Cold City (Repairman Jack - the Early Years Trilogy) (30 page)

“I was depending on you for that.”

Julio choked on his coffee.  “Me?  Hey, meng, why you asking me?  Because I’m Puerto Rican?”

Jack hadn’t expected this.  “Well, no, I just–”

“Yeah, I know what you
just
.  You just
assume
the PR knows how to steal a car, is that how it is?”

“Hey, listen–”

“No, you answer me, meng.  Is that how it is?”

“So you’re telling me you do
not
know how to hot-wire a car.”

“Course I do.  But you shouldn’t just assume, know what I’m sayin’?”

“All right, all right.  I–”

Julio grinned and backhanded Jack across his upper arm.  “Gotcha!”

Jack shook his head and smiled. “Bastard.  So, we gonna do it?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the first step?”

“We get a flat-head screwdriver and a hammer and find the oldest car we can that ain’t locked.”

“Why old?  I might want something flashy.”

“You want flash, I’ll flash you my ass. We want old because they got less safety shit on them.  If you’re lucky, you just hammer the screwdriver into the keyhole, give it a twist, and she start up.”

Jack shook his head.  “Not looking to screw up anybody’s car.”

“What, you got like ethics ’bout boostin’ a car?  You kiddin’ me?”

“Just want to borrow it, is all.”

“Then we need some tools.”

Julio knew a mom-and-pop hardware store around the corner.  He bought rubber cleaning gloves – pink, because that was the only color available in the cheap brand – a wire cutter/stripper, and a Phillips screwdriver.  Then they walked down the block, Jack on the street side, Julio on the sidewalk, testing door handles.  They found a 1984 Plymouth Reliant coupe with an unlocked passenger door.  This had been a new car when Jack had been hot-wiring.  It might have come off the assembly line some sort of blue but that had faded to a dull gray trimmed with rust. 

Julio slid over behind the wheel and motioned to Jack.  “Get in.  I’ll show you how it’s done.”

He knew how it was done, but he’d never done it in daylight.  He looked around, suddenly feeling exposed. 

“Right out here in public?”

“It’s still early on a Saturday.  People are asleep, like I should be.  Get your ass in here.  The whole thing is looking like you belong here.  Do that and nobody give you a second look.”

As Jack slid in and slammed the door, the smell hit him.  By all appearances, the owner was a cigar smoker and a sloppy eater.  Spilled drinks stained the seats, petrified French fries dotted the floor.  It smelled like he’d been smoking rotten food.  No wonder he’d left the door unlocked.  Who’d want this rolling landfill?  On the other hand, maybe he was hoping it would be stolen.

Where was Julio’s cologne when you needed it?  Even his worst was better than this.

Julio pushed the seat back and checked under the steering column.  He found what he wanted and put the Phillips to work. In less than a minute he’d popped the plastic cowl.  He tossed that in the backseat and tugged some wires loose.

“See the two reds?  One’s always hot, the other’s not until the key turns and connects them.  Since we don’t have a key, we connect them by hand.”

Jack played naïve as Julio put on the pink rubber gloves.

“That color is so you,” Jack said.

“Hot pink to help a hot guy do a hot wire.”

Snip-snip, strip-strip, twist-twist, and the wires were joined.  Jack jumped as Richard Neer’s voice came through the radio.

Julio grinned.  “Easy, man.  It’s only the FAN.”

Jack turned it off.  He’d noticed a change in Julio’s diction since he’d entered the car.

“What happened to ‘meng’?”

Julio looked flustered for a second.  “Oh, yeah, well, that’s just my Rican thing.  Gotta project a certain amount of street, y’know?”

“You a native?”

“Full blood Nuyorican – born in Harlem Hospital, grew up on East 102
.”

“You sound like you grew up speaking English.”

“Yeah.  My mother insisted.  My grandmother never learned so we had to speak Spanish to her, but the rest of the time it was English all the way.  I could sound pure gringo if I wanted to, but I don’t.  ’Cause I ain’t pure gringo.  I’m no kinda gringo.”

“I hear you,
meng
.”

Julio dropped his head and groaned, then looked at Jack.  “I say this as a friend: You don’t
ever
wanna do that.”

