Crisscross rj-8

by F. Paul Wilson

  Jack smiled. Outdated stuff. Easily bypassed as long as you knew it was there.

  Down on the street again he checked his voice mail and heard Russ saying his floppy would be ready around six. Jack called back and said pickup would have to wait till tomorrow.

  Tonight he had a heavy date.

  9

  Jack was glad the weather had turned chilly; even then, his Creature from the Black Lagoon suit was hot and stuffy. Glad too that daylight saving time had ended yesterday. If the sun were still out he'd be parboiled inside this green rubber oven.

  Green… why did they always color the Creature green? The films were all black-and-white, so who knew his real color? Most fish Jack had seen were silvery gray, so why should the Creature be this sick green?

  Another recurrent question: If Eric Clapton had to steal one of the Beatles' wives, why the hell couldn't it have been Yoko? Imponderables like this were what filled his head when he couldn't sleep.

  He and Gia were chaperoning Vicky and five of her friends—two princesses, a leprechaun, a Hobbit, Boba Fett, and the Wicked Witch of the West—along an upper-crust Upper West Side block of single-owner brown-stones. Gia walked, Jack lumbered, and the kids scampered. Only Gia was uncostumed, though she denied it, saying she was disguised as a nonpreg-nant woman. Since she didn't look to be in a family way, Jack couldn't argue.

  Through the mask's eyeholes he watched the kids run up a brownstone's front steps and ring the bell. A pleasant, blue-blazered, balding man in horn-rimmed glasses answered the door to a chorus of "Trick or Treat!" He dropped a candy bar into each kid's goodie bag, then grinned down at Jack waiting on the sidewalk.

  "Hey, Creature." He gave a thumbs-up. "Nice."

  "Better be, after what it cost to rent it." Jack's voice sounded at once muffled and echoey inside the mask.

  "How about a snort of ice-cold Ketel One to keep you going?"

  "I'd need a straw."

  The guy laughed. "Not a problem."

  Jack waved and started moving after the kids. "Have to take a rain check. Thanks for the thought, though."

  The guy called, "Happy Halloween," and closed his door.

  Vicky ran back from where her friends were climbing to the next door. With her black pointed hat, flowing dress, and warty green skin she made a great mini Margaret Hamilton.

  "Look, Jack!" she cried, digging into her bag. "He gave me a Snickers!"

  "My favorite," Jack said.

  "I know." She held it up. "Here. You can have it."

  Jack knew she was allergic to chocolate, but was touched by her generosity. He was continually amazed at the bond they'd developed, and wondered if he'd ever be able to love his own child as much as he did Vicky.

  "Thanks a million, Vicks, but"—he held out his gloved hands with their big webbed fingers and rubber talons—"can you hold it for me till we get home?"

  She grinned and dropped it back into her bag as she ran after the others. Her friends were just finishing up atop the next set of steps. The door closed just as Vicky reached it. She knocked but the young woman behind the glass shook her head and turned away. She knocked again but the lady turned back and made a shooing gesture.

  Vicky trudged back down the steps and looked up at her mother with teary eyes.

  "She wouldn't give me any candy, Mom."

  "Maybe she ran out, hon."

  "No. I saw a whole bowlfull inside. Why won't she give me any?"

  Suddenly it felt a lot warmer in the Creature suit.

  "Let's go find out."

  "Jack," Gia said. "Let it go."

  "I'm cool, I'm cool," he told her, though another look at Vicky blinking back tears made him anything but. "I just want to satisfy my curiosity. Come on, Vicks. Let's go check this out."

  "No, Jack. Leave her here."

  "All right."

  He climbed the stairs and rang the bell. The same young woman, maybe thirty, answered.

  "Mind telling me something?" He pointed to Vicky standing at the bottom of the steps. "Why did you stiff that little girl?"

  "Stiff?"

  "Yeah. You gave her friends candy but not her."

  She began to close the door. "I don't think I have to explain my reasons to anyone."

  Jack held the door open with a taloned hand. "You're right. You don't, but there's the right thing to do and there's everything else. Giving her an explanation is the right thing to do."

  The woman's lips tightened into a line. "If you insist. Tell her it's because I don't approve of this so-called holiday in the first place but, just to be a good neighbor, I put up with the indignity of it. However, I draw the line at rewarding paganism. That child is dressed as a witch, a pagan sorceress. I won't encourage paganism or sorcery."

  Jack felt his jaw working behind the mask. "You gotta be kidding!"

  "I assure you I'm not. Now please get off my steps or I'll have to call the police."

  With that she closed the door and turned away.

  Jack raised his hand to knock again—cops or not he wanted to tell her a thing or two—when he heard Gia's voice.

  "Jack—"

  Something in her tone made him turn. When he saw how she was bent slightly forward, her hand over her lower abdomen, her face pale with pain, he ran down the steps.

