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Authors: F. Paul Wilson

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BOOK: The Haunted Air
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“Got it,” Jack said, tapping his finger on a story in the newspaper.
He'd grabbed the
Daily News
from Abe's counter as soon as he'd walked in and thumbed through it, looking for stories about the little Asian kid and the wounded Bellitto.
He'd found a two-inch column reporting that a Mr. Eli Bellitto of SoHo had been stabbed and a companion, Adrian Minkin—so that was Gorilla Arms's name—had been bludgeoned by an unknown assailant last night. Both were admitted to St. Vincent's.
Predators playing victims, Jack thought. Smart.
But the story about the recovery of a kidnapped Vietnamese boy got big play, with a picture of little Duc Ngo and another of his mother.
“
Nu
?” Abe said as he arranged—with surprising delicacy for his pudgy fingers—strips of lox across the inner surface of a sliced bagel. “Got what?”
“A story about the kid those pervs snatched last night. He's okay.”
“What kid?”
Abe didn't look up. He was busily smearing the other half of the bagel with cream cheese—the lowfat kind. Although, considering the amount he was slathering on, he wasn't sparing himself any calories or fat.
“Hey, leave some for me,” Jack told him.
He'd brought breakfast, as usual, splurging on lox—not Nova, because Abe liked the saltier kind—but trying to help Abe in the calorie department with the lowfat Philly.
“What kid?” Abe repeated, ignoring him. “What pervs?”
Jack gave him a quick rundown of last night's events, then ended by quoting from the
News
story.
“Listen to his mother: ‘“I was so worried,” said Ms. Ngo. “Little Duc insists on going out every night to buy ice cream. He has gone a hundred times and never had trouble. It is so terrible that children are not safe in this city.”'” Furious, Jack slammed his hand on the paper—and winced as he felt a tug on his wound. “Can you believe that? What a load of crap!”
“What's not to believe?”
“He's seven years old! It was ten o'clock and pouring! Like hell he wanted to go out. The real deal is she and her boyfriend send that little kid out every night so they can get it on while he's down on the street. But she's not going to tell that to the
News
, is she!”
He hit the paper again, harder this time—resulting in another painful yank on his wound—his fist landing on the picture of the kid's mother. He hoped she felt it, wherever she was.
“You saved him from death, maybe worse.” Abe chomped into his freshly constructed bagel-and-lox sandwich and spoke around the bite. “You performed a
mitzvah.
You should be happy instead of angry.”
Jack knew Abe was right but as he stared at the grainy black-and-white photo of little Duc—taken at school, most likely—all he could see was his limp body wrapped in a soggy blanket.
“She calls herself a parent? She should be protecting her kid instead of putting him in harm's way. Oughta be an exam you have to take before they let you become a parent. Guy shoots a couple million sperm and one of them hits an egg and
bam!
—a baby. But are either of the two adults capable of bringing up a child? Who knows? Children are a big responsibility. They should only be entrusted to people who can be responsible parents.”
Listen to yourself, he thought. You're ranting. Stop.
He looked up and found Abe staring at him.
“
Nu
? Is there some part of this story I'm missing? What's all this
tumel
about parents?”
Jack wondered if he should tell Abe, then instantly decided he had to. How could he not? He knew it would go no further. Abe was as tightlipped as a clam.
“I'm going to be one.”
“You? A father?” Abe grinned and wiped his right hand on his shirt before thrusting it across the counter. “
Mazel tov!
When did you find out?”
Jack gripped the hand, still slightly slick with salmon oil. “Yesterday afternoon.”
“And Gia, she's comfortable with the prospect of saddling the world with a child who has half your genes?”
“She's fine with the child part. It's what kind of a father I can be that's causing problems for us.”
“You as a good father? There's a question about this? Look at the training you're getting already with Vicky. Like a daughter she is.”
“Yeah, but there are, you know, legal issues I'm going to have to deal with.”
He explained those while Abe finished his bagel and began preparing another.
“She makes sense, that Gia,” Abe said when Jack finished. “I have to give her that. But what I think I'm hearing here is the end of Repairman Jack.”
Jack winced inwardly at hearing it so starkly put, but …
“I guess that pretty well sums it up.”
“Citizen Jack,” Abe said, shaking his head. “Doesn't have quite the same ring as Repairman Jack.”
Jack shrugged. “The name wasn't my idea anyway. You're the one who started calling me that.”
“And now I'll have to stop. So when do you become Citizen Jack?”
“First I have to figure out
how
. Any ideas?”
Abe shook his head. “A tough one, that. To make you a newborn citizen with no illegal baggage … this will take some thought.”
He cut the second lox-and-bagel combo in half and gave part to Jack.
Jack took a bite, relishing the mixture of flavors and textures. He relaxed a little. Knowing that someone else was working with him on this eased some of the weight from his shoulders.
“While you're thinking,” he said, “I'm going to call Eli Bellitto's brother and give him some hell.”
Jack had gone straight to Gia's last night after Doc Hargus had finished stitching him up. He'd stopped by his apartment this morning and picked up Edward Bellitto's number on the way to Abe's. He wormed his Tracfone and the slip of paper out of his jeans, started to dial, then …
“What the … ?”
“What now?”
“He only wrote down nine digits.”
Jack stared at the paper. Edward hadn't used hyphens, putting all the numbers in a straight string. Jack hadn't noticed till now that he'd been shortchanged one digit.
Abe leaned forward and looked at the paper. “A two-one-two area code—that means he's here in the city. Maybe he was in such a hurry or maybe he was a little
farblondzhet
from worrying about his brother so he left off the last digit. If that's the case, you can try all the possibilities. Only ten.”
