9:00 P.M.-??? Films: Communion, Red Dawn, Exorcist II: The Heretic
1
Still a little shaky and unsettled from the night before, Jack balanced his cup of coffee atop the lobby pay phone and dialed Gia. Everything was fine there. No signs of anyone lurking about. That was a relief. Next he checked his voice mail. Only one call and—cheers—not from his father. Oscar Schaffer had left him a terse message.
"I've got the rest of your money. Just tell me where you want me to drop it."
Jack dialed the number and Schaffer picked up.
"Good morning. It's Jack."
"Oh. Where do you want me leave the money?"
And a gracious good morning to you too, Jack thought, wondering at Schaffer's tight, brusque tone. Go back to bed and get up on the other side.
"Drop it off at Julio's this morning. What's the story with—?"
"You going to be there?"
"Probably not."
"Good. 'Cause I don't even want to be in the same building as you, you sick, perverted bastard. I'll drop off your money, and then I don't want to see or hear or even think of you again!"
And then he hung up.
What's his problem? Jack wondered as he cradled the receiver. Schaffer should be one happy guy this morning. His sicko brother-in-law was in the hospital by now, and his sister was on vacation from her job as part-time punching bag.
Jack got a sour feeling in his stomach. Had Gus come to and managed to hurt Ceil worse than he had before? Jack couldn't see how—not with two broken legs. Had to be something else. He decided to hang out at Julio's this morning and find out firsthand what was bugging Oscar Schaffer.
He was almost to the lobby door when a familiar gangly figure limped through.
Lew. Jeez, he'd almost forgotten about him. Sometimes Jack became so immersed in a job that he lost sight of why he'd got involved in the first place. This missing Melanie thing wasn't the first gig that had taken on a life of its own, engulfing and carrying him along.
Lew looked terrible—pale, bags under his eyes, clothes wrinkled enough to look like he'd slept in them, except Jack had a feeling the guy wasn't sleeping much. Or showering much either: He needed a shave and his presence wasn't exactly a breath of fresh air.
"Lew. I thought you were out on the island."
Lew blinked heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes as he focused on Jack.
"I just got back. I stayed up all night out there, sitting in front of the TV, and then first thing this morning I was overcome with this feeling that I shouldn't be there. I should be…" His voice trailed off, followed by his gaze, settling somewhere over Jack's right shoulder.
"Should be where, Lew?"
He shrugged, still staring at some far corner of the ceiling. "I don't know. Somewhere else. So I came here." He focused on Jack again. "Any progress? Any news?"
Yeah, Jack thought. Something tried to kill me. But the call luring him to the basement yesterday had mentioned Olive instead of Melanie, so maybe there was no connection.
On the other hand, someone else had mentioned Melanie's name.
"Well," Jack said, "I discovered last night that I'm not the only one looking for Melanie."
Lew blinked and straightened. "Who? Who's looking for her?"
Jack told him about his run-in with the black-clad men in the black Lincoln.
"Men in black," Lew said, rubbing a hand over his rubbery features. "Everybody's heard of them, but…despite all the stories, I've never believed they were real. Maybe these were just guys dressed up and trying to scare you."
"Maybe. But I'll tell you this, if they were just hired meat, they were good actors; and if they were just actors, they were pretty damn tough meat. And they weren't trying to scare me off; they wanted to know where she was." He changed his tone to imitate the voice from last night. '"Where is Melanie Rubin Ehler?'"
Lew stiffened. "'Melanie Rubin Ehler?' They said that? They used her maiden name?"
"Every time. Something wrong with that?"
"I don't know about wrong, but it's certainly odd. Melanie never used her maiden name. She hardly ever used a middle initial."
"Well, whoever they were," Jack said, trying to boost Lew's spirits, "at least they think she's still alive—and findable."
He brightened. "Hey, that's right. That's right. Jack, I think you just made my day."
"Great, Lew. Why don't you go to your room and crash for awhile. You look dead on your feet."
"I think I'll do just that."
Jack watched Lew limp off, and couldn't help thinking of the other husband he'd dealt with in the past twenty-four hours. Could any two people be more different? Maybe someday Ceil would find herself a Lew to help her forget Gus.
As he was turning toward the door, Jack caught Roma staring at him from the other end of the lobby. Roma raised his hand, and for an instant Jack thought he was going to wave. But no—he made that three-fingered clawing gesture again.
Jack was tempted to make a gesture of his own, a more economical one employing only a single digit, but thought better of it. Instead, he held Roma's dark gaze until the monkey jumped up on his shoulder and added his own stare to his master's.
That was enough for Jack.
Later, Roma, he thought as he turned and pushed through the revolving door. We're not finished yet.
2
Roma watched the stranger leave, wondering where he was headed with such purpose at this early hour.
"Why did you do that?" Mauricio whispered when no one was looking.
"I wanted to rattle his cage, as they say."
"To what end?"
"To keep him off balance until we know the part he plays in this. Did you check his room?"
"As we assumed: the rest of the device is there."
Roma had expected this, would in fact have been shocked if Mauricio had reported otherwise, yet still it elicited a pang of dismay in his gut. Why, why, why?
"Undamaged?"
"Yes, but still, I am worried."
"No need to be," Roma said, forcing a casual tone. "As I told you, he knows nothing of the Otherness. And yet the Otherness seems to want him involved. Else why deliver the device to him—and protect him from you? No, my friend. We must watch carefully and see how this plays out…before another sunrise we will know what part this stranger is to play."
Mauricio growled his dissatisfaction, then said, "By the way, I ran into Frayne Ganfield this morning. He's looking for you. Says he has something important to tell you."
"That despicable little hybrid always thinks he has something important to tell me. He will have to wait. I have better things to do than listen to his prattle."
Much more important, Roma thought, feeling his excitement grow. Less than twenty-four hours until his hour came round. He needed solitude. The growing anticipation made further human contact almost unbearable.
3
Jack was on his second coffee in Julio's when he spotted Schaffer through the front window. He was moving fast, no doubt as close to a run as his portly frame would allow. Jack had told Julio that Schaffer was coming and to do the usual interception, but tell him Jack wanted a word with him.
Schaffer entered clutching a white envelope. Perspiration gleamed on his pale forehead. His expression was strained. Here was one very upset real estate developer. He handed Julio the envelope; after they exchanged a few words, Schaffer glanced around like a rabbit who'd just been told there was a fox in the room, spotted Jack, and bolted out the door.
Jack got up and started after him. He passed Julio along the way.
Julio was grinning as he handed Jack the envelope. "What you do to spook him like that?"
Jack grabbed the envelope and kept moving. "Don't know, but I'm going to find out."
Out on the sidewalk, where spring was reasserting herself, he stopped and scanned the area. Quiet and sunny this morning, almost deserted. New York City is a different town on weekend mornings. Cabs never completely disappear, but only a few are on the prowl. No commuters, and the natives are sleeping in. Most of them, anyway. To his left, a guy stood with a pooper scooper in one hand and a leash in the other, waiting patiently while his dachshund relieved himself in the gutter. Far down to his right a young guy in a white apron was hosing last night off the sidewalk in front of a pizza shop.
But where the hell was Schaffer?
There—across the street off to his left, a bustling portly form hurrying away. Jack caught the developer as he was opening the door to his Jaguar.
"What's going on?" Jack said.
Schaffer jumped at the sound of Jack's voice. His already white face went two shades paler.
"Get away from me!"
He jumped into the car but Jack caught the door before he could slam it. He pulled the keys from Schaffer's trembling fingers.
"I think we'd better talk. Unlock the doors."
Jack went around to the other side and slipped into the passenger seat. He tossed the keys back to Schaffer.
"All right. What's going on? The job's done. The guy's fixed. You didn't need an alibi because it was done by a prowler. What's your problem?"
Schaffer stared straight ahead through the windshield.
"How could you? I was so impressed with you the other day. The rogue with a code: 'Sometimes I make a mistake. If that happens, I like to be able to go back and fix it.' I really thought you were something else. I actually envied you. I never dreamed you could do what you did. Gus was a rotten son of a bitch, but you didn't have to…" His voice trailed off.
