He hated waiting for an opponent to make the next move. It left him on the defensive, and the defensive side had no initiative.
But why play defensively? That was just what Kusum expected him to do. Why let crazy Kusum call the shots? Vicky was safe. Why not take the war to Kusum?
He snatched up the phone and dialed. Abe answered with a croak on the first ring.
“It’s me—Jack. Did I wake you?”
“No, of course not. I sit up next to the phone every night waiting for you to call. Should tonight be any different?” Jack didn’t know whether he was joking or not. At times it was hard to tell with Abe.
“Everything okay on your end?”
“Would I be sitting here so calmly talking to you if it wasn’t?”
“Vicky’s all right?”
“Of course. Can I go back to sleep on this wonderfully comfortable couch now?”
“You’re on the couch? There’s another bedroom.”
“About the other bedroom I know. I just thought I should maybe sleep here between the door and our two lady friends.”
Jack felt a burst of warmth for his old friend. “I really do owe you for this, Abe.”
“I know. So start paying me back by hanging up.”
“Unfortunately, I’m not finished asking favors yet. I got a big one coming up.”
“Nu? What’s this latest toiveh I should do you?”
“I need some equipment: incendiary bombs with timers and incendiary bullets along with an AR to shoot them.”
The Yiddishkeit disappeared; Abe was abruptly a businessman. “Those I don’t have in stock, but I can get them. You need them when?”
“Tonight.”
“Seriously—when?”
“Tonight. An hour ago.”
Abe whistled. “Oy, that’s going to be tough. Important?”
“Very.”
“I’ll have to call in some markers on this. Especially at this hour.”
“Make it worth their while,” Jack told him. “The sky’s the limit.”
“Okay. But I’ll have to leave and make the pickups myself. These boys don’t deal with anybody they don’t know.”
Jack didn’t like the idea of leaving Gia and Vicky without a guard. But since there was no way for Kusum to find them, a guard was superfluous.
“Okay. You’ve got your truck, right?”
“Right.”
“Then make your calls, make the pickups, and I’ll meet you at the store. Call me when you get there.”
Jack hung up and settled back in his chair. Comfortably dark here in the front room with only a little indirect light spilling from the kitchen area. He felt his muscles loosen up and relax into the familiar depressions of the chair. He was tired. The last few days had been wearing. When was the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep? Saturday? Here it was Wednesday morning.
He jumped at the sudden jangle of the phone and picked it up before it finished the first ring.
“Hello?”
A few heartbeats of silence on the other end of the line, and then a click.
Puzzled and uneasy, Jack hung up. A wrong number? Or Kusum checking up on his whereabouts?
He listened for stirrings from the bedroom where he’d left Kolabati, but none came. The ring had been too brief to wake her.
He made his body relax again. He found himself anticipating with a certain relish what was to come. Mr. Kusum Bahkti was in for a little surprise tonight. Yes sir, Jack was going to make things hot for him and his rakoshi. Crazy Kusum would regret the day he tried to hurt Vicky Westphalen.
Because Vicky had a friend. And that friend was mad. Madder’n hell.
Jack’s eyelids slipped closed. He fought to open them but then gave up. Abe would call when everything was ready. Abe would come through. Abe could get anything, even at this hour. Jack had time for a few winks.
The last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him was the hate-filled eyes of the Mother rakosh as she watched him from the floor of the hold after he’d seared the face of one of her children.
Jack shuddered and slipped into sleep.
20
Kusum swung the rented yellow van into Sutton Square and pulled all the way to the end. Bullwhip in hand, he got out and stood by the door, scanning the street. All was quiet, but who could say for how long? He wouldn’t have much time here in this insular neighborhood. His van would draw immediate attention should some insomniac glance out a window and spot it.
Normally this would have been the Mother’s job, but she could not be in two places at once. He had given her the sweaty shirt Jack had left on the ship so that she could identify her target by scent, and had dropped her off outside Jack’s apartment building only a few moments ago.
He smiled. Oh, if only he could be there to see Jack’s expression when the Mother confronted him. He would not recognize her at first—Kusum had seen to that—but he was certain Jack’s heart would stop when he saw the surprise Kusum had prepared for him. And if shock didn’t stop his heart, the Mother would. A fitting and honorable end to a man who had become too much of a liability to be allowed to live.
Kusum drew his thoughts back to Sutton Square. The last Westphalen lay asleep within meters of where he stood. He removed his necklace and placed it on the front seat of the van, then walked back to the rear doors. A young rakosh, nearly full-grown, leaped out. Kusum brandished the whip but did not crack it—the noise would be too loud.
This rakosh was the Mother’s first born, the toughest and most experienced of all the younglings, its lower lip deformed by scars from one of many battles with its siblings. It had hunted with her in London and here in New York. Kusum probably could have let it loose from the ship and trusted it to find the Scent and bring back the child on its own, but he didn’t want to take any chances. No mishaps tonight.
The rakosh looked at Kusum, then looked past him, across the river. Kusum gestured with his whip toward the house where the Westphalen child was staying.
