A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Well, if nothing else, the lack of make-up gave her a clean, scrubbed look, which Jack supposed was a good thing for a doctor.

  But her eyes . . . something hiding there. Fear? Anger? A little of both, maybe?

  She thrust out her hand. “Welcome, Mister Niedermeyer.”

  She had a good grip.

  “Just call me Jack.”

  “You’ll want to see the scene of the crime, I imagine.”

  “I was going to suggest that.”

  No wasting time. All business. Jack liked that.

  The Center wasn’t at all what he’d expected. The halls were bright, painted cheery shades yellow and orange.

  “You’re a pediatrician?” he said as they walked along.

  She nodded. “Subspecialty in infectious diseases.”

  “My sister’s a pediatrician.”

  “Really? Where’s she practice?”

  Jack kicked mentally himself. Why the hell had he said that? He never thought about his sister the doctor. Or his brother the judge. Must be those calls from Dad.

  “I’m really not sure. We don’t keep in touch.”

  Dr. Clayton gave him a strange look.

  Yeah, he thought. Sounds pretty lame, I know, but my sister’s far better off not being linked to me.

  As they passed open doorways he peeked through and saw rooms filled with toddlers laughing and playing and running around. They didn’t look sick.

  “That’s the day-care area,” Dr. Clayton said. “Where HIV-positive kids can play with other HIV-positive kids, and no one has to worry about passing on the infection.”

  A little boy ran out of one of the rooms and skidded to a stop before them.

  “Doctor Alith!” he cried. “Look at my hair! I got a buthcut!”

  “Very nice, Hector. But you know you’re supposed to stay in the playroom.”

  Hector was all of four years old and maybe thirty pounds, with ultra-short light brown hair about the same shade as his skin. He looked pale under his pigment, but his grin was a winner.

  “Feel my head! It’th a buthcut.”

  A heavyset woman in a flowered smock appeared at the door of the playroom, filling it.

  “C’mon back, Hector. It’s your turn at the light box.”

  “No. I want Doctor Alith to feel my buthcut!”

  The woman said, “He just got that haircut and he’s been driving us all nuts about it.”

  Dr. Clayton smiled and brushed her hand over Hector’s stubbled head. “Okay, Hector, I’ll check out you buzzcut, but then–”

  Her smile faded and she pressed her hand to his forehead. “I think you feel a little warm.”

  “He’s been running around like a little madman—‘Feel my buzzcut! Feel my buzzcut!’ I’m sure he’s just overheated.”

  “Could be, Gladys, but bring him by my office before he goes home, okay?”

  Hector jumped in front of Jack and angled the top of his head toward him. “Feel my buthcut, mithter!”

  Jack hesitated. Hector was a cute little guy, but he was a cute little guy with HIV.

  “C’mon, mithter!”

  Jack gave the bristly top of Hector’s head a quick rub. He didn’t like himself for how quickly he pulled his hand away.

  “Ithn’t it mad cool?”

  “The maddest.”

  Gladys scooted Hector back to his playroom and they moved on to the next area, which wasn’t so pleasant. Jack peeked through a window in a door and saw a room full of kids hooked up to IV’s.

  “This is the clinic area. Kids come in here for outpatient therapy—we infuse them, monitor their progress, then send them home.”

  Then they came to a huge plate-glass window that stretched from waist level to the ceiling.

  “We board the homeless or abandoned infants in there. We have volunteers to hold them and comfort them. The crack babies need a lot of comforting.”

  Jack spotted Gia cradling a baby in her arms on the far side of the glass, but he didn’t pause. He didn’t want her to spot him.

  “You do a lot here,” he said as they moved on.

  “Yeah, we’ve had to become a clinic, a nursery, a daycare center, and a foster home.”

  “And all because of a single virus.”

  “But we have to deal with more than the virus. So many of these kids aren’t born merely HIV positive—as if ‘merely’ can somehow be used with ‘HIV’—but addicted to crack or heroin as well. They hit the world screaming like any other baby at the insult of being ejected from that warm cozy womb, but then they keep on screaming as the agonies of cold-turkey withdrawal set in.”