Jack was baffled.
"You were the one who wanted him killed. I only broke his legs."
Schaffer turned to him, the fear in his eyes giving way to fury.
"Who do you think you're kidding? You really think I wouldn't find out?" He pulled a couple of folded sheets of paper from this pocket and tossed them at Jack. "I've read the medical examiner's preliminary notes!"
"Medical examiner? He's dead?" Clammy shock wormed through him. Dead hadn't been in the plan. "How?"
"As if you don't know! Gus was a scumbag and yes I wanted him dead, but I didn't want him tortured! I didn't want him…mutilated!"
Confused, Jack scanned the notes. They described a man who'd been beaten, bludgeoned, bound by the hands, and had both tibias broken; then he'd been tortured and sexually mutilated with a Ginsu knife from his own kitchen before dying of shock due to blood loss from a severed carotid artery.
"It'll be in all the afternoon papers," Schaffer was saying. "You can add the clippings to your collection. I'm sure you've got a big one."
Jack squeezed his eyes shut for a few heartbeats, and reread the second half of the notes. His first reaction was relief of sorts—he hadn't killed Gus. Then he thought of Olive's mutilated body. A connection? No, this seemed different. Olive's mutilation had been almost ritualistic, Gus's sounded far more personal, a revenge thing, fueled by boundless rage and betrayal.
Jack tossed the report onto Schaffer's lap and leaned back. He lowered the window. He felt the need for some air.
Finally he looked at Schaffer. "How'd you get those notes? Are they the real thing?"
"Who do you think you're dealing with? Half the new construction in Queens is mine! I got connections!"
"And where was Ceil supposed to be when all this"—Jack waved the notes—"was happening?"
"Where you left her—locked in the hall closet. She got out after she heard you leave. And to think she had to find Gus like that. Poor Ceil…no one should have to see something like that. Especially her. She's been through enough." He slammed his fist against the Jag's mahogany steering wheel. "If I could make you pay—"
"When did she phone the cops?"
"Don't worry about the cops. I paid you and that puts me in this as deep as you, so I won't be saying anything."
Jack was getting a little tired of Oscar Schaffer. "Answer me, dammit. When did she call the cops?"
"Right before calling me—around three A.M."
Jack shook his head. "Wow. Three hours…she spent more than three hours on him."
"She? She who?"
"Your sister."
"Ceil? What the hell are you talking about?"
"When I left their house last night, Gus was on the living room floor, trussed up with two broken legs—out cold, but very much alive."
"Bullshit!"
Jack gave him a cold stare. "Why should I lie? As you said, you're not going to dime me. And someday when you have time you should try to imagine how little I care what you think of me. So think hard about it, Oscar: why should I lie?"
Schaffer opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"I left Gus alive," Jack said. "When I was through with him, I opened the door to the closet where I'd put your sister, and took off. That was a little while before midnight."
"No," he said, but there was no force behind it. "You've got to be lying. You're saying Ceil—" He swallowed. "She wouldn't…she couldn't. Besides, she called me at three, from a neighbor's house, she'd only gotten free—"
"Three hours. Three hours between the time I opened the closet door and the time she called you."
"No! Not Ceil! She…"
He stared at Jack, and Jack met his gaze evenly.
"She had Gus all to herself after I left."
Slowly, like a dark stain seeping through heavy fabric, the truth took hold in Schaffer's eyes.
"Oh…my…God!"
He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and closed his eyes. He looked like he was going to be sick. Jack gave him a few minutes.
"The other day you said she needed help. Now she really needs it."
"Poor Ceil!"
"Yeah. I don't pretend to understand it, but I guess she was willing to put up with anything from a man who said he loved her. But when she found out he didn't—and believe me, he let her know in no uncertain terms before he pulled the trigger on her."
"Trigger? What—?"
"A long story. Ceil can tell you about it. But I guess when she found out how much he hated her, how he'd wanted her dead all these years, when she saw him ready to murder her, something must have snapped inside. When she came out of the closet and found him helpless on the living room floor…I guess she just went a little crazy."
"A little crazy? You call what she did to Gus a little crazy?"
Jack shrugged and opened the car door.
"Your sister crammed ten years of payback into three hours. She's going to need a lot of help to recover from those ten years. And those three hours."
Schaffer pounded his steering wheel again. "Shit! Shit! Shit! It wasn't supposed to turn out like this!"
Jack got out and slammed the door. Schaffer leaned over the passenger and looked up at him though the open window.
"I guess things don't always go according to plan in your business."
"Hardly ever," Jack said.
"I gotta get back to Ceil."
Jack listened to the Jag's engine roar to life. As it screeched away, he headed for Abe's.
4
"Occam's what?"
"Occam's Razor," Abe said.
Jack had picked up half a dozen raisin bran muffins along the way. He'd also brought a tub of Smart Balance margarine in a separate bag. Abe had spread the sports section of the morning's Times on the counter and the two of them were cutting up their muffins. Parabellum hopped about, policing the crumbs.
"Kind of flaky, these muffins," Abe said. "They fresh?"
"Baked this morning." Jack didn't want to tell him they were low fat.
"Anyway, Occam's Razor is named after William of Occam, one of the world's great skeptics. And he was a skeptic back in the fourteenth century when it could be very unhealthy to be a skeptic. Such a skeptic he was, one of the popes wanted his head. Occam's Razor is something your friends in that chowder club—"
"SESOUP," Jack said.
"Whatever—it's something everyone of them should memorize by heart, and then take to heart."
"How do you memorize a razor?" Jack said.
Abe stopped sawing at the muffin and stared at him. He raised the knife in his hand.
"Occam's Razor is not a cutting instrument. It's an aphorism. And it says, 'Entities ought not to be multiplied without necessity.'"
"Oh, well, I'm sure that will make everything clear to them. Just tell them, 'Necessity cannot be multiplied unless you're an entity,' or whatever you said, and all talk about antichrists and aliens and New World Orders and Otherness will be a thing of the past."
"Why do I bother?" Abe sighed, glancing heavenward. "Listen carefully to the alternate translation. 'It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer."
"Fewer what?"
"Assumptions. If you've got two or more possible solutions or explanations for a problem, the simplest, most direct one, the one that requires the fewest assumptions, tends to be correct one."
"The shortest distance between two points, in other words."
"Something like that. Let me illustrate: You and I are walking down a country road in Connecticut, and all of a sudden we hear lots of hoofbeats around the bend. When we reach the bend, however, whatever was making those hoofbeats is now out of sight, so we must make assumptions on what they could have been. What's the most logical assumption?"
Jack shrugged. "A horse, of course. What else?"
"What else, indeed. But I bet that some of your friends in Paella—"
"SESOUP."
"Whatever—would probably imagine a herd of zebras of wildebeests, am I right?"
"Or UN invaders on horseback…or hoofed aliens…or the legions of hell…"
"That far out we won't go," Abe said. He'd finished slicing his muffin in half and was reaching for the bag with the margarine. "Wildebeests will serve fine. But you see my point? We're in the country in Connecticut where a lot of people keep horses. I should expect wildebeests? No. Horses require very few assumptions.
Wildebeests, however, require assumptions like someone has been importing the creatures and keeping their existence secret—I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any stories in the paper about a black market in wildebeests. So Occam's Razor demands we assume, until proven otherwise, that the noise was made by horses and—"
Abe had pulled the Smart Balance from the bag and was staring at it like a wino contemplating a bottle of O'Doul's.
"What on earth is this?
"It's a kind of margarine."
"Margarine? So? What happened to my Philly? Or my nicely salted Land o' Lakes?"
"This is supposed to be good for your heart."
Outwardly Jack remained casual, but inwardly he cringed, waiting for the explosion. This was sacred ground. Not counting a few friends like Jack, Abe didn't have a hell of a lot in his life beyond his business and his food.
Yeah, he had every right to eat himself into an early grave, but Jack had just as much a right to refuse to shorten that trip.
"My heart? Who should be worried about my heart?"
"You," Jack said.
