Never Fear (72 page)

“
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.

Chapter 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 picked 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.

He’d floated the word that if anyone
wanted a deep discount on a bunch of new Xmas toys, wrapped and
ready to go, the Nail was the man. Word had floated back that a
fence who was a friend of a friend of a friend wanted the whole
truck load. Yes!

He exhaled and peered down the alley,
looking for headlights. Lots of wheels rolling by out there,
heading for the nearby Manhattan Bridge. He wished the right set
would roll in here so he could get this deal done.

His contact hadn’t said so, but The
Nail figured the fence was bringing his own truck. Had to be. How
else was he going to cart the stuff out of here?

Better not have any ideas
about taking
this
truck, man. He patted the little .32 automatic in his belt.
Better not be thinking of anything beyond passing the cash and
off-loading the stash.

Hey, that rhymes.

Passin’ the green and splittin’ the
scene.

The Nail smiled and took another toke.
Too bad he wasn’t with the band anymore. Maybe him and the drummer
could’ve like worked that up into a song or something. That’d be
cool.

He missed Polio. Best damn punk
thrasher band in the world, man, and he’d played bass for them.
Well, for a few months, anyway. Until they kicked him out for not
showing up.

But it’d been a good few months. That
was when he’d picked up the name The Nail. Well, not picked up,
actually. That was when he’d started calling himself The Nail. You
needed a name like The Nail if you was playing for Polio. Like
who’d want a bass player named Joey DeCiglia?

And The Nail was
such
a cool name, having
like a double meaning and all.

But even with a handle like The Nail
and having gigged with Polio, there wasn’t no work out there. Least
not for him. Shit, yeah, he got auditions just by name-dropping
Polio, and everybody was real interested in hearing him… until they
heard him.

Then it was like, don’t call us,
man…

Yeah, well, like fuck you
too.

He sucked the joint down to his
fingertips and tossed the roach out the window. Not worth saving,
man.

After a bunch of wasted auditions, The
Nail said goodbye to the music scene. He had his pride, man. As a
lark, he started boosting stuff and selling it off. Wound up making
more that way than from what he’d’ve been paid by any of the
nowhere, no-name thrasher bands that never called back.

But then Tina goes and gets herself
knocked up and tries to tell him the kid’s his. Sure. Right. Like
with the way she jumps on anything upright and hard, he’s gonna
believe that shit? No fucking way.

Then
she gets all fucked up in the head and won’t have an
abortion. Nah. She’s gonna have the kid and be a mommy.

Right. Mommy Tina. Sure.

But surprise, surprise.
She’s goes through with it. And of course the kid’s born like
totally wasted. And then the word comes down that it’s got fucking
AIDS, man.
AIDS!

That meant Tina had the
bug, and
that
blew The Nail’s mind. Fuck, he could have it too, what with
screwing Tina all the time and sharing needles. He should’ve gotten
tested right then, but he was too scared, man. Like he didn’t want
to
know
.

But for Tina, it was like she wasn’t
even sick and like the kid wasn’t sick either. Her head was royally
fucked. So she was all broke up when they took the baby away from
her.

And she kept telling him
it was
his
kid.
Kept saying how it looked just like him. So one day last week she
finally hounded him into going over to this place where they keep
the kid and look after it. The Nail didn’t know what had gotten
into him—maybe that Ceylonese brown they’d been using had got him
over-mellowed—but he was glad he’d given in. Because as he was
hanging around the place he saw people carrying a bunch of
Christmas gifts through this doorway. He took a peek figuring he
might be able to make off with something small, but he saw a whole
room
filled
with
toys. Whoa.

Merry Christmas to me.

He did the place two nights
later.

And the coolest part of the whole
thing was the news coverage. Shit, man, last night you couldn’t
turn on a radio or TV without hearing about “the AIDS baby
Christmas toy theft.” He’d spent hours hopping from channel to
channel, one news show after the other, grinning like a total
asshole.

That was him they was talking about.
The Nail.

The only bad thing was, he couldn’t
tell anyone. At least not until he’d sold off the stuff. After that
he could talk all he wanted because the toys would be gone and no
one could prove nothing.

The only thing he didn’t
get was how pissed off and disgusted all the news geeks acted. Like
it really mattered to them. Bull
shit
. Everybody knew how stupid it
was to waste presents on those AIDS kids. Really, how long were
they gonna live anyway? Weren’t gonna be around long enough to
appreciate them. Total waste, man.

Leave it to The Nail to put the stuff
to good use.

And it’d been so fucking simple. All
he’d had to do was–

The Nail jumped as he
heard a
skree-eek
behind him. He twisted in his seat. That sounded
like–

It was! Shit, some asshole had opened
one of the truck’s back doors. And now he was flashing a light
inside.

His first thought was cops, but he
hadn’t seen a fuzzmobile pull up. And The Nail knew cops had to
follow certain rules about searches.

The buyer? Maybe, but he
didn’t think so. More likely some strung-out junking trying to
boost
his
stuff.

The Nail pulled out the
automatic and chambered a round. He’d put an end to that
shit
real
quick.

He jumped out and ran around to the
back of the truck.

“
Hey, man. What the fuck
you think–?”

Nobody there. And both rear doors
closed. The Nail scanned the alley up and down: not a fucking soul
in sight.

He couldn’t have imagined
it. The weed hadn’t been
that
strong. And he’d heard the noise. He’d
seen
the
light.

Better check to see if anything was
missing.

But as The Nail reached for the
handle, the door sprang open and slammed into him, knocking him
flat. He landed on his back, rolled, and popped to his feet, the
gun stuck out ahead of him. He saw the open door of the truck, but
no one there.