A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Presidents? You mean—?”

  “Never mind, Mr. Moulton. How do you wish to die? The choice is yours.”

  How do you wish to die? How the hell do you answer a question like that? And then I know—with the best Answer.

  “COPPE.”

  He nods. “An excellent choice.”

  For the first time since I started using the Answer, I don’t want to know what the other guy heard. I bite back a sob. I close my eyes . . .

  1

  Munir stood on the curb, unzipped his fly, and tugged his penis free. He felt it shrivel in his hand at the cool caress of the breeze, as if shrinking from the sight of all these passing strangers.

  At least he hoped they were strangers.

  Please let no one who knows me pass by. Or, Allah forbid, a policeman.

  He stretched his flabby, reluctant member and urged his bladder to empty. He’d drunk two quarts of Gatorade in the past two hours to be sure that it would be full to bursting, but he couldn’t go. His sphincters were clamped as tightly shut as his jaw.

  Off to his left the light at the corner where 45th Street met Broadway turned red and the traffic slowed to a stop. A woman in a cab glanced at him through her window and started when she saw how he was exposing himself to her. Her lips tightened and she shook her head in disgust as she turned away. He could almost read her mind: A guy in a suit exposing himself on a Sunday afternoon in the theater district—New York’s going to Hell even faster than they say it is.

  But it has become hell for me, Munir thought.

  He closed his eyes to shut out the bright marquees and the line of cars idling before him, tried to block out the tapping, scuffing footsteps of the pedestrians on the sidewalk behind him as they hurried to the matinees, but a child’s voice broke through. “Look, Mommy. What’s that man–?”

  “Don’t look, honey,” said a woman’s voice. “It’s just someone who’s sick.”

  Tears were a pressure behind Munir’s sealed eyelids. He bit back a sob of humiliation and tried to imagine himself in a private place, in his own bathroom, standing over the toilet. He forced himself to relax, and soon it came. As the warm liquid streamed out of him, the waiting sob burst free, propelled equally by shame and relief.

  He did not have to shut off the flow. When he opened his eyes and saw the glistening puddle before him on the asphalt, saw the drivers and passengers and passers-by staring, the stream dried up on its own.

  I hope that is enough, he thought. Please let that be enough.

  Averting his eyes, Munir zipped up and fled down the sidewalk, all but tripping over his own feet as they ran.

  2

  The phone was ringing when Munir got to his apartment. He hit the RECORD button on his answering machine as he snatched up the receiver and jammed it against his ear.

  “Yes!”

  Pretty disappointing, Mooo-neeer,” said the now familiar electronically distorted voice. “Are all you Ay-rabs such mosquito dicks?”

  “I did as you asked! Just as you asked!”

  “That wasn’t much of a pee, Mooo-neeer.”

  “It was all I could do! Please let them go now.”

  He glanced down at the caller ID. A number had formed in the LCD window. A 212 area code, just like all the previous calls. But the seven digits following were a new combination, unlike any of the others. And when Munir called it back, he was sure it would be a public phone. Just like all the others.

  “Are they all right? Let me speak to my wife.”

  Munir didn’t know why he said that. He knew the caller couldn’t drag Barbara and Robby to a pay phone.

  “She can’t come to the phone right now. She’s, uh . . . all tied up at the moment.”

  Munir ground his teeth as the horse laugh brayed through the phone.

  “Please. I must know if she’s all right.”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it, Mooo-neeer.”

  “She may be dead.” Allah forbid! “You may have killed her and Robby already.”

  “Hey. Ain’t I been sendin’ you pichers? Don’t you like my pretty pichers?”

  “No!” Munir cried, fighting a wave of nausea. Those pictures—those horrible, sickening photos. “They aren’t enough. You could have taken all of them at once and then killed them.”

  The voice on the other end lowered to a sinister, nasty, growling tone.

