Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross (44 page)

"Sorry." Jack forced himself to perch on one of the chairs at her kitchen table.

"Have a donut. You haven't touched one."

When their schedules permitted, Jack liked to stop by Gia's early on a Saturday or Sunday with a box of donuts.

He picked up a brown-sugar cruller, crispy on the outside, soft and white within, and nibbled. He wasn't hungry.

"You're looking good this morning, mama," he told Gia.

And she was. Her color was better and she seemed to have more energy.

She smiled. "Thanks. I'm feeling better. I run out of gas sooner than usual, but I should do better as my blood count gets back to normal."

He heard Vicky laugh and looked up. She sat on the far side of the table, reading a book Jack had bought her last month. The sugared creme donut she'd just finished—her favorite—had left her with a snowy mustache. Appropriately she was reading, for the umpteenth time, Ogden Nash's
The Tale of Custard the Dragon
.

"What's so funny, Vicks?"

"Listen," Vicky said, grinning at him. " 'Meowch!' cried Ink, and 'Ooh!' cried Belinda, for there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.'" She laughed again. "
Winda
! I love that part!"

Vicky loved wordplay, which was why Nash was perfect for her.

"I'll get you the sequel. Something about Custard and a Wicked Knight."

"Another Custard book? When are you getting it?"

"Soon as I can find a copy."

As Vicky went back to reading, Jack looked up and found Gia staring at him.

"She's on your mind, isn't she." She spoke in a low tone with a glance across the table. "And I don't mean Miss Big Ears."

Jack had told her about Jamie Grant.

"Yeah. Not only do I not have a clue where she is, I don't even know if she's still, um, with us." He pounded a fist on his knee. "I shouldn't have let her go back to her office."

"And just how were you going to stop her? She's a grown woman who's got a right to make her own decisions. You of all people—"

"I know, I know. It's just… I can't help it, I feel… responsible."

Jack knew he shouldn't. What could he have done? Abducted her and tied her up in his trunk?—which was probably just what Jensen had done. But if he had done it first she'd be safe right now.

Gia was staring at him. "I thought we agreed that you were going to avoid rough stuff."

"This started off as a missing person thing and I—"

"Missing?" Vicky said. "Who's missing?"

"It's okay," Jack said. "No one you know. And he's been found."

"Oh, good." She went back to her book.

"But the problem," Gia said, speaking barely above a whisper, "is that you've traded one missing person for another. And she may be more than missing, she may be… like that poor security guard at the paper. This is not what I call avoiding rough stuff."

"Wasn't supposed to be like this." He sighed. "At least that blackmail fix-it's over with. No rough stuff there."

Clocking a mook over the head with a hot plate didn't really fit Jack's definition of no rough stuff, but he decided not to mention it.

He stifled a yawn. He hadn't gotten much sleep last night. Following Jensen had turned out to be a waste of time. He'd looked for a chance to get in the GP's face—like maybe at a rest stop—and pull a little carjack action. Force Jensen to drive him to Jamie.

But the opportunity had never presented itself. Jensen drove nonstop to a garage on East Eighty-seventh, disappeared inside. He reappeared a few minutes later and entered the apartment building next door.

Home? Probably. Holding Jamie there? No way.

So he'd driven over to the West Side where he spotted the Dormentalist surveillance team still on the job.

Again the question: Watching for her or him?

"Where is she?" he said, thinking aloud.

Gia sipped her tea. "Kind of hard for me to speculate about someone I've never met, but from what you've told me about her, she doesn't sound like a person who'd slink away in silence."

"You've got that right. Even if she was hiding in some kind of foxhole, she'd still be sending dispatches from the front." He balled a fist. "They've got her, damn it. They've got her and I don't know where."

Gia covered his fist with her hand. "You've done all you can. The police are on it, and you pointed them in the right direction. It's out of your hands."

"I suppose it is." Easier to say than accept. "But I've got a bad feeling that this story is not headed for a happy ending."

Gia gave his fist a squeeze but said nothing.

"And on the subject of missing women," Jack said, digging his Tracfone out of his pocket, "I still haven't been able to touch base with the lady who got me involved in this mess in the first place."

He punched in the number for Maria Roselli—the only name he had for her—and listened to her phone ring and ring.

"Still not answering." He stabbed the END button. "I'm going to take a quick walk down to Beekman." A ten-block trip; wouldn't take him long. "She may be there and just not answering."

Jack had told Gia that he'd been hired by a mother to locate her Dormentalist son. It had always been his practice never to mention names, even to her. Gia understood that. He'd felt free to discuss Jamie Grant with her, though, because she hadn't hired him.

But names weren't all he kept from Gia. He never mentioned details that he knew might upset her. Like the flap of Anya's skin, for instance. That was a little too gruesome to share.

He had it folded in the pocket of his jacket now. If he got to see the lady known as Maria Roselli, maybe it would shock her into answering a few questions.

"Be back soon."

"Be careful."

"I was born careful."

Gia rolled her eyes but couldn't hide the hint of a smile. "Oh, puh-
lease!"

2

Esteban shook his head. "She's out shopping."

"You're sure?" Jack said.

The two of them stood in the white marble lobby that was becoming familiar to Jack. Too familiar.

"Put her in the cab myself. Mrs. Roselli goes shopping every Saturday morning. She and Benno."

"She takes that big dog shopping?"

Esteban smiled. "Benno goes wherever Mrs. Roselli goes."

