Scenes from the Secret History

  “Christ!” the cop said, then shouted: “Gerry – you make the call?”

  “Ambulance and back-up on the way,” said a voice from the unit.

  “All right. See who’s down.”

  Another uniform dashed out of the darkness behind the first cop and stopped within half a dozen feet of Jack. He squinted at the ruined face above Jack’s hand.

  “Oh, Jeez, it’s Carella!”

  “Shit!” said the first cop. He spoke through clenched teeth as he glared at Jack. “You dirty–”

  “Hey-hey!” Jack said. “Let’s get something straight here. I didn’t shoot your pal.”

  “Just shut the fuck up! You think I’m stupid?”

  Jack bit back an affirmative and jerked his head toward the guy on the sidewalk.

  “He did it.”

  Apparently the cop hadn’t seen the other body until now. He jumped to his feet.

  “Oh, great. Just great.”

  The second cop, the one called Gerry, eased around to the sidewalk and checked out the body.

  “This one’s cooling,” he said. “Head wound.” He whistled. “Looks like a hot load.”

  “And I suppose you had nothing to do with that, either?” the first cop said.

  “No. Him I did. But there was another cop. He went into Costin’s. I heard a shot, and then this guy–”

  “Jeez!” Gerry said. “The kid was with Carella!”

  “See if he’s all right!” the first cop said.

  Gerry dashed up the stairs and grabbed the door handle. As he pulled it open, a voice screamed from within.

  “Stay back! I got your buddy and the owner in here! Stay back or I’ll kill ‘em both!”

  Gerry scuttled back down the steps.

  “We got a hostage situation here, Fred.”

  “He’s got the kid!” Fred said. “God damn! Call the hostage team. Now!”

  As Gerry ran off, an emergency rig howled down the street and screeched to a halt. Jack explained to the EMTs what had happened and why he had his thumb sunk an inch into the wounded man’s neck. One of the techs pulled on a rubber glove and substituted his finger for Jack’s. He held it there as the wounded cop was lifted onto a stretcher.

  Jack watched for a second, then began to edge backward, preparing to slide between two parked cars.

  “No, you don’t!” Fred the cop said, jerking his pistol up level with Jack’s head. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere! Hands on the car and spread ‘em!”

  Desperation gnawed on Jack’s spine as his eyes hunted for an escape route. The street crawled with uniforms, and they all seemed to be watching him. Slowly he forced his lead-filled limbs to move, slapping his hands against the hood of the patrol car, spreading his feet. He held up okay during the frisk, but he almost lost it when his hands were yanked behind his back and the cuffs squeezed around his wrists.

  Cops, arrest, cuffs, interrogation, investigation, fingerprinting, exposure, court, lawyers, judges, jail – a recurrent nightmare for most of his adult life.

  Tonight it was real.

  The rest of the story continues in… Quick Fixes – Tales of Repairman Jack

  December

  LEGACIES

  After a 14-year holdout, I finally gave in and wrote a sequel to The Tomb.

  I’ve always been a genre hopper: SF in the 70s, horror in the 80s, medical thrillers in the 90s. In the mid-90s I signed a multi-book contract for medical thrillers. The Select and Implant had been fun but I was finding the genre confining and losing interest. I submitted Deep as the Marrow as part of the contract, but it was really a political thriller with a doctor as protagonist. The next novel I wanted to write was a techy thriller with no medical elements. In fact, it looked perfect for bringing back Repairman Jack. Just once… just this once. But the contract called for a medical thriller.

  I decided what the hell. I tipped my hat to the contract by having a doctor hire Jack. (“It’s got a doctor and it’s a thriller – that makes it a medical thriller, yo.”) The publisher wasn’t fooled for a moment, but they liked the novel and Legacies was published in 1998. I had so much fun with Jack that I decided to do one (just one) more. That was Conspiracies. By then I was hooked. So I gave in.

