A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

“So, Jack. Who’s your new tailor? Now that Liberace’s gone, you’re thinking maybe of filling his sartorial niche? Or is this Elvis you’re trying to look like?”

  Jack couldn’t help smiling. “Could be either. But since I don’t play piano, it’ll have to be Elvis. You can open for me, seeing as you’ve got the Jackie Mason patter down perfect. You write for him?”

  “What can I say?” Abe said with an elaborate shrug. “He comes to me, I give him material.”

  Jack pulled off the jacket. He’d known he’d get heat from Abe for it, but it was a little too cold out tonight for just a sweater. But he was glad Abe was still in his store. He kept much the same hours as Jack.

  Jack rolled up the right sleeve of his sweater and set the little Semmerling back into the spring holster strapped to his forearm. Not the most comfortable rig, but after tonight he ranked it as one of the best investments he’d ever made.

  “You had to use that tonight?”

  “Yeah. Not one of my better nights.”

  “Nu? You’re not going to tell me how such a beautiful and stylish leather coat fits in?”

  “Sure. I’ll tell you downstairs. I need some supplies.”

  “Ah! So this is a for buying visit and not just a social call. Good! I’m having a special on Claymores this week.”

  Abe stepped to the front door of the Isher Sports Shop, locked it, making sure the “SORRY, WE ARE CLOSED” sign faced toward the street. Jack waited as he unlocked the heavy steel door that led to the basement. Below, light from overhead lamps gleamed off the rows and stacks of pistols, rifles, machine guns, bazookas, grenades, knives, mines, and other miscellaneous tools of destruction.

  “What’ll it be?

  “I lost my forty five, so I’ll need a replacement for that.”

  “Swishy leather jackets and losing guns. A change of life, maybe? How about a nine millimeter parabellum instead? I can give you something nice in a Tokarev M213, or a TT9, or a Beretta 92F. How about a Glock 17, or a Llama Commander?”

  “Nah.”

  “ ‘Nah.’ You never want to change.”

  “I’m loyal.”

  “To a person you can be loyal. To a country maybe you’re loyal. But loyal to a caliber? Feh!”

  “Just give me another Colt like the last.”

  “I’m out of the Mark IV. How about a Combat Stallion. Cost you five fifty.”

  “Deal. And maybe I should look into one of those Kevlar vests,” Jack said, glancing at a rack of them at the far end of the basement.

  “For years I’ve been telling you that. What makes a change of mind now?”

  “Somebody tried to kill me tonight.”

  “So? This is new?”

  “I mean a sniper. Right through the hotel room window. Where nobody but me knew I was staying. I didn’t even use Jack in the name when I called in the reservation.”

  “So maybe it wasn’t you they were after. Maybe it was meant for anybody who happened to walk by a window.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said, but he couldn’t quite buy it. “Lousy shot, too. I spotted a telescopic sight on it and still he managed to miss me.”

  Abe made a disgusted noise. “They sell guns to anybody these days.”

  “Maybe I’ll take a raincheck on the vest,” Jack said, then quickly added, “Oh, and I need another dozen shuriken.”

  Abe whirled on him. “Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! You’ve been spiking cockroaches with my shuriken again, haven’t you? Jack, you promised!”

  Jack cringed away. “Not exactly spiking them. Hey, Abe, I get bored.”

  Abe reached into a square crate and pulled out one of the six pointed models, wrapped in oiled paper. He held it up and spoke to heaven.

  “Oy! Precision weapons made of the finest steel! Honed to a razor’s edge! But does Mr. macher Repairman Jack appreciate? Does he show respect? Reverence? Of course not! For pest control he uses them!”

  “Uh, I’ll need about a dozen.”

  Muttering Yiddish curses under his breath, Abe began pulling the shuriken out of the crate and slamming them down on the table one by one.

  “Better make that a dozen and a half,” Jack said.

