Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  Funny to see Rollo again after all this time, dressed down in jeans and a leather coat. None of the Ganooch syndicate’s charm to him anymore. No silk suit or imported Italian shoes. Even with the perfect hair, you could tell he was having trouble with the downturn his life had taken.

  Eye contact wasn’t important to most hired muscle. It didn’t have to be when you were using a 12-gauge. Rollo turned in Pace’s direction, holding the shotgun too high because he didn’t want to take the recoil in the gut. Six inches lower and he’d kill everybody in the room. As it was, he was mostly firing toward the ceiling.

  Pace covered the distance between them in two steps, grabbing the barrel with his right hand and jerking it hard, yanking Rollo forward.

  Being this near to one of the Ganooch boys was like growing closer to his dead wife. A strange, wildly inappropriate warmth filled his groin. He had to squelch the abominable urge to actually hug Rollo Carpie.

  Nose to nose, Pace said, “Hello, Rollo. You working on your own now?”

  Rollo struggled and gasped, “You know me?”

  “I know you.”

  “No.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Let go,” Rollo whined, trying to shake Pace free and take the shotgun back. “Hey—” Saying it almost politely, as if it might really happen. Like you tell the guy you’re trying to kill to drop your weapon so you can shoot him with it, and he actually does it.

  Pace’s left hand hardly seemed to touch Rollo at all. Even so, the shooter let out a shriek and fell to his knees. Pace whirled the 12-gauge around and whopped Rollo’s forehead with the stock, hard but not hard enough to put him all the way under.

  A loud, dull thunk resounded across the room. Rollo fell flat on his face and lay there wheezing, eyes rolling in panic.

  “Is he Jack?” Hayden cried, cowering behind the couch.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Faust said, stuck somewhere between crouching and rearing. He looked like he was about to start praying against his own better judgment. “Not yet.”

  “Thank Christ.”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m understandably nervous, you know!”

  “Who’s Jack?” Pace asked.

  Pia and Dr. Brandt, together behind the leather chair, neither appearing very alarmed, held their gazes on Pace like they planned on writing all this down later.

  He stared at them. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Pia said. “Don’t let us stop you. Continue.”

  He hauled Rollo to his feet, offended by the hair. He slapped the hair a couple of times and it still didn’t shift at all. He had met the much-debated immovable object and been defeated by it. That hair, it really got on his fucking nerves.

  In a daze, Rollo swooned in Pace’s arms so the two of them kind of danced together for a few steps. Reeling, Rollo sagged and made tiny humming noises, sounding like Jane when she and William Pacella went dancing on their first date. It was during a Fourth of July picnic that her whole hometown had come down to the dunes. She’d worn a pleated yellow skirt, and her blonde hair had been like streaming flame in the setting the sun, as they swayed by the shore and the water lapped at their feet.

  When he was in Garden Falls he used to dance around with the schizoaffectives this way, remembering his earliest days with Jane. Lost inside their own heads, some of them were much better dancers than Jane ever was. Doing dips and spins, occasionally jitterbugging, hucklebucking, bumping, grinding, hustling, disco ducking, everybody in their bathrobes and slippers.

  “Wait, wait,” Rollo said, out of breath. Actually holding his hands out. Like all you had to do was say wait and the guy you were trying to blow away would just stand there. Rollo had a lot of weird ideas on just how much impact his pleading carried. “It’s...it’s you. Isn’t it you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “You’re the guy who came through a couple of years ago.” Rollo’s eyebrows began squirming all over his forehead. “The psycho.”

  “Don’t be rude, Rollo.”

  “The one who did them all. The whole top-level Ganucci crew, one after the other.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Damn near. The Ganooch, the consigliere, a lot of torpedoes. Hey, hey, I’m not hooked up with them no more!”

  “Nobody is.”

