TUESDAY
1
Jack looked around the front room of his apartment and figured he was either going to have to move to a bigger place, or stop buying stuff. He had nowhere to put his new Daddy Warbucks lamp.
Well, not new exactly. It had been made sometime in the 1940s, but it was in great shape. The base was a glazed plaster cast of Daddy from the waist up, his hand gripping a lapel of his tuxedo, a tiny rhinestone in place of his diamond stick pin. He was grinning, and his pupilless eyes showed not the slightest trace of concern about the lamp stem and socket shell emerging from his bald pate.
Jack had found it in a Soho nostalgia shop, and talked the owner down to eighty-five dollars for it. He would have paid twice that. The apartment didn't need another lamp, but Jack needed this one. Warbucks was such a stand-up guy. No way Jack could pass it up. No bulb or lampshade, but that was easily remedied. Problem was, where to put it?
He did a slow turn. His home was the third floor of a brownstone in the West Eighties, and smelled of old wood. Not surprising since the place was crammed with Victorian golden oak furniture. The walls and shelves were cluttered with memorabilia and tchotchkes from the thirties and forties. Everything in sight except for the computer monitor existed before he was born. Even the Cartoon Network—he could see the large-screen TV in the extra bedroom—was playing a toon from the thirties with a big-eyed owlet crooning how he loved "to sing-a, about the moon-a anna June-a anna spring-a…" And here in the front room, not a single empty horizontal surface left…
Except for the computer monitor.
Jack placed the Daddy Warbucks lamp on top of the monitor, which sat atop Jack's antique oak rolltop desk. The processor sat on the floor in the kneehole, and the keyboard hid under the rolltop. The monitor didn't look comfortable perched up there, but then, the computer didn't really fit anywhere in the room—a plastic iceberg adrift in a sea of wavy-grained oak.
But you couldn't be in business these days without one. Jack didn't understand all that much about computers, but he loved the anonymity they afforded in communications.
He hadn't checked his email since this morning, so he lit up the monitor and rolled up the tambour top to reveal his keyboard. He logged on through one of his ISPs—Jack had multiple accounts under various names with a number of Internet service providers, and maintained a Web site through one of them. Everything he'd read said that people were increasingly looking to the Internet to solve all sorts of problems, so Jack figured he might as well make himself available to folks searching there for his kind of solution.
Half a dozen emails from the Web site waited, but only one seemed worth answering, and that barely:
Jack—
I need your help. It's about my wife. Please call me or email me back, but—please—get back to me.
It was signed "Lewis Ehler" and he'd left two numbers, one in Brooklyn, the other on Long Island.
It's about my wife…not some guy who wanted to know if she was cheating, he hoped. Marital problems weren't in Jack's line.
He had another job just starting up, but that promised to be mostly night work. Which meant his days would be free.
He wrote down the numbers, then headed out to make the call.
2
Jack walked east toward Central Park, looking for a phone he hadn't used recently, while the little toon owl's song echoed in his head.
I love to sing-a, about the moon-a anna June-a anna spring-a
Spring had sprung and NYC was lurching out of hibernation. The air smelled fresh and clean, bright flowers peeked from window boxes on the upper floors of the brownstone regiments, and tiny leaf buds bedizened the branches of the widely spaced trees set in the sidewalks. The late morning sun sat high and bright, keeping Jack comfortable in a work shirt and jeans. Winter coats were gone, leaving short skirts and long legs on display again. A good day to be alive and heterosexual.
Not that the women paid much attention to him. They barely seemed to notice the guy with the so-so build, average-length brown hair, and mild brown eyes. Which was just fine with Jack. He'd be disappointed if they did, considering the effort he put into being a walking trompe l'oeil.
Jack cultivated anti-presence. The anonymous look took effort—not too trendy, not too retro. He kept an eye on what the average guy on the street was wearing. Jeans and flannel shirts never went out of style, even here on the Upper West Side; neither did sneakers and work boots—real work boots. Twill work pants were another safe bet—never stylish, but they never attracted attention either.
He found a pay phone on Central Park West. The apartment buildings stopped dead here, as if sliced off with a knife for dozens of blocks in either direction to leave room for the park across the street. Through the still-naked trees he could see the Lake, a blue lozenge in the greening grass. No boats on it yet, but it wouldn't be long.
He tapped in the access number on his prepaid calling card. He loved these things. As anonymous as cash and a hell of a lot lighter than the pocketful of change he used to have to carry.
Everybody seemed so frightened of the potential threat new electronics posed to security. And maybe it was a genuine peril for citizens. But from Jack's perspective, electronics offered an anonymity bonanza. He used to keep an answering machine in an empty office on Tenth Avenue, but a few months ago he unplugged it and had all calls to that number forwarded to a voice-mail service.
Email, voice mail, calling cards…he could almost hear Louis Armstrong singing, "What a wonderful world."
Jack punched in the Brooklyn number Ehler had left. He found himself talking to the Keystone Paper Cylinder Company and asked to speak to Lewis Ehler.
"Whom shall I say is calling?" said the receptionist.
"Just tell him it's Jack, calling about his email."
Ehler came on right away. He spoke in a wheezy, high-pitched voice accelerating steadily in an urgent whisper.
"Thank you so much for calling. I've been half out of my mind not knowing what to do. I mean, since Mel's been gone I've—"
"Whoa, whoa," Jack said. "Gone? Your wife's missing?"
"Yes! Three days now and—"
"Wait. Stop right there. We can save me time and you a lot of breath: I don't do missing wives."
His voice rose in pitch and volume. "But you must!"
"That's a police thing. They've got the manpower and resources to do missing persons a lot better than I ever will."
"No-no! She said no police! Absolutely no police."
"She told you? When did she tell you?"
"Just last night. I…I heard from her last night."
"Then she's not really missing."
"She is. Please believe me, she is. And she told me to call you, only you. 'Repairman Jack is the only one who will understand' is what she said."
"Yeah? How does she know about me?"
"I don't know. I'd never heard of you until Mel told me."
"Mel?"
"Melanie."
"Okay, but if Melanie can call you, why can't she tell you where she is?"
"It's very complicated—too complicated to get into over the phone. Can't we just meet? It'll be so much easier to explain this in person."
Jack thought about that. He stared at the hulking mass of the Museum of Natural History a few blocks away and watched a yellow caravan of school buses pull into the parking lot. This gig sounded a little wacky. Hell, it sounded way wacky. A missing wife who calls and tells her husband don't go to the police, call Repairman Jack instead. Kidnapped, maybe? But then…
"No ransom demand?"
"No. I doubt whoever's behind Mel's disappearance is interested in money."
"Everybody's interested in money."
"Not in this case. If we could just meet…"
Wackier and wackier, but Jack had nothing doing the rest of the day…and Ehler had said no cops involved——
"Okay. Let's meet."
Ehler's relief flooded through the receiver. "Oh, thank you, thank you—"
"But I'm not going to Brooklyn."
"Anywhere you say, just as long as it's soon."
Julio's was close. Jack gave Ehler the address and told him to be there in an hour. After Ehler hung up, Jack pressed the # key and an electronic voice told him how much credit he had left on his calling card.
God, he loved these things.
He hung up and walked away from the park, thinking about what Ehler's wife had said.
Repairman Jack is the only one who will understand. …
Really.
3
Jack sat at his table near Julio's rear door. He was halfway through his second Rolling Rock when Lewis Ehler showed up. Jack tagged him as soon as he saw the gangly, brown-suited frame step through the door. Julio's crowd didn't wear suits, except for occasional adventuresome yupsters looking for something different, and yuppie suits were never wrinkled like this guy's.
