Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (20 page)

At least the tension he'd sensed coiling in the hotel all yesterday seemed to have eased this morning, as if a pent-up charge had been released.

He spotted Lew in the common area outside the exhibit room, and ducked toward the escalator, hoping to get away without being seen. He was itching to get over to Gia's.

But no such luck.

"Jack!" Lew called, hurrying toward him. "Have you found any leads?" he asked when he reached him.

Jack shook his head. "Nothing useful. Look," he said slowly, not sure exactly how to phrase this, "I don't know if I'm the right guy for this job."

Lew stared at him with a stricken look. "You can't be serious."

Yeah, he could be ... pretty much.

"I'll give you the money back, Lew."

"I don't care about the money. It's Mel I want!" His face screwed up. He looked like he was about to cry.

"Easy, Lew."

"Don't say that when you don't know what she means to me. I was nothing before I met her."

"I thought you said you owned that plant over in—"

"Yeah, sure, I owned it, but I was letting it go to hell. I thought it was too much for me, that I wasn't up to running a business by myself. I was trying to sell it when I met her. She turned me around. She told me I could do it. She said I was perfectly capable of handling it, and she helped me. She showed me how. And you know what? She was right. I damn well
could
do it. I just never believed it. With this gimpy leg, I was never able to keep up with the other kids while I was growing up—couldn't run worth a damn, couldn't climb worth a damn—and that's how I began to think of myself: not worth a damn."

"Yeah, but—" Jack said, trying to sneak a word in. He didn't need to hear Lew's life story.

"But Mel changed all that. In my whole life I've never felt so good about myself. And it's all because of Mel. That's why you've got to find her, Jack. Without her, life means nothing to me. And you're the only one. 'Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand.' Remember?"

"Yeah," Jack said glumly, feeling trapped. "I remember."

"So please, I'm begging you—"

"All right. I'll keep plugging, but—"

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!"

Lew tried to wrap him in a bear hug but Jack dodged clear.

"Hey, hey. None of that. We haven't even known each other two days. But I've got to tell you, it's not looking great."

"You're the one," Lew said with a burst of confidence. "Mel said you're the one and Melanie's never wrong."

"Let's hope so," Jack said.

6

Roma stood with a group of SESOUP members, trying to appear interested in their vacuous blather as he kept an eye on the stranger. The man who called himself Jack Shelby was in animated conversation with Lew Ehler at the far end of the common area. He wished he knew the connection between those two.

He heard a sudden burst of high-pitched screeching and turned to see Mauricio scampering toward him across the floor. Something in the creature's voice sounded almost like ... terror.

Roma stooped and extended his hand toward Mauricio, to allow him to scamper up to his shoulder, but Mauricio, eyes wide with apprehension, was having none of it. He grabbed Roma's fingers and began tugging him toward the elevators.

A prickle of apprehension urged Roma to follow him. Had he found the device? Had something gone wrong with it?

He put on a wry smile and turned to the knot of attendees. "Excuse me, but apparently Mauricio wants lunch. We'll finish this discussion later."

They laughed as he moved off. At least he was free of those dullards, but what could have put Mauricio in this state? He saw the elevator doors open and half a dozen attendees step out, leaving the car empty. He hurried inside and pressed the "8" button.

"The Twins!" Mauricio said breathlessly as soon as the doors slid shut. "I saw one of the Twins!"

A chill rippled down Roma's back. "Impossible!"

"Don't say it's impossible when I saw him with these two eyes!"

"Where?"

"On the eighth floor—
your
floor."

The chill became a frozen hand against his spine. "Lots of other people on that floor as well. Just one Twin? What was he doing?"

"Sneaking along."

"Near my room?"

"No. He was at the other end of the hall. I didn't stay around to see any more. I was afraid I'd be recognized."

Roma glanced up and saw a red "6" on the floor indicator. Quickly he jabbed the "7" button.

"Good idea," Mauricio said. "You wouldn't want to step out of the elevator and come face to face with the Twins."