  “A double whammy.” Poor kids.

  “Yes. Some parents leave their kinds an inheritance, some leave hidden scars, these kids were left a virtual death sentence.”

  Jack sensed something very personal in that last sentence but couldn’t latch onto what it might have been.

  “Perhaps ‘death sentence’ is overstating it,” she added. “We can do a lot for these kids now. The survival rate is way up, but still . . . once they get through withdrawal, they still have the aftereffects of addiction. Crack and heroin burn out parts of the nervous system. I won’t bore you with a lecture about dopamine receptors, but the result is fried circuits in the pleasure centers. Which leaves our little crack babies edgy and irritable, unable to take solace in the simple things that comfort normal infants. So they cry. Endlessly. Until the strung-out junkie mothers who made them this way beat them to shut them up.”

  Jack realized she probably gave this spiel to all the visitors, but he wished she’d stop. He was getting the urge to go hurt somebody.

  “The lucky ones”—she cleared her throat harshly—”try to imagine a lucky HIV-positive crack baby—wind up here.”

  She stopped before a windowless door.

  “Here’s the storeroom where the toys were kept.”

  She showed him the space, empty but for some scotch tape and wrapping paper.

  “The toys will be wrapped in this paper?” he said, memorizing the pattern.

  “Most, but not all.”

  He pulled open the door to the alley and checked the alley itself. Easy to see how it had been done. The outer door frame and the surface around the latch were deeply gouged and warped. Looked like the work of a long pry bar in the hands of someone with the finesse of an orangutan.

  He saw Dr. Clayton shiver in the cold wash from the open door. She rubbed the sleeves of her white coat. She was very thin—no insulation.

  “How are you going to handle this?” she said as Jack closed the door.

  “Not here. Can we talk in your office?”

  “Follow me.”

  On the way to her office, Dr. Clayton stopped at the front door and peered out at the street. He saw her stiffen, as if she’d seen something that frightened her.

  5

  A chill rippled over Alicia’s skin and collected at the base of her spine as she watched a gray car double-parked across the street. It idled there, slightly uptown from her vantage point, its motor running.

  The same car as this morning? She couldn’t be sure. Was it watching the door of the Center or waiting for someone in one of those stores? How could she know? Hell, between the sun glare and the tinted windows, she couldn’t even tell how many people were in it.

  She forced herself to turn away and led Jack Niedermeyer back to her office. Maybe it was just her imagination. Why would anybody follow her? What was the point? She did the same thing every day: from her apartment in the Village to the Center, from the Center to her apartment. A model of predictability.

  Relax. You’re making yourself crazy.

  “Have a seat,” she said as they entered her office.

  Raymond stopped by to drop off some papers. She introduced them but said nothing about why Mr. Niedermeyer was here.

  When Raymond was gone and they were seated, facing each other, she took a good look at this mid-thirtyish man in jeans and a reddish flannel shirt. He stood abou
t five-eleven, had a tight wiry build, dark brown hair, lips on the thin side, and mild brown eyes. The very definition of average.

  This is the guy who’s going to get the toys back? Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much.

  “Now, Mister Niedermeyer–”

  “Just call me Jack.”

  “Okay, Just Jack.” And you can call me Doctor Clayton. No, she wouldn’t say that. “Ms. DiLauro told me you might be able to help. Are you a friend of hers?”

  “Not really. I did some work for her aunt once.” He leaned forward. “I believe the subject is missing toys?”

  A tiny flash of intensity there. Well hidden, but Alicia had spotted it. Something personal between these two? Or simply none of my business?

  When he’d leaned forward he’d put his hands on her desk. Alicia was struck by the length of his thumbnails. His hands were clean, his nails well trimmed . . . all except for the thumbs. Their nails jutted a good quarter inch or more beyond the tips. She wanted to ask him about them but didn’t see how she could do so with any grace.