Julio spotted him too, and ducked out from behind the bar. Julio had a brief conversation with the guy, acted real friendly, standing close, clapping him on the back in welcome. Finally satisfied the stranger wasn't carrying, Julio pointed Jack's way.
Jack watched Ehler stumble toward him—the darkness at the rear here took some adjusting to after stepping in from daylight—but he seemed to be having extra trouble because of a pronounced limp.
Jack waved. "Over here."
Ehler veered his way but remained standing when he reached the table. He looked fortyish, starvation lean, with a big jutting nose and a droopy lower lip. Close up, Jack saw that the brown suit was shiny and worn as well as wrinkled. He noticed how the sole of his right shoe was built up two inches. That explained the limp.
"You're him?" Ehler said in that high-pitched voice from the phone. His prominent Adam's apple bounced with each word. "Repairman Jack?"
"Just Jack'll do," Jack said, offering his hand.
"Lew." His shake was squishy and moist. "You don't look like what I expected."
Jack used to ask the next question, the obvious one, but had stopped long ago after hearing the same answer time after time: they always expected a glowering Charles Bronson type, someone bigger, meaner, tougher-looking than this ordinary Joe before them who could step up to the bar in front and virtually vanish into the regulars hanging there.
Jack took the You-don't-look-like-what-I-expected remark as a compliment.
"Want a beer?" he asked.
Lew shook his head. "I don't drink much."
"Coffee, then?"
"I'm too nervous for coffee." He rubbed his palms on the front of his jacket, then pulled out a chair and folded his Ichabod Crane body into it. "Maybe decaf."
Jack waved to Julio and mimed pouring a coffee pot.
"I thought we'd meet in a more private place," Lew said.
"This is private." Jack glanced at the empty booths and tables around them. The faint murmur of conversation drifted over from the bar area on the far side of the six-foot divider topped with dead plants. "Long as we don't shout."
Julio came strutting around the partition carrying a coffee pot and a white mug. His short, forty-year-old frame was grotesquely muscled under his tight, sleeveless shirt. He was freshly shaven, his mustache trimmed to a line, drafting-pencil thin, his wavy hair slicked back. This was the closest Jack had got to him this afternoon, and he coughed as he caught a whiff of a new cologne, more cloying than usual.
"God, Julio. What is that?"
"Like it?" he said as he filled Lew's mug. "It's brand-new. Called Midnight."
"Maybe that's the only time you're supposed to wear it."
He grinned. "Naw. Chicks love it, man."
Only if they've spent the day in a chicken coop, Jack thought but kept it to himself.
"Say," Lew said, pointing to all the dead vegetation around the room, "did you ever think of watering your plants?"
"Wha' for?" Julio said. "They're all dead."
Lew's eyes widened. "Oh. Right. Of course." He looked at the mug Julio was pouring. "Is that decaf? I only drink decaf."
"Don't serve that shit," Julio said tersely as he turned and strutted back to the bar.
"I can see why the place is half deserted," Lew said, glancing at Julio's retreating form. "That fellow is downright rude."
"It doesn't come naturally to him. He's been practicing lately."
"Yeah? Well somebody ought to see that the owner gets wise to him."
"He is the owner."
"Really?" Lew leaned over the table and spoke in a low voice. "Is there some religious significance to all these dead plants?"
"Nah. It's just that Julio isn't happy with the caliber of his clientele lately."
"Well he's not going to raise it with these dead plants."
"No. You don't understand. He wants to lower it. The yuppies have discovered this place and they've started showing up here. He's been trying to get rid of them. This has always been a working man's bar and eatery.
The Beamer crowd is scaring off the old regulars. Julio and his help are rude as hell to them but they just lap it up. They like being insulted. He let all the window plants die, and the yups think it's great. It's driving the poor guy nuts."
Lew seemed to be only half listening. He stood and stared toward the grimy front window for a few seconds, then sat again.
"Looking for someone?"
"I think I was followed here," Lew said, looking uncomfortable. "I know that sounds crazy but—"
"Who'd want to follow you?"
"I don't know. It might have something to do with Melanie."
"Your wife? Why would—?"
"I wish I knew." Lew suddenly became fidgety. "I'm not so sure about this anymore."
"It's okay. You can change your mind. No hard feelings." A certain small percentage of customers who got this far developed cold feet when the moment came to tell Jack exactly what they wanted him to fix for them. "But don't back out because you're being followed."
"I'm not even sure I am." He sighed. "The thing is, I don't know why I'm here, or what I'm supposed to do. I'm so upset I can't think straight."
"Easy, Lew," Jack said. "This is just a conversation."
"Okay, fine. But who are you? Why did my wife say to call you and only you? I don't understand any of this."
Jack had to feel sorry for the guy. Lewis Ehler was no doubt a one-hundred-percent solid, taxpaying citizen; he had a problem and felt he should be dealing with one of the institutions his sweat-procured taxes paid for, instead of this stranger in a bar. This wasn't the way his world was supposed to be.
"And why do you call yourself Repairman Jack?" Ehler added.
"I don't, really. It's a name that sort of became attached to me." Abe Grossman had started calling him that years ago. Jack had used it for awhile as a lark, but it had stuck. "Because I'm in a sort of fix-it business. But we'll get to me later. First tell me about you. What do you do for the Keystone Paper Cylinder Company?"
"Do? I own it."
"Really." This guy barely looked middle management. "Just what does a Keystone Paper Cylinder Company make?"
And don't tell me paper cylinders.
"Cardboard mailing tubes. The 'paper cylinder' bit was my father's idea. Thought it sounded classier than cardboard mailing tubes. He retired, left the place to me. And yeah, I know I don't look it, but I own it, run it, and make a decent living at it. But I'm not here to talk about me. I want to find my wife. She's been gone three days and I don't know how to get her back."
His features screwed up and for a moment Jack was afraid he was going to cry. But Lew held on, sniffed twice, then got control.
"You okay?" Jack said.
Ehler nodded. "Yeah."
"Okay. Let's start at the beginning. When did you last see your wife—Melanie, right?"
Another nod. "Yes. Melanie. She left Sunday morning for some last-minute research and—"
"Research on what?"
"I'll get to that in a minute. The thing is, she said something that didn't sound so strange then, but sounds kind of creepy in retrospect. She told me if I didn't hear from her for a few days, not to get worried, not to report her missing or anything. She'd be all right, just out of touch for a while. 'Give me a few days to get back,' she said."
"Get back from where?"
"She didn't say."
"Don't know about you," Jack said, "but that sounds pretty strange from the git-go."
"Not if you knew Mel."
"Got a picture?"
Lew Ehler fished out his wallet. His long bony fingers were surprisingly agile as he whipped a creased photo from one of the slots and handed it across the talkie.
Jack saw a slim, serious-looking brunette in her mid-thirties wearing a red turtleneck sweater and tan slacks, pictured from the hips up. Her hands were behind her back and her expression said she wasn't crazy about having her picture taken. She had pale skin, thick black hair and eyebrows, and dark penetrating eyes. Not a raving beauty, but not bad looking.
"How recent is this?"
"Just last year."
Jack suddenly had a bad feeling where this was going: younger pretty wife leaves older, limping scarecrow husband to run off with younger man…and maybe tries to run a game on him in the process.
"No," Lew said, smiling thinly. "She's not having an affair. Mel's probably the most direct person you'll ever meet. If she were leaving me, she'd simply say so and go." He shook his head and looked again like he was going to cry. "Something's happened to her."
"But you know she's alive, right?" Jack said quickly. "I mean, you heard from her last night."
He bit his upper lip and shrugged.
Jack said, "What did she say?"
"She told me she was okay, but needed help, and that she wasn't where I could find her. 'Only Repairman Jack can find me,' she said. 'Only he will understand.'"
