Jack kept moving, forcing himself forward a few more steps until he reached the corpse. He dropped to his knees in a pool of still-warm blood, grabbed one of the shoulders, and rolled him over.
The face – his lips were pulled back in a horrific, agonized grimace, but his glazed eyes left no doubt about it.
Dad.
Dead.
Jack felt as if his chest might explode. He let out a sound that was equal parts moan and sob.
He shook his father. It couldn’t be. They’d been talking just a few minutes ago. He couldn’t be dead!
“Dad! Dad, it’s me, Jack! Can you hear me?”
The voice said, “Are you fuckin’ deaf? I told you to freeze!”
Jack looked up into the muzzle of a pistol held by a mustached security guard.
“This… this is my father.”
“I don’t give a fuck, I told you to–"
“That will be enough!”
An older man had come up behind the guard. He looked to be about fifty and wore a blue NYPD uniform with sergeant stripes. His nameplate read Driscoll.
The guard backed off a step. “I found this guy wandering around. He could be–"
Sergeant Driscoll’s voice dripped scorn. “He wasn’t wandering around. I saw him come in. He was looking for someone.” His eyes dropped to Jack father’s inert form. “And he found him.”
“But–"
“But nothing.” He shoved the guard away. “Get over by the door in case anyone else tries to wander in.”
The guard moved off.
Driscoll muttered, “Asshole,” then squatted beside Jack. “Look, I’m sorry about your dad, but you’ve got to go outside.”
“What happened?” His own voice sounded far away. “I left him here just a few minutes ago… we were talking about going to the Empire State Build–"
“I’m really sorry, but you’re going to have to wait outside. This whole area is a crime scene and you’re contaminating it, so you’ve got to leave.”
“But–"
He pointed to the floor beneath Jack. “Look at what you’re kneeling in. If we’re gonna catch these guys, we need every scrap of evidence we can get.” He slipped a hand into Jack’s armpit and lifted. “Come on. If you want to help us catch the fucks who did this to your dad, wait outside.”
The cop’s touch lit a flicker of rage that flashed through the dead, dumb grayness that filled Jack, but he quickly doused it. Lashing out at this man who was trying to do the decent thing would solve nothing. He could walk away or be carried away; either way, he’d be leaving his dad behind. And if he was carried away, they’d find his ankle holster and the unregistered AMT .380 it held.
So he let the cop help him to his feet and shuffled toward the shattered doorway where the security guard stood.
He watched Jack’s approach.
“Hey, sorry about back there. Case like this, you don’t know who’s friend or foe.”
Jack nodded without making eye contact.
Outside – chaos. EMS trucks screeching to a halt, shuttles trying to get out of the way, limos inching out from the curb, hundreds of people milling about, some weeping, some hysterical, some in slack-faced shock.
He saw a harried-looking cop standing by the Vic, shouting, “One last time: Who owns this?”
Jack hesitated, unsure of what he might be getting himself into, then decided that stepping forward would be less complicated, especially since his fingerprints were all over the car and it was registered in someone else’s name – someone unaware of that.
Jack waved and hurried toward the cop. “Me! It’s mine!”
“Then move it! You’re blocking the – hey, you hurt?”
“What?”
He pointed to Jack’s legs. “You’re bleeding.”
Jack looked down and saw the wet red splotches on his knees. For a few seconds, he didn’t understand. Then–
“No…” His voice caught. “No, that’s my father’s.”
“Jesus. He all right?”
Jack wanted to tell him what a stupid fucking question that was but bit it back. He simply shook his head.
“Listen, I’m sorry.” The cop pointed to the Vic. “But ya still gotta move it. Just drive it into the garage. Then you can come back and wait with the rest.”
“Wait for what?” Dad was dead.
The cop shrugged. “I dunno. News about survivors, I guess. Not like you gotta choice. Airport’s locked down. Nobody out, nobody in.”
Jack said nothing as he slipped behind the wheel and pulled away.
Read on…Infernal
January
Harbingers
Harbingers is spoiler city for the Repairman Jack series. You really should read the first nine books in the main sequence (from The Tomb onward) before tackling this. Otherwise you miss those pleasant little epiphanies (“So that’s why that happened!” or “So that’s what it meant!”) sprinkled throughout the story.
It starts off routinely enough…
HARBINGERS
(sample)
Jack hopped out of the cab at Hudson and Worth and looked around. He hadn’t taken time to change. Kept the jeans and beat-up bomber jacket he’d worn to the doctor’s. He noticed a bearded guy on the corner. A ragged-cut square of cardboard with a crudely printed message dangled from his neck.
MICKY MOUSE STOLE MY CAR
NEED $$ TO GO TO ORLANDO
AND KICK HIS ASS
The guy could have been anywhere from forty to seventy. A flap-eared cap covered much of his head. A dirty, gray, Leland Sklar-class beard hid pretty much everything else. He wore what looked like a dozen layers of sweaters and coats, none of which had seen the inside of a washing machine since the Koch administration. He jiggled the change in the blue-and-white coffee container clutched in his gloved hand.
