Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (2 page)

He patted the letter folded in his jeans pocket. Another problem fixed. Jankowski would be happy, and Cordova…

Jack smiled. Fat Richie Cordova had to be fuming as much as the sulfuric acid on his photos and papers.

2

A man who was something more than a man crouched among the foundation plantings of a two-story house in a quiet Connecticut community. He moved through the world under different guises, using different names, but never his own, never his True Name. And as he traveled, doing what must be done to prepare the way, he searched out places such as this family home.

He sat with his spine and the back of his head pressed against the house’s concrete foundation. Someone coming upon him might have thought he was an indigent sleeping off a bender. But he hadn’t been sleeping. He required very little rest. He could go for days without closing his eyes.

And even if this had been one of those rare occasions when he needed rest, he would have found sleep impossible while basking in the exhilarating emanations from the basement of this house.

On the other side of the wall…systematic torture, mutilation, and defilement. The victim wasn’t the first so abused by this family of three, and would not be the last. Or so the man who was something more than a man hoped.

What the two adults within had done to the ones they’d captured and imprisoned over the years would have been sustenance enough for this man. But the fact that they had debased their own child and made him a willing participant in the systematic defilement of another human being…this was exquisite.

He flattened his back more firmly against the wall, drinking, feasting…

3

After stopping at Julio’s for a couple, Jack fell into bed when he got home. Jankowski could wait till morning for the good news.

Somewhere around 3 A.M. the ringing of the front-room phone dragged him from slumberland. The answering machine clicked on and out came a voice he hadn’t heard in fifteen years.

“Jackie. This is your brother Tom. Long time no see. I assume you’re still alive, though it’s hard to tell. Well, anyway, Dad was in a car accident earlier tonight. He’s in pretty bad shape, in a coma, they tell me. So give me a call, prontissimo. We need to talk.”

He rattled off a number with a 215 area code.

Jack had been up and moving at the mention of his father’s accident, but didn’t reach the receiver in time to pick up. He stood over the phone in the dark.

Dad? In an accident? In a coma? How the hell—?

Unease trickled through his gut. The past he’d cut himself off from was worming its way back into his life. First he runs into his sister Kate last June, and a week later she’s dead. Now, three months after that, he hears from big brother Tom that his father’s in a coma. Was he detecting a scary symmetry here? A pattern?

Deal with that later, he told himself. First find out what happened to Dad.

Jack replayed the message, writing down the phone number. He used his Tracfone to return the call. That same voice answered.

“Tom? Jack.”

“Well, I’ll be. The long lost brother. The prodigal son. He lives. He returns a call.”

Jack didn’t have time for this. “What’s the story with Dad?”

Jack had never particularly liked his brother. Hadn’t disliked him either. They’d never had any sort of a relationship growing up. Tom—Tom, Jr., officially—was ten years older and seemed to have viewed his little brother as an inconvenient pet, one that belonged to his parents and his sister but had nothing to do with him. He’d always been self-involved to a fault. Kate had said he was on his third wife and hinted that the latest marriage was headed for the same fate as his others. Jack hadn’t been surprised.

Tom had been a Philadelphia lawyer for a couple of decades and was now a Philadelphia judge. Which meant he was an officer of the court, a cog in the wheels of officialdom. All the more reason for Jack to keep his distance. Courts gave him the creeps.

“Pretty much what I told you. I got a call from this nurse at the Novaton Community Hospital that Dad was involved in an MVA and—”

“M-V—?”

“Motor vehicle accident—and that he’s in bad shape.”

“Yeah. A coma, right? Jeez, what do we do?”

“Not we, Jackie. You.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of this. “I don’t get you.”

“One of us has to go down there. I can’t, and since Kate’s not exactly available, that leaves you.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I—I’m in the middle of a bunch of legal business…judicial matters that have me tied up.”

“You can’t get away to see a comatose father?”

“It’s complicated, Jackie. Too complicated to go into on the phone at this hour of the morning. Suffice it to say that I can’t leave the city now.”

Jack sensed a lot more going on here than Tom was telling.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Me? Christ, why would you ask something like that?”

“Because you sound funny.”

Tom’s tone took on a sharp edge. “How would you know what I sound like? We haven’t spoken in, what, ten years, and you’re going to tell me how I sound?”

“It’s been fifteen years”—not quite long enough, Jack thought—“and yeah, I’m telling you you sound funny.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry about me. Worry about Dad. He gave me your number before he moved to Florida. ‘Just in case,’ he said. Well, ‘just in case’ just happened. Tag, you’re it.”

Jack sighed. “All right. I guess I’ll go.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

Jack shook his head. First off, he hated to leave New York for any reason, period. Plus, this wasn’t a good time for him to be heading for Florida or anywhere else. He had another fix-it in the early stages of development, but he’d have to let it wait. Worse, an emergency trip like this meant that driving and Amtrak were out. He’d have to take a plane. He didn’t mind flying itself, but all the extra security since 9-11 made an airport a scary place for a guy with no official identity.

But then, it was his father down there.

Tom said, “In a way you’re lucky he’s in a coma.”

Strange thing to say. “How’s that?”

“Because he’s pissed at you for not showing up for Kate’s funeral. Come to think of it, so am I. Where the hell were you?”

As if he’d tell a judge, even if that judge happened to be his big brother.

Big Brother…judge. How Orwellian.

“Suffice it to say,” he said, deciding to give Tom a dose of his own medicine, “that it’s too complicated to go into on the phone at this hour of the morning.”