  First thing the next morning, Jack called George at the diner and told him to meet him at Julio’s at ten. Then he went for his morning run. From a booth on the rim of Central Park, he called the answering machine that sat alone in the fourth floor office he rented on Tenth Avenue. He fast forwarded through a couple of requests for appliance repairs, then came a tentative Oriental voice, Chinese maybe:

  “Mistah Jack, this is Tram. Please call. Have bad problem. People say you can help.” He gave a phone number, a downtown exchange.

  Tram. Jack had never heard of him. He was the last on the tape. Jack reset it, then called this Tram guy. He was hard to understand, but Jack decided to see him. He told him where Julio’s was and to be there at 10:30.

  After a shave and a shower, he headed to Julio’s for some breakfast. He was on the sidewalk, maybe half a block away, when he heard someone shout a warning. He glanced left, saw a man halfway across the street, pointing above him. Something in his expression made Jack dive for the nearest doorway. He was half way there when something brushed his ankle and thudded against the pavement in an explosion of white.

  When the dust finally cleared, Jack was staring at what was left of a fifty pound bag of cement. The man who had shouted the warning was standing on the other side of the mess.

  “That maniac could’ve killed you!”

  “Maniac?” Jack said, brushing the white powder off his coat and jeans.

  “Yeah. That didn’t fall. Somebody dropped it. Looked like he was aiming for your head!”

  Jack spun and raced around the corner to the other side of the building. This was the second time since midnight someone had tried to off him. Or maim him. The cement bag probably wouldn’t have killed him, but it easily could have broken his neck or his back.

  Maybe he had a chance to catch this guy.

  He found the stairs to the upper floors and pounded up a dozen flights, but by the time he reached the roof it was empty. Another bag of cement sat on the black tar surface next to a pile of bricks. Someone was planning to repair a chimney.

  Warily, he hurried the rest of the way to Julio’s. He didn’t like this at all. Because of the nature of his business, he had carefully structured it for anonymity. He did things to people that they didn’t like, so it was best that they not know who was doing it to them. He did a cash business and worked hard at being an average looking Joe. No trails. Most of the time he worked behind the scenes. His customers knew his face, but their only contact with him was over the phone or in brief meetings in places like Julio’s. And he never called his answering machine from home.

  But somebody seemed to know his every move. How?

  “Yo, Jack!” said Julio, the muscular little man who ran the tavern. “Long time no see.” He began slapping at Jack’s jacket, sending white clouds into the air. “What’s all this white stuff?”

  He told Julio about the two near misses.

  Y’know,” Julio said, “I seem to remember hearing about some guy asking aroun’ for you a coupla weeks ago. I’ll find out who he was.”

  “Yeah. Give it a shot.”

  Probably wouldn’t pan out to anything, but it was worth a try.

  Jack scanned the tavern. It was dustier than usual. The hanging plants in the window were withered and brown.

  “Your cleaning man die, Julio?”

  “Nah. It’s the yuppies. They keep comin’ here. So I let the place get run down and dirty, an’ they still come.”

  “Déclassé must be in.”

  “They make me crazy, Jack.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve all got our crosses to bear, Julio.”

  Jack had finished his roll and was on his second coffee when George Kuropolis came in. He handed George a wad of cash.

  “Here’s what Reilly’s boys took from you last night—minus your porti
on of the next installment on my fee. Tell the rest of your merchants association to ante in their shares.”

  George avoided his eyes.

  “Some of them are saying you cost as much as Reilly.”

  Jack felt the beginnings of a surge of anger but it flattened out quickly. He was used to this. It always had happened with a number of his customers, but more often since The Neutralizer hit the air. Before that, people who called him never expected him to work for free. Now because of some damn stupid goody two-shoes TV vigilante, more and more of his customers had the idea it was Jack’s civic duty to get them out of jams. He’d been expecting some bitching from the group.

  This particular merchants association had had it rough lately. They ran a cluster of shops on the lower west side. With the Westies out of the picture, they’d thought they’d have some peace. Then Reilly’s gang came along and began bleeding them dry. Finally one of them, Wolansky, went to the police. Not too long after, a Molotov cocktail came through the front door of his greengrocer, blackening most of his store; and shortly after that his son was crippled in a hit and run accident outside their apartment building. As a result, Wolansky developed acute Alzheimer’s when the police asked him to identify Reilly.