Louie had said look for a beard hanging around Worth and Hudson. This could be him.
“Cool sign,” Jack said. “How’s it working for you?”
“A gold mine,” he said without inflection. He kept his eyes straight ahead. “Get ’em to smile and they part with some change.”
“Mickey’s got an ‘e’ in it.”
Still no look. “So I been told.”
“You Rico?”
Now he looked. “Yeah. You Jack?”
“Hear you saw something.”
“Maybe. Heard there was a reward for finding a red-haired kid, so I been keeping my eyes open.”
“And?”
“Follow me.”
He led Jack around a couple of corners, then stopped across the street from an ancient five-story, brick-fronted building.
“I seen three guys carrying a red-haired girl through the cellar door over there.”
The building looked deserted. The scaffolding and boarded-up windows said remodeling in progress.
Rico said, “Lucky thing I was looking that way because it happened so fast I’d’a missed it.”
This didn’t sound good, even if she wasn’t Timmy’s niece.
“What was she wearing?”
“Couldn’t tell. Had her wrapped up in a sheet but I saw her head. Had Little Orphan Annie hair.”
Jack pulled out Cailin’s photo.
“This her?”
“Never saw her face, but the hair’s pretty much the same.”
“When did all this go down?”
“Soon as it started gettin’ dark.”
“I mean what time?”
“Ain’t got no watch, mister.”
Jack did. He checked it: 5:30. Full dark now. Sunset came between four-thirty and five these days, but the streets started to murk up before that. She could have been in there for an hour or more.
“Struggling?”
“Nope. Looked asleep. Or dead maybe.”
Cailin or not, he’d have to go take a look. As he stepped toward the curb Rico grabbed his arm.
“Don’t I get my money?”
“If it’s the right girl, yeah.”
“How’s about a little advance? I’m a tad short.”
Jack nodded toward the sign. “I thought that was a gold mine.”
“Traffic’s been light. C’mon, man.”
Jack fished out a ten and gave it to him. Rico checked it, then grinned, showing both his mustard-colored teeth.
“Bless you, sir! I’m gonna use this to buy me a nice bowl of hot chili!”
Jack had to smile as he crossed the street.
Right.
He approached the rusty, wrought-iron railing that guarded the stone steps to the cellar. He leaned over for a look. Light filtered around the edges of the chipped and warped door at the bottom. But no window.
He stepped back and looked around. To his right he saw an alley just wide enough for a garbage can. In fact, two brimming cans stood back to back at the building line. Behind them, faint yellow light oozed from a small, street-level window. The alley dead ended at a high brick wall.
Jack placed a hand against each of the sidewalls and levered himself over the garbage cans, then knelt by the window. He wiped off the layer of grime and peered through. Took him a few seconds to orient himself, to make sense out of what he was seeing.
“Shit.”
A naked red-haired, teenage girl was strapped to a long table. Jack didn’t need to pull out the photo again. He recognized her. Cailin wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed. Could have been dead, but the duct tape over her mouth said otherwise. Didn’t need to gag a corpse. She looked unharmed.
Three lean, shaggy-haired men dressed in jeans and sweatshirts hovered around her. Two stood watching as the third drew on her skin. Looked like he was using a black Sharpie to trace weird freeform outlines all over her body. The pattern reminded Jack of Maori tattoos, but much more extensive.
On the wall behind them someone had painted an inverted pentacle in a circle.
Jack nudged the window and felt it move. Slowly, carefully, he eased it inward but it wouldn’t pass the inch mark.
“Come on, Bob,” said one of the watchers. “What’s taking so long?”
“Yeah,” said the other. “Get it fucking done.”
“Get off my back!” Bob said. “This has got to be done right! I do a half-assed job, it’s all for nothing.”
“Nothing?” The first one nudged the second and grinned as he stared at Cailin’s naked body. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
The second guy thought that was real funny.
Someone needed to bring this party to a screeching halt. The window was too small to fit through, but he could pull his Glock and break the glass. Or he could go around front and kick in the door.
He’d promised Gia to stay arm’s length and do the 9-1-1 thing, but he couldn’t count on the cops getting here in time. Had to go in.
He’d reached the garbage cans and was just about to hop over them when a big black Chevy Suburban chirped to a halt at the curb before the building. Jack ducked as three men dressed in black fedoras, black suits, black ties, and white shirts stepped out. Despite the darkness, all wore sunglasses. They were either trying to look like the Blues Brothers or the mythical Men in Black from UFO lore.
Or like the two similar-looking characters Jack had dealt with last spring.
The three made a disparate group. One was huge, one short and skinny, one somewhere between.
They looked like they knew where they were going as they crossed the sidewalk and hurried down the cellar stairs. When Jack heard them kick in the door, he scrambled back to the window.
The trio with the girl had heard the sound of the door – how could they not? – and drawn long knives.
The three men in black burst in with drawn pistols.
“Who the fuck’re you?” said the artist.
