“Here. You will look for it, won’t you?”
Kusum’s dark brown eyes bored into his. He seemed to be staring at the rear wall of Jack’s brain.
“I said I would.”
“And I believe you. Bring the necklace to me as soon as you find it.”
“Sure. As soon as I find it.”
Sure. He walked away wondering why he’d agreed to help a stranger when Gia’s aunt needed him.
Same old story—Jack the sucker.
Damn!
5
Once back in the darkened hospital room, Kusum returned immediately to the bedside and pulled up a chair. He grasped the withered hand that lay atop the covers and studied it. The skin was cool, dry, papery; there seemed to be no tissue other than bone beneath. And no strength at all.
A great sadness filled him.
Kusum looked up and saw the plea in her eyes. And the fear. He did his best to hide his own fear.
“Kusum,” she said in Bengali, her voice painfully weak. “I am dying.”
He knew that. And it was tearing him up inside.
“The American will get it back for you,” he said softly. “I’ve been told he’s very good.”
Burkes had said he was “incredibly good.” Kusum hated all Britishers on principle, but had to admit Burkes was no fool. But did it matter what Burkes had said? It was an impossible task. Jack had been honest enough to say so. But Kusum had to try something! Even with the foreknowledge of certain failure, he had to try.
He balled his only hand into a fist. Why did this have to happen? And now, of all times? How he despised this country and its empty people! But this Jack seemed different. He was not a mass of jumbled fragments like his fellow Americans. Kusum had sensed a oneness within him. Repairman Jack did not come cheaply, but the money meant nothing. The knowledge that someone was out there searching gave him solace.
He patted the limp hand. “He’ll get it back for you.”
She seemed not to have heard.
“I am dying.”
6
The money was a nagging pressure against his left buttock as Jack walked the half block west to Tenth Avenue and turned downtown. His hand kept straying back to the pocket; he repeatedly hooked a thumb in and out of it to make sure the envelope was still there. The problem now was what to do with the money. It was times like this that almost made him wish he had a bank account. But the bank folks insisted on a Social Security number from anyone who opened an account.
He sighed to himself. That was one of the major drawbacks of living between the lines. If you didn’t have an SSN, you were barred from countless things. You couldn’t hold a regular job, couldn’t buy or sell stock, couldn’t take out a loan, couldn’t own a home, couldn’t even complete a Blue Shield form. The list went on and on.
With his thumb casually hooked in his left rear pocket, Jack stopped in front of a rundown office building. He rented a ten-by-twelve cubicle here—the smallest he could find. He’d never met the agent, nor anyone else connected with the office. He liked it that way.
He took the creaking Otis with the penny-studded floor up to 4 and stepped off. The hall was empty. Jack’s office was 412. He walked past the door twice before pulling out the key and quickly letting himself in.
It always smelled the same: dry and dusty. The floors and windowsills were layered with dust. Dust bunnies clogged the corners. An abandoned spiderweb spanned an upper corner of the only window—out of business.
No furniture. The dull expanse of floor was broken only by the half dozen or so envelopes that had been shoved through the mail slot, and by an old vinyl IBM-typewriter cover and the wires that ran from it to the telephone and electrical outlets in the wall on the right.
Jack picked up the mail: Three were bills, all addressed to Jack Finch in care of this office. The rest belonged to Occupant. He stepped to the typewriter cover and lifted it. The answering machine beneath appeared to be in good shape. Even as he squatted over it, the machine clicked on and he heard Abe’s voice give the familiar salutation in the name of Repairman Jack, followed by a man complaining of an electric dryer that wasn’t drying.
He replaced the cover and went back to the door. A quick peek showed two secretaries from the shoe-importing firm at the other end of the hall standing by the elevator. Jack waited until the door slid shut after them. He locked his office, then ducked for the stairway. His cheeks puffed with relief as he started down the worn steps. He hated coming here and made a point of doing so at random intervals at odd times of the day. He did not want his face in any way connected with Repairman Jack; but there were bills to be paid, bills that he didn’t want delivered to his apartment. And popping into the office at random hours of the day or night seemed safer than having a post office box.