  Jittery, Rollo started flexing his knees, like he had a nice salsa beat going and wanted to dance some more. “Hey, listen, I didn’t know it was you. I don’t want no trouble—if I’d known, hey—”

  The darkness snickered with Pace’s throat, coming from an empty alley full of fog, footsteps echoing along the cobblestones, the whores easing closer. “How much did Kaltzas pay you?”

  “Who?”

  “Alexander Kaltzas.”

  Going soft, wanting to flip over and show his belly, Rollo hung there limply in Pace’s grip. “No no, never heard of him, that’s the truth.”

  “Rollo, does it have to get ugly?”

  “No! No, listen! Whoever that is, I got nothing to do with him. You got a beef with that one, go take it up with him, okay? We’re square, you and me.”

  Pace pulled him close and searched his eyes. Rollo was very stupid but he wasn’t lying. “Who fingered us?”

  “A guy named Vindi. He said to pay you a visit. That’s all I was doing. Shaking you up a little!”

  “For how much?”

  “Two grand.”

  That took Pace back. It was another insult, and this one kind of stung. “Two g’s to do all four of us?”

  “Shake you up. The five of you. You don’t want the money, do you? ’Cause I don’t have it on me. But it’s what I got paid. My ex, she got most of it, for our kid’s dental work. My boy, he eats all those sugary cereals you know, and never brushes. I get on him but—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Rollo.” Pace turned and studied Dr. Brandt again. She wore an expression of barely restrained excitement, passion, terror. He’d never met anybody who was so hard to read.

  She said, “He knew I would be with you.”

  Pace checked the window. If Kaltzas’s agents were anywhere around, he couldn’t spot them.

  Rollo’s hands were still waving all over the place. “The whole apartment, he told me. Five of you. I wasn’t even trying to hit you!”

  “Jesus, you’re really bottom of the barrel now, Rollo. None of the other families would pull you in?”

  “They didn’t need any more muscle.” Rollo Carpie’s voice dipped with desolation. “They’re too busy hiring accountants and dividing up the Ganooch’s business. Ten years, all those oaths I had to take, hold a burning matchbook, and I didn’t even get health insurance out of it.”

  “You might consider another line of work.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  What little Pace remembered about Kaltzas came to him as if through a veil. But he figured the man could buy and sell the New York families a hundred times over. Drugs, prostitution, and construction crew kickbacks would be nickel and dime to a tycoon. He was just making another point, showing how long his reach was.

  Pace still couldn’t picture Kaltzas. Or the girl Cassandra. The name Vindi meant nothing to him. He glanced at the ceiling to see if there were any more faces up there.

  Hayden showed his sharp teeth and said, “Even in this neighborhood the cops are gonna be coming soon. Shouldn’t you be knocking the bad guy out right about now?”

  “Or shooting him,” Faust added.

  “Or cutting him,” Pia offered. “I vote we cut him up.”

  Rollo went even more soft and let out a whimper.

  All the Ganooch boys cried in the end.

  Pace had the nearly overwhelming urge to see blood. Inside him, the guy in his leather apron wanted to watch blood trickling out, alive and spreading, spurting and pooling. Pace looked over at Dr. Brandt as though he should tell her about it, but she had set her lips, already very aware.

  Would killing Rollo be any less sane than dancing w
ith him?

  You could do a lot, but even a sociopath had some lines he shouldn’t cross.

  The Fourth of July fireworks went spiking the sky, igniting the night as the moon dipped low and red, and Jane nuzzled his neck.

  Pace’s hands did something and Rollo turned a pretty shade of teal and fell over unconscious.

  “Who’s Vindi?” Hayden asked. “That’s one name I never heard before.”

  “Does it matter?” Pia said. Her lower lip was still cocked, the half-grin so lovely. “Someone working for Kaltzas. We’ll see him soon enough, no doubt.”

  The dust of an ancient world weighed down Faust’s words. “He’s going to find us again. We can’t escape him. We were foolish to think we could. Our father who art insufferable.”