"And I suppose this is a low-fat muffin?"
"No fat, actually."
Abe looked at him, his face reddening. "Since when do you worry about my heart for me?" Before Jack could answer, he added, "Maybe I should worry about my heart, and you should worry about yours."
"That would be fine if you seemed to give a damn, but—"
"So now my doctor you've become?"
"No," Jack said levelly. He was acutely uncomfortable with this role, but wasn't going to back down. "Just your friend. One who wants you around for a long time."
Abe stared down at the Smart Balance, and Jack waited for him to toss it across the store. But Abe surprised him. He flipped the lid, peeled back the seal, and dug his knife into the yellow contents.
"Well," he said with a sigh. "Since there's nothing else…"
Jack felt his throat tighten as he watched Abe spread a glob on the muffin. He reached across the counter and clapped Abe on the shoulder.
"Thanks, Abe."
"You should be thanking me? For what? For poisoning myself maybe? Probably full of artificial ingredients. Long dead and in the grave I'll be from chemical preservatives and toxic dyes before my cholesterol even knows I'm gone."
He bit into his muffin, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then swallowed. He picked up the container and stared at it.
"This I hate to say, but…not bad."
"Keep this up," Jack said, "and maybe someday you'll die of nothing too."
They finished their muffins in silence.
"Nu?" Abe said finally. "You next look where for this missing lady?"
"That's the million-dollar question. I get dizzy and disoriented whenever I talk to these people. They've got an elaborate answer for everything except where Melanie Ehler might be." He shook his head. "Isn't life complicated enough without seeing a conspiracy behind everything? I mean, why is everybody so into conspiracies lately?"
"Lately?" Abe said. "What's lately about it? Conspiracy theories have been with us since humans could organize thought. What were the first religions but conspiracy theories."
"You mean like Olive's Satan and the Antichrist conspiring to take over America?"
"No. Long, long before the Bible was dreamt up. Cavemen I'm talking. Hut dwellers. Gods were created to make sense of the seeming randomness of nature and everyday life. Why did the lightning spare the tall tree but strike my hut and kill my wife and children? Why did it not rain during the growing season, and then pour after the meager harvest? Why was my child stillborn? Powerful supernatural beings explain it all very nicely, so early humans created a pantheon of cosmic kibitzers—a god of thunder, a god of trees, a god of wine, one for each aspect of the world that affected them—and imagined them conspiring against humanity. You think these Finnan Haddie people—"
"SESOUP."
"Whatever—you think their conspiracies are elaborate? Feh! Look at the old mythologies—Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Norse—so rife with divine plots, either against each other or against humans, your head will spin."
Jack nodded, remembering tales from Bullfinch's in high school. "The Trojan War, for instance."
"Right. Gods conspiring with gods, gods conspiring with humans, such a mess. But no matter how many entities we humans created, the purpose was the same: When something went wrong, we had an explanation. Bad things happened because a certain good deity was angry or displeased, or an evil deity was at work. We might be at the mercy of these entities, but at least we've ordered the randomness, we've appended a name to the darkness, we've created symmetry from chaos."
"Sort of like the old fairy tale thing that if you know someone's name you can control them."
"Control is the key. Once we identified the deity, we tried to control it—sacrifices, chants, dances, rituals anything you could dream up was tried. And sometimes certain actions did appear to work. If slaughtering a lamb at the vernal equinox seemed to convince the deity to bring rain for the growing season—or stop the recurrent floods that were plaguing the area—suddenly a lamb was not such a healthy thing to be."
"But dead lambs have no effect on El Nino."
"They can seem to if the timing is right. And I'm sure knowledge of El Nino would have done wonders for the lamb population. Still, we now have to wonder what causes El Nino."
"UFO exhaust," Jack said. "I have it on good authority."
"Then someone should inspect those things. Fit them with catalytic converters, at the very least."
"Could also be CIA solar mirrors."
"The CIA," Abe said, shaking his head. "I should have known. But the point is, the effect of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge is a general pushing back of the darkness. As we discover more and more non-supernatural explanations for the formerly inexplicable, the gods and demons recede. The magic goes away. But—a certain amount of randomness remains."
"Shit still happens."
"How eloquent you are today."
Jack shrugged. "It's a gift."
"I envy you. But as you say, shit does indeed still happen. So, people who don't use Occam's Razor tend to go two ways. Some drop into denial and reject all our centuries of rational and scientific evidence; they seek shelter in orthodoxy and cling to potty beliefs like creationism."
"Some of them must belong to SESOUP. I saw a flyer about a book exposing 'the Evolution Hoax.'"
"With Darwin as the chief conspirator, I'm sure. But if you're Occam-impaired and choose to keep your head out of the sand, you must come up with new brief systems to explain what's wrong with your world and who's pulling the strings attached to your life. For half a century international communism was such a wonderful bad guy, but when the USSR went kaput it left a huge vacuum that had to be filled—because we all know there's something in those shadows. King and the Kennedy brothers weren't killed by lone meshuggeners, the changes in family life and society aren't part of long processes—they're all part of a plan. The result is that fringe groups, with the help of a jaded, sensation-hungry public and accommodating mass media, get main-streamed. We find comfort in the wackiness."
"I don't know," Jack said. "Aliens, antichrists, New World Orders…that's comforting?"
"For lots of people, most certainly yes. There's a certain comfort in being able to point a finger and say 'That's why,' in being able to explain events, no matter how scary the explanation. If the cause is a conspiracy, then it can be identified, it can be broken up, and the world will be on track again."
"Which brings us back to control. You know," Jack said, remembering his conversations with various SESOUPers, "the fear of mind control seems to play a big part in all their theories."
"And shadow governments. A shadow government you need, subverting the will of the electorate in order to implement mind control."
"Yeah. Olive worried about the 666 chip, Zaleski talked about mind-control devices implanted by aliens, and Kenway went on about the CIA's mind control programs."
"That you should lose control over your thoughts and actions is a terrible fear. You would think about things that frighten you, you could injure or hurt people you love."
"Start talking about mind control and I start thinking about Dirty Eddie," Jack said, referring to a homeless guy of indeterminate age and race who used to wander Columbus Avenue.
Abe smiled. "Eddie…where is he these days? Haven't seen him for a year at least."
"Me neither, but you remember the aluminum foil cap he used to wear? Told me it was to keep out the voices that kept telling him to do things."
"I'm sure any conspiracy theory has its paranoid schiz mavens; that sort of stuff is tailor-made for them. But for the rest who haven't completely broken with reality, the cult aspect is probably as important as the conspiracies themselves. Fellow True Believers form a sort of intellectual commune. Not only do you share The Truth with them, but appreciation of that common knowledge sets you apart from the workaday schlmiels who remain in the dark. You form an elite corps. Soon you're associating only with other True Believers, people who won't challenge The Truth, which in turn reinforces The Truth over and over. I'm sure no small number of people are involved for fun and profit, but the core believers are searching for something."
"Control."
"Yes…and something else, maybe. Something they're not finding in modern society. Family, I think. Fellow believers become a family of sorts. And in this rootless, traditionless, culturally challenged society America has become, family is hard to find."
Family…Jack thought about how violent death had hurled him on a tangential arc from his own family, how his father and sister and brother were scattered now up and down the East Coast. And he thought of how Gia and Vicky and Abe and Julio had become a new family of sorts. Anchors that kept him from drifting into a dark no-man's land.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess everybody needs a family of some sort."
"And this fish yoich group—"
"SESOUP."
"Whatever—is a sort of extended family. And like any family, they have squabbles."
"Deadly squabbles?" Jack said. "Neck-twisting, eye-gouging, lip-removing squabbles?"
Abe shrugged. "Hey. When the police find a dead body, who's the first suspect? Someone in the family. And here you're dealing with one meshugge family."
"Yeah, maybe," Jack said. "But I've got to tell you, Abe, after what's been happening, I'm starting to wonder."
"Oy, you're not serious? I'm starting to think maybe you've been hanging around these people too long."