But Jack did not understand. He was baffled. "She gave no hint where she was calling from?"
Lew licked his lips. He seemed uncomfortable. "Let me explain a few things about Melanie first."
Jack leaned back with the beer bottle between his fingertips. "Be my guest."
"All right," Lew ran his fingers through his thinning hair. "I met her through my accountant. He had a heart attack and his firm sent her over to do Keystone's quarterly tax estimate. Melanie Rubin…" Lew's lips curved into a smile as he said the name. "I've never met anyone before or since so full of energy, so determined, so focused. And yet so pretty. It was love at first sight for me. And best of all, she liked me. We went out for a while, and five and a half years ago we were married."
"Any kids?"
He shook his head. "No. Mel doesn't want any."
"Ever?"
"Never."
Sounded like Melanie Ehler ruled the roost. Jack hesitated, mulling his phrasing…the next question was a bit delicate.
"I couldn't help but notice that you said it was love at first sight on your part, but she 'liked' you. Is that…?"
Lew's smile was shy, his shrug a little embarrassed. "We have a good relationship. We live a quiet life, with very few close friends. Melanie loves me as much as she can love anyone. But she's too driven to really, truly love anyone."
"Driven by what?"
A deep sigh. "Let's see…how do I put this? Okay…Melanie might be considered a kook by some standards. She's been involved in fringe groups since she was a teenager."
"Fringe groups? How fringey? Objectivism, the Church of the Sub-Genius, Scientology?"
"More like SITPRCA, MCF, CAUS, ICAAR, LIU-FON, ORTK, the New York Fortean Society, and others."
"Wow." Jack hadn't heard of any of those. "Alphabet city."
Lew smiled. "Yeah, they love their acronyms almost as much as the government. But they're all concerned with one sort of conspiracy or another."
"You mean like who really killed JFK and RFK and MLK, and who's covering it up and why?"
"Yeah, some of them are like that. Others are really far out."
Swell, Jack thought. A missing conspiracy nut. He could feel the rear exit door beckoning from behind him. If he jumped up and ran now, he could be out before Lew Ehler could say another word about his lost wife.
But the missing Melanie had said that only Repairman Jack would understand, hadn't she. He wondered what she'd meant.
Something must have showed on his face because Lew started waving his hands in front of him.
"Don't get me wrong. She wasn't really into all that stuff—she was more of an interested observer than a serious participant in those groups. She was looking for something—she's been looking for something most of her life—and didn't know what it was. She once told me she wasn't looking for answers from these groups, just enough information to know what questions to ask."
Could have been a Bob Dylan lyric.
"And did she find it?"
"No. And she was very frustrated until last year when SESOUP was formed."
"Sea soup?" Sounded like an appetizer.
"The Society for the Exposure of Secret Organizations and Unacknowledged Phenomena."
"SESOUP…" Jack had heard that name, but couldn't remember where. "For some reason, that sounds familiar."
"It's an exclusive organization, started by—" Lew froze as he glanced toward the front. "There!" he said, pointing at the window. "Tell me that guy isn't watching us!"
Jack looked—and damn if Lew wasn't right. A figure was silhouetted against Julio's front window, nose pressed against the glass, hands cupped on either side of his face. He sure as hell seemed to be staring their way.
Jack jumped up and headed for the door. "Come on. Let's go see."
The figure ducked away to the left, and by the time Jack reached the door, he'd vanished into the rest of the foot traffic on the sidewalk.
"See anybody who looks familiar?" Jack said as Lew joined him in the doorway.
Lew eyed the stream of shoppers and workers and mothers with strollers, then shook his head.
"Could have been a thirsty guy just checking the place out," Jack said as they returned to the table.
Of course that didn't explain why he'd hurried off when Jack started moving.
"Could have been," Lew said, but no way he believed it.
"All right. You were telling me about this soup society or something."
"SESOUP." Lew looked spooked, and kept glancing at the window as he spoke. "It was put together by a fellow named Salvatore Roma. Membership is by invitation only, which has caused a lot of bad feeling in the conspiracy subculture—some well-known names were excluded. It's designed as a clearing house for most of the major conspiracy theories. Roma's idea is to sort through them all for the purpose of finding common elements among them. Melanie loved the idea. She's sure that's the path to the truth."
"The truth? About what?"
"About what's really going on in the world. Something that would help identify the powers, the planners, the string-pullers behind the mysteries and mayhem and secret organizations that plague the world." He held up his hands again. "Not my words—Roma's."
That rear door was calling like a siren.
"And who's this Roma?"
"Salvatore Roma came out of nowhere—actually he's a professor at some university in Kentucky—and got everybody fired up. He's been very helpful to Melanie in her research."
"I take it then that you're not into that stuff."
"Not like Melanie. I got involved out of pure curiosity—plus, attending the various gatherings and conventions around the country gave us an excuse to travel—but I've got to tell you, mister, after spending time with these people, I'm not so sure they're half as crazy as they're painted. And in some regards, I don't think they're crazy at all."
"It's called brainwashing," Jack said.
"Maybe. I don't say I'm immune to that. But Mel…Mel is so tough minded, it's hard to imagine her being brainwashed by anything or anybody."
"Does any of this have anything to do with Mel's disappearance?"
"I'm sure of it. You see, over the years Mel became convinced that none of the conflicting theories about secret societies and UFOs and the Antichrist and world domination conspiracies was completely right."
"I'm glad for that," Jack said.
"But she also thought that none of them was completely wrong. She figured each formed around a kernel of truth, a tiny piece of the big picture. She spent years analyzing them all, trying to come up with what she called her Grand Unification Theory."
"And?"
"And a couple of months ago she told me she believed she'd found it."
"And you're going to share it, right?"
"I wish I could. All she told me was that she'd identified a single heretofore unsuspected power behind all the world's mysteries and unexplained phenomena, something totally unrelated to current theories. She refused to say any more until she had absolute proof. That was the 'research' I mentioned before. She thought she'd found a way to prove her Grand Unification Theory."
"Let me guess: You think that she maybe did find this proof, and whoever's behind it all has abducted her."
More like a job for Mulder and Scully, Jack thought.
"That's a possibility, of course," Lew said, "but I'm afraid it might be something more mundane. And part of it might be Mel's fault. You see, she's been so excited about finally pulling her Grand Unification Theory together, that she's been sort of bragging."
"To whom?"
"To anyone who'll listen."
"But didn't you tell me you two have very few friends?"
"She's been bragging in the Usenet groups she participates in."
"Isn't that part of the Internet?"
Lew looked at him strangely. "You have a Web site and you don't know about Usenet groups?"
Jack shrugged. "I had a guy at my ISP throw it together. You didn't see many bells and whistles, right?" Christ, the designer had wanted to festoon the site with animated tools—bouncing screwdrivers, pirouetting pliers, slithering tool belts. Remembering the demo still made Jack shudder. "It's not there to impress anyone. It's just another way for customers to get in touch with me. And as for the rest of the Internet, I don't do much surfing. It's a black hole for time, and I've got other things to do. So…what's a Usenet group?"
"It's a kind of bulletin board divided into interest topics where people post messages, news, facts, theories, opinions. The Internet is loaded with conspiracy topics, and Mel visited them all regularly, mostly lurking. But recently she began posting and, uncharacteristically, bragging, saying how her Grand Unification Theory was going to 'blow all other theories out of the water.' She said she was going to reveal her findings at the first annual SESOUP conference."
"And that's bad?"
"Well, yes. I think someone in one of those Usenet groups is trying to silence her."
"That doesn't make sense. I thought these conspiracy nuts—sorry, no offense—were supposed to be looking for the truth that's presumably been hidden from them."
