grown a goatee since Jack had last seen him. The eyes of the stout, hard man were bright behind gold-framed glasses. Ian wore a plaid chambray shirt and jeans, contrasting sharply with the two men on either side. Jack bet he was wearing boots. Ian was not only ready, he looked to be already on his way.
The last man, Steve, sat apart from the others, typing almost feverishly at a modular computer. He never changed. For the past ten years the heavyset fellow had looked to be on the verge of going bald. A half-eaten Snickers bar lay wrapperless, melting beside him next to one of two nondescript black boxes cabled to his main computing unit.
Jack watched as the major excused herself and left the men to pore over the documents on the desk. She retrieved a polka-dotted umbrella from a nearby window seat and stepped offstage.
The lone man on the balcony glanced at his watch. About two minutes until the train was due to depart. Jack’s eyes sought out each man’s face a last time, then he turned deeper into the darkness. He found his small knapsack without any trouble, and stowed the photograph inside.
Jack swallowed, suddenly chilled as a wind gusted across the stairs he descended. A middle-aged woman, one of the many vendors on the lower platform, offered him a biscuit or something from a covered basket which smelled delicious. Jack silently refused.
The major stepped down from the train, umbrella raised against the gusting rain. She looked ridiculously like a circus performer who’d run away to join the army. Her government insignia was mostly obscured by a dark green rain slicker. “We’ve gone over all the material we discussed earlier in your flat.” She spoke loudly so as to be heard over the hum of the train and the gusting wind. “They seem surprisingly capable fellows. Not what you’d expect from, ah—”
“Mercenaries, Major?”
“Let’s say ‘walk-ins,’ shall we? That’s how you Americans put it, is it not?”
Jack shook his head. “Those men inside aren’t with CIA, Major, A couple of them work for the U.S. government, but for the moment, we’re all on vacation. We’re just here to help.”
“Yes, well. At any rate, if you yourself are prepared, Mr. Flynn, we’ll be off. Your computer man, Fisbeck, and the Chinese (it wasn’t’ particularly obvious what Brad did for a living; Jack could see this irritated her) have come across something interesting; combined with what that mysterious fellow told you this afternoon, we could actually have an idea about the little girl’s whereabouts. If we might board?” The major stepped back and held the umbrella up against the rain.
Jack hesitated, then glanced to his left, down the length of the depot’s platform. Simultaneously the wind brought the sounds of scuffling feet and a woman’s muffled cry. The major breathed in sharply as Jack seized her umbrella.
The older woman with the basket was struggling against an unkempt youth barely out of his teens. The major watched as the young man took a firmer grip on the woman’s handbag and heaved it out of her mittened fingers. Laughing, the young man ran a few steps with the bag, then turned to yell something deprecating in French. He spun back to make his getaway complete, then shouted in fright at the rushing explosion of polka dots that blossomed suddenly a few inches from his face.
“Moi viola!” said Jack, his face grim. He darted the major’s umbrella at him a few more times, working the catch and lunging like a swordsman, until the young man dropped the bag and swore. From his ragged pocket the would-be assailant pulled an old-fashioned switchblade, instantly bringing it around between himself and the American.
Jack spun along with the young man’s arm, catching his
wrist and bringing the blade past himself with one hand, the other hand knifing in and under the mugger’s chin. The young man instantly gagged and sagged halfway to his knees. The switchblade fell with a clatter, and Jack kicked it under the train.
The young man found himself spun around instantly, his free hand clutching his throat, as Jack seized him by the arm and scooped up the purse. Jack dug his fingers into the soft flesh behind the youth’s elbow, squeezing viciously. He handed the purse to the woman, who smiled.
“Maintenaint, donne-la ton portefeuille, gamin.” said Jack to the young man.
He switched to English. “You took hers, now I want yours. Depeche-toi.” Major Griffin watched as the young man reluctantly handed over his wallet and loose change. He started to whine, but Jack only tightened the grip on his elbow. “Viola, madam. En fait, j’aimerais bien du pain.”
Jack took his time digging a few bills out of his pockets, pointedly ignoring the squirming youth next to him. He pressed the euros into the woman’s grateful hands, and took her basket in return. He waved as she retreated into the depot, spouting thanks in the name of several legitimate saints and a few the major wasn’t sure of.
The sound of muted cheers reached them. Jack turned to the train and found several men and women in the adjacent cabin all standing behind the glass, clapping. Further back in the train, Brad gave him a thumbs-up as Alonzo grinned and pounded against the glass.
Jack turned and marched the young man down the platform towards the major, who suddenly realized the rain had nearly soaked her to the skin. She stepped back into the train, watching as the American bent his head low and said something to the young man, who grimaced and nodded. Jack released his arm, and the young man ran down the platform, disappearing into the darkness beyond the lights.
Jack retrieved the umbrella, then vaulted the distance between the platform and the train, stepping up beside the major as the train began to pull away. “I think I’m ready now, Major.”