The big guy pointed a suppressed H-K Tactical at him and fired. The bullet hit him in the nose and flung him back against the table. He hung there against Cailin’s body, then slithered to the floor, very dead. The other two immediately dropped their knives and raised their hands. But the big guy wasn’t impressed. With no hesitation and no sign of emotion he shot each once in the head.
Phut!
Phut!
“Damn you, Miller!” the middle-size guy shouted. “What’d you do that for? What’s the matter with you?”
Miller holstered his pistol. “Just improving the gene pool.”
“What about the plan? Tag them and track them, see where they hang out. See if there’s any more like them. Remember that? Ever occur to you that they might have been useful alive?”
“Buncha fucktards. Nothing useful ever coming from them.” The corners of his mouth curled up in a barely noticeable smile. “Least not now anyways.”
The medium guy shook his head. “All right, let’s wrap her up and get her out of here.”
“Let Zeklos do it. He’s gotta be good for something.”
The third, a buck-toothed weasel guy, shot him a venomous look, then approached Cailin.
What the hell?
Jack could still call the police, but the group would be long gone before they got here. Besides, he wanted to know what was going on. Who were these guys? And what did they plan to do with Cailin?
He pulled a knit cap from his jacket pocket. Had an idea of how to find out.
Who were those masked men? Find out here… Harbingers
Infernal Night
(with Heather Graham)
Face Off is an anthology of series characters, um, facing off. Jack was paired with Heather Graham’s Michael Quinn and it worked out well because each is experienced in otherworldly problems.
The story is connected to the Secret History because it involves one of the Seven Infernals listed in the Compendium of Srem (the book, not the story).
For a reason I can’t fully explain, I added Madame de Medici, a character who appeared more than a century ago in three Sax Rohmer stories. I find her fascinating, mostly because of what Rohmer does not tell us about her. I mean, she may not be completely human. She makes a double cameo here, but I would love to play with her at length someday.
Here’s how the story starts…
INFERNAL NIGHT
(with Heather Graham)
(sample)
Jack wandered the room as they spoke.
Okay, so Jules, the last surviving member of the Chastain family, was rich. If the private Gulfsteam V that had flown him down here from LaGuardia and the Maybach with the liveried driver that had picked him up at the airport weren't enough, the sprawling New Orleans mansion provided sufficient backup.
Moss-draped oaks had swayed in the breeze to either side of the house as the driver let him out in front. “The Garden District,” he’d said. Jack had no idea what that meant, but the neighborhood spoke of genteel wealth, of a time forgotten, of slow grace and a distant era. For all Jack knew, the manor house itself might have been a plantation once. With those massive pillars lining the front porch, it reminded him of Tara from Gone with the Wind.
He’d had done a little research before agreeing to come south. Jules Chastain had acquired his wealth the old-fashioned way: He’d inherited it.
And the guy knew people. Famous people. Newspaper clippings and original photos of Chastain with George W., with Obama, with Streisand, with Little Richard – now that was cool – lined the walls between ancient artifacts from all over the world. Jack had lots of artifacts around his apartment too, but mostly from the 1930s and 40s. These were like from pre-pyramid days.
I could be impressed, he thought.
He'd probably be definitely impressed if this guy was talking sense.
He stopped his wandering to face Chastain where he sat in some kind of throne-of-swords chair – only this wasn't a movie prop. With his thin mustache, thick glasses, and ridiculous silk smoking jacket, he looked like Percy Dovetonsils on crack instead of martinis.
"Let me get this straight: You flew me all the way down here from New York to steal something you own from your family crypt."
"Yes," he s
aid in a quavery voice. "Exactly."
"Okay. Now, since you're not crippled in any way I can see, go over again why you can't do this yourself."
"As I explained, the artifact I seek was obtained from another collector who wants it back."
"Because you stole it."
"Mister – I never got your last name."
Jack had had dozens over the years.
"Just Jack'll do."
"Very well, Jack, I assure you I can pay for anything I desire. Anything."
"Not if the other guy doesn't want to sell."
He glanced away. "Well, occasionally one runs into bullheaded stubbornness–"
"Which obliges one to steal."
He waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, very well. Yes. I… appropriated it without the owner's knowledge."
"And the owner wants it back."
"Yes, she discovered the… appropriation."
He seemed incapable of saying "theft."
"Oh, a she. You never mentioned that."
“Madame de Medici. You’ve heard of her?”
“I hadn’t heard of you until you called me, so why should I have heard of her?”
“Just wondering. You’re familiar with the expression ‘Hell hath no fury’?”
“It’s ‘Heav'n has no Rage like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman scorn'd.’”
Chastain’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, a poetry fan.”
“Not necessarily. Just like to get things right. I had the misfortune of being an English major once.”
“Really? What school?”
“The name doesn’t matter once you’ve dropped out.”
Chastain gave a little smile. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“You were saying?”
“Well, if the true quote is ‘Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman scorn'd,’ then in this case we’ve got ‘Nor Hell a Fury like a de Medici missing a piece from her collection.’ When I told her I didn’t have her absent artifact, she went out and hired a hit man to kill me on sight.”
Scenes From the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) Page 25