"That's what you'd think, of course. But once you've gotten to know these folks…well, you can see how some of them would feel threatened by a theory that proved theirs wrong, or worse yet, made theirs look foolish. You've got many people out there who've blamed all the problems in their lives on a certain conspiracy; some of them have built reputations in the conspiracy community by becoming experts on their section of the conspiracy landscape. Jack, these people live in that landscape, and the conspiracy community is all the social contact they've got. Someone like that wouldn't want to be proved wrong."
"Badly enough to move against your wife?"
"Loss of face, belief, support structure, status—think about it. That could be utterly devastating."
Jack nodded. Damn right. Take a guy who's not too tightly wrapped to start with, and a threat like that could completely unravel him.
Now we're getting somewhere, he thought.
If Lew had started insisting that his wife had been abducted by aliens, or fallen victim to a faceless bogeyman or agents of some all-powerful shadow government, Jack would be waving bye-bye now. He wasn't into chasing phantoms. But a bad guy who was a fellow conspiracy nut, maybe working alone or with one or two of his brother kooks—that sounded real. Jack could handle real.
"This Roma you mentioned—could he be a player in this?"
Lew shook his head. "I can't see how. He's been very supportive of Mel's research, and she's often credited him publicly for his help."
That still doesn't rule him out, Jack thought.
"Okay, then," Jack said. "If someone's got her, how did she call you?"
Lew looked away. "She didn't exactly call."
The guy looked positively embarrassed.
"Well then, how did she 'exactly' contact you?"
"Through the TV."
"Oh, hell."
"Listen to me," Lew said hurriedly, looking at Jack now. "Please, I'm not crazy. She spoke to me from my TV—I swear!"
"Right. And what were you watching—The X-Files?
"No. The Weather Channel."
Jack laughed. "Okay, who put you up to this? Abe? Julio? Whoever it is, you're good. You're very good."
"No, listen to me," he said, sounding frantic now. "I know how it sounds, but this is no joke and I am completely sane. I was sitting there with The Weather Channel on, not paying it much attention—when I'm alone I use it like Muzak, you know? Just to have something on. And I'm sitting there having my after-dinner coffee when suddenly I hear Melanie's voice. I jump up and look around but she's not there. Then I realize it's coming from the TV. The weather maps are running but the sound is gone and Melanie is talking to me, but she's talking like she's on a one-way line and only has a short time to speak."
"What did she say? Exactly."
Lew put his head back and squeezed his eyes shut. "Let me see if I can get this right. She said, 'Lew? Lew? Can you hear me? Listen carefully. I'm okay now, but I need help. I'm not where you can find me. Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand. You can find him on the Internet. Remember: only Repairman Jack and no one else. Hurry, Lew. Please hurry.' And then the weatherman's voice came back on and Mel was gone."
Jack hesitated. Every so often he ran into a potential customer who was missing a few buttons on his remote. The best thing was to let them down easy and not return any future calls.
"Well, Lew, I wish I could help you but—"
"Look, I'm not crazy. For a while I had my doubts, and I'm sure I was staring at that TV screen just the way you're staring at me now. I waited for the voice to return but it never came. So I did what she'd told me: I looked for you on the Internet. I've never heard of you, yet when I did a search for your name in Yahoo, 'repairmanjack.com' popped right up. That got me thinking that maybe I didn't imagine her voice."
"Well, you could have—" Jack began, but suddenly Lew was leaning over the table, reaching across it with pleading hands, his Adam's apple bobbing like a piston.
"Please—she says you're the only one who can do it. Don't turn me away. If you want to think I'm crazy, fine, but humor me, okay? Something has happened to Melanie and I'll pay you anything you want to get her back."
Tears rimmed Lew's eyes as he finished.
Jack didn't know what to say. The guy didn't seem crazy, and didn't strike him as a put-on artist, and he did appear to be genuinely hurting. And if his wife was truly missing, whether through her own doing or taken against her will…well, maybe Jack could fix it for him.
And beyond that was the nagging question: If Lew's wife had indeed contacted him—though Jack would never buy the through-the-TV story—why had she stipulated Repairman Jack and no one else?
Jack knew the question would go on biting at his ankles indefinitely if he didn't look into this.
"Okay, Lew," he said. "I'll probably regret this, but I'll see what I can do for you. I'll—"
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!"
"Just hear me out first. I'll give it a week, max. Five thousand cash up front, non-negotiable, non-returnable. If I find her, it's another five thou, cash, on the spot."
Jack was hoping the price might put him off, but Lew didn't bat an eye.
"Okay," he said without an instant's hesitation. "Fine. Done. When do you want it?"
Must be good money in the paper cylinder business.
"Today. And I also want to go through any papers Melanie might have left around your place. Where do you live?"
"Out on the Island. Shoreham."
Jeez, that was a haul—almost out to the fork—but Jack didn't have much else on the slate for the day, so…
"All right. Give me the address and I'll see you out there in a couple of hours. Have the down payment with you."
Lew glanced at his watch. "Okay. I've got to move if I'm going to make it to the bank." He pulled out a card and wrote on the back. "There's my home address. Take the LIE—"
"I'll find it. Let's make it five o'clock. I want to beat the rush."
"Fine. Five o'clock." He reached across the table and grabbed Jack's right hand in both of his. "And thank you—thanks a million. You don't know what this means to me."
I'm sure I don't, Jack thought. But I got a feeling I'm going to find out.
Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand.
Why me?
4
"So why should you call them nuts?" Abe said. "We are surrounded by conspiracies."
Jack had swung by the Isher Sports Shop to say hello to Abe Grossman, a graying Humpty Dumpty of a man in his late fifties with a forehead that went on almost forever, and Jack's oldest friend in the city. In the world. They sat in their usual positions: Jack leaning on the customer side of the scarred wooden counter, Abe perched on his stool behind it, and around them, a gallimaufry of sporting goods tossed carelessly onto sagging shelves lining narrow aisles or hung from ceiling hooks, all in perpetual, undusted disarray. A Sports Authority outlet designed and maintained by Oscar Madison. One of the reasons Jack liked coming here was that it made his apartment look neat and roomy.
"You know the root of the word?" Abe said. "Conspire: it means to breathe together. The world is rife with all sorts of people and institutions breathing together. Just take a look—" He broke off and cocked his head toward the pale blue parakeet perched on his stained left shoulder. "What's that, Parabellum? No, we can't do that. Jack is a friend."
Parabellum tilted his beak toward Abe's ear and looked as if he were whispering into it.
"Well, most of the time he is," Abe said, then straightened his head and looked at Jack. "See? Conspiracies everywhere. Just now, right in front of you, Parabellum tried to engage me in a conspiracy against you for not bringing him a snack. I should be worried if I were you."
Usually Jack brought something edible, but he'd neglected to this time.
"You mean I can't drop in without bringing an offering?" Jack said. "This was a spur of the moment thing."
Abe looked offended. "For me—feh!—I shouldn't care. It's for Parabellum. He gets hungry this time of the day."
Jack pointed to the Technicolor droppings that festooned the shoulders of Abe's half-sleeve white shirt.
"Looks like Parabellum's had plenty to eat already. You sure he doesn't have colitis or something?"
"He's a fine healthy bird. It's just that he gets upset by strangers—and by so-called friends who don't bring him an afternoon snack."
Jack glanced pointedly at Abe's bulging shirt front. "I've seen where the bird's snacks usually end up."
"If you're going to start on my weight again, you should save your breath."
"Wasn't going to say a word."
But he wanted to. Jack was getting worried about Abe. An overweight, sedentary, Type-A personality, he was a heart attack waiting to happen. Jack couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to Abe. He loved this man. The decades that separated their birthdays hadn't kept them from becoming the closest of friends. Abe was the only human being besides Gia Jack could talk to—really talk to. Together they had solved the world's problems many times over. He could not imagine day-to-day life without Abe Grossman.