  “We need to leave. He’s had his eye on us the whole time, all the way from Greece, that prick.”

  “This is merely another show of his strength.” Faust was resolved. The scar on his forehead glistened. He kept looking left and right, distracted, his angels chatting with him. Pace saw two glimmering streamers twining through the air. Faust leaned toward one, then the other. “He’s calling us to him, now that we’re all together again. This wasn’t an attack. It was an invitation.”

  “Do we take it?” Pia asked. “As scared as I am, I’d still like to put this thing to rest eventually. I run my own life, as I see fit.”

  Dr. Brandt drifted closer to Pace, stood by him the way a lover would, and the two of them watched the others. Her breath warmed the side of his face. He thought, She must be even crazier than the rest of us. Why else would she throw in?

  Hayden grabbed up his notepad and swung it overhead, the pages of his letter to his mother flapping. “I say we take the fight to him! Smack him in the mush!”

  “How? We’re still escapees from a mental institution.”

  “So are about a half million New Yorkers. If they locked us all back up tomorrow the streets would be empty.”

  “With what money?”

  Faust did something he rarely did. He let out a chuckle. “Kaltzas will provide.”

  “Oh knock that shit off!” Hayden shouted, lunging in every direction and no direction. His notepad hit the floor. “You sound like you love the vicious bastard.”

  “Maybe I love all vicious bastards, Hayden. It would explain how our relationship has become almost familial.”

  “To hell with that. Let’s just get on with it! We have to book out of here!” Hayden’s hands were shaking and he closed them into fists that shuddered at his sides.

  “Not just yet,” Pace said.

  “Why not, Will?” Dr. Brandt asked. “Do you have reservations? Are you having second thoughts?”

  “I’m still confused about some things.”

  “You always were, Will. You’ll never get any better where that’s concerned, not without a lot more treatment.”

  “You let me go.”

  “I shouldn’t have. I was scared.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “We should leave.”

  “I want to hear your answer.”

  “You know it already.”

  “No. I want to know the real reason. Why did you devote so much time to Pacella? And to me?”

  She had trouble getting it out, which proved it was true. That gorgeous face was full of honest pain. It made her even more beautiful. “My father was schizophrenic. Medication helped to a degree, but not much. My mother left. When things became very bad I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle. Finally, the day came when I came home and my father was gone.”

  “So that’s why you try to cure us? We’re stand-ins for your father?”

  “An impetus, no more. I do what I can to help. This is the course my work has taken me.”

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  “That’s not true at all.”

  He reached to touch the angle of her jaw, but even his hands weren’t quick enough to get there before her veneer was back in place. She looked at him without expression. “Where can we go?”

  Inside Pace, the laughing darkness roiled. Its name was Jack. So that was the Jack they were talking about. Jack mentioned an address.

  Pace nodded. He said, “I have a place.”

  seven

  The scent of rain and saltwater filled the air, drifting off the East River on a harsh wind as the sun went down.

  The storm had followed and seemed about to break wide again. Pace drove the Chevy hard across the Brooklyn Bridge and onto the Belt Parkway.

  Kaltzas would have a real surveillance team somewhere nearby, already following. They were going to be rough to spot and even tougher to shake. The car was might be bugged so Vindi could keep tabs. He was glad for it. If Kaltzas had a line on Pace, then Pace could follow it back to the man himself.

  The team would stay a half-mile to a mile in back of them, running parallel when possible. That’s how Jack had done it. That’s how the Ganooch’s people were brought down.

  Crumble the pug held his head out the window. “Arf!”

  The loose steering let Pace put the speed of his hands to good use, constantly shifting them on the wheel as he wove in and out of traffic, keeping himself busy. The weight of the few belongings packed into the trunk added some ballast. The squealing tires hurt his head but he enjoyed the noise nonetheless.

  “What did Jack do on the ward?” Pace asked. “What did he do to you to scare you all so much?”