  Eventually I came to realize that this series was the answer to my genre-hopping dilemma. I can do a conspiracy novel, a medical thriller, a high-tech thriller, a haunted house story... I can do any kind of novel I feel like writing. As long as Repairman Jack’s in it, the marketing department’s happy, the readers are happy, and I’m happy. What had seemed like a trap turned out to be liberating.

  Legacies danced along the borders of Tesla territory but had no supernatural elements. The events of The Tomb are alluded to (Jack has scars) but play no part in the story. You could start the series with Legacies and go back to The Tomb later (as long as you read it before All the Rage).

  One impetus for bringing Jack back was a news story about the theft of a load of Christmas toys being put aside for children with AIDS. It infuriated me. I wanted to get even with that guy soooo bad. So I sicced Jack on him…

  LEGACIES

  (sample)

  FRIDAY

  1

  “It’s okay!” Alicia shouted from the rear seat as the cab jerked to the left to swing around a NYNEX truck plodding up Madison Avenue. “I’m not in a rush!”

  The driver – curly dark hair, a thick mustache, and swarthy skin – didn’t seem to hear. He jogged his machine two lanes left, then three lanes right, hitting the brakes and gunning the engine, hitting and gunning, jerking Alicia back and forth, left and right, then swerving to avoid another yellow maniacmobile trying a similar move through the morning traffic.

  Her cab’s net gain: one car length. Maybe.

  Alicia rapped on the smudged, scratched surface of the plastic divider. “Slow down, dammit! I want to arrive in one piece.”

  But the driver ignored her. If anything, he upped his speed. He seemed to be engaged in a private war against every other car in Manhattan. And God help you if you were a pedestrian.

  Alicia should have been used to this. She’d grown up in Manhattan. She hadn’t been here for a while, though. She’d moved away at eighteen for college and had stayed away for medical school and her residencies in pediatrics and infectious diseases. She hadn’t wanted to come back – what with that man and her half-brother Thomas still living here – but St. Vincent’s had made her the proverbial offer she couldn’t refuse.

  So now, after a little over a year, she was still getting used to the city’s changes. Who’d have believed they’d be able to scour off the grim sleaziness that she’d assumed to be permanently etched on Times Square?

  Cabbies too. What had happened to them? They’d always been pushy, brazen drivers – you had to be to get around in this city – but this new crop was maniacal.

  Finally they hit the Forties.

  Almost there, Alicia thought. Maybe I’ll live to see another sunset after all.

  But as they neared 48th she noticed her cab was still in the center lane, accelerating. At first she thought he was going to miss her turn off, then she saw the opening: two lanes to the right, behind a graffiti-coated delivery truck and just ahead of a bus pulling away from the curb.

  “You’re not!” Alicia cried. “Please tell me you’re not going to try to–”

  He did. And he made it – just barely – but not without forcing the bus to slam on its brakes and give him a deafening blast from its horn.

  The cabby floored it along the open stretch of 48th, then swerved violently rightward toward the curb, jerking to a halt at the address Alicia had given him when she’d slid into its rear seat down in Greenwich Village.

  “Six-seventy-five,” he said.

  Alicia sat there fuming, wishing she were strong enough to break through the partition and throttle him. She wasn’t. But she could give him a taste of his own medicine – in r
everse.

  Slowly, she inched toward the curbside door, opened it with the greatest of care, and edged herself out into the chill December air. Then she took out her wallet and began to count her change… carefully. She had about two dollars worth. She picked out a dollar-seventy-five in dimes and nickels.

  “Come on, lady,” the cabby said, leaning over the passenger seat and looking up at her through the window. “I have not all day.”

  Alicia made no sign she’d heard him as she slowly pulled five singles from her wallet, one… at… a… time. Finally, when she had exactly six-seventy-five in her hand, she handed it through the window.

  And waited.

  It didn’t take long – three seconds, tops – before the driver popped out his door and glared at her over the roof.