Most likely none of it was necessary. Most likely no one was looking to get even with Repairman Jack. He was always careful to stay far in the background when he fixed things. Only his customers ever saw him.
But there was always a chance. And as long as that chance existed, he made certain he was very hard to find.
Thumb hooked again into that important pocket, Jack moved into the growing lunch hour crush, luxuriating in the anonymity of the crowd. He turned east on Forty-second and strolled up to the brick-front post office between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. There he purchased three money orders—two in negligible amounts for the phone and electric bills, and the third for a figure he considered preposterous considering the square footage of office space he was renting. He signed all three Jack Finch and mailed them off. As he was leaving, it occurred to him to use the cash to pay the rent on his apartment too. He went back and purchased a fourth money order, which he made out to his landlord. This one he signed Jack Berger.
A short walk past an art deco building to the side of the Port Authority Building, then across Eighth Avenue, and he was in Disney World North. He remembered when Times Square and environs were Sleazeville, USA, a never-ending freak show that would have put Tod Browning to shame. Jack had never passed up an opportunity to stroll through the area. He was a people-watcher and nowhere had there been such a unique variety of Homo sapiens lowlificus as in Times Square.
The block ahead had once been Exploitation Row, an almost continuous canopy of grind house marquees touting either triple-X sex, kung-fu imports, or psycho-with-a-knife splatter films from the Emeril Lagasse slice-and-dice school of moviemaking. You could walk along here in the rain and hardly get wet. Stuck in between had been hole-in-the-wall porn shops, stairways to “modeling studios” and dance halls, the ubiquitous Nedicks and Orange Julius stands, and sundry stores perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy—or so their window signs claimed. Mingling among the patrons of these venerable establishments had been hookers and derelicts of both sexes plus a startling array of epicene creatures who’d probably looked like boys when they were little.
All gone now, replaced by new legit theaters and outlets of the franchise factories. Donald would have no qualms about bringing Huey, Dewey, and Louie here.
Jack crossed Broadway behind the building that had given the Square its name, then turned uptown on Seventh Avenue. Set up on tables along the curb were chess and backgammon boards where a couple of guys would play anyone for a few bucks. Farther along were three-card monte setups on cardboard boxes. Pushcarts sold shish kebab, Sabrett hot dogs, dried fruits and nuts, giant pretzels, and freshly squeezed orange juice. The odors mingled in the air with the sounds and sights. All the record stores along Seventh were pushing the latest group du jour, Polio, playing cuts from their debut album onto the sidewalk. Jack stood waiting for the green at Forty-sixth next to a Puerto Rican with a giant boom box on his shoulder blasting salsa at a volume that would probably cause sterility in most small mammals, while girls wearing tube tops that left their midriffs bare and satin gym shorts that left a smooth pink crescent of buttock protruding from each leg hole rollerbladed through the traffic with tiny headphones on their ears and iPods belted to th
eir waistbands.
Standing directly in the middle of the flow was a big blind Black with a sign on his chest, a dog at his feet, and a cup in his hand. Jack threw some loose change into the cup as he slipped by.
Something about New York got to Jack. He loved its sleaze, its color, the glory and crassness of its architecture. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Upon reaching the Fifties, he turned east until he came to Municipal Coins. He stopped in front and glanced briefly at the low-priced junk under the red and white We Buy Gold sign in the window—proof sets, Confederate paper, and the like—then went in.
Monte spotted him right away.
“Mr. O’Neil! How are you!”
“Fine. Just call me Jack, remember?”
“Of course!” Monte said, grinning. “Always with the informality.” He was short, slight, balding, with scrawny arms and a big nose. A mosquito of a man. “Good to see you again!”