"Something's, going on, something a lot bigger than a bunch of conspiracy nuts sitting around and trading theories. I sense it, Abe. Someone's moving around behind the scenery. I don't know if it's one of these fabled secret organizations or a government agency—"
"If it's a government agency, then you should include yourself out of this mess immediately, if not sooner. You and government weren't meant to mix. Let someone else find the missing lady."
"But I can't," Jack said, wishing he could get out, but haunted by what Melanie Ehler had told Lew.
"Why the hell not?"
"Didn't I tell you? Because only I can find her. Only I will understand."
5
Jack closed his apartment door behind him and froze. He scanned the front room as he snatched the Semmerling from his ankle holster.
Something wrong here.
He listened. No sound except the hum from the computer's CPU fan and the ticks and tocks from the various pendulum clocks—a Shmoo, Felix the Cat, Sleepy the Dwarf—on the walls. No unusual odor.
He didn't sense anyone in the apartment, yet something was not right. With his pistol against his thigh, he did a quick search of all the rooms—he knew every possible hiding place, and each was empty. All the windows were double-locked with no sign of forced entry. Times like this he wished he'd put bars on the windows; trouble was, bars worked both ways, and there might come a time when he wanted to go out one of those windows.
Jack and his fellow tenants had a mutual watchdog society and were extremely careful who they buzzed in. A four-way bar-bolt secured his door. No one was going to break it down, but as he well knew from experience, no lock was bypass-proof. No system was perfect.
Long ago he'd considered and rejected an alarm system; that would bring the police, and the last thing he wanted was a couple of cops—city or private—snooping through his place looking for an intruder.
He thought of Kenway's motion recorder and wished he had one. That would have settled the question once and for all.
Jack turned in a slow circle. He was the only one here now. And from all appearances, he was the only one who had been here since he'd locked up and left yesterday.
But he didn't put the Semmerling away. His hackles were up and his nervous system was on full alert.
Why?
He couldn't put his finger on it, but the apartment and its contents seemed subtly out of kilter, just the tiniest bit askew.
He checked his computer, the filing cabinet, riffled through the papers on his desk, did a count in the weapons cache behind the secretary. Nothing appeared to be missing, everything seemed to be just where he'd left it. He checked his shelves, still crammed with all his neat stuff. Nothing had been disturbed—
Wait. At the base of the Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine shake-up mug…a crescent of clean wood reflecting the sunlight from the window. The rest of the shelf's lacquered surface—what little wasn't obscured by the crowded mementos—sported a down of dust. Jack had never been one to expend much energy in the housekeeping department, tending to wait until the situation reached crisis proportions, and now he was glad of it. Because that bright sliver of polished wood meant the mug had been moved.
If Jack were searching this room, he knew he'd want to know if anything was hiding in that old red domed mug. And since it sat at eye level, the only way to check would be to take it down, lift the cap, and look inside, then replace it.
No question—the mug had been moved. But by whom?
Me?
Had he adjusted the mug or looked at it when he'd bought the Daddy Warbucks lamp? After all, Daddy and Annie were connected. He couldn't remember.
Damn. If he'd known it was going to matter, he would have paid more attention at the time.
Or was all this simply his imagination? Maybe all the hours he'd been spending with the SESOUP crowd were having an effect.
Is this what it's like? he wondered. Is this how Zaleski and Kenway live, suspicious of every little inconsistency, always looking over their shoulders and under the bed?
Had somebody been here or not, dammit?
He was surprised at how rattled he was by the mere hint that the seal on his sanctum had been broken. And rage accompanied the rattle. He had to get back to the hotel, but he didn't want to leave. He wanted to hunker down in the easy chair with a scattergun across his knees and wait. Anybody came in—men in black, men in blue, men in chartreuse or paisley, Jack didn't care—they'd get bellies full of magnum double-O buck, fifteen pellets per round, one after the other.
But he had to find a missing lady…and talk to a weird guy with a monkey.
He holstered his pistol and stepped into the bathroom. Positioning himself before the mirror, he pulled up his shirt, exposing his chest. He stared at the three ragged lines, angry red now instead of pale, running diagonally across his chest.
How could Roma possibly know about these scars?
And what was it he'd said? Something about being "marked by the Otherness."
They're not marks, Jack thought. They're ordinary scars. No big deal. I've got lots of scars. These are just part of the collection.
You are much more a part of this than you realize.
No. I'm not part of anything, especially this Otherness junk. And you're not sucking me in. I'm not like you people.
But were these scars why Melanie had said that only Repairman Jack could find her…that only he would understand?
And he remembered something else Roma had said yesterday, just minutes before that creature had attacked him.
You would do well to take care, Mr. Shelby. You might even consider returning to your home and locking your doors for the rest of the weekend.
Had Roma known he was going to be attacked?
Too many questions…and he could think of only one man who might be able to answer them.
Roma.
Jack tucked in his shirt and—reluctantly—left his apartment. But in the hall, after locking the door, he pulled a hair from his scalp, wet it with saliva, and stretched it across the space between the door and the jamb. After the saliva dried, it would be invisible. A crude little telltale, but very effective.
He headed back to the hotel, glancing over his shoulder all the way.
6
Jack sat on one of the benches in the common area on the second floor as various SESOUPers wandered in and out of the huckster room and the MK-ULTRA panel. He watched them smile and greet each other, laugh at an in-joke, throw a friendly arm over another's shoulder, and he thought about what Abe had said. They truly were like a family, not genetically related, maybe, but they did share a heritage of sorts. He'd bet the majority of them spent a lot of time alone, their contact for most of the year limited to newsletters and the Internet, and maybe an occasional phone call. This conference was a family gathering of sorts…a gathering of loners, mostly.
Loners…Jack knew the Loner family…he was a charter member.
But one member of this particular branch was dead. Maybe two, if Melanie already shared the same fate as Olive.
"Working hard?"
Jack looked up and saw Lew Ehler standing over him.
Lew looked worse than he had this morning. Wasn't he sleeping at all!
"Sit down, Lew" Jack said, patting the spot next to him on the bench. "Want to ask you a couple of questions."
Lew wearily slumped his gangly frame onto the bench. "Have you learned anything since this morning?"
"Nothing useful."
"Sitting here daydreaming isn't going to improve that situation."
Jack gave him a raised-eyebrow look.
"Sorry," Lew said, looking away. "I'm a wreck, just a wreck. With each passing hour I become more and more convinced I'll never see her again." He bit his lip. "I'm going out of my mind."
"You were feeling better when I left you this morning."
"For a while, yes. The men in black…I figured that's why she's missing, and why she doesn't contact me—she's hiding from them." He slumped further. "But then I started asking myself, How can I be sure? And if she is hiding, where is she hiding? I can't bear to think of her huddled somewhere alone and afraid."
Jack sensed Lew was going to puddle up again. "It may not be that bad. She may be holed up in a motel—"
"How? Using what for money? I checked our bank account and she hasn't made any ATM withdrawals. I called our credit card companies and there've been no charges on her cards. It's like she dropped off the face of the earth."
"Maybe she's with a friend," Jack offered.
"Olive, maybe?" he said, brightening just a little. "She's still missing, you know."
"I'd assumed as much," Jack said carefully.
"She still hasn't contacted anyone—just like Mel. Do you think Olive could be with Mel, maybe helping her?"
Jack debated telling him about Olive. Did Lew have a right to know? Maybe. Would it make his life any easier at the moment? After seeing the flicker of hope the mention of Olive had lit in his eyes, Jack was certain the truth would sink him.
Some other time, Jack decided.
"I don't know what to tell you about Olive," Jack said.
Not an answer, he admitted, but at least it's true.
"I keep thinking about that rope ladder in Mel's folks' basement," Lew said. "It's so bizarre…I can't seem to get it out of my head. Don't ask me why, but I just know it has something to do with Mel's disappearance."
"All right," Jack said, grasping at anything to steer the subject away from Olive. "Maybe we'll go take another look at it."
"Now?" Lew said eagerly.
"Well, no. Not right now. I want to have a talk with Professor Roma first."
"How can he help?"
"You said he was in contact with Melanie a lot before she disappeared. Do you know if they ever met?"