"They cannot possibly know who I am. But your true nature is not so well insulated. They might spot you. As for me, I'm sure I could walk right past them without their guessing."

"Why else would they be here? It's obvious the Enemy knows—"

"Hush," Roma said as the car stopped. "Let me think."

The doors opened onto the seventh floor elevator alcove. Roma stepped out, pressed the down button, and checked the hallway. Empty. As the elevator doors closed, he paced the alcove, trying to order his thoughts.

The Twins—ruthless, relentless agents of the opposition. Created sometime during World War Two as watchmen, after the first guardian was released from his duties, they had proved to be a nettlesome pair, barging into areas where the Otherness was making inroads. But their ham-handed methods often proved effective, and the men-in-black myth that had sprung up around them tended to work in their favor.

But now they might prove more than nuisances; now they could ruin everything. Worse, they would destroy him on sight—if they recognized him.

"Let us consider this logically," Roma whispered. "We can assume they do not know that I am The One. If they did, they would have grabbed me at the first opportunity—they would not care where, public or private ... while I was giving the welcoming address last night, for instance—and torn me to pieces in front of everyone."

"But they must know
something
," Mauricio said. "Why else would they be here? Unless ... "

"Unless what?"

"Unless they know what the Ehler woman discovered."

"Good thought, Mauricio. That might be it. Although, I will bet they know only that Melanie Ehler discovered
something
, and not what, and that is why they are here. They must have followed her husband right to our doorstep."

The slam of a door down the hall jolted Roma. It was followed immediately by the chime of the elevator car heading down. Roma leaped inside and jabbed the lobby button until the doors closed.

"Now will you abandon this folly?" Mauricio said quickly—neither knew how much time they had before the elevator picked up another passenger. "As I've said all along, it is not yet your time. Too many things have already gone wrong, and even if they hadn't, the arrival of the Twins alone is reason enough to abort it."

Roma shook his head. "These are merely complications. We will go ahead as planned. The second and final delivery is tonight."

"But we haven't located the first yet!"

"Then you must keep searching, Mauricio. Find that device!"

The elevator doors opened, admitting a young couple. Roma was glad of that. He knew Mauricio had more to say but he didn't want to hear it. All he needed was another twenty-four hours, and he would be able to fulfill his destiny.

7

"Look at your scars," Gia said, tracing her fingers across his chest. 'They're all inflamed."

Jack leaned against the tile wall of the shower stall with closed eyes. An hour of vigorous lovemaking had left him with partially vulcanized knees. The steam from the hot water was easing him into a pleasantly tranquil state of paralysis.

He opened his eyes and watched the water course over Gia's pale, lithe body as she leaned against him. The flow had molded her short blond hair against her scalp. He reveled in the soft feel of her.

The bathroom was old-fashioned white tile with time-darkened grout. But the enclosed shower was relatively new and roomy.

At Jack's urging, Gia and Vicky had moved into the Westphalen townhouse on Sutton Square. It was unofficially Vicky's anyway—she was listed in her aunts' will as the final heir. She'd be the legal owner when Grace and Nellie Westphalen were declared officially dead, but just when that would happen—their bodies never would be found—was anyone's guess. Since there was no one to object to Gia and Vicky living in the place and keeping it up, they'd done just that.

With what seemed like enormous effort, Jack looked down at the three red lines running diagonally across his chest, starting near his left shoulder and ending at the lower border of his right ribs.

The scene strobed through his mind as if it had been yesterday. Battery Park ... Kusum's ship burning in the harbor ... the scar-lipped rakosh closing in on Gia and Vicky ... Jack clinging to its back, trying to blind it ... the creature peeling him off and slashing at him ... the talons of its three-fingered hand raking fire across his chest ...

"Not
all
the scars," he said. "Just the ones made by that rakosh."

"Funny. They weren't red last time we made love."

"Yeah, well, they've been kind of itchy lately." At least he assumed they were the source of that itching out in Monroe the other day. "I dreamed about the rakoshi again last night."