  “I wasn’t prying. I’m simply curious as to how one man could possibly find those toys ahead of the whole New York City Police Department.”

  Jack shrugged. “First off, it won’t be the ‘whole’ department. Maybe one or two robbery detectives—if you’re lucky.”

  Alicia nodded. He was right.

  “Second, I think it’s a safe bet that the guys who ripped you off aren’t family men stocking up for their own kids’ Christmases. And from the look of that door, they weren’t pros. I smell a quickie, spur-of-the-moment heist. I’ll bet they don’t have a fence in place to dump their loot, which means they’ll be looking for one. I know people . . .”

  He left that hanging. What people? People who buy stolen Christmas gifts? Was he some sort of criminal himself?

  She looked at him and realized that his mild brown eyes revealed nothing . . . absolutely nothing.

  “So . . . you ‘know people’ . . . people, I assume, who might lead you to the thieves. And then what?”

  “And then I will prevail upon them to return the gifts.”

  “And if you can’t ‘prevail?’ What then? Call in the police?”

  He shook his head. “No. That’s one of the conditions of my involvement: no contact with officialdom. If the police recover the gifts, fine. All’s well that ends well. If I return them, it’s a wonderful occurrence, a Christmas miracle. You don’t know who’s responsible, but God bless ’em. You’ve never seen me, never even heard of me. As far as you know, I don’t exist.”

  Alicia tensed. Was this some sort of scam? Rob the gifts, then charge a fee to “find” them. Maybe even collect a reward?

  But no. Gia DiLauro would never have anything to do with something like that. Her anger this morning had been too real.

  But this man, this “Just Jack” . . . he might have involved Gia without her knowledge.

  “I see. And what would you charge for–?”

  “It’s taken care of.”

  “I don’t understand. Did Gia–?”

  “Don’t worry about it. All taken care of.”

  “There’ll be a reward.”

  She’d had calls—businesses and individuals offering to contribute to a reward fund for the arrest of the perpetrators. The total was mounting.

  “Keep it. Spend it on the kids.”

  Alicia relaxed. All right. So it wasn’t a scam.

  “What I need is some information about the gifts—anything distinctive that’ll help me make sure I’m on the right track.”

  “Well, for one thing, they were all wrapped. We only accepted new toys or clothing—all of it unwrapped—and then we wrapped them ourselves as they came in. You saw the kind of paper we used. Other than that, what can I say? It was a real hodgepodge of gifts, a beautiful, generous assortment . . .”

  Alicia felt her throat begin to lock with rage.

  And they’re all gone!

  The man rose and extended his hand across her desk. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Alicia gripped his hand and held it. “What are our chances? The truth. Don’t think you have to make me feel good.”

  “The truth? Chances for recovery are zip if they’ve already fenced the toys. Slim if they haven’t. If they’re not recovered, say, by Sunday, I’d say they’re gone for good.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.” She sighed. “But that’s the way it goes around here, I guess. These kids are born under a dark cloud. I don’t know why I should expect they’ll get a break this time.”

  He gave her hand a little extra squeeze, then released her.

  “You never know, Doctor Clayton.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Even the worst losers get lucky once in a while.”

  Maybe it was the smile that did it. It dropped his shields. Alicia saw into this Jack for an instant—a nanosecond, really—and suddenly she had hope. If it was at all possible to find and return those gifts, this man believed he could pull it off.

  And now Alicia was beginning to believe it too.

  6

  Instead of heading for the front after leaving the doctor’s office, Jack ducked to the left and returned to the infant area. He stepped back into the relative shadow of a doorway across from the big plate glass window and watched.

  Gia sat half facing him, but all her attention was on the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She rocked, smiled, cooed, and looked down at that bundle as if it were the most precious child in the world. Someone else’s baby, but no one looking at Gia now would know it. Her eyes were aglow with a light Jack had never seen before. And her expression . . . beatific was the only word for it.