  That was when George and the others got together and called Repairman Jack.

  “You going to tell me you don’t see the difference?”

  “No, of course not,” George said hurriedly.

  “Well, let me refresh your memory,” Jack said. “You came to me, not the other way round. This isn’t television and I’m not The Neutralizer. Don’t get reality and make believe confused here. This is my work. I get paid for what I do. I was around before that do gooder came on the air and I’ll be around after he’s off. Those knives Reilly and his bunch carry aren’t props. Their guns aren’t loaded with blanks. This is the real thing. I don’t risk my neck for kicks.”

  “All right, all right,” George said. “I’m sorry—”

  “And another thing. I may be costing you, but I’m just temporary, George. Like purgatory. Reilly is hell, and hell is forever. He’ll bleed you until he’s stopped.”

  “I know. I just wish it was over. I don’t know if I can take another night like last night.” George began rubbing his right hand. “They were gonna—”

  “But they didn’t. And as long as they see me as a competitor, they’ll save their worst for me.”

  George shuddered and looked at his fingers. “I sure hope so.”

  Shortly after George left, an Oriental who looked to be on the far side of fifty showed up at the door. His face was bruised and scraped, his left eye was swollen half shut. Julio intercepted him, shook his hand, welcomed him to his place, clapped him on the back, and led him toward the rear of the tavern. Jack noticed that he walked with a limp. A bum right leg. By the time he reached Jack’s table, he had been thoroughly frisked. If Julio found anything, he would lead him right past Jack and out the back door.

  “Tram,” Julio said, stopping at Jack’s table, “this is the man you’re looking for. Jack, this is Tram.”

  They had coffee and made small talk while Tram smoked unfiltered Pall Malls back to back. Jack led the conversation around to Tram’s background. His fractured English was hard to follow but Jack managed to piece together the story.

  Tram was from Vietnam, from Quang Ngai, he said. He had fought in a string of wars for most of his life, from battling the French with the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu through the final civil war that had ravaged what was left of his country. It was during the last one that a Cong finger charge finished his right leg. Along with so many others who had fought on the losing side, Tram became a refugee after the war. But things improved after he made it to the States. Now an American made prosthesis of metal and plastic took up where his own flesh left off below the knee. And he now ran a tiny laundry just off Canal Street, on the interface between Little Italy and Chinatown.

  Finally he got around to the reason he had called Jack.

  His laundry had been used for years as a drop between the local mob and some drug runners from Phnom Penh. The set up was simple. The “importers” left a package of Cambodian brown on a given morning; that afternoon it was picked up by one of the local Italian guys who would leave a package of cash in its place. No one watching would see anything unusual. The laundry’s customers ran the ethnic gamut of the area—white, black, yellow, and all the shades between; the bad guys walked in with bundles of dirty clothes and walked out with packages wrapped in brown paper, just like everyone else.

  “How’d you get involved in this?” Jack asked.

  “Mr. Tony,” Tram said, lighting still another cigarette.

  Sounded like a hairdresser. “Mr. Tony who?”

  “Campisi.”

  “Tony Campisi?” That was no hairdresser.

  Tram nodded. “Yes, yes. Knew very good Mister Tony nephew Patsy in Quang Ngai. We call him ‘Fatman’ there. Was with Patsy when he die. Call medic for him but too late.”

  Jack had heard of Tony “the Cannon” Campisi. Who hadn’t? A big shot in the dope end of the Gambino family. Tram went on to say that “Fatman” Pasquale had been one of Tony’s favorite nephews. Tony learned of Tram’s friendship with Patsy and helped Tram get into the States after the U.S. bailed out of Nam. Tony even set him up in the laundry business.

  But there was a price to pay. Natch.

  “So he put you in business and used your place as a drop.”

  “Yes. Make promise to do for him.”

  “Seems like small time for a guy like Campisi.”

  “Mr. Tony have many place to drop. No put all egg in one basket, he say.”