“Very funny. I tell you, though, I can’t say I was unhappy about him taking a turn on you. All we heard for years from him was how he wanted to reach you and bring you back into the fold. That was how he put it: ‘Bring Jack back into the fold.’ It became his mantra. He obsessed on it. But he’s not obsessing anymore.”

Jack felt he should be glad to hear that—he’d had no intention of ever returning to any fold anywhere—but he wasn’t. Instead he felt a pang of regret, as if he’d lost something.

A decade and a half ago, when Jack had dropped out of college, out of his family, and out of society in general, his father spent years tracking him down. Somehow he found someone who had Jack’s number. He started calling. Eventually he wore Jack down to the point where he agreed to meet him in the city for dinner. After that they got together maybe once a year for a meal or a set of tennis.

A tenuous relationship at best. The get-togethers were always uncomfortable for Jack. Though his father had never said it, Jack knew he was disappointed in his younger son. Thought he was an appliance repairman and was always pushing him to better himself—finish college, get a pension plan, think about the future, retirement will be here before you know it, blah-blah-blah.

Dad didn’t have a clue about what his younger son was about, the crimes he’d committed, the people he’d had to kill while earning his living, and Jack never would tell him. The old guy would be devastated.

“Where’d you say he was?”

“Novaton Community Hospital, and don’t ask me where that is because I don’t know. Someplace in Dade County, I’d imagine. That’s where he had his place.”

“Where’s—?”

“South of Miami. Look, the best thing to do is call the hospital—no, I don’t have the number—and ask for directions from Miami International. That’s where you’ll have to fly into.”

“Swell.”

“If he wakes up, explain to him that I’d be there if I could.”

Sure you would, Jack thought. And then it hit him.

“‘If
he wakes up’?”

“Yeah. If. They say he’s banged up pretty bad.”

Jack’s chest ached. “I’ll leave as soon as I tie up a few loose ends here,” he said, suddenly tired.

He hung up. He had nothing more to say to his brother.

4

Semelee awoke alone in the dark. She opened her eyes and lay perfect still, listenin’. She heard the breathin’ sounds of her clansmen around her, some soft, some rough. She heard the creak of the old houseboat timbers as it rocked gentle like, the soft lap of the lagoon water against the hull, the croakin’ of frogs and the chirpin’ of crickets among the night sounds of the other Everglades critters. She jumped as someone nearby—Luke, most likely—made a coughin’ sound that turned into a snore.

The thick hot air lay like a damp sheet on the exposed skin of her arms and legs, but she was used to it. This September was provin’ to be a hot one, but not like August.
That
had been a hot one, hottest she could remember.

Why was she awake? She usually slept straight through the night. And then she remembered the dream—not the details, for they had vanished into the night like mornin’ mist before a storm, but the overall feel of movement…movement toward her.

“Someone’s comin’,” she whispered aloud.

She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. This weren’t the first time she’d had a second sight. Every so often, without warnin’, she’d get a sense of somethin’ about to happen, and then it did, it always did.

Someone was comin’ her way. A him, a man, was on his way. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Didn’t matter. Either way, Semelee would be ready.

5

“Such bounty,” Abe Grossman said, staring down at the half dozen donuts laid out in the box before him. “I’ve done what to deserve this?”

Jack said, “Nothing…everything.”

Abe’s raised eyebrows sent wrinkles like sets of surfing waves up his brow and into the balding bay of his scalp to crash on the receding gray shore of his hairline. “But Krispy Kremes? For me?”

“For
us
.”

Jack dipped into the box and extracted one of the crustier, sour-cream models, heavy with grease and glazed to within an inch of its life. He took a big bite and closed his eyes. Damn, these were good.

Abe made a face. “But they’re full of fat, those things.” He rubbed his bulging waistline as if he had a belly ache. “Like ladling concrete into the arteries.”

“Probably.”

“And to me you brought them?”

The two of them flanked the scarred rear counter of Abe’s store, the Isher Sports Shop, Jack on the customer side, Abe across from him, perched like Humpty Dumpty on a stool. Jack made a show of looking around at the dusty cans of tennis balls, the racquets, the basketballs and hoops, footballs and Rollerblades along with their attendant padding shoved helter skelter onto sagging shelves lining narrow aisles. Bikes and SCUBA gear hung from the ceiling. If the Collyer brothers had been into sporting goods instead of newspapers, this is what their place might have looked like.

“You see anyone else around?”

“We’re not open yet. I should see no one.”

“There you go.” Jack pointed to the donuts. “Come on. What are you waiting for?”

“This is a trick, right? You’re trying to pull one over on your old friend. You brought them for Parabellum.”

As if in response to his name, Abe’s little blue parakeet peeked out from behind a neon-yellow bicycle safety helmet, spotted the donut box, and hopped across the counter to it.

Jack spoke around a mouthful of donut. “Absolutely not.”

Parabellum cocked his head at the donuts, then looked up at Jack.

“Better not deny him,” Abe warned. “He’s a fierce predator, that Parabellum. A raptor in disguise, even.”

“Oh, right.” Jack tore off a tiny piece and tossed it to the bird, who leaped on it.

“What happened to the fat-free Entenmann’s and the low-fat cream cheese?”

“We’re taking a vacation from all that.”

Abe rubbed his belly again.
“Nu
? I shouldn’t be worried about my heart? You want I should die before my time?”

“Jesus, Abe. Can we have one breakfast without you complaining? If I bring in low-cal stuff, you bitch. So here I bring the kind of stuff you always say you wish you were eating instead, and you accuse me of trying to kill you.”