"No. I'm sure they didn't. Why?"
He told Lew about his trip to Monroe yesterday, and what the librarian had said about seeing Melanie last week with a man who had a monkey on his shoulder.
Lew looked stunned. "Professor Roma?"
"Do you know anyone else with a pet monkey?"
Lew shook his head. "I don't understand."
"Neither do I. That's why I'm looking for him."
Jack looked away. He didn't mention that his interest in Roma was of a more personal nature. Sure, Roma might know something about Melanie, but that wasn't the only reason now. Jack wanted to find out how much he knew about Jack, and how he knew it.
"Don't forget Frayne Canfield while you're at it," Lew said. "He and Mel were close. They shared a bond that excluded me."
Jack looked at him now. Was that a hint of jealousy in Lew's voice?
"But I guess it's to be expected," Lew went on. "They grew up near each other in a small town, both disabled…" He shook his head. "For a while there I suspected they might be having an affair, but…I realized I was wrong. Mel wouldn't do that to me."
"By the way, what's wrong with his legs?"
"I don't know. I've never seen them…but Mel has."
"How do you know?"
"Because I asked her just what you asked me. 'What's wrong with Frayne's legs?' She told me, 'You don't want to know.'"
7
Jack spent the rest of the morning and some of the early afternoon looking for Roma, but man and monkey seemed to have vanished. No one at the hotel knew his whereabouts. He tried to listen to some of the El Nino panel but found it so lame he fled after a couple of minutes. It irked him that he could have been using the time to coach Vicky on her baseball basics.
Finally he went outside in search of a phone. A sunny spring Saturday greeted him. And what did New Yorkers do when the sky was bright and the air balmy? Without lawns to mow or gardens to weed, they were free to hit the streets. And today they were hitting with a vengeance—strolling, jogging, shopping, snacking, parents pushing baby carriages, couples in shorts and sun dresses walking arm in arm or hand in hand, kids chasing each other along the sidewalks.
An abundance of navels on display, many of them pierced.
And all these pretty girls with really ugly guys…almost as if they were dating outside their species. Then Jack wondered if people thought the same when they saw Gia with him. Probably.
The people-watching served only to make Jack long all the more to be with Gia and Vicky. But he knew that even if he'd already found Roma and finished questioning him, he'd probably be keeping to himself today.
He couldn't shake the feeling that Gia and Vicky might be safer if he stayed away.
He found a pay phone at the corner of Ninth and Fiftieth. A huge painting of the Toxic Avenger grinned at him from the side of the building half a block down the street where Troma Rims had its offices. He called Gia, cupping his hand over the buttons as he tapped in her number.
Dammit, he thought. Why don't I just become a card-carrying member of SESOUP? I'm becoming just like them.
Except I'm really being watched.
Which was no doubt how Kenway and Zaleski saw themselves too.
What next? Start getting myself X-rayed for mind-control implants?
Jack could not remember ever feeling this spooked.
"Hey, it's me," he said when Gia answered.
"You're late," she said. "Vicky's been waiting for you."
He hated the thought of disappointing Vicky. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel out of baseball practice, Gia."
He heard her sigh. "You shouldn't have promised if you weren't sure you could make it."
"I was sure I could get away for a couple of hours, but…"
"Tomorrow, then?"
"I don't think so. I—"
In the background he heard a little voice saying, "Is that Jack? Is that Jack?" And then Gia saying, "Yes, hon, and he has something to tell you."
"Hi, Jack!" Vicky said, and rattled on with her usual ebullience. "How come you're not here yet? I've had my glove on since one o'clock and it's getting all sweaty inside while I've been waiting. When are you coming?"
The image she conjured tore at his heart.
"Uh, I'm, sorry, Vicks, but I have a job that's going to keep me away for a while. I'm really sorry, but—"
"You're not coming?" she said at about half her previous volume.
"I promise I'll make it up to you," he said quickly. "We'll have a nice long practice as soon as I can get away."
"But tryouts are next week."
Please, Vicks, he thought. Please understand.
"Vicks, I'll be there for you. I won't let you down. I promise."
"Okay." She was at quarter volume now. "Bye."
Jack leaned against the phone booth's shielding and stared at the pavement. An ant was crawling along the curb. He felt low enough to challenge it to a foot race.
"Really, Jack," Gia said, her voice taking on a vague scolding tone, "is what you're doing right now so all important that you can't come by and see her?"
"It's not that. It's just that I don't like the way things are going here."
"Meaning?"
"I'm being followed."
"By whom?"
"Not sure, and that's what worries me. I don't want them to know about you and Vicks, so I'm thinking it might be best for you two if I keep my distance until this job was finished."
"Oh," she said. "And when will that be?"
"Real soon, I hope."
Another sigh. "Jack, when are you going to give this up?"
"Please, Gia. Not now. A pay phone on a crowded sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen is not where I want to discuss this."
"You never want to discuss it."
"Gia…"
"Don't you see what this Repairman Jack stuff does? It doesn't involve just you. It affects all of us. And now you're afraid to see us because of it."
"I hate it when you're right."
That seemed to mollify her. "All right. To be continued. Please be careful, Jack."
"Always. Love you."
"Love you too."
His insides roiling, Jack hung up and stood staring at the phone. Gia was right. He should be more careful with the kinds of jobs he took. He guessed this was the price of caring, of close attachments. None of it had entered the picture in his lone wolf days when he'd done his share of rough-and-tumble gigs. But now…what was worth disappointing Vicky—or possibly endangering her?
What irked him was that he'd been so darn choosy lately. This gig, for instance—a missing wife should have been a no-risk, no-sweat fix-it. How had everything spun so damn far out of control?
Sooner or later he was going to have to face it: He couldn't have it both ways. Some hard choices were coming.
But he couldn't think about that now.
He picked up the receiver as if he were about to make another call, then whirled—
—and startled a young woman waiting behind him.
She wore jeans and a chopped Orioles T-shirt, had buzz-cut hair, and at least a dozen rings in her left ear. She recovered quickly.
"You finished with that?"
He scanned the area to see if he could catch someone watching him.
No one…at least no one he could see.
He handed her the phone and moved on. He wished he were done with this job. It was making him crazy.
8
Jack returned to his hotel room and hauled the crates out of the bathroom. He propped the lids against the headboard of his bed and made a stab at assembling some of the Erector Set-type struts, but soon realized the job required an extra pair of hands. He tried to decipher the scrawl in the corner of the smaller lid but it didn't make much sense.
Frustrated, he sat on the bed and stared at the two crates full of puzzle parts. He thought of Vicky. She loved puzzles. Under normal circumstances, this might have been a fun project to tackle with her, but something in his gut didn't want Vicky anywhere near these crates.
After a few more hours of haunting the conference areas, he was hungry. He couldn't bear the thought of another meal in the coffee shop, so he wandered out and found a place on Tenth called Druids. A pint of Guinness and a steak had him in a somewhat better state of mind and body by the time he returned to the hotel,
He was halfway to the escalator when he saw Frayne Canfield rolling toward him across the worn carpet of the lobby. He wore a bright green shirt that, along with his red hair and beard, gave him a Christmas look.
"Have you found Sal yet?" Canfield said.
Jack tried to look barely interested. "You mean Professor Roma? Who told you I was looking?"
"Evelyn. Lew. I've been looking for him too. Any, luck?"
"Nope."
"Maybe we can look together."
Is he really looking for Roma, or trying to keep an eye on me? Who's he working for?
Then he remembered that Canfield had been the first to mention this Otherness stuff. Maybe Jack could pump him about it, and maybe he'd slip—maybe he'd drop something about Melanie in the process.
"Maybe," Jack said. "We had a long discussion about the Otherness yesterday, and I wanted to get back to it."
"The Otherness, ay?" Canfield's bulging eyes narrowed as he looked up at Jack. "And how you're tied into it?"
Jack fought to hide his shock. What have I got—some sort of sign around my neck?
"We, uh, never got that far into it."
Canfield looked around. "Well, if you want to discuss it, this isn't the place. My room or yours?"