Of course it was good to see him again. Jack knew he was probably Monte’s best customer. Their relationship had begun years ago, after Abe had told him to buy gold. Krugerrands, specifically.
“It’s completely anonymous!” Abe had said, saving his most persuasive argument for last. “As anonymous as buying a loaf of bread!”
So he’d bought some coins for cash, and sold them for more cash. He was supposed to report his profits to the IRS, but the IRS didn’t know he existed and he didn’t want to burden them with the information.
Jack had been in and out of gold since, and was buying it now. He figured the numismatic market was depressed, so he was investing in choice rare coins, too. They might not go up for many years, but he was buying for the long run. For his retirement—if he survived to enjoy it.
“I think I have something you’ll really like,” Monte was saying. “One of the finest Barber Halves I’ve seen.”
“What year?”
“It’s a 1901S.”
There followed the obligatory haggling over the quality of the strike, bag marks, and the like. When Jack left the store he had the Barber Half and a 1909-proof Barber Quarter carefully wrapped and tucked in his left front pocket with a cylinder of Krugerrands. A hundred or so in cash was in the other front pocket. He felt far more relaxed heading back uptown than he’d been coming down.
Now he could turn his mind to Gia. He wondered if she’d have Vicky with her. Most likely. He didn’t want to arrive empty-handed. He stopped at a card shop and found what he was looking for: a pile of furry little spheres, somewhat smaller than golf balls, each with two slender antennae, flat little feet and big rolling eyes: Rascals. Vicky loved Rascals almost as much as she loved oranges. He loved the look on her face when she reached into a pocket and found a present.
He picked out an orange Rascal and headed for home.
7
Lunch was a can of Red Hook Lager and a cylinder of Country Style Pringles in the cool of his apartment. He knew he should be on the roof doing his daily exercises, but he also knew what the temperature would be like up there.
Later.
Jack loathed his exercise routine and embraced any excuse to postpone it. He never missed a day, but never passed up an opportunity to put it off.
While nursing a second Red Hook, he went to the cedar closet next to the bathroom to stash his new acquisitions. The air within was heavy with the scent of the wood. He pulled a piece of molding loose from the base of a sidewall, then slipped free one of the cedar planks above it. Behind the plank lay the bathroom water pipes, each wrapped in insulation. Taped to the insulation like ornaments on a Christmas tree were dozens of rare coins. Jack found empty spots for the latest.
He tapped the board and molding back into place, then stepped back to survey the work. A good hidey-hole. More accessible than a safe deposit box. Better than a wall safe. With burglars using metal detectors these days, they could find a safe in minutes and either crack it or carry it off. But a metal detector here would only confirm that there were pipes behind the bathroom wall.
The only thing Jack had to worry about was fire.
He realized a psychiatrist would have a field day with him, labeling him a paranoid of one sort or another. But Jack had worked out a better explanation: When you lived in a city with a high robbery rate and you worked in a field that tended to get people violently angry with you, and you had no FDIC to protect your savings, extreme caution as a daily routine was not a symptom of mental illness; it was necessary for survival.
He was polishing off the second beer when the phone rang. Gia again? He listened to the Pinocchio Productions intro, then heard his father’s voice begin to leave a message. He picked up and cut in.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Don’t you ever turn that thing off, Jack?”
“The answering machine? I just got in. What’s up?”
“Just wanted to remind you about Sunday.”
Sunday? What the hell was—
“You mean about the tennis match? How could I forget?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jack winced. “I told you, Dad. I got tied up with something and couldn’t get away.”
“Well, I hope it won’t happen again.” Dad’s tone said he couldn’t imagine what could be so important in the appliance repair business that could tie up a man for a whole day. “I’ve got us down for the father-and-son match.”
“I’ll be there bright and early Sunday morning.”
“Good. See you then.”
“Looking forward to it.”
What a lie, he thought as he hung up.