“But what if he left off a number in the middle? How many calls will that take?”
“Millions, you're talking.”
“Swell.”
Jack wondered if the missing digit was an accident at all. Maybe Edward didn't want Jack contacting him. Maybe he'd planned a vanishing act all along. If so, there went the second half of Jack's fee.
Very few of his customers ever tried to stiff him, and none of those had succeeded. Edward might be the first.
Abe pointed to Jack's cell phone. “Your new Tracfone, it's working out?”
“So far, so good. They should call it the Untraceablefone.”
Jack had picked up his at a Radio Shack along with a prepaid airtime card. He'd activated his phone online from a computer terminal in the Public Library without giving his name, address, or any credit information. Per-minute charges were higher than calling plans from Verizon and the like, but you had to sign contracts and go through credit checks for those. For Jack, the Tracfone's anonymity was priceless.
“I should maybe get one. For when I call you. You gave me that number, right?”
“You, Julio, and Gia have it, and that's it.”
An idea struck Jack as he finished his bagel. He picked up his phone.
“You know, maybe I don't have to make a million calls to track down Edward Bellitto. Maybe I can simply ask his brother Eli.”
“You think he'll tell you?”
“Can't hurt to try.”
After information gave him St. Vincent's main number, Jack called and asked for Eli Bellitto's room.
A hoarse voice answered. “Hello?”
“Mr. Bellitto? This is Lorenzo Fullerton from the St. Vincent's accounting office. How are you this morning?”
Abe raised his eyebrows, rippling the bare expanse of his scalp, and mouthed the name:
Lorenzo Fullerton?
Jack shrugged. It was a name he'd come up with years ago and used whenever he was pretending to represent officialdom.
“What do you want?” The voice sounded weak as well as hoarse.
Good. In pain too, Jack hoped.
“Well, your intake form isn't clear. We can't make out the name and address of your brother Edward. We'd all be terribly grateful if you could please clarify this little matter for us.”
“Brother? I don't have a brother named Edward or anything else. I'm an only child.”
Eli Bellitto slammed the receiver back onto its cradle. The abrupt movement evoked a jab of pain from his heavily bandaged groin. He groaned and looked at his doctor.
“You have idiots in your administration.”
Dr. Najam Sadiq smiled. “You will hear no argument from me,” he said in decent English.
Dr. Sadiq had been making late rounds in St. Vincent's when Eli arrived in the emergency department; as the most immediately available urologist, he'd been assigned to Eli's case.
Eli tried to shift his position in the bed and that ignited another bonfire of pain. He glanced at the morphine pump attached to the pole next to his bed. A PCA pump, the nurse had called it. Patient Controlled Analgesia. A button clipped to the bed rail allowed him to self-medicate—within limits—but he'd been holding off because the drug made him foggy and he feared saying the wrong thing. He didn't think he could hold off much longer though.
At least he'd had the presence of mind last night to demand a private room. He didn't care how much it cost. The last thing in the world he needed now was a nosy roommate.
“As I was saying,” Dr. Sadiq said, “you are a lucky man, Mr. Bellitto. Very lucky. If that knife had sliced but a quarter of an inch further to the left, we would have had a much bigger problem.”
Eli thought, I've got oxygen running into my nose, morphine hooked into my left arm, an IV running into my right, and a tube in my bladder draining bloody urine into a bag hanging near the floor. This is not lucky.
Dr. Sadiq went on. “The knife sliced into the base of your penis, just missing your urethra. We saved your penis without much trouble, but we could not save the right testicle, I'm afraid. It was too badly lacerated. I had to remove it.”
The room seemed to darken around Eli as he listened. Not so much the details—that he had been sexually maimed and mutilated, that a piece of him had been amputated—but that it had occurred at all. What had happened to his invulnerability? Why had it failed him?
More importantly, who was that man last night? Had it been a chance encounter, or could he have been following him and Adrian? Could he know about the Circle?
Eli forced a smile. “I'm not thinking about starting a family. Not at my age.”
“But you do not have to worry too much about sexual function. There will be scarring, of course, and that may interfere with erections, but with proper care and therapy, you should be able to resume normal sexual function within a couple of months.”
Eli didn't care about sexual function. Last night had not been about sex, although the man who had attacked them seemed to think so. Not that Eli could blame him. Two men in the dark with an unconscious boy … the prosaic, untutored mind would naturally leap to such a conclusion. But the Circle was devoted to concerns far more profound than mere sex.
Eli wanted no more talk about his wounds or his chances for full recovery. He changed the subject.
“My friend, Mr. Minkin, the one with the head injuries … how is he doing?”
Adrian was an ox, yet their attacker had felled him in an instant and left him senseless.
Dr. Sadiq shook his head. “That I do not know. He was admitted to the neurology service. Is he your … partner?”
“Partner?”
Now why on earth would Dr. Sadiq think Adrian had anything to do with the shop? Unless … could he be even
considering that he and Adrian were
lovers
? Yes, that had to be it.
Anger flared in Eli. What's wrong with this world? Everything is
not
about sex!
“Oh, no,” Eli said. “He's just an old friend.”
A tiny shift of his hips was rewarded by a disproportionate shock of pain. He was suddenly very tired.
“I think I'd like to rest now, doctor.”
“Of course,” Dr. Sadiq said. “I'll look in on you again during my evening rounds.”
As soon as the door closed Eli grabbed the morphine delivery button and began jabbing at it like a telegraph operator. Soon a delicious lethargy suffused him, pushing away the pain and worries about strange men who lunged out of the darkness.
BOOK: The Haunted Air
5.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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