"And you gave her my message—about calling me?"

"Of course." He looked offended. "I not only told her, I wrote it down and handed her the note."

"Okay, well do it again. And this time tell her I have something she needs to see."

Esteban nodded. "Something she needs to see… I'll tell her."

Jack stepped onto the sidewalk and started walking back uptown. Frustration burned like a furnace in his belly.

Nothing was happening.
Nothing
.

Maybe he should just go with it for now. Kick back and hang with Gia and Vicks for the day and wait for something to break. But he knew he'd be lousy company, his attention constantly wandering elsewhere.

He had to do something.

Maybe go for a ride. To Jersey, perhaps. To a cement plant where they poured concrete into a strange mold.

It was a Saturday in mid-fall. The place might not even be open.

All the better.

He sighed. Probably a waste of time. Certainly nowhere near the fun of making fatso Cordova's life miserable. Jack almost wished he hadn't finished the blackmail fix so quickly.

3

"Sister Maggie?"

"No, this is Sister Agnes. Sister Margaret Mary isn't available at the moment. Can I help you?"

"Oh, hi, Sister. This is Maggie's cousin. I was just calling about Uncle Mike."

"
Not bad news, I hope
."

"Well, it isn't good. Do you know when she'll be back?"

"
She's working in the soup kitchen in the basement of the church. She'll be there until after the midday meal. I can give you the number if you want to call over there
."

"No, no, that's okay. Don't even tell her I called. You know how she is. She'll just worry. I'll catch her later."

Richie Cordova hung up the phone.

"Yessiree," he said. "Catch her later."

4

Jack parked his rented Buick in the same spot as last night, identifiable by the crushed brush and weeds between the two trees. A good spot in the dark but kind of obvious in daylight.

Yeah, well, so what? He'd looked around and hadn't found anyplace better, so this would have to do. Frustration on the Jamie Grant front had made him edgy and grumpy and a little reckless.

The afternoon sun was fading behind a blanket of low clouds as Jack reached the lip of the Wm. Blagden & Sons driveway. He looked down on the plant and its sandy, barren grounds, virtually devoid of vegetation beyond patches of scrub brush and clusters of the ubiquitous and fearless ailanthus.

The place looked more deserted than last night. Not a car in sight. Apparently Blagden & Sons took weekends off—at least this particular weekend.

Figuring the less time out in the open the better, Jack broke into a trot down the steep slope of the entry drive, slowing to a walk when he reached the fleet of silent trucks. He wound through them cautiously. Just because the place looked deserted didn't mean it was.

He made his way to the tall building and found his window with its clean corner of glass. He peeked through. Light filtering through dusty skylights lit an interior much changed since last night. The tall metal cylinder was gone, replaced by a winch-equipped flatbed truck. A large concrete pillar, etched with the angular symbols he'd seen on the cylinder, lay on the truck's bed. Chains and straps locked it down.

This is what they'd been pouring last night. Here was one of the columns Luther Brady was burying all over the world. Was he nuts? It was a hunk of doodad-decorated concrete.

Jack knew there had to be more to it. Brady had to think it was part of some grand plan, a means to some momentous end, else why go to the trouble and expense of building that illuminated globe in a closed-off alcove?

Jack needed a closer look at those symbols.

He rounded the corner to the door where the cars had been parked last night: locked. He'd left his kit of B-and-E tools in the trunk of the rental. He could run up and get them, but hated wasting the time.

Out of curiosity, he stepped around the next corner to a pair of truck-sized double doors and found them unlocked. A thick chain and heavy-duty padlock lay in a bucket to the right.

Jack slipped between the doors and stood in the high, open space, listening. Silence. On guard, he approached the truck and its cargo.

As he stood beside the bed and looked up at the column, studying the symbols, he wished he'd planned this better. He should have brought a camera to photograph the thing. Someone at Columbia or NYU might be able to translate the symbols. He thought again about going back to the car, this time to hunt up a 7-Eleven or drugstore that sold those dinky little disposable cameras. Pick one up and bring it back here and…

His scanning gaze passed and then darted back to a small brownish area that bulged amid the unbroken gray of the rest of the column. Enough out of place to pique Jack's curiosity.

He moved to his left until he was directly opposite it. He leaned on the bed of the truck for a closer look. Reddish brown… almost like…

A chill like cold, wet concrete sludged down Jack's spine.

He levered himself up to the truck bed where he went down onto one knee for a closer look. It did look like blood. If this was part of the design, it was the only one like it that Jack could see.

He pulled out his Spyderco Endura and flipped out the blade. After a quick glance around—still no one coming—he began chipping at the concrete. It took only a few short quick jabs to loosen a dime-sized flake. As it dropped to the bed Jack touched the newly exposed gray surface.

It gave—just a little. It was soft, firm, definitely not concrete. This was flesh. This was someone's hand.

His intestines wound themselves into a Gordian knot as he chipped away more of the thin concrete overlaying the knuckles, revealing more gray flesh. The thumb, the index—this was a left hand—then the middle finger, then the ring, then…

The pinkie was a stub… a bloody stub.

Jack dropped his other knee to the bed and sagged.

"Oh, shit," he whispered. "Oh, goddamn."

Unlike Jamie's, this one had been recently amputated. And Jamie's shorty had been on her right—

Christ!

Jack crawled over the column and checked the opposite side. There he found a symbol that looked out of place. All the others had been molded into the surface, this one bulged. He began chipping away…