Jack dreaded seeing his father, even for something so simple as a father-and-son tennis match. Yet he still accepted an occasional invitation to go back to New Jersey and bask in parental disapproval. It wasn’t masochism that kept him coming back; it was duty. And love—love that had lain unexpressed for years. After all, it wasn’t Dad’s fault that he thought his directionless son had squandered an education and was going nowhere. Dad didn’t know what his son really did.
Jack reset the answering machine and changed into a pair of lightweight tan slacks. He wouldn’t feel right wearing Levi’s on Sutton Square.
He decided to walk. He took Columbus Avenue down to the Circle, then walked along Central Park South past the St. Moritz and under the ornate iron awning of the Plaza’s park-side entrance, amusing himself by counting Arabs and watching the rich tourists stroll in and out of the status hotels. He continued due east along Fifty-ninth toward the stratospheric rent district.
He was working up a sweat but barely noticed. The prospect of seeing Gia again made him almost giddy.
Images, pieces of the past, flashed through his brain as he walked. Gia’s big smile, her azure eyes, the way her whole face crinkled up when she laughed, the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin … all denied him for the past two months.
He remembered his first feelings for her …
With almost all the other women in his life the most significant part of the relationship for both parties had been explored in bed. It was different with Gia. He wanted to know her. He’d thought about the others only when there had been nothing better to think about. Gia, on the other hand, had a nasty habit of popping into his thoughts at the most inopportune times. He’d wanted to cook with her, eat with her, see movies with her, listen to music with her, be with her. He’d found himself wanting to get in his car and drive past her apartment house just to make sure it was still there. He hated to talk on the phone but had found himself calling her at the slightest excuse. He was hooked and he’d loved it.
For nearly a year it had been a treat to wake up every morning knowing he was probably going to see her at some time during the day. So good …
Other images crept unbidden to the fore. Her face when she learned the truth about him, the hurt, and something worse—fear. The knowledge that Gia could even for an instant think that he would ever harm her, or ever allow harm to come to her, was the deepest hurt of all. Nothing he’d said or
tried to say had worked to change her mind.
Now he had another chance. He wasn’t going to blow it.
8
“He’s late, isn’t he, Mom?”
Gia DiLauro kept both hands on her daughter’s shoulders as they stood at the window in the front parlor and watched the street. Vicky was fairly trembling with excitement.
“Not quite. Almost, but not quite.”
“I hope he doesn’t forget.”
“He won’t. I’m sure he won’t.” Although I wish he would.
Two months ago she’d walked out on Jack. She was adjusting. Sometimes she could go through a whole day without thinking about him. She’d picked up where she’d left off. There was even someone new creeping into her life.
Why couldn’t the past ever stay out of sight where it belonged? Take her ex-husband, for instance. After their divorce she’d wanted to cut all ties with the Westphalen family, even going so far as to change her name back to the one she’d been born with. But Richard’s aunts had made that impossible. They adored Vicky and used every imaginable pretext to lure Gia and their niece over to Sutton Square. Gia had resisted at first, but their genuine affection for Vicky, their insistent pleas, and the fact that they had no illusions about their nephew—“a bounder and a cad!” as Nellie was wont to describe him after her third glass of sherry—finally changed her mind. Eight Sutton Square had become a second home of sorts. The aunts had even gone so far as to have a swing set and a wooden playhouse installed in the tiny backyard just for Vicky.
So when Nellie had called in a panic after she’d discovered Grace missing on Tuesday morning, Gia had come right over. And had been here ever since.
Grace Westphalen. Such a sweet old lady. Gia couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to harm her, and no ransom demand had been made. So where was she? Gia was frightened and mystified by the disappearance, and she ached for Nellie, who she knew was suffering terribly behind her stoical front. It had been only out of love for Nellie and her deep concern for Grace that she’d agreed to call Jack this morning. Not that Jack would be much help. From what she’d learned of him, she could safely say that this was not his sort of job. But Nellie was desperate and it was the least Gia could do to ease her mind.