Jack considered that for a second. If he went off with Canfield, he might miss Roma. But finding Roma was looking pretty iffy; Canfield was a sure thing. He didn't want Canfield to see the mystery crates and their contents, however.
"Yours," he said, and didn't offer an explanation.
As Jack followed him to the elevator, he glanced up and saw Jim Zaleski and Miles Kenway huddled in a comer, heads close in deep conversation. They stopped talking as they spotted Jack.
Kenway called out, "I'm expecting a photo to be faxed to me any time now."
Jack gave a thumbs-up and kept walking.
So Kenway had taken his advice about getting visual confirmation on the Roma here and the Roma in Kentucky. That could be very interesting.
"What photo?" Canfield asked.
"Just a mutual acquaintance," Jack said.
Jack and Canfield rode up in silence, with Canfield busily gnawing at a fingernail, and Jack trying to avoid looking at his flannel-wrapped legs and the disconnecting way they moved beneath the blanket. He couldn't help thinking about what Melanie had said to Lew about what was wrong with those legs…
You don't want to know.
Canfield's room was laid out exactly like Jack's. In fact, it could have been Jack's…except it had no weird green crates lying about.
"Let's see now," Canfield said, grinning through his Hagar beard and motioning Jack to one of the chairs. "Where were we?"
He sat there snacking on fingernail and cuticle crudites as he regarded Jack with too-bright eyes. He seemed more wired up than usual. Salt-rimmed crescents darkened the armpits of his shirt.
"Yesterday you and I were in the 'Children of the Otherness' zone—inhabited by you and Melanie Ehler," Jack said. He settled into the chair, dropping to eye level with Canfield. "Later Roma said something about my supposedly being 'marked by the Otherness.'"
"Not supposedly—the mark is there and you know it."
You can see it too? Jack thought, stiffening. He shrugged with as much nonchalance as his tight muscles would allow.
"Do I?"
"Of course you do. Open your shirt and I'll prove it."
"Sorry. Not on a first date."
Canfield didn't laugh. "What's wrong? Does it disturb you that your scars might link you to me and my birth defects?"
Jack repressed a shudder as Canfield's legs stirred under the blanket.
"Whatever scars I have came along long after my birth. You told me yourself that your defects happened before you were born. I don't see any connection."
"Ah," Canfield said, raising a well-chewed index finger. "But what made your scars? A creature, right?"
Jack stared at him. He knows too? Finally he said, "Where do you get your information?"
"About the Otherness creatures?"
Why doesn't he call them by name? Jack wondered.
"Yeah. How do you know about them?"
"Melanie and I sensed their presence last year. Just as I sensed those scars on your chest, we became aware of the Otherness creatures approaching from the east."
That's right, Jack thought. The rakoshi had come from the east…from India…by freighter.
"I get the impression you never saw one."
"I never had the honor. We searched, but we never could locate them."
"Lucky for you."
"I don't see it that way. I could consider them almost…brothers. After all, they too were children of the Otherness, like Melanie and me, although they contained far more of the Otherness than either of us."
"The Otherness…I'm getting real tired of that word."
"Well, it's a perfect name, really. The Otherness represents everything that's not 'us'—meaning the human race and the reality we inhabit. Melanie thinks it's vampiric in a way, sucking the life—the spiritual life—out of everything it encounters. Monstrously dark times will ensue if and when it takes over."
"And how would it manage that?"
"Sneak in when the other side's not looking. It can't charge in because the current landlord's got it locked out, but it's always there, hovering just beyond the threshold, keeping an eye on us, making tiny intrusions, creating strange, fearful manifestations, using its influence to sow discord, fear, and madness wherever and whenever it can."
"Like through the folks downstairs?"
Canfield nodded. "Some people are more aware, others less, but each of us knows—I don't care whether it's in our preconscious, post-conscious, subconscious, in the most primitive corners of our hindbrains, in the very cells of our bodies, we all sense this battle raging. And that subliminal perception has been reflected in human religions since earliest recorded history: Horus and Set, the Titans and the Olympians, God and Satan. The war is out there, and it's been going on since the beginning of time. We're aware of it. We can sense the Otherness on the far side of the door, we can smell its hunger."
"Okay. Fine. Let's just say that's true. How's this…this evil Great Whatever screwing with things now?"
"It can influence certain susceptible individuals—'touched by the Otherness,' as Melanie used to say."
"Touched is right," Jack said.
Canfield smiled. "Interesting, isn't it, that 'touched' has two meanings."
Jack hadn't thought of that, and thinking about it now was no comfort.
"Keep going."
"The willing susceptibles give in to the influence and go to work for it—they're the ones behind all the discord and cover-ups."
"Controlled by the Otherness."
"Not so much controlled, as simpatico. They're not taking orders, per se, but they feel a certain solidarity with its ethic."
"Ethic? What ethic?"
"All right, perhaps ethic isn't the best term. How about 'esthetic'? Does that sit better? Whatever the term or the reason, they're quite willing to inject as much chaos and discord as possible into everyday life. The unwilling fight back, but not without paying a price."
"SESOUP folk, in other words."
"Yes. They're what we call 'sensitives.' For better or worse, their nervous systems are more attuned to the Otherness. Their minds have to make sense of the external will impinging on them and so they think they're hearing voices, or come up with these wild-sounding theories."
"Like gray aliens, reptoids, Majestic-12, the New World Order—"
"You're thinking small: from Christianity and its Book of Revelations to the Hebrew Kaballah, to the Bhagavad Gita, they all come from the same place."
"So in other words, there's no shadow government trying to control our minds."
Canfield shook his head. "You're missing my point. I believe there is a shadow government with our worst interests at heart, but it's not controlled by aliens or the UN or Satan, it's run by people under the influence—note I said 'influence,' not 'direction'—of the Otherness. Aliens, devils and the NWO are simply some of the masks worn by that single, nameless chaotic entity…the many faces of a single truth."
"Melanie's Grand Unification…" Jack said.
"Exactly. But this conference is a unification of sorts too. The members of SESOUP are particularly sensitive to the Otherness, that's why membership is so selective. And now they're all gathered here, packed into a single structure, each one of them a lens of sorts, perceiving the Otherness, and focusing it, distilling it. Surely you've noticed the charged atmosphere in the hotel?"
"Sort of. But focusing it for what purpose?"
"Only time will tell. We must believe now, but soon we shall have proof."
"Proof?" Jack said. "Real hard proof? That'd be refreshing."
"Your scars are a form of proof, wouldn't you say?"
Jack was glad to get back to the subject of his scars. He remembered something Canfield had said.
"You mentioned that you and Melanie 'sensed' the creatures. You 'sensed' they were in New York but you didn't know where they came from."
"Of course we did. They came from the Otherness."
"I mean, what country."
"Country? What is a country but an artificial boundary agreed on by ephemeral governments."
"And I'll bet you don't know what they were called, either."
"What's in a name? Just a label attached by some primitive people. All that matters is that the creatures were fashioned ages ago by the Otherness, and they carry the Otherness in them."
Odd. He seemed to know the big picture, but not the details.
"Carried," Jack said. "Past tense. They became fried fish food at the bottom of New York Harbor."
Canfield nodded. "Yes. I remember waking from a nightmare about their death agonies. When I read about the ship that had burned in the harbor, I guessed that was what had happened." He shook his head. "Such a shame."
"Shame, hell. Probably the best thing I ever did."
Canfield stared at him. Jack couldn't read his expression through all that hair. When he spoke his voice was just above a whisper.
"You? You're the one who killed the Otherness creatures?"
Something in Canfield's wide eyes made Jack uneasy.
"Yeah, well, somebody had to do it. They happened to pick on the wrong little girl for their next meal."
"Then it's no wonder you're here. You are involved…more deeply than you can possibly imagine."
"Involved in what?"
"In Melanie's Grand Unification Theory. The Otherness creatures are part of it, I'm sure, and therefore so are you."
"Whoopee," Jack said. "And does her theory involve weird contraptions as well?"
"You mean machines? I don't think so. Why?"