For kicks, Jack pushed it.  “Really?  I don’t sound ‘street’?”

“No, you sound beat – as in
lame
, not -nik.”

“I get the feeling you’re saying I’m too white bread to be street.”

“In a nicer way, but yeah, that’s what I was getting at.  You saying ‘meng’ is wrong in so many ways, too many to count.  It’s wrong like… like turkey-flavored ice cream is wrong.”

Jack’s gorge rose at the thought.  “
That
wrong?”

“Yeah, that wrong.  Anyway, the red wire’s now hot–”

“Thus the term ‘hot wire.’”

Julio gave him a sour look.

Jack shrugged.  “Can’t help it.  When I was a kid I ruled at Master of the Obvious.”

“We don’t play that in Harlem, but I believe it.  Okay.  Here’s your ignition wire.”

He snipped that and stripped a half inch of insulation from the tip.

“Now watch,” he said.

As he put his foot on the gas, he touched the ignition wire to the exposed area of the hot wire.  The engine roared to life.

“You da meng!” Jack said. 

Julio’s face showed real pain.  “Jack… please?”

“Okay, okay.”

Julio put it into gear and pulled out onto the street.

“We head for the Bronx.”

Jack couldn’t resist: “No thonx.”

4

Julio drove him to a mixed commercial-residential area along Crosby Street in the Pelham Bay section.  It reminded Jack a little of his own current neighborhood.

Julio pointed to some apartments over an Italian bakery.  “The
hijo de puta
lives on the third floor there.”

“Think he’s home?”

Julio shrugged.  “Who knows?”

“You know his number?”

“By heart.  I call him alla time, tellin’ him to stay away from Rosa.”

Jack pointed to a phone booth a block up.  “Pull in up there and tell me the number.”

Jack hopped out, dropped a coin, and punched in the number.  He hung up when a man answered.

Yep.  Home.

They parked the car and wandered into a used bookstore across the street.  The delicious smell of old paper engulfed him as he stepped inside the door.  Two small tables, each flanked by a pair of ladderback chairs sat in the sunlight streaming through the window.  He found a bin full of paperback books with their covers missing.  Fifty cents apiece.  Such a deal, as Abe might say.  Keeping an eye on Zalesky’s door through the front window, he poked through them until he found an author he’d heard of.  Robert Ludlum:
The Icarus Agenda
.  Hadn’t read that one.  For half a buck, how could he say no?  He found a Stephen King novel for Julio.

A carafe of coffee sat beside the cash register.  Jack paid for the books and two paper cups.  They each poured themselves a cup and settled at one of the sun-soaked tables.

Julio looked askance at the coverless book.  “This is all messed up, meng.” 

“The whole box was like that.”

“We gonna sit here and
read
?”

“No, we’re gonna pretend to read while we keep an eye on the
hijo de puta
’s doorway.”

“Hey, you say that pretty good.”

Well, why not?  He’d heard Julio say it enough times.

Jack flipped the title page and the first thing that caught his eye was a warning:

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

Swell. 

So far this week he’d smuggled illegal alien minors across numerous state lines, killed one man, broke another’s knees, and now this. 

A life of crime, that’s what I’m living.

He started reading.  He was participating in robbing an author of a royalty.  Not quite on a par with the rest of the week, but still it bothered him.  However, he’d already bought it and needed it for a prop.  Could be a long while before a
hijo de puta
sighting.

Not so long, it turned out.  Less than two hours later, a trim, darkly handsome guy in his early thirties stepped out of the door next to the bakery.

“That him?”

Julio looked up.  His lips twisted into a snarl as his fists crushed the book.  He opened his mouth to speak–

“Never mind,” Jack said, rising.  “I’m going to follow him.”  Julio began to push back his chair but Jack waved him down.  “Stay put.”

“But–” 

“He knows you.  Never seen me.”

Jack stepped out into the cold fall air.  He’d been getting a little drowsy inside and found it bracing. 

Zalesky was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and conservative striped tie.  A long way from the Saturday morning dress code of his neighbors.  As he walked south he adjusted a dark fedora over his slicked-back hair.  Looked like he was on his way to a Mormon prayer meeting.  Or a con. 