  "What's wrong, Mom?" Vicky was saying.

  "Mommy doesn't feel too great. I think we have to go home now."

  "I think we have to go to the hospital," Jack said.

  Gia grimaced and shook her head. "Home. Now."

  10

  While Gia closed herself in the master bathroom upstairs at the Sutton Square place, Jack did his best to put aside his fears and fill the half hour until the parents of Vicky's friends showed up. He stayed in costume and told them the story of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. None of them had ever seen it. Jack once had persuaded Vicky to watch it but she'd lasted only ten minutes. Not because she was scared. No, her complaint was, "There's no color! Where's the color?"

  He half told, half acted out the story, going so far as to lie on the floor and imitate the Creature's backstroke in its fabulous water ballet with Julie Adams.

  His audience's consensus: Great performance, but the story was "just like Anaconda."

  Finally the parents started arriving and Jack explained that Gia wasn't feeling well—"Something she ate." When the townhouse was cleared, he ran upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door.

  "You okay?"

  The door opened. An ashen Gia leaned on the edge of the door, hunched over.

  "Jack," she gasped. A tear ran down her left cheek. "Call the EMTs. I'm bleeding. I think I'm losing the baby!"

  "EMTs, hell," he said, lifting her in his arms. "I'll have you in the ER before they even start their engines."

  Terror and anguish were icy fingers around his throat, making it hard to draw a full breath, but he couldn't let any of that show: Vicky stood at the bottom of the staircase, fist jammed against her mouth, eyes wide with fear.

  "Mom's not feeling good, Vicks," he said. "Let's get her to the hospital."

  "What's wrong?" she said, her voice high-pitched, barely audible.

  "I don't know."

  And he didn't, really, though he feared the worst.

  11

  Throughout the nail-biting two-hour wait outside the Mount Sinai ER, while interns, residents, ER docs, and Gia's obstetrician did whatever it is they do in these situations, Jack tried to keep Vicky occupied. Not necessary. Before long she found another girl her age to talk to. Jack envied her ability to strike up a friendship anywhere.

  He tried to take his mind off Gia and what might be happening in that treatment room by shuffling through some leftover section of the Times. He spotted a familiar name in the Sunday Styles section: "New York's most eli-gible bachelor, Dormentalist Church guru Luther Brady, was observed in close conversation with Meryl Streep at the East Hampton Library Fund charity ball."

  Not exactly an abstemious lifestyle.

 
He looked up as a nurse approached. She started to speak, then broke into a laugh.

  "What's so funny?"

  "I'm sorry. When your wife said to look for a man dressed like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I thought she was kidding."

  By now Jack had gotten used to the stares from the other people in the waiting room. He'd left the mask, gloves, and feet back at the house, but still wore the green, finned bodysuit.

  "It is Halloween, you know. How is she?"

  "Dr. Eagleton will tell you all about it."

  They followed her to a treatment room where they found Gia propped up on a gurney. Her color was better but she still looked drawn. Vicky darted to her side and they hugged.

  As Jack hung back, letting them have their moment, a tall, slim woman with salt-and-pepper hair stepped in. She wore a long white coat.

  "You're the father?" she said, eyeing his costume. When Jack nodded, she held out her hand. "I'm Dr. Eagleton."

  "Jack," he said. She had a firm grip. "How's she doing?"

  Dr. Eagleton didn't look exactly comfortable discussing this with a man in a rubber monster suit, but she bore with it.

  "She's lost a lot of blood, but the contractions have stopped."

  "She's going to be okay?"

  "Yes."

  "And the baby?"

  "Ultrasound shows no problem—good position, steady heart rate."

  Jack closed his eyes and let out a relieved breath. "Thanks. Thank you very much."

  "I want to keep her overnight, though."

  "Really? Is there still a danger?"

  "She should be fine. The further along the pregnancy, the less likely a miscarriage. Gia's in her twentieth week and it's rare after that. So I think we're in good shape. Just the same, I'd like to be sure."

  Jack glanced at Gia. "What caused this?"

  Dr. Eagleton shrugged. "The most common causes are a dead or grossly defective fetus." Jack's stab of alarm must have shown on his face because she quickly added, "Bui that's not the ease here. Sometimes it's trauma, and sometimes it just… happens."

  Jack didn't like the sound of that. For a while now it seemed that things—bad things, at least—didn't "just happen" in his life.

  Jack stepped over to the gurney and took Gia's hand. She squeezed his.

  "You'll take care of Vicky until I get home tomorrow, won't you?"

  Gia had no family in the city. Everyone was back in Iowa.

  Jack smiled. "You don't even have to ask." He winked at Vicky. "Vicks and I are going straight home to do flaming shooters of Cuervo Gold."

  As Vicky giggled, Gia said, "Jack, that's not funny."