  “You callin’ me a liar, you lousy, greasy, two-bit Ay-rab? Don’t you ever doubt a word I tell you. Don’t even think about doubtin’ me. Or I’ll show you who’s alive. I’ll prove your white bitch and mongrel brat are alive by sending you a new piece of them every so often. A little bit of each, every day, by Express Mail, so it’s nice and fresh. You keep on doubtin’ me, Mooo-neeer, and pretty soon you’ll get your wife and kid back, all of them. But you’ll have to figure out which part goes where. Like the model kits say: Some assembly required.”

  Munir bit back a scream as the caller brayed again.

  “No-no. Please don’t hurt them anymore. I’ll do anything you want. What do you want me to do?”

  “There. That’s more like it. I’ll let your little faux pas pass this time. A lot more generous than you’d ever be—ain’t that right, Mooo-neeer. And sure as shit more generous than your Ay-rab buddies were when they killed my brother over there in Baghdad.”

  “Yes. Yes, whatever you say. What else do you want me to do? Just tell me.”

  “I ain’t decided yet, Mooo-neeer. I’m gonna have to think on that one. But in the meantime, I’m gonna look kindly on you and bestow your request. Yessir, I’m gonna send you proof positive that your wife and kid are still alive.”

  Munir’s stomach plummeted. “No! Please! I believe you! I believe!”

  “I reckon you do, Mooo-neeer. But believin’ just ain’t enough sometimes, is it? I mean, you believe in Allah, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course I believe in Allah.”

  “And look at what you did on Friday. Just think back and meditate on what you did.”

  Munir hung his head in shame and said nothing.

  “So you can see where I’m comin’ from when I say believin’ ain’t enough. Cause if you believe, you can also have doubt. And I don’t want you havin’ no doubts, Mooo-neeer. I don’t want you havin’ the slightest twinge of doubt about how important it is for you to do exactly what I tell you to. ‘Cause if you start thinking it really doesn’t matter to your bitch and little rat-faced kid, that they’re probably dead already and you can tell me to shove it, that’s not gonna be good for them. So I’ve gonna have to prove to you just how alive and well they are.”

  “No!” He was going to be sick. “Please don’t!”

  “Just remember. You asked for proof.”

  Munir’s voice edged toward a scream. “PLEASE!”

  The line clicked and went dead.

  Munir dropped the phone and buried his face in his hands. The caller was mad, crazy, brutally insane, and for some reason he hated Munir with a depth and breadth Munir found incomprehensible and profoundly horrifying. Whoever he was, he seemed capable of anything, and he had Munir’s wife and child hidden away somewhere in the city.

  The helplessness overwhelmed Munir and he began to sob. He had allowed only a few to escape when he heard a pounding on his door.

  “Hey. What’s going on in there? Munir, you okay?”

  Munir stiffened as he recognized his neighbor’s voice. He straightened in his chair but said nothing. Charlie lived in the apartment next door. A retired city worker who had taken a shine to Barbara and Robby. A harmless busybody, Barbara called him. He couldn’t let Charlie know anything was wrong.

  “Hey!” Charlie said, banging on the door again. “I know someone’s in there. You don’t open up I’m gonna assume something’s wrong and call the emergency squad. Don’t make a fool out of me.”

  The last thing Munir needed was a bunch of EMTs swarming around his apartment. The police would be with them and who knew wha
t the crazy man who held Barbara and Robby would do if he saw them. He cleared his throat.

  “I’m all right, Charlie.”

  “The hell you are,” Charlie said, rattling the doorknob. “You didn’t sound all right a moment ago when you screamed and you don’t sound all right now. Just open up so I can—”

  The door swung open, revealing Charlie Akers—fat, balding, a cigar butt in his mouth, the Sunday comics in his hand, dressed in wrinkled blue pants, a T-shirt, and suspenders—looking as shocked as Munir felt.

  In his haste to answer the phone, Munir had forgotten to latch the door behind him. Quickly, he wiped his eyes and rose to close it.

  “Jesus, Munir,” Charlie said. “You look like hell. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, Charlie.”