  “Ay! Where is tip?” He pronounced it teep.

  “Pardon me?” Alicia said sweetly. “I can’t hear you.”

  “My tip, lady! Where is it?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, holding a hand to her ear. “Your lips appear to be moving, but I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Something about my slip?”

  “My tip, goddammit! My tip! My tip! My fucking tip!”

  “Did I enjoy my trip?” she said, then let her voice go icy. “On a scale of one to ten, I enjoyed it zero… exactly the amount of your tip.”

  He made a move to come around the cab, probably figuring he could intimidate this slight, pale woman with the fine features and the glossy black hair, but Alicia held her ground. He gave her a venomous look and slipped back into his seat.

  As she turned away, she heard the cabby shout an inarticulate curse, slam his door, and burn rubber as he tore off.

  We’re even, she thought, her anger fading. But what an awful way to start a beautiful fall day.

  She put it behind her. She’d been looking forward to this meeting with Leo Weinstein and wasn’t going to let some crazy cabby upset her.

  At last she’d found an attorney who wasn’t afraid to tackle a big law firm. All of the others she’d tried – those in her limited price range – had reacted with a little too much awe when they’d heard the name Hinchberger, Rainey & Guran. Not Weinstein. Hadn’t fazed him in the least. He’d read through the will and within a day came up with half a dozen suggestions he seemed to believe would put the big boys on the defensive.

  “Your father left you that house,” he’d said. “No way they can keep it from you. Just leave it to me.”

  And so she’d done just that. Now she was going to see what he’d accomplished with the blizzard of paper he’d fired at HR&G.

  She heard a honk behind her and stiffened. If it was that cab…

  She turned and relaxed as she saw Leo Weinstein waving through the open window of a silver Lexus. He was saying something she couldn’t catch. She stepped closer.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The LIE was jammed. Just let me pull into the garage down there and I’ll be right with you.”

  “No problem.”

  She was almost to the front door of the building where Cutter and Weinstein had their offices when she was staggered by a thunderous noise. The shock wave slammed against her back like a giant hand and almost knocked her off her feet.

  Turning she saw a ball of flame racing skyward from the middle of the block, and flaming pieces of metal crashing to the ground all about her. Cars were screeching to a halt as pedestrians dove for the pavement amid glittering shards of glass tumbling from windows up and down the block. Alicia jumped back as a blackened, smoking chunk of a car trunk lid landed in front of her and rolled to her feet.

  An icy coil of horror tightened around her throat as she recognized the Lexus insignia.

  She craned her neck to look for Leo’s car, but it was… gone.

  “Oh, no! Oh, my God, no!”

  She hurried forward a few steps on wobbly knees to see if there was anything she could do, but… the car… nothing was left where it had been… just burning asphalt.

  “Oh, God, Leo! Oh, I’m so sorry!”

  She couldn’t breathe. What had happened to all the air? She had to get away from here.

  She forced her stricken body to turn and blunder back up the sidewalk, away from the smoke, the flames, the wreckage. She stopped when she reached Madison Avenue. She leaned against a traffic light post and gulped air. When she’d caught her breath, she looked back.

  Already the human vultures were gathering, streaming toward the flames, wondering what happened. And not too far away, sirens.

  She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t help Weinstein and she didn’t want to be listed as a witness. The police might get it into their heads that she was hiding something, and they might start looking into her background, her family. She couldn’t allow that. Couldn’t stand it.

  Alicia didn’t look for a taxi – the thought of being confined was unbearable. She needed space, light, air. She turned downtown.

  Poor Leo!

  She sobbed as she started walking, moving as fast as her low-heeled shoes would allow. But even if she’d worn her sneakers she would not have been able to outrun the guilt, the terrible suspicion that she was somehow responsible for Leo Weinstein’s death.

  2

  “Thank God you’re here!” Raymond said as Alicia walked though the Center’s employee entrance. “I’ve been beeping you since eight o’clock. Why didn’t…?” His voice trailed off as he looked at her. “Christ, Alicia, you look like absolute, total shit.”