Jack followed him around the corner onto Roberts Avenue to a plain black Dodge Dynasty sedan parked on the street.  As Zalesky got in and started the engine, Jack realized he was pointed away from Crosby.  If he headed up that way, they’d lose him.  He looked around for a taxi.  He could follow and call Julio later. His pulse picked up a little as he realized the street showed not a trace of yellow.  To Jack’s relief, Zalesky pulled out of his space, did a three-point turn, then cruised back Jack’s way. 

Jack turned and beat him back to Crosby.  Zalesky passed him on the corner and turned south.  Jack ran to the bookstore and signaled Julio through the window. 

“Come on!  Gotta move!”

He and Julio raced for their car and got it rolling.  Fortunately, lots of other cars were traveling south on Crosby as well and Zalesky hadn’t gone far. 

Even better when Zalesky turned into a car wash.  Julio pulled over and they waited.

“Car don’t even look dirty,” Julio said.

“I’ll bet he’s got a good reason for wanting it spotless.”

“Meeting a mark?”

“Why else?”

They waited.  About five minutes later the Dodge, all shiny and glittering with a few remaining drops of water, emerged from the car wash and turned their way. 

Julio trailed Zalesky to the Bruckner, and then all the way south to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  They exited the BQE into Brooklyn Heights.  Jack admired the panoramic view of the lower half of Manhattan Island.  Beautiful, even if marred by the jutting towers of the World Trade Center.  Jack called them the Twix Towers.  They weren’t simply too damn big, they were obnoxiously unimaginative, unbalancing the skyline.  He might have forgiven them all that, but then they’d gone and provided a location for that awful remake of
King Kong
.  Unforgivable.

“Looks like we’re in
Moonstruck
territory,” he said aloud.

“What’s
Moonstruck
?” Julio said. 

“A movie.  With Cher.”

Julio grinned.  “You a Cher fan?”

“She’s okay.  Got dragged to it.  It was set right around here.” 

Karina had wanted to see it when she was home that first Christmas break after starting college.  Nicolas Cage must have turned her on because the sex was hotter than usual that night.

These local streets were slow and narrow, and Jack started to worry that Julio was staying too close behind Zalesky.

“Let a car or two get between us.”

“I might lose him.”

“Better than him realizing he’s being tailed.  Worse yet, recognizing you through the windshield.”

“Got it.”

True to his word, at the next opportunity he let a car pull out of a parking space and get between him and Zalesky.

Jack figured losing Zalesky would be bad luck, but it left the option of following him another day.  If they were made, however, Zalesky would be on guard from then on and another chance would be unlikely.

They followed the Dodge on a winding path until it double-parked before a three-story row house.  Jack turned his head as Julio glided past.

“What now?”

Jack thought about that.  He’d been playing this by ear.  He still wasn’t sure he was going to see anything happen today, although the suit, the tie, and getting the car washed were pretty good indications.

“Drive around the block and park where we can watch.”

Julio did just that and idled in a no-parking zone by a fire hydrant with a view of the row house and the Dodge.  A few minutes later Zalesky emerged with a dowdy woman who appeared to be in her seventies.  He held the door for her as she lowered herself into the rear of the Dodge, then he walked around to the driver side.

“That looks like one of the marks he used to brag about to Rosa.”

“Always old ladies?”

“Sometimes old guys, but mostly the ladies.  Mostly because he’s a charmer.  You know, good looking, big smile, talks the talk.  People like him.  Even I liked him.  Didn’t like him sniffing after Rosa but she was
loco
for him and I was her younger brother, so what did I know about love?” 

“Why old?  No jealous boyfriends to get in the way?”

“You’d think, but he told her he needed his marks from a certain generation because he had to be able to ‘appeal to their sense of civic duty.’”

“He said that?  Their ‘civic duty’?  What the hell did that mean?”

“Yeah.  I asked Rosa but she didn’t know.  He wouldn’t say.  Wouldn’t say a lot about his scams.  Said it was ‘proprietary information.’”  Julio shook his head.  “Told her not to marry a gringo.”

“Hey, we’re not all bad.”

“Ain’t sayin’ that.  But if she stayed in the community, well, we got ways of handling certain situations.”

Jack understood.  “But Zalesky’s out of reach.  Nobody can take him aside and straighten him out.”