  No one answered. Pace stared in the rearview, and nobody met his eyes. He repeated the question and specifically asked Pia to respond.

  Her brow furrowed and she tugged her head back and forth. A sickly grin pried her lips apart.

  “He talked,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “If you don’t remember then you’re better off.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Don’t, Pia,” Dr. Brandt said.

  “He wants to learn about Jack.” Pia ran a hand through the hair at the back of his head, a sensual move but an aggressive one too, like she wanted to push her luck with him. “You really want to know, Will? Jack would talk about what he would do to women. How he would take their kidneys and cook them. How he would carve them up. More women than the ones in Whitechapel. Many more. Not only whores, but...the elderly, little girls. History doesn’t know a tenth of what he’s done, but he’d go on about it for hours, chattering in the night.”

  “He never shut up,” Faust said. “He went into detail. About the Ganucci family members. The old man in the wheelchair.”

  Dr. Brandt shifted in the seat beside him. Depending on the light her eyes were either blue or green. It was a little off-putting, getting used to her eyes being one way and then, as she turned aside, seeing them another. You never knew who you were getting with this crew.

  “I’m sorry, doctor,” he said. It was an odd thing to do, apologizing for being who you were, and who you weren’t, but he felt the need. “Really, I never meant to be such an annoyance to you.”

  She glanced at him sadly. “Please Will, take your meds. You’re just going to get worse.”

  “He’s back,” Faust said. “The in-between man. Our father who art in-between.”

  So that’s who Pace was. In-between William Pacella and the devil. Between that drugged-up dimwit he’d been this morning and the many others milling nearby, just waiting for their chance to take over. “That disturbs you, Dr. Brandt?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You never liked the end result of all your repair work anyway.”

  “Not entirely,” she admitted. “But you were making progress. And now you’ve regressed at an unbelievable rate. The medication you’ve already taken will remain in your system for another three or four days, but you’ve already thrown off their stabilizing effects. You’re exhibiting your previous symptoms of DID. The amnesia, depersonalization, and identity disturbances. As well as the emergence of altered personality traits. You’re growing more delu
sional.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I feel better. Two years under intense sedation isn’t progress, Dr. Brandt.”

  “Arf!”

  “You didn’t have much of a point of reference, Will.”

  “You pump those tranquilizers into a rhino’s neck and it’ll tap dance to Swanee River for you. Remember, you joined us for a reason.”

  “Yes. God help me, I’m easily frightened. I didn’t know what to do. His man approached me.”

  “Vindi?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But he knew things about me, about my father. About the hospital, and all the patients. Things he shouldn’t have been able to know.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “They’re ineffectual.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because they couldn’t stop you. You killed a lot of people as one of your alternates, Will, and they couldn’t do a thing to end the bloodshed. When you were through with your mission, you stopped of your own volition and committed yourself.” She lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and snorted the smoke. “If nothing else, you taught me how relentless and pure an all-consuming fixation can be. I suspect Mr. Kaltzas is also the victim of such an obsession.”

  Hayden leaned forward. “You’re as loco as any of us, lady.”

  A vein in her neck snapped. “I’m not particularly proud of myself. But maybe you can do what the police can’t, Will. I know what you’re capable of.”

  “I wonder if that’s true,” Pace said.

  Faust read the signs. “Greetings from Coney Island. Welcome to Coney Island Park. Admission to Cyclone Waterslide. W Train - Stillwell Avenue.”

  Pia said, “My father used to take us on road trips during the summers. My mother, sister, and me. For years we traveled all over the country. He was a Revolutionary War buff. If ten thousand guys with muskets died on a field someplace, I’ve probably been there. He loved roadside attractions, too. Houses made of hubcaps, corn husks, and beer cans. The chicken that never lost at tic-tac-toe. There must’ve been twenty of them, everybody thinking there was just this one super-intelligent chicken, and meanwhile every two hundred miles there was another one.”