  “Hey, don’t shit me. I heard you. Sounded like someone was stepping on your soul. Anything I can do?”

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  “Yeah, right. You in trouble? You need money? Maybe I can help.”

  Munir was touched by the offer. He hardly knew Charlie. If only he could help. But no one could help him.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Is it Barbara and the kid? I ain’t seen them around for a few days. Something happen to–?” Munir realized it must have shown on his face. Charlie stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, what’s going on? Are they all right?”

  “Please, Charlie. I can’t talk about it. And you mustn’t talk about it either. Just let it be. I’m handling it.”

  “Is it a police thing? I got friends down the precinct house—”

  “No! Not the police! Please don’t say anything to the police. I was warned”—in sickeningly graphic detail—”about going to the police.”

  Charlie leaned back against the door and stared at him.

  “Jesus . . . is this as bad as I think it is?”

  Munir could do no more than nod.

  Charlie jabbed a finger at him. “Wait here.”

  He ducked out the door and was back in less than two minutes with a slip of paper in his hand.

  “My brother gave me this a couple of years ago. Said if I was ever in a really bad spot and there was no one left to turn to, I should call this guy.”

  “No one can help me.”

  “My brother says this guy’s good people, but he said make sure it was my last resort because it was gonna cost me. And he said make sure the cops weren’t involved because this guy don’t like cops.”

  No police . . . Munir reached for the slip of paper. And money? What did money matter where Barbara and Robby were concerned?

  A telephone number was written on the slip. And below it, two words: Repairman Jack.

  3

  I’m running out of space, Jack thought as he stood in the front room of his apartment and looked for an empty spot to display his latest treasure.

  His Sky King Magni Glow Writing Ring had just arrived from his connection in southeast Missouri. It contained a Mysterious Glo signaler (“Gives a strange green light! You can send blinker signals with it!”). The plastic ruby unfolded into three sections, revealing a Secret Compartment that contained a Flying Crown Brand (“For sealing messages!”); the middle section was a Detecto Scope Magnifying Glass (“For detecting fingerprints or decoding messages!”); and the outermost section was a Secret Stratospheric Pen (“Writes at any altitude, or under water, in red ink!”).

  Neat. Incredibly neat. The neatest ring in Jack’s collection. Far more complex than his Buck Rogers Ring of Saturn, or his Shadow ring, or even his Kix Atomic Bomb Ring. It deserved auspicious display. But where? His front room was already jammed with neat stuff. Radio premiums, cereal give-aways, comic strip tie-ins—crassly commercial junk from a time before he was born. Why did he collect them? After years of accumulating his hoard, Jack still hadn’t found the answer. So he kept buying. And buying.

  Old goodies and oddities littered every flat surface on the mismatched array of Victorian golden oak furniture crowding the room. Certificates proclaiming him an official member of The Shadow Society, the Doc Savage Club, the Nick Carter Club, Friends of the Phantom, the Green Hornet G-J-M Club, and other august organizations papered the walls.

  Jack glanced at the Shmoo clock on the wall above the hutch. He had an appointment with a new customer in twenty minutes or so. No time to find a special spot for the Sky King Magni-Glo Writing Ring, so he placed it next to his Captain Midnight radio decoder. He pulled a worn red windbreaker over his shirt and jeans and headed for the door.

  4

  Outside in the growing darkness, Jack hurried through the West Seventies, passing trendy boutiques and eateries that catered to the local yuppies and their affluent subgroup, dinks—double income, no kids. They types who were paying $9.50 for a side dish of the Upper West Side’s newest culinary rage—mashed potatoes.

  The drinkers stood three deep around the bar at Julio’s. Two hundred-dollar shirts and three hundred-dollar sweaters were wedged next to grease-monkey overalls. Julio’s had somehow managed to hang onto its old clientele despite the invasion of the Giorgio Armani and Donna Karen set. The yups and dinks had discovered Julio’s a while back. Thought it had “rugged charm,” found the bar food “authentic,” and loved its “unpretentious atmosphere.”