So Jack had cut back on the goodies he traditionally brought whenever he stopped by, or now if he did bring something, he'd sworn it would be low cal or low fat—preferably both.
"Anyway, I should be worried about weight? If I want to lose some, I can do it anytime. When I'm ready, I'll go to Egypt and eat from street carts for two weeks. You'll see. Dysentery does wonders for the waistline. Richard Simmons should be so effective."
"Im-Ho-Tep's revenge, ay?" Jack said, keeping it light. He didn't want to be a complete pain in the ass. "When do you leave?"
"I have a call in to my travel agent now. I'm not sure when she'll get back to me. Maybe next year. But what about you? Why are you so careful with your foods? A guy in your line of work should worry about cholesterol?"
"I'm an optimist."
"You're too healthy is what's wrong with you. If you don't get shot or stabbed or clubbed to death by one of the many people you've royally pissed off in your life, what can you die from?"
"I'm doing research. I'll find something interesting, I hope."
"Nothing you'll die of! And how will that look on your death certificate? 'Cause of death: Nothing.' Won't you feel foolish? Such an embarrassment. It will have to be a closed-coffin service to hide your red face. And really, how could I come to your funeral knowing you died of nothing?"
"Maybe I'll just die of shame."
"At least it's something. But before you pass on, let me tell you a little something about conspiracies."
"Figured you have something to say on the subject."
"Indeed I do. Remember that global economic holocaust I used to warn you about?"
For years Abe had gone on and on about the impending collapse of the global economy. He still maintained a mountain retreat upstate, stocked with gold coins and freeze-dried food.
"The one that didn't happen?"
"The reason it didn't happen is that they didn't want it to happen."
"Who's 'they'?"
"The cabal of international bankers that manipulates the global currency markets, of course."
"Of course."
Here we go, Jack thought. This ought to be good.
"'Of course," he says," Abe said, speaking to Parabellum. "Skepticalman Jack thinks his old friend is meshugge." He turned back to Jack. "Remember when the Asian and Russian markets went into free fall awhile back?"
"Vaguely."
"'Vaguely," he says."
"You know I don't follow the markets." Since he didn't own stocks, Jack pretty much ignored Wall Street.
"Then I'll refresh your memory. The fall of 1997: the bottoms fell out of all the Asian markets. Less than a year later, the same thing in Russia, making rubles good only for toilet paper. People were losing their shirts and their pants, banks and brokerage houses were failing, Asian brokers were hanging themselves or jumping out windows. Do you think that just happened? No. It was planned, It was orchestrated, and certain people made money that should be measured in cosmological terms."
"What people?"
"The members of the cabal. They're drawn from the old royal families and international banking families of Europe along with descendants of our own robber barons. Most of their influence is concentrated in the West, and they were probably miffed at being left out of all the emerging economies booming in Asia. So they invited themselves in. They manipulated Asian currencies, inflated the markets, then pulled the plug."
Jack had to ask: "How does that help them?"
"Simple: They sell short before the crash. When prices have bottomed out—and they know when that is because they and their buddies are pulling the strings—they cover their short positions. But that's only half of the equation. They don't stop there. They use their stupendous short profits to buy up damaged properties and companies at fire sale prices."
"So now they've got a piece of the action."
"And no small piece. After the crash, enormous amounts of Thai and Indonesian stock and property were bought up at five cents on the dollar by shadow corporations. And since the lion's share of profits from those upstart countries will now be flowing into the cabal's coffers, those economies will be allowed to improve."
"Okay," Jack said. "But who are they? What are their names? Where do they live?"
"Names? You want I should give you names? How about their addresses too? What's Repairman Jack going to do? Pay them a little visit?"
"Well, no. I just—"
"If I knew their names, I'd probably be dead. I don't want to know their names. Someone else should know their names and stop them. They've been pulling the world's economic strings for centuries but no one ever does anything. No one hunts them down and calls them to account. Why is that, Jack? Tell me: Is it ignorance or apathy?"
"I don't know and couldn't care less," Jack said with a shrug.
Abe opened his mouth, then closed it and stared at him.
Jack fought the grin that threatened to break free. Goading Abe was precious fun.
Finally Abe turned to Parabellum. "You see what I put up with from this man? I try to enlighten him as to the true nature of things, and what does he do? Wise he cracks."
"As if you really believe all that," Jack said, grinning.
Abe stared at him, saying nothing.
Jack felt his smile fading. "You don't really believe in an international financial cabal, do you?"
"I should tell you? But one thing you should know is that a good conspiracy theory is a mechaieh. And also great fun. But this group you mentioned, this Bouillabaisse—"
"SESOUP."
"Whatever. I'll bet it's not fun for them. I'll bet it's very serious business for them: UFOs and other stuff far from the mainstream."
"UFOs are mainstream?"
"They've been mainstreamed. That's why sightings are up: believing is seeing, if you should get my drift. But when you start talking with members of Zuppa De Peche—"
"SESOUP."
"Whatever—I bet you'll run into meshuggeners so far from the mainstream they're not even wet."
"I can hardly wait." Jack glanced at his watch. "Look, I've got to be heading out to the Island. Can I borrow your truck?"
"What's the matter with Ralph?"
"Sold him."
"No!" Abe seemed genuinely shocked. "But you loved that car."
"I know." Jack had hated parting with his 1963 white Corvair convertible. "But I didn't have much choice. Ralph's become a real collector's item. Everywhere I took him people stopped and asked me about him, wanted to buy him. Don't need that kind of attention."
"Too bad. All right, since you're in mourning, take the truck, but remember: she only likes high test."
"That old V6?"
Abe shrugged. "I shouldn't spoil my women?" He extracted the truck keys from his pocket and handed them to Jack as the bell on the shop's front jangled. A customer entered: a tanned, muscular guy with short blond hair.
"Looks like a weekend warrior," Jack said.
Abe returned Parabellum to his cage. "I'll get rid of him."
"Don't bother. I've got to go."
With obvious reluctance, Abe slid off the stool and left his sanctum behind the counter. He sounded bored as he approached the customer.
"What overpriced recreational nonsense can I sell you today?"
Jack headed for the door, holding up the truck keys as he passed Abe.
Abe waved, then turned back to his customer. "Water skis? You want to spend your free time sliding on top of water? What on earth for? It's dangerous. And besides, you could hit a fish. Imagine the headache you'd cause the poor thing. A migraine should be half so bad…"
5
The Incorporated Village of Shoreham sits on the north shore of Long Island a bit west of Rocky Point. All Jack knew about Shoreham was that it was the home of a multibillion-dollar nuclear power plant that had never ignited its reactor—one of the greatest boondoggles in the state's long history of boondoggles.
And no doubt the subject of a number of conspiracy theories, Jack figured.
After asking at a 7-Eleven along 25A, he found Lewis Ehler's street. Briarwood Road led north, twisting and turning into the hills bordering the Long Island Sound. Poorly paved and bouncy, but he guessed the residents liked it that way because the houses were big and well kept. All the lots were wooded, and the homes to his right perched on a rise overlooking the water. Between the houses and through the trees, Jack caught glimpses of the Sound. Connecticut was a darker line atop the horizon.
He found the Ehler place and pulled into the gravel drive of an oversized ranch. The dark cedar shake siding and white trim and shutters blended with the budding oaks, maples, and birches surrounding the house. The landscaper had gone for a low-maintenance yard, substituting mulch and wood chips for grass. Perfectly trimmed rhodos and azaleas hugged the foundation; nothing ostentatious, but Jack knew from his teenage days as a landscaper's helper that everything here was first quality. A lot of money had been invested into this yard's "natural" look.