  Smart. If the narcs raided a drop, they never got much, and didn’t affect the flow through all the other drops around the city. Campisi had a slick rep. Which was probably why he had rarely seen the inside of a Federal courtroom.

  “So why the change of heart?”

  Tram shrugged. “Mr. Tony dead.”

  Right. The Gambino family had pretty much fallen apart after old Carlo’s death and a deluge of Federal indictments. And Tony “the Cannon” Campisi had succumbed to the Big Casino of the lung last summer.

  “You don’t like the new man?”

  “No like dope. Bad.”

  “Then why’d you act as middle man for Campisi?”

  “Make promise.”

  Jack’s gaze locked with Tram’s for an instant. The brown eyes stared back placidly. Not much more needed t in the way of explanation.

  “Right. So what’s the present situation?”

  The present situation was that the hard guy who had made the drops and pick-ups for Campisi over the years was now running that corner of the operation himself. Tram had tried to tell him that the deal was off—“Mr. Tony dead . . . promise dead,” as Tram put it. But Aldo D’Amico wasn’t listening. He’d paid Tram a personal visit the other day. The result was Tram’s battered face.

  “He belted you around himself?”

  A nod. “He like that.”

  Jack knew the type—you could take the guy off the street, but you couldn’t take the street out of the guy.

  Obviously, Tram couldn’t go to the police or the DEA about Aldo. He’d had to find some unofficial help.

  “So you want me to get him off your back.”

  Another nod. “Have heard you can do.”

  “Maybe. Don’t you have any Vietnamese friends who can help you?”

  “Mr. Aldo will know is me. Will break my store, hurt my family.”

  And Jack could imagine how. The Reillys and the D’Amicos . . . bully boys, pure and simple. The only difference between them was the size of their bank accounts. And the size of their organizations.

  That last part bothered Jack. He did not want to get into any rough and tumble with the mob. But he didn’t like to turn down a customer just because the bad guys were too tough.

  Maybe he could find a way.

  Central to the Repairman Jack method was sh
ielding himself and the customer by making the target’s sudden run of bad luck appear unrelated to the customer. The hardest part was coming up with a way to do that.

  “You know my price?”

  “Have been saving.”

  “Good.” Jack had a feeling he was going to earn every penny of this one.

  The brown eyes lit with hope. “You will help?”

  “I’ll see. When’s the next pick up?”

  “This day. At four.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “It will not be good to shoot him dead. He has many friends.”

  Jack had to smile at Tram’s matter of fact manner.

  “I know. Besides, that’s only a last resort. I’ll just be there to do research.”

  “Good. Want peace. Very tired of fight. Too much fight in my life.”

  Jack looked at Tram’s battered face, thought of his missing leg below the knee, of the succession of wars he had fought in since age fifteen. The man deserved a little peace.

  “I read you.”

  Tram gave him the address of his laundry and a down payment in twenty dollar bills that were old yet clean and crisp—like he had washed, starched, and pressed them. Jack in return gave him his customary promise to deduct from his fee the worth of any currency or valuables he happened to recover from D’Amico & Co. during the course of the job.

  After bowing three times, Tram left him alone at the table. Julio took his place.

  “The name ‘Cirlot’ mean anything to you?” he asked.

  Jack thought a moment. “Sure. Ed Cirlot. The blackmailer.”

  A customer named Levinson—Tom Levinson—had come to Jack a few years ago asking to get Cirlot off his back. Levinson was a high end dealer in identities. Primo quality. Jack had used him twice in the past himself. So Levinson had called him when Cirlot had found a screw and begun turning it.

  Cirlot, it seemed, had learned of a few high placed foreign mobsters who had availed themselves of Levinson’s services. He threatened to tip the Feds to their ersatz I D the next time they came Stateside. Levinson knew that if that ever happened, their boys would come looking for him.

  Cirlot had made a career out of blackmail, it seemed. He was always looking for new pigeons. So Jack set himself up as a mark—supposedly a crooked coin dealer running a nationwide scam from a local boiler room. Cirlot wanted ten large down and one a month to keep quiet. If he didn’t get it, the FTC would come a knockin’ and not only close Jack down, but take him to court.