“There!” he said in Bengali. “There!”
With seeming reluctance the creature moved in the direction of the house. Kusum saw it enter the alley on the west side, no doubt to climb the shadowed wall and pluck the child from its bed. He was about to step back to the front of the van and retrieve his necklace when he heard a clatter from the side of the house. Alarmed, he ran to the alley, cursing under his breath all the way. These younglings were so damned clumsy! The only one he could really depend upon was the Mother.
He found the rakosh pawing through a garbage can. It had a dark vinyl bag torn open and was pulling something out. Fury surged through Kusum. He should have known he couldn’t trust a youngling! Here it was rummaging in garbage when it should be following the Scent up the wall. He unfurled his whip, ready to strike …
The young rakosh held something out to him: half of an orange.
Kusum snatched it up and held it under his nose. It was one of those he had injected with the elixir and hidden in the playhouse last night. The rakosh came up with another half.
Kusum pressed both together. They fit perfectly. The orange had been sliced open but had not been eaten. He looked at the rakosh and it was now holding a handful of chocolates.
Enraged, Kusum hurled the orange halves against the wall. Jack! It could be no one else! Curse that man!
He strode around to the rear of the townhouse and up to the back door. The rakosh followed him partway and then stood and stared across the East River.
“Here!” Kusum said impatiently, indicating the door.
He stepped back as the rakosh came up the steps and slammed one of its massive three-fingered hands against the door. With a loud crack of splintering wood, it flew open. Kusum stepped through with the rakosh close behind. He wasn’t worried about awakening anyone in the house. If Jack had discovered the treated orange, he surely had spirited everyone away.
Kusum stood in the dark kitchen, the young rakosh a looming shadow beside him. Yes … the house was
empty. No need to search it.
A thought struck him with the force of a blow.
No!
Uncontrollable tremors shook his body. Not anger that Jack had been one step ahead of him all day, but fear. Fear so deep and penetrating that it almost overwhelmed him. He rushed to the front door and ran out to the street.
Jack had hidden the last Westphalen from him—and at this very moment Jack’s life was being torn from him by the Mother rakosh! The only man who could tell him where to find the child was being silenced forever! How would Kusum find her in a city of eight million? He would never fulfill the vow! All because of Jack!
May you be reincarnated as a jackal!
He opened the rear door of the van for the rakosh but it would not enter. It persisted in staring across the East River. It would take a few steps toward the river and then come back, repeating the process over and over.
“In!” Kusum said.
He was in a black mood and had no patience for any quirks in this rakosh. But despite his urgings, the creature would not obey. The youngling was normally so eager to please, yet now it acted as if it had the Scent and wanted to be off on the hunt.
And then it occurred to him—he had doctored two oranges, and they had found only one. Had the Westphalen child consumed the first before the second was found out?
Possible. His spirits lifted perceptively. Quite possible.
And what could be more natural than to remove the child entirely from the island of Manhattan? What was that borough across the river—Queens? It didn’t matter how many people lived there; if the child had consumed even a tiny amount of the elixir, the rakosh would find her.
Perhaps all was not lost.
Kusum gestured toward the river with his coiled bullwhip. The young rakosh leaped to the top of the waist-high retaining wall at the end of the street and dropped to the sunken brick plaza a dozen feet below it. From there it took two steps and a flying leap over the wrought iron railing to the East River running silently below.
Kusum stood and watched it sail into the darkness, his despair dissipating with each passing second. This rakosh was an experienced hunter and seemed to know where it was going. Perhaps there was still hope of sailing tonight.
After the sound of a splash far below, he turned and climbed into the cab of the van. Yes—his mind was set. He would operate under the assumption that the youngling would bring back the Westphalen girl. He would prepare the ship for sea. Perhaps he would even cast off and sail downriver to New York Bay. He had no fear of losing the Mother and the youngling that had just leaped into the river. Rakoshi had an uncanny homing instinct that led them to their nest no matter where it was.
How fortunate he had dosed two oranges instead of one. As he refastened the necklace at his throat, he realized that the hand of Kali was evident here.
All doubt and despair melted away in a sudden blast of triumph. The Goddess was at his side, guiding him. He could not fail!
Repairman Jack was not to have the last laugh after all.
21
Jack awakened with a start. He experienced an instant of disorientation before he realized he was not in his bed but in a chair in the front room. His hand automatically went to the Glock in his lap.
He listened. Something had awakened him. What? The faint light seeping in from the kitchen area was enough to confirm that the front room was empty.
He rose and checked the TV room, then looked in on Kolabati. Still asleep. All quiet on the western front.
A noise made him whirl. From out in the hall—the creak of a board. Jack pressed his ear against the door. Silence. A hint of an odor was present at the edges of the door. Not the necrotic stink of a rakosh, but a sickly sweet smell like an old lady’s gardenia perfume.
Heart thumping, Jack unlocked the door and pulled it open in a single motion, then jumped back and took his firing stance: legs spread, the pistol in both hands, left supporting right, both arms fully extended.