  That was a somewhat generous assessment of how she felt, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Thank you, Raymond. You don’t know the half of it.”

  She didn’t head for her office, but toward the front reception area instead. Raymond paced her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just give me a minute, will you, Raymond?” she snapped. “I’ll be right back.”

  She regretted being so short with him, but she felt stretched to the breaking point. One more tug in the wrong direction…

  She was vaguely aware of Tiffany saying hello as she hurried past the reception desk on her way to the front door. Stepping aside to allow a middle-aged woman and her two grandchildren to enter, Alicia peered through the glass at the street outside, looking for the gray car.

  She was sure it had followed her back from 48th Street. At least she thought it had. A gray car – what would you call it? A sedan? She didn’t know a damn thing about cars. Couldn’t tell a Ford from a Chevy. But whatever it was, she’d kept catching sight of this gray car passing her as she walked. It would turn a block or two ahead of her, and disappear for a few minutes, then cruise by again. Never too close. Never too slow. Never a definite sign of interest. But always there.

  She scanned Seventh Avenue outside, half expecting to see it roll by. Across the street and slightly downtown, she checked the curb in front of her least favorite part of the St. Vincent’s complex. The O’Toole Building squatted at the corner of Twelfth. Its white-tiled, windowless, monolithic facade did not fit here in the Village. It looked as if a clumsy giant had accidentally dropped the modernistic monstrosity on his way to someplace like Minneapolis.

  No gray car, though. But with all the gray cars in Manhattan, how could she be sure?

  Her nerves were getting to her. She was becoming paranoid.

  But who could blame her after this morning?

  She headed back to her office. Raymond picked her up in the hall.

  “Now can we talk?”

  “Sorry I snapped at you.”

  “Don’t be silly, honey. Nobody snaps at me. Nobody dares.”

  Alicia managed a smile.

  Raymond – never “Ray,” always “Raymond” – Denson, NP had been one of the original caregivers at the Center for Children with AIDS. The Center had MD’s who were called “director” and “assistant director,” but it was
this particular nurse practitioner who ran the place. Alicia doubted the Center would survive if he left. Raymond knew all the ins and outs of the day-to-day functions, all the soft touches for requisitions, knew where all the bodies were buried, so to speak. He clocked in at around fifty, she was sure – God help you if you asked his age – but he kept himself young looking: close cropped hair, neat mustache, trim, athletic body.

  “And about my beeper,” she said, “I turned it off. Doctor Collings was covering for me. You knew that.”

  He paced her down the narrow hallway to her office. All the walls in the Center had been hurriedly erected, and the haste showed. Slapdash taping and spackling, and a quick coat of bright yellow paint that was already wearing though in places. Well, the decor was the least important thing here.

  “I know, but this wasn’t medical. This wasn’t even administrative. This was fucking criminal.”

  Something in Raymond’s voice… his eyes. He was furious. But not at her. But then what?

  A premonition chilled her. Were her personal troubles going to spill over into the Center now?

  As she continued walking she noted knots of staff – nurses, secretaries, volunteers – all with their heads together, all talking animatedly.

  All furious.

  An icy gale blew through her.

  “All right, Raymond. Lay it on me.”

  “The toys. Some rat bastard motherfucker stole the toys.”

  Astonished, disbelieving, Alicia stopped and stared at him. No way. This had to be some cruel, nasty joke. But Raymond was anything but cruel.

  And were those tears in the corners of his eyes?

  “The donations? Don’t tell me–”

  But he was nodding and biting his upper lip.

  “Aw, no.”

  “Every last one.”

  Alicia felt her throat tighten. Strangely enough – and she damned herself for it – this was hitting her harder than Leo Weinstein’s death.

  A man she knew, a man with a wife and family was dead, and yet… and yet… this felt so much worse.