"Well, I've got a couple of crates of parts sitting in my room. I don't know why they're there—I don't even know how they got there—but I've got a funny feeling their appearance is somehow connected to Melanie's disappearance."
"I can't imagine how. You mean, you don't know who sent them or where they're from?"
"Tulsa, I think. North Tulsa."
Canfield grinned. "Ever been to Tulsa?"
"No."
"I have. It's not big enough to have a 'north.'"
"Maybe it was something else then. All I know is the plans for assembling this gizmo are printed inside the lid, and I saw 'N. Tulsa' scribbled along an edge."
"N. Tulsa…" Canfield said softly. "N. Tul—" Suddenly he straightened in his wheelchair. "Dear God! It couldn't have been 'Tesla,' could it?"
Jack tried to picture the lid. "Could have been. It was kind of scrawled and I didn't pay that much attention because—"
Canfield was wheeling toward the door. "Let's go!"
"Where?"
"Your room. I want to see this myself."
Jack wasn't crazy about a guest in his room, but if Canfield knew something about those crates…
"Where's Tesla?" Jack said as they took the elevator down one stop.
"Not where—who. I can't believe you've never heard of him."
"Believe it. Who is Tesla?"
"A long story, not worth telling if I'm wrong."
Jack followed him to his own room. A disturbing thought struck him as he was unlocking the door.
"How come you know where my room is?"
Canfield smiled. "After I sensed those scars on you, I made it my business to find out. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Probably half the people here know where you're staying."
"Why the hell should they care?"
"Because you're an unknown quantity. Some may suspect you're with the CIA, some may think you were sent by MJ-12, or maybe even an agent of the devil."
"Swell."
"You're surrounded by people who believe that nothing is as it seems. What did you expect?"
"You've got a point there."
That does it, he thought. This was like his worst nightmare. First thing in the morning, I'm out of here.
Jack had left the lights on, and allowed Canfield to precede him into the room. The crates lay open on the floor dead ahead, and Canfield rolled directly to them. He picked up one of the lids, scanned its inner surface.
"The other one," Jack said.
Canfield checked that one and slapped his hand against it when he found what he was looking for.
"Yes!" he cried, his voice an octave higher than usual. "It's him! Nikola Tesla!"
Jack read over his shoulder. Now that he really looked, he could see that the scrawl was "N. Tesla."
"Okay. So who is Nikola Tesla?"
"One of the great geniuses and inventors of the last three or four generations. Right up there with Edison and Marconi."
"I've heard of Edison and Marconi," Jack said. "Never heard of Tesla."
"Ever had an MRI?"
Jack leaned back against the writing table. "You mean that X-ray thing? No."
"First off, it's not an X ray. It's magnetic resonance imaging—M-R-I, get it? And the units of magnetism it uses are called 'Teslas'—one Tesla equals ten thousand Gauss—named after Nikola Tesla."
Jack was trying hard to be impressed. "Oh. Okay. But why is this genius inventor sending me stuff?"
"He's not. He died in 1943."
"I'm not happy to hear that a dead man is sending me boxes," Jack said.
Canfield rolled his eyes. "Somebody sent you these crates, but I don't believe for a moment it was Nikola Tesla. He was unquestionably a genius, but he didn't invent a way to come back from death. He was in his late twenties in the 1880s when he arrived here from Yugoslavia, and barely into his thirties when he perfected the polyphase alternating current power system. He sold the patents to Westinghouse for a million bucks—real money in those days, but still a bargain for Westinghouse. Today, every house, every appliance in the country uses AC power."
Now Jack was impressed. "So this was a real guy, then—not one of these make-believe SESOUP bogeymen?"
"Very real. But as he got older his ideas became more and more bizarre. He started talking about free energy, cosmic ray motors, earthquake generators, and death rays. Lots of fictional mad scientists were inspired by Tesla."
Something about death rays and mad scientists clicked in Jack's brain.
"The Invisible Ray," he said.
"Pardon?"
"An old Universal horror flick. Haven't seen it in ages, but I remember Boris Karloff playing a mad scientist with a death ray."
"Was he made up with bushy hair and a thick mustache?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. And he had an Eastern European name—Janos, or something."
"There you go: That was Nikola Tesla all the way. He lived in the Waldorf and had an experimental lab out on Long Island at the turn of the century where he was trying to perfect broadcast power."
"Broadcast power?" Jack said.
"Yes. You've heard of it?"
Jack only nodded. Heard of it? He'd seen it in action.
"Anyway," Canfield continued, "Tesla starting building this tower way out on Long Island in a little town called Wardenclyffe…"
Canfield's voice trailed off as his face went pale.
"Wardenclyffe, Long Island?" Jack said. "Never heard of it."
"That's because it doesn't exist anymore," Canfield said slowly. "It was absorbed by another town. It's now part of Shoreham."
Jack felt a cold tingle rush down his spine. "Shoreham? That's where Lew and Melanie live."
"Exactly." Canfield slapped a palm against his forehead. "Why didn't I see this before? All these years I've never understood why Melanie left Monroe to live in Shoreham, but now it's clear. She's been living near Tesla's old property. She must have thought some of his wilder theories and never-executed plans had to do with the Otherness."
Jack remembered what Lew had told him that first day out in their house in Shoreham.
"Lew said she was buying and selling real estate, saying it had something to do with her 'research.'"
"I knew it!"
"He said she'd buy a place, hire some guys to dig up the yard, then resell it."
Canfield was leaning forward. "Did he say where she'd buy these places?"
"Yeah. Always in the same development…along some road…" Damn. He couldn't remember the name.
"Randall Road?'
"You got it."
"Yes!" Canfield pumped his fist in the air. "Tesla's property ran along Randall Road in Wardenclyffe! That's where he built his famous tower. The old brick building that housed his electrical lab is still standing. No question about it. Melanie was definitely searching for old Tesla documents."
"You think she found something?"
"Most definitely." He nodded and pointed to the crates. "And I think it's sitting right in front of us."
"You think Melanie sent this stuff?"
"I do."
"But why to me? Why not to you?"
Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand.
Was that why?
"I wish I knew," Canfield said. He sounded hurt. "I certainly wouldn't have left it sitting around for days. I can tell you that."
"Really. What would you have done?"
"Assembled it, of course."
"Maybe she thought you might have…" He glanced at Canfield's blanket-wrapped lower body. "You know…trouble putting it together."
"Maybe," he said. He seemed cheered by the thought. "And she was probably right. But now there's two of us, so let's get to it."
"Whoa. We don't know what this thing is, or what it does. We don't know how it got here and we don't even know for sure it's from Melanie."
"It's from Melanie," he said. "I'm sure of it."
Jack wasn't sure of anything about these crates. Assembling the pieces might seem like the next logical step, but something inside him wasn't too keen on taking it.
"I only have one wrench and a couple of screwdrivers. We'll need—"
"Never fear," Canfield said, reaching around the back of his wheelchair. He removed a tool kit from the pouch back there. "I never travel without this. Let's get to work."
Still Jack hesitated. He could buy that this contraption was linked to Melanie, but he was far from convinced she'd sent it. Figuring there was safety in numbers, he decided to get some other people involved.
He pulled Kenway's pager number from his wallet and started dialing.
"What are you doing?" Canfield said.
"Calling in some help."
"We don't need help."
"Look at all those pieces. Sure we do."
"Who are you calling?"
"Miles Kenway."
"No!" He seemed genuinely upset. "Not him!"
"Why not? What's that old expression? Many hands lighten the load."
"He won't understand."
"Then we'll explain it to him."
When Kenway's beeper service picked up, Jack left a simple message: "Call Jack. Urgent." He was sure Kenway knew his room number. Everyone else seemed to.
"You shouldn't have done that," Canfield said, almost sulking. "Kenway doesn't belong here."
What's his problem? Jack wondered.
"He doesn't, but you do? How'd you reach that conclusion? The crates wound up in my room, remember?"
"He isn't part of this. We are."
"If what you've said is true, we're all part of this—whatever 'this' might be."
The phone rang. It was Kenway.