The light in the hall was meager at best but brighter than where Jack stood. It would silhouette anyone attempting to enter the apartment. Nothing moved. All he saw was the banister and balusters that ran along the stairwell. Jack held his position as the gardenia odor wafted into the room like a cloud from an overgrown hothouse—syrupy, flowery, with an underlying hint of decay.
Keeping his arms locked straight out in a triangle with the Glock at the apex, he moved to the door, weaving back and forth to give himself angled views of the hallway to the left and right. All clear so far.
He leaped into the hall and spun in the air, landing with his back against the banister, arms down, pistol held before his crotch, ready to be raised right or left as his head snapped back and forth.
Hall to the right and left: clear.
An instant later he was moving again, spinning to his right, pressing his back against the wall next to his door, eyes darting right, to the staircase up to the fourth floor clear.
The landing to his left going down: cl—
Wait. Someone there, sitting on the shadowed landing. His pistol snapped up, steady in his hands as he took a better look—a woman, barely visible, in a long dress, long sloppy hair, sloppy hat, slumped posture, looking depressed. The hat and the hair obscured her face.
Jack’s pulse started to slow but he kept the Glock trained on her. What the hell was she doing here? And what had she done—spilled a bottle of perfume all over herself?
“Something wrong, lady?” he said.
She moved, shifting her body and turning to look at him. The movement made Jack realize that this was one hell of a big lady. And then it was all clear.
Kusum’s touch: Jack had disguised himself as an old woman when he’d worked for Kusum, and now … he didn’t even have to see the malevolent yellow eyes glowering at him from under the hat and wig to know that he’d spoken to the Mother rakosh.
“Holy shit!”
In a single, swift, fluid motion accompanied by a hiss of rage and the tearing of the fabric of her dress, the Mother rakosh reared up to her full height and flowed toward him, fangs glinting, talons extended, triumph gleaming in her eyes.
Jack’s tongue stuck to the roof of his suddenly dry mouth, but he stood his ground. With a methodical coolness that amazed even him, he aimed the first round at the upper left corner of the Mother’s chest. The silenced Glock jumped in his hands, rubbing against his wounded palm, making a muted phut! when he pulled the trigger. The .40 caliber slug jolted her—Jack could imagine the lead projectile breaking open, releasing its hidden birdshot, sending it tearing in all directions through her lungs—but her momentum carried her forward. He wasn’t sure where her heart would be so he placed three more rounds at the corners of an imaginary square in relation to the first, now oozing a stream of very dark blood …
The Mother stiffened and lurched as each slug cut into her, finally coming to a staggering halt a few feet in front of him. Jack watched her in shock. The very fact that she was still standing was testimony to an amazing vitality—she should have gone down with the first shot. But Jack was confident: She was dead on her feet. He knew the stopping power of those .40 caliber pre-frag hollow points. The hydrostatic shock and vascular collapse caused by just one properly placed round would stop just about anything. The Mother rakosh had taken four.
Jack wanted to put an end to this. He took careful aim and pumped another round dead center into the Mother’s chest.
She spread her arms and lurched back against the newel post at the head of the stairs, cracking it with her weight. The hat and wig slipped from her head but she didn’t topple over. Instead, she made a half turn and slumped over the banister. Jack waited for her final collapse.
And waited.
The Mother did not collapse. She took a few deep gasps, then straightened and faced him, her eyes as bright as ever. Jack stood rooted to the floor, watching her. Impossible! She was dead! Dead five times over! He’d seen the holes in her chest, the black blood! Her lungs should be jelly
!
With a loud, drawn-out hiss, she lunged toward him. By pure reflex rather than conscious effort, Jack dodged away. Where to go? He didn’t want to get trapped in his apartment, and the way down to the street was blocked. The roof was his only option.
He was already on the stairs taking them two at a time when he made the decision. His pistol was no good. Kolabati’s words came back to him.
… fire and iron … fire and iron …
Without slowing or breaking stride, he dropped the Glock on the steps, glancing behind him as he did. The Mother rakosh was a flight below, gliding up the stairs after him, the remains of her dress hanging in tatters from her neck and arms. The contrast of her smooth, utterly silent ascent to his pounding climb was almost as unnerving as the murderous look in her eyes.
Jack increased his effort to the limit and managed to widen the gap between himself and the Mother. But only briefly. Instead of weakening, the Mother seemed to gain strength and speed with the exertion. By the time Jack reached the final steps up to the roof, she’d closed to within half a flight.
Jack didn’t bother with the latch on the roof door. It had never worked well anyway and fumbling with it would only lose him precious seconds. He rammed it with his shoulder, burst through, and hit the roof on the run.
The Manhattan skyline soared around him. From its star-filled height the setting moon etched the details of the roof like a high-contrast, black and white photo—pale white light on upper surfaces, inky shadows below. Vents, chimneys, aerials, storage sheds, the garden, the flagpole, the emergency generator—a familiar obstacle course. Perhaps that familiarity could be worked to his advantage. He knew he could not outrun the Mother.
Perhaps—just perhaps—he could outmaneuver her.