  And then Vicky hopped into the picture, an eight-year-old slip of a thing; her dark brown braids bouncing as she hurried a bottle of formula to her mother. Jack smiled. He had to smile every time he saw Vicky. She was a doll and he loved her like a daughter.

  He’d never met Vicky’s father and, from what he’d heard about the late, not-so-great Richard Westphalen, he was glad. Jack had it on excellent authority that the Brit bastard was dead—he knew the where, when, and how of his death—but the remains would never be found. So it would be years before Richard Westphalen was declared legally dead. Gia had taken back her maiden name after the divorce, although Vicky remained a Westphalen—the last of the line.

  Vicky didn’t seem to miss her father. Why should she? She’d hardly known him when he was alive, and now Jack had more than taken his place. Or at least he hoped so.

  He watched a few minutes longer, unable to take his eyes off the two most important people in his life. It worried him no end that they were both in an enclosed room with HIV-positive infants.

  Right, right, right. He knew all the facts and figures about how safe they were, and all that. And that was all fine and good for other people. But this was Gia and Vicky. And the threat was a virus, something you couldn’t see, and not just any virus. This was HIV.

  Jack felt he could protect those two people in there against just about anything. But not a virus. And they were putting themselves right in its way.

  If either one of them should catch it . . . he didn’t know what he’d do.

  HIV was something he could not fix.

  He pulled himself away and walked back the way he had come.

  He saw the heavyset Gladys leading a line of preschoolers down the hall. She smiled and nodded as she passed, a huge goose with her goslings. He spotted Hector bringing up the rear.

  “Hey,” he said, pointing. “Who’s that kid with the mad buzzcut?”

  Jack had expected another offer to “feel my buthcut,” or a smile at least, but Hector’s eyes were dull when he looked up at Jack. And then he staggered against the wall and dropped to his knees. Before Jack could react, Hector vomited.

  “Whoa!” Jack yelled. “Trouble here!”

  Gladys was there in a second. “Stay back,” she said as she pulled on latex gloves that seemed to appear from nowhere.

  She pick
ed up a hall phone, spoke a few words, then knelt beside Hector. Jack couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw Hector shake his head.

  And then Raymond appeared—he too was wearing latex gloves. He gathered Hector up in his arms and carried him back the hall. As Gladys directed the other children back into their playroom, a janitor appeared and began mopping up the mess with a solution that reeked of antiseptic.

  Jack moved on. He’d been a frozen observer, not knowing what to do. The staff here had its own set of rules and protocols that he was not privy to. He felt like a stranger in a foreign country, with no knowledge of the language or the culture.

  He quickened his pace. Hector had been smiling and bubbling less than an hour ago, and just now he’d looked like a little rag doll with all its stuffing vacuumed out.

  The happy sounds of the children in the daycare rooms attacked Jack as he moved. Each shout felt like a shot, each laugh a knife thrust. Death hovered over every one of them, a fatal infection lurked around every corner, but they didn’t know. And just as well. They were kids, and they should be happy while they could be.

  Especially the crack babies. Their short lives had been full of pain from day one, while a virus chewed away at their immune systems.

  And now someone had stolen their toys.

  Jack felt his jaw muscles bunch. Don’t worry kids . . . Uncle Jack may not know how what to do when you’re sick, but he’s not quite as useless as he looked a few minutes ago. He’s going to get your toys back. And in the process he sincerely intends to have a heart-to-heart chat with the oxygen waster who took them.

  Life really sucked sometimes.

  But it didn’t have to suck all the time. Sometimes things could be fixed.

  SATURDAY

  The Nail sat behind the wheel of his truck and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Cold as shit out tonight, man. Cold as shit!

  But not for long. An hour from now, maybe less if the buyer didn’t try to jew him down too much, he’d be flush and warm in his crib, sucking on some rock instead of this piss poor excuse for a joint.

  The Nail took a deep toke and held it. He wiped the condensation off his windshield and wished the heater in this damn truck worked. He flicked his Bic to check the dashboard clock. The buyer had said like eleven-thirty. Just about that now.