  They drove Julio up the wall.

  Julio was behind the bar, under the “Free Beer Tomorrow . . .” sign. Jack waved to let him know he was here. As Jack wandered the length of the bar he overheard a blond dink in a blue Ralph Lauren blazer, holding a mug of draft beer; he’d been here maybe once or twice before, and was pointing out Julio’s famous dead succulents and asparagus ferns hanging in the windows to a couple who were apparently newcomers.

  “Aren’t they just fabulous?”

  “Why doesn’t he just get fresh ones?” the woman beside him asked. She was sipping white wine from a smudged tumbler. She grimaced as she swallowed.

  Julio made a point of stocking the sourest Chardonnay on the market.

  “I think he’s making a statement,” the guy said.

  “About what?”

  “I haven’t the faintest. But don’t you just love them?”

  Jack knew what the statement was: Callousless people go home—this is a working man’s bar. But they didn’t see it. Julio was purposely rude to them, and he’d instructed his help to follow his lead, but it didn’t work. The dinks thought it was a put-on, part of the ambiance. They ate it up.

  Jack stepped over the length of rope that closed off the back half of the seating area and dropped into his usual booth in the darkened rear. As Julio came out from behind the bar, the blond dink flagged him down.

  “Can we get a table back there?”

  “No,” Julio said.

  The muscular little man brushed by him and nodded to Jack on his way to assuming the welcoming-committee post by the front door.

  Jack pulled an iPod from his jacket pocket and set up a pair of lightweight headsets while he mentally reviewed the two phone calls that had led to this meet. The first had been on the answering machine he kept in a deserted office on Tenth Avenue. He’d called it from a pay booth this morning and heard someone named Munir Habib explaining in a tight, barely accented voice that he needed help. Needed it bad. He explained how he’d got the number. He didn’t know what Jack could do for him but he was desperate. He gave his phone number and said he’d be waiting. “Please save my family!” he’d said.

  Jack then made a couple of calls on his own. Mr. Habib’s provenance checked out so Jack had called him back. From the few details he’d allowed Habib to give over the phone, Jack had determined that the man was indeed a potential customer. He’d set up a meet in Julio’s.

  A short, fortyish man stepped through Julio’s front door and looked around uncertainly. His light camel-hair sport coat was badly wrinkled, like he’d slept on it. He had milk-chocolate skin, a square face, and bright eyes as black as the stiff, straight hair on his head. Julio spoke to him, they
exchanged a few words, then Julio smiled and shook his hand. He led him back toward Jack, patting him on the back, treating him like a relative. Close up, the guy looked halfway to zombie. Even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have a clue that he’d just been expertly frisked. Julio indicated the seat opposite Jack and gave a quick O-K behind his back as the newcomer seated himself.

  When Julio got back to the bar, the blond guy in the blazer stopped him again.

  “How come they get to sit over there and we don’t?”

  Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. It wasn’t an act. Julio was feeling mean these days.

  “You ask me one more time about those tables, man, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!”

  As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.

  “I just love this place.”

  Jack turned his attention to his own customer. He extended his hand.

  “I’m Jack.”

  “Munir Habib.” His palm was cold and sweaty. “Are you the one who . . .?”

  “That’s me.”

  A few beats of silence, then, “I was expecting . . .”

  “You and everybody else.” They all arrived expecting someone bigger, someone darker, someone meaner looking. “But this is the guy you get. You’ve got the down payment on you?”

  Munir glanced around furtively. “Yes. It is a lot to carry around in cash.”

  “It’s safe here. Keep it for now. I haven’t decided yet whether we’ll be doing business. What’s the story?”

  “As I told you on the phone, my wife and son have been kidnapped and are being held hostage.”

  A kidnap. One of Jack’s rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad in the city these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for Feds than he had for local cops. But this Munir guy had sworn he hadn’t called the cops. Said he was too scared by the kidnapper’s threats. Jack didn’t know if he could believe him.