Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (33 page)

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?"