"Again? Bad?"

He nodded, thinking: Please don't ask if you were in it.

Instead, she touched the scars again. "I'm hoping the whole thing will eventually seem like just a bad dream. But you'll always have these as reminders."

"I like to think of them as proof that we really did run up against those things."

"Who wants proof?" Gia said, snuggling tighter against him. "I want to forget them—forget they ever existed."

"But they were real, right? We didn't just imagine them."

She stared at him. "Are you serious? Of course they were real. How can you even ask?"

"Because of the people I've been hanging with at the conference. UFOs and aliens and Antichrists are real to them. If one of them said to a friend, 'Are the gray aliens real?' he'd get the same look you gave me just now, and the friend would say, 'Are you serious? Of course they're real. How can you even ask?' You see what I'm getting at? These people are absolutely sure these conspiracies, these beings, these secret organizations are real."

"Shared delusions," Gia said with a slow nod. She began soaping his chest, hiding the scars with lather. "I see what you mean."

"To me, they're nut cases. I mean, talk to any one of them for five minutes and you
know
that someone has stopped payment on their reality check. But what if you and I went around talking about the rakoshi? Wouldn't people think the same about us? And with good reason—because we can't prove a damn thing. We have no hard evidence except these scars of mine which, as far as anybody knows, could have been self-inflicted."

"It happened, Jack. We lived through it—just barely—so we know."

"But
do
we? What do we know of reality but what we remember? When it comes right down to it, who we
are
is what we remember. And from what I've read about memory lately, it isn't all that reliable."

"Stop talking like this. You're scaring me."

"I'm scaring me."

"At least we're not out there saying rakoshi are planning to take over the world, or responsible for everything bad that happens."

"No ... not yet."

"Now cut that out," she said, landing a gentle punch on the chest. "We're different from them because we're not focusing on it. That awful experience happened, we've dealt with it, and we've put it behind us—believe me, I'm doing my best to
forget
it. But they make it the center of their lives; they extrapolate it into a worldview."

"Yeah. Why would anybody want to do that? Isn't reality complicated enough?"

"Maybe that's the problem," Gia said. "Most of the time I find reality
too
complicated. Something happens because of this, something else happens because of that, another thing happens because of a combination of this, that, and the other thing."

"And lots of times," Jack added, "things seem to happen for no damn reason at all."

"Exactly. But an all-encompassing conspiracy simplifies all of that. You don't have to wonder any more. You don't have to fit the pieces together—you've got it all figured out already. Everyone else might be in the dark, but
you
know the real skinny."

"Come to think of it, a lot of those SESOUPers do look kind of smug." Jack sighed. "But in spite of everything you've said, some of them almost remind me of ... me."

"Get out."

"I'm serious. Consider: They're always looking over their shoulders, I'm always looking over mine."

"With good reason."

"Let me finish. They tend to be loners; until I met you, I was a loner—big time. They're outsiders, I'm an outsider."

"Way outside."

"They're considered weirdoes by mainstream society, I'll land in the joint if mainstream society ever finds out about me. Really, despite the fact that I'm keeping my mouth shut, how do I know I'm not just like them, or"—he held up his thumb and forefinger, a quarter inch apart "this far" from being one of them?"

"Because I say you're not," Gia said, then kissed him.

If only that was enough, he thought, closing his eyes and holding her tight against him, needing her warmth, her presence, her very existence. Gia was his anchor to reality, to sanity. Without her and Vicky, who knew what wild shore he might be sailing toward.

He glanced down once more at the reddened diagonal streaks of his scars and suddenly the image of Roma was before him, from the cocktail party last night, his three middle fingers hooked into rakoshi-like talons, raking the air between them along the exact angle of Jack's scars.

"What's wrong?" Gia said as Jack's spine stiffened reflexively.

"Nothing," he told her. "Muscle spasm."

He held her tighter to keep her from seeing his expression, knowing it would give away his shock, his bafflement.