Lew met him at the door and scanned the road running past the house.
"Did you see anyone following you?"
"No." Jack hadn't been looking, but he hadn't noticed anyone. "How about you?"
"I thought I saw a black sedan a few times but…" He shrugged and ushered Jack inside where he gave him an envelope stuffed with cash. Jack didn't count it.
The interior had a lot of nautical touches—hurricane lamps, a big brass compass, fishnets and floats on the walls, all looking very staged.
"I didn't particularly want to live way out here," Lew said as he showed Jack through the house. "It means a longer commute for me, but Mel said this was the place she really wanted to live, so…this is where we live."
The only non-decorator touches about the house were the paintings—dark, brooding abstractions on all the walls.
"Really something, aren't they," Lew said.
Jack nodded. "Who's the artist?"
"Mel. She did them when she was a teenager."
She must have been a real fun date, he thought, but said: "Impressive."
"Aren't they? She's been getting back into it again, when she can steal time from her research."
"And where does she do that?"
"In her study. I'll show you," he said, leading Jack toward a spiral staircase. "She used the second bedroom for a while but all her reference materials pretty quickly outgrew that, so we converted the attic for her."
Lew's short leg made for slow progress on the narrow treads, but finally they reached the top. Jack found himself in a long, low-ceilinged room running the length of the house; a beige computer desk near the staircase, a window at each end—an easel by the far window—four filing cabinets clustered in the center, and all the rest an enormous collection of paper—a Strandesque array of books, magazines, pamphlets, article excerpts and reprints, tear sheets, and flyers. The shelves lining every spare inch of wall space were crammed full; the tops of the filing cabinets were stacked at least a foot deep, and the rest was scattered in piles on the carpeted floor.
"Her reference materials," Jack said softly, awed.
He sniffed the air, heavy with the scent of aging paper. He loved that smell.
"Yeah." Lew walked past one of the shelves, running a finger along the book spines. "Everything you could ever want to know about UFOs, alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, Satanism, telepathy, remote viewing, mind control, the CIA, the NSA, HAARP, the Illuminati, astral projection, channeling, levitation, clairvoyance, seances, tarot, reincarnation, astrology, the Loch Ness monster, the Bible, Kaballah, Velikovsky, crop circles, Tunguska—"
"I get the picture," Jack said when Lew stopped for a breath. "All for her Grand Unification Theory."
"Yes. You might say she's obsessed."
Jack noted Lew's use of the present tense when he referred to his wife. A good sign.
"I guess so. I was going to ask you what else she did with her time, but I guess we can skip that."
"She was also into real estate for a while. Not that we needed the money, but she got her license and did a few deals."
"I doubt that has anything to do with her disappearance."
"Well, it might. She didn't do real estate the way most people do. She never gave me the details, but she did tell me her activities were related to her research."
"Such as?"
"Well, she'd buy a place herself—always in the developments along Randall Road on the south side of the highway. Then she'd hire some men to dig here and there around the yard, then resell it."
"Did she tell you what she was looking for?"
"She just said it was part of her research. And I couldn't complain much, because she usually resold the properties at a profit."
One weird lady, Jack thought, looking around. And part pack rat, to boot. I'm supposed to find a clue to her whereabouts in this Library of Congress of the weird? Fat chance.
Jack wandered down toward the far window. The Sound was visible through the bare branches of the trees. As he turned he caught a glimpse of the canvas on the easel, and it stopped him cold. This one made the grim paintings downstairs seem bright and cheery. He couldn't say why the seemingly random swirls of black and deep purple bothered him. The longer he stared at it, the more heightened the feeling that things were watching him from within the turbulent shadows. He gave into a sudden urge to touch its glistening surface. Cold and…
He pulled back. "It feels wet."
"Yes," Lew said. "Some new paint Mel started using. Supposedly it never dries."
"Never?" He checked his fingertips—no pigment on them, even though they still felt wet. "Never's an awful long time."
He touched the surface again, in a different spot. Yes…cold, wet, and—
"Damn!" he said, jerking his hand away.
"What's wrong?"
"Must be something sharp in there," Jack said as he stared at the tips of his index and middle fingers.
He didn't want to say that he'd felt sharp little points digging into them, like tiny teeth snapping at his flesh. But the skin was unbroken. Still felt wet, though.
"Let me show you something on her computer," Lew said, heading for the desk.
With a final glance into the hungry depths of the painting, Jack shook off a chill and followed Lew, still rubbing his moist fingertips.
At the deck, Jack noticed a green and blue image of the earth spinning on the monitor screen; and as it spun, chunks began disappearing from its surface, as if some invisible being were gnawing at it. After the globe was completely devoured, the sequence looped back to the beginning.
"Cheerful screen saver," Jack said.
Mel programmed that herself."
"Imagine that."
"But here's what I wanted to show you," Lew said, fiddling with the mouse. The apple-core shaped remnant of the earth disappeared, replaced by a word processor directory. Lew opened a directory labeled GUT.
"Gut?" Jack said.
"G-U-T. That's how Mel refers to her Grand Unification Theory. And look," he said, pointing to the blank white screen. "It's empty. She had years of notes and analysis stored in that folder, and someone's erased it."
"The same people who have her, you think?"
"Who else?"
"Maybe the lady herself. She knew she was going away; maybe she copied the contents onto floppies and"—he resisted saying gutted—"cleared the contents herself to keep them secret. Is she the type to do something like that?"
"Possibly," he said, nodding slowly. "It never occurred to me but, yes, that's definitely something she might do. She was pretty jealous about her research—never gave anybody but Salvatore Roma so much as a peek at what she was up to."
Roma…that name again. "Why him?"
"As I said, he was helping her. They were in almost daily contact before Mel…left."
Mr. Roma was looking better and better as the possible bad guy here.
"Did you contact him?"
"No. Actually, he contacted me, looking for Mel. She was supposed to call him but hadn't. He was worried about her."
"And he had no idea where she might be."
"Not a clue."
Why don't I believe that?
Jack looked around the cluttered study and the missing Mel's words came back to him: Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand.
Sorry to disappoint you, lady, he thought, but Jack doesn't have a clue.
"How about friends? Who'd she hang with?"
"Me, mostly. We're both pretty much homebodies, but Mel has acquaintances all over the world via the Internet. Spent a lot of time on her computer."
"How about her car? What does she drive?"
"An Audi. But I haven't gotten a call that it's been found anywhere."
"No other contacts?" Jack said. He felt his frustration mounting. "What about family?"
"Both her folks are dead. Her father died before we met, her mother died just last year. Mel was an only child so she inherited the house and everything in it. I keep telling her to sell it but—"
"She has another house? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't think it was important. Besides, I searched the place just yesterday. She wasn't there. I've been there before, but never actually searched through it. I found something odd in the cellar, but—"
"Odd? Odd how?"
"In the cellar floor." He shrugged. "Nothing that would relate to Mel's disappearance."
We're talking a very odd woman here, Jack thought. Two odds sometimes attract.
"Can't hurt to look," he said, desperate for something to give him direction. "Where is it?"
"It's a ways from here. A little town named Monroe."
"Never heard of it."
"It's near Glen Cove."
"Great," Jack said. "Let's take a look."
Not that he had much hope of finding anything useful, but this Monroe was back toward the city, and he had to head in that direction anyway.
But if the Monroe house yielded as much as this place, he'd have to return Lew's down payment. This was going nowhere.
Jack cast a final look at the painting at the far end of the study as he followed Lew down the stairway. His fingertips didn't hurt any longer—must have been something sharp within the paint; it simply had felt like a bite—but damn if they didn't still feel wet. Weird.