"Get up to my room," Jack told him. "I've got something to show you."
"Be right up," Kenway said. "And brother, have I got something to show you."
"Bring Zaleski," Jack told him. "And if you've got any tools, bring them along too."
"Will do."
Canfield groaned as Jack hung up the phone. "Not Zaleski too!"
"The more the merrier, I figure," Jack said as he dialed Lew's room number.
"Who now?" Canfield said. "Olive Farina?"
"Olive?" Jack said, watching Canfield closely. "She's been found?"
"No. Where have you been? She still hasn't shown up. A missing person report has been filed. Everybody's still looking for her."
Jack sensed that Canfield didn't know any more about Olive than he was saying.
No answer at Lew's room.
"I was going to ask Lew Ehler too," Jack said, hanging up. "But I guess he's gone back to Shoreham."
"Just as well." Canfield grunted with annoyance. "Zaleski and Kenway will be more than enough to handle. Whatever you do, don't mention the Otherness or that this device may be a link to it."
"Why not?"
"Because proof of the existence of the Otherness will expose Zaleski's UFO's and aliens and Kenway's New World Order for the shams they are. Who knows how they'll react. They might not be able to handle it." He pounded his fist on the armrest of his wheelchair. "I wish you hadn't called them!"
"Relax," Jack told him. "We'll order pizza and beer. We'll make this a party. Like a mini barn raising. You'll see. It'll be fun."
9
Kenway and Zaleski arrived less than fifteen minutes later. They both knew Canfield who finally seemed to have resigned himself to sharing the stage with the two newcomers.
"Take a gander at this." Kenway said, holding out a folded sheet of fax paper.
Jack opened the flimsy sheet and stared at the photo of a portly young man, blond, with a fuzzy attempt at a beard.
"Our mutual friend, I presume?"
"Exactly!" Kenway's grin was shark-like, his gray crewcut more bristly than ever as he took back the fax. "Oh, brother, is the shit ever gonna hit the fan when I pass this around tomorrow. I knew there was something phony about our fearless leader!"
Zaleski tried to get a look. "Who? Roma? What've you got there?"
"You'll find out tomorrow," Kenway said.
Jack's thoughts drifted as they argued. If Roma was a bogus identity, who was the guy running the show? Why had he created SESOUP and organized this meeting? Was he connected to Melanie's disappearance? To these boxes? And if so, why had they wound up with Jack, when he hadn't even known he was coming until the night before?
Jack's head was spinning.
"Whatever," Zaleski finally said to Kenway, then grinned at Jack as he displayed an elaborate ratchet set. "You want tools, man? We got tools. What the fuck for?"
Jack explained what he could. Neither of them needed any introduction to Nikola Tesla, it seemed. Zaleski and Kenway were awed by the prospect of assembling a contraption designed by him.
They divided the workload. Jack and Zaleski would assemble the base while Kenway and Canfield tackled the dome. The contents of each crate were dumped onto one of the two double beds, and they had just begun to work when Canfield lifted his hand.
"Shhh! What's that?"
Jack listened. Something scratching at his door. He went to the peephole but saw nothing. Yet the sound persisted. He pulled open the door—
And Roma's monkey scampered in.
"Get that fucking oversized rodent outta here!" Zaleski shouted, tossing a pillow at the monkey.
It screeched and dodged the pillow, scampered a single circuit of the room, then fled. Jack slammed the door after it.
"Don't let that damn thing in again!" Zaleski cried, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Little fucker gives me the creeps."
"For once we agree on something," Kenway said. "It shouldn't be allowed to run free."
Jack was remembering what Olive had told him about that monkey, how she'd overheard it talking to Roma…or whoever he was.
"Let's get back to business," Canfield said.
"Tesla got royally screwed by J. P. Morgan, you know," Kenway said after a few minutes. "Morgan promised to fund his broadcast power project back at the turn of the century. He let Tesla get the Wardenclyffe tower three-quarters built—"
"That would be out on Long Island?" Jack said, glancing at Canfield.
"Yes, of course," Kenway said. "Morgan let him get to a certain point, then suddenly pulled the financial rug out from under him."
"Why do that?" Jack said. "Broadcast power would be worth zillions."
"Because Morgan was one of the bankrollers of the One World conspiracy, and he and his fellows came to realize that a cheap energy source like Tesla's broadcast power would rev all the world's economies into high gear. They figured that once the secret was out, they'd lose control of those economies. Tesla had a mysterious breakdown somewhere around 1908 and was never quite the same after."
"Bullshit," Zaleski said from the other side of the room. "He had a breakdown in 1908, but it wasn't caused by no J. P. fucking Morgan. Tesla had an in on alien technology, that's why he made all his breakthroughs."
Jack glanced again at Canfield who mouthed, I warned you.
"Back in 1908, with Morgan pulling the plug on his finances, Tesla needed a dramatic demonstration that his Wardenclyffe tower worked. Peary was making a second try to reach the North Pole at the time, so Tesla contacted the expedition and said they should be on the lookout for an unusual occurrence. On June 30, he aimed a beam of energy from Wardenclyffe to an arctic area where the explosion would be seen by the Perry team. But nothing happened. He thought he'd failed. Then he heard about Tunguska."
"What's Tunguska?" Jack asked.
"A place in Siberia," Canfield said. "Half a million square acres of forest were utterly destroyed by a mysterious cataclysmic explosion on June 30, 1908."
"Right!" Zaleski said. "The same day as Tesla's demonstration. And Tunguska is on the same longitudinal line as Peary's base camp."
"Researchers have estimated the force of the blast at fifteen megatons," Canfield added. "The boom was heard over six hundred miles away. It's never been explained."
Zaleski grinned. "But Old Nik knew the truth. His beam had overshot its mark."
"It was a meteor!" Kenway said.
"Really?" Zaleski's eyebrows floated halfway to his hairline. "Then how come no meteor fragments were ever found?"
"An antimatter meteor," Kenway said, not backing down an inch. "When antimatter meets matter, there's cataclysmic destruction, with total annihilation of one or the other."
"Uh-uh, Miles, old boy. Tesla did it, and the total awesomeness of the destructive power he'd unleashed blew his circuits. He had a nervous breakdown."
"Wrong," Kenway said. "J. P. Morgan's betrayal caused the breakdown."
"Gentlemen, please," Canfield said. "We're not going to decide this here. Suffice it to way that something happened to cause Tesla to stop communicating with people for a while and to sell his land and dismantle his tower. Let's just say that Nicola Tesla was never the same after 1908 and leave it at that."
"All right," Kenway said. "As long as there's no more talk about alien technology."
"Or New World Order bullshit," Zaleski said.
"Can we just build this damn thing!" Jack snapped. "I don't want to be at it all night."
He avoided looking at Canfield. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe including these two had been a bad idea.
10
"They're assembling it!" Mauricio cried as he rushed into the room. "And as I was listening at the door I heard Miles Ken way say something about a 'our fearless leader' being a 'phony!' It's all falling apart!"
"Keep calm," Roma said. "We knew the deception would not last forever."
Sal Roma—he'd immersed himself in the character so deeply that he'd become comfortable with the name. Might as well keep up the pretense. He didn't care what name he was known by, as long as it was not his own.
"But this is too close. And we do not have the device—they do!"
"Just who is 'they?'"
"Canfield, Kenway, Zaleski, and the stranger."
"Quite a crew. I wonder if this was what Canfield wanted to see me about—that he had learned about the device?"
"Who cares why he wanted to see you?" Mauricio screeched. "The device is ours! We are supposed to use it!"
"And we shall, dear friend. Without the bother of assembling it ourselves. This is all working out very nicely."
"You are insane! The plan was—"
"Hush now, Mauricio, before you anger me. The plan is heading for the right place, it is simply taking a different course—I do not know why that is, but in good time I am sure I shall. We need only watch and follow, and step in when it is to our advantage."
Mauricio crouched on the bedspread, and wrapped his thin arms around his folded legs. His sulking pose. "This will come to a bad end, I tell you."
"A bad end…" Roma smiled. "That is the whole point, is it not?"