6
Monroe turned out to be a Gold Coast town, smaller and prettier than Shoreham. It had a picturesque harbor, for one thing, and no room for a nuclear plant. Jack guessed from the faux whaling-village facades on the harbor area shops and buildings that the town must do a fair amount of tourist trade in the summer. A little early for that now. Traffic was minimal as he followed Lew's Lexus through the downtown area, then uphill past the brick-fronted town hall and library, the white steepled church—a real postcard of a town. He trailed him past rows of neat colonials, then came to a development of mostly two- and three-bedroom postwar ranch houses.
Lew pulled into the driveway of a house that wasn't so well-kept. Its clapboard siding needed a fresh coat of paint; last fall's leaves clogged the gutters; dark green onion grass sprouted in the weedy, anemic, threadbare lawn. A detached garage sat to the right. A huge oak dominated a front yard that was unusually large for the neighborhood—looked like half an acre or better.
Jack parked Abe's truck at the curb and met Lew at the front door.
"Why does she keep this place?" Jack asked.
"Sentimental reasons, I guess," Lew said, searching through his key ring. "I've wanted her to sell it, or maybe even subdivide the lot. Be worth a pretty penny, but she keeps putting it off. She grew up here. Spent most of her life in this house."
Jack felt a chill as they paused on the front stoop. He looked around uneasily. They were standing in the deep shadow cast by the massive oak's trunk as it hid the late afternoon sun. That had to be it.
Lew opened the door and they stepped into the dark, slightly mildewy interior. He turned on a light and together they wandered through the two-bedroom ranch.
Jack noted that the place was filled with pictures of Melanie at various ages—birthdays and graduations, mostly; no sports or dancing school shots—and always that Must-you-take-my-picture? expression. The walls of her old bedroom were still hung with framed academic achievement certificates. A bright child, and obviously cherished by her folks.
"Where's this 'odd' something you mentioned?" Jack said.
"Down in the basement. This way."
Through the tiny kitchen, down a narrow set of stairs to an unfinished basement. Lew stopped at the bottom of the steps and pointed at the floor.
"There. Don't you think that's odd?"
All Jack saw was a rope ladder lying on the floor. A typical fire safety type with nylon rope and cylindrical wooden treads, sold in any hardware store. Other than the fact that it was kind of short and in the basement of a ranch house, he couldn't see anything odd about—
Wait. Were his eyes playing tricks on him, or did the end of the ladder disappear into the floor?
Jack stepped closer for a better look.
"I'll be damned."
The bottom end of the rope ladder was imbedded in the concrete of the floor slab. Jack squatted and tugged on the last visible tread—no give at all. He looked back along the ladder and saw that the top end was tied to a steel support column.
"What's this all about?"
"Beats me," Lew said, stepping closer and standing beside him. "I've never been down here before yesterday, so I can't say how long that's been there."
Jack scratched the front of his shirt. He chest had begun to itch.
"Can't be long," he said, touching the nylon cord. "This ladder is new."
"But the concrete isn't," Lew said. "These houses were built shortly after World War Two. This slab's got to be at least fifty years old."
"Can't be. Look at this. It's obvious the concrete was poured around the ladder."
"Look at the concrete, Jack. This is old."
Jack had to admit he was right. The concrete was cracked, chipped, obviously old. And Jack could find no telltale seam that would indicate a recent patch.
"What we have here," Jack said, "is what you call a mystery."
As he was straightening, Jack noticed a small dark splotch on the concrete. He leaned closer. Half-dollar sized, black, irregular, flared on its edges, it looked like some sort of scorch mark. He scanned the rest of the nearby floor and found seven more, evenly spaced in a three-foot area around where the ladder disappeared into the concrete.
"Any idea what might have made these?"
"Not the slightest," Lew said.
Jack rose and looked around. Two steel columns supported the central beam; the foot of the staircase was attached to one of them. Not much else: a washer and dryer, a sump pump in the corner, a sagging couch against the rear wall, a rickety old desk, a folded card table and some chairs. Jack went to the desk. An electric screwdriver, a wrench, a dozen or so nuts and bolts sat on the top, along with three large, oblong, amber quartz crystals. The drawers were empty.
Still scratching at his chest, he turned and stared at the rope ladder. Something about this really bothered him, but did it have anything to do with Melanie Ehler's disappearance? Jack couldn't see how.
"All right," he said. "Let's go back upstairs."
"I told you there was nothing here," Lew said, once they reached the kitchen.
"That you did."
Lew's cell phone rang. While he spoke to someone in California about a late shipment, Jack wandered back to Melanie's bedroom, looking at the photos, trying to get a feel for her. No pics with other kids, only adults, undoubtedly family members. Not a lot of smiles in those pictures. A serious child.
He opened a closet and pulled a box off the shelf. A bunch of old dolls, Barbie and the like, some dressed, some not. He was about to put it back when he noticed that one of the dolls was missing its left hand. Not broken off or cut off…more like whittled off, ending in a point.
Odd…
He pulled out another and found its left hand whittled away as well. And the others—each missing its left hand. Some forearms had concentric grooves near the end, as if they'd been stuck in a pencil sharpener. ' Beyond odd into very weird.
Jack returned the box and stared at the ten- or twelve-year-old girl in one of the larger photos. Dark hair and dark, piercing eyes, and somewhat pretty. Why aren't you happy, kid? Can someone make you smile? Where are you now? And why do you want only me to look for you?
Jack was hooked now. He was going to have to find this strange lady and ask her face to face.
He wandered back to the kitchen as Lew was finishing his call.
"Sorry," Lew said. "That call couldn't wait."
"Speaking of calls," Jack said, "is there anybody we can call that Melanie might have called? A friend? A relative?"
"No relatives, but she did have one childhood friend in Monroe she kept in touch with. His name's Frayne Canfield. He's in SESOUP too."
"All right. Let's get in touch with him."
Lew shrugged and called information on his cell phone, punched in a number, listened for a moment, then broke the connection.
"His answering machine says he'll be out of town for a few days but he'll be checking his messages."
Interesting, Jack thought. Mel's away…her old friend's away…
"What are you thinking?" Lew said.
As he spoke, Jack stared out the kitchen window at the backyard where an old swing set rusted under another big oak. The itching on his chest seemed to have eased.
"I'm thinking that people disappear for two reasons: they run away or are abducted. Either way, in almost every case, someone they know is involved. Yet all the people Melanie 'knows' except for you and this Frayne Canfield are spread all over the globe."
"Not this week, they're not. Most of them, including Frayne Canfield, I'm sure, will be in Manhattan for the first annual SESOUP conference."
Lew started toward the front door. Jack followed.
"Is that where she promised to 'blow all other theories out of the water' with her Grand Unification Theory?"
"The very same."
"And Roma will be there too, I assume?"
"Of course. He put it all together."
Jack felt as if a weight suddenly had been lifted from his shoulders. All the possible suspects in one place—perfect.
"When's it start and how do I get into this conference?"
"Day after tomorrow, but you can't get in. Members only—and only one guest each."
"Then I'll be yours."
"I'm not a member. I'm Mel's guest."
"Why so restrictive?"
"I told you—it's very exclusive. This is serious business for them."
"I want you to get me in."
"Why? Mel won't be there."
"Yeah, but I bet the person who knows where she is will be."
"Yes," Lew said, his Adam's apple moving in and out as he nodded. "I can see that. I'll see what I can work out. But you'll need a cover story."
As they stepped out the front door, movement on the street caught Jack's eye. At the far corner of the property to his right, a black sedan began pulling away from the curb. He watched its rear end coast away.
He wondered about that. Had they been followed? He didn't remember seeing any cars parked on the street when he arrived.
"Why do I need a cover story?" he asked Lew.
"I assume you're not planning to go up to people and ask them if they've seen Melanie Ehler lately."
"Well, no. I figure you'll introduce me around—"
"But you need a reason to be there and a connection to Mel. I'll think on it. The conference is in the Clinton Regent—you know the place?"
"Vaguely. Not exactly the Waldorf."
Far from it. If Jack remembered correctly, the Clinton Regent was in Hell's Kitchen.
"Well, SESOUP's membership isn't exactly poor, but the typical midtown room rate is over two hundred dollars a night, plus twenty-five percent additional in taxes. That would strain a lot of budgets. Roma got the Regent to give us a more affordable rate if we could fill the whole hotel, which we will."
"Okay. I'll see you there Thursday morning. What time?"
"Registration opens at noon. Meet me in the lobby around eleven-thirty. I'll have something cooked up for you by then."
They parted—Lew heading back to Shoreham, Jack to Manhattan.
He rubbed his fingers against his pants leg. Why couldn't he get them to feel dry?
7
He awakens feeling wet. He turns on the light and sees that his sheets are red. He leaps from the bed with a cry of alarm. The sheets, top and bottom, are soaked with red, so are his shorts and T-shirt.
Blood. But whose?
Then he notices that his right palm is full of thick red liquid…trickling from his index and middle fingertips—the ones that touched Melanie Ehler's painting earlier. Squeezing the fingers to stanch the flow, he hurries to the bathroom, but stops halfway when he spots the easel and canvas set up in the center of his front room.
He stares in cold shock. Where the hell did that come from? This is his home, his fortress. Who could have—?
As Jack steps warily into the front room, he recognizes the painting. He saw it earlier at Lew Ehler's house, the disturbing one in Melanie's study, only now the glistening impasto swirls are alive on the canvas, twisting and contorting into Gordian tangles of black and purple pigment, and from deep within the kinetic madness of those tortured coils, meteoric crescents of yellow glare briefly, then disappear.
Jack rotates slowly, searching for the intruder, and when he completes the turn, he sees that the canvas has changed—no, is changing as he watches. The color is leaking away, draining like a tainted transfusion from a befouled IV bottle into a pool on the rug before the easel. The stain spreads quickly, too quickly for Jack to step back and avoid it. But instead of feeling pigment ooze against his bare toes, he feels nothing—nothing against his skin, nothing but air beneath his soles.
Jack windmills his arms wildly, reaching for something, anything to stop his fall. Somehow the paint has eaten through his floor and he's plunging into the apartment below. He twists, clutches at the edge of the hole, but his fingers slip on the slick pigment and he plummets into the waiting darkness.
He lands catlike, in a crouch, and knows immediately that he's not in the second floor apartment. Neil the anarchist may not be a personal hygiene poster boy, but he's never smelled this bad. Jeez, what is it? Choice strips of three-day-old roadkill folded into rotten eggs and left out in the sun to warm might come close.
And worse…Jack recognizes it.
But it can't be.
And then he realizes that he's not crouching on wood flooring or carpet, but metal grating—cold, and slick with a sheen of engine oil. Some sort of catwalk. He looks up—a tangle of ducts and wiring, but no sign of the hole that dropped him here. And from far below…light—faint, flickering off the steel plates of the inner walls of a ship's hull…
"Shit!" Jack whispers.
He knows where he is—the Ajit-Ruprobati. But it can't be. Not possible. He sank this rustbucket and everyone aboard it—human and non-human—last summer. This old freighter rests and rusts now in the silt of lower New York Harbor. No way he can be aboard it…
Which means this must be a dream. But it sure as hell doesn't feel like one. He had nightmares about this place and the creatures it harbored for months after he damn near died sinking it, but never this real.
The creatures…the rakoshi…Jack feels every muscle in his body recoil at the thought of them. If the ship is back and awash with their stink, then they too must have returned from the Land of the Dead.
Movement below catches his eye. Jack freezes as a massively muscled, shark-snouted creature glides along another catwalk directly below his. It stands six or seven feet tall and the flickering light plays over its glistening cobalt skin as it moves with sinuous grace.
A rakosh.
Jack wants to scream. This isn't happening. He killed these creatures, incinerated every damn one of them in this very hold last summer. But Jack doesn't dare even to breathe. Hold statue-still until it passes, then find a way out—fast.
But as the creature moves beneath him, it slows, then stops. In a strobe-flash of motion it whirls into a hissing crouch, its head darting back and forth as it sniffs the fetid air.
Does it sense me? Jack wonders as his heart races even faster. Or does it simply sense something different?
The rakosh tips back its shark-like head and looks up. As Jack gazes into the glowing yellow slits of its eyes, he fights a primal urge to jump up and run screaming from this abomination.
I'm in the dark up here, he tells himself, forcing calm. I'm on the far side of this steel mesh. If I don't breathe, don't blink, it won't see me. It'll move on.
Finally, it happens, just as he hoped. The creature lowers its head and looks around, indecisive. It turns, but as it starts to move away, Jack sees something falling through the mesh of his perch. Something small…globular…red.
A drop of his blood.
He watches in horror as the ruby bead drifts like a snowflake toward the rakosh's head, splatters against its snout. He cannot move as a dark tongue snakes from a lipless mouth and licks the smear, leaving no trace.
What happens next is blurred: a hiss, the flash of bared teeth, a three-taloned hand thrusting up, bursting through the steel mesh as if it were window screen, grabbing Jack's bloody hand and yanking it down through the opening. Jack cries out in terror and pain as his right shoulder slams against the mesh. He tries to wrench his hand free but the rakosh's grip is like a steel band.
And then he feels something writhe against his hand, something cool and wet, with the texture of raw liver.
Jack looks down and sees the rakosh licking the blood off his hand. Flooded with revulsion, he tries to grab the slimy tongue, to rip the damn thing out of the creature's head, but it's too slippery.
And then he sees other forms emerging from the shadows, converging from both ends of the catwalk below. More rakoshi. They begin to fight over his hand, baring their fangs and snapping at each other. The tugging on his arm grows increasingly fierce until Jack begins to fear they'll rip his arm out of its socket.
Then one of the creatures rears up and bites into Jack's forearm. He screams with the blinding agony of razor teeth slicing through skin and muscle, crunching through bone, and then it's gone—the lower half of his forearm, his hand, his wrist, all gone—and the rakoshi are lifting their heads and opening their cavernous maws to lap the crimson rain spewing from the stump.
Helpless, his consciousness fading, Jack watches his life draining away…
No!"
Jack sat up in bed, gripping his right arm. He fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp and turned it. Relief washed through him as he checked his hand—still there, with all five fingers.
And the fingertips—no bleeding. Same with the sheets—no bloodstains.
He flopped back, gasping. God, what a nightmare. So real. He hadn't dreamed about those demons since…must have been sometime late last year that he'd stopped having rakoshi-mares. What had brought one on tonight? Melanie's painting had been in the dream. Had that triggered it? Why? How? He didn't remember seeing anything in it to remind him of those creatures.
He rolled out of bed and padded to the front room. Everything was as he'd left it. He took some comfort from the familiarity of the crowded shelves, but he knew he wasn't going to have an easy time getting back to sleep.
He held up his hand and wiggled the fingers, just to be sure. He could almost feel a phantom ache in the bones above the wrist where they'd been bitten off in the dream. That shouldn't be. And then he remembered other mangled limbs, plastic limbs—the left arms of little Melanie's Ehler's dolls. Had seeing them been the trigger for losing his hand in the dream?
Sure. Jack could buy that. But why the rakoshi? Why should they return to haunt him now?
He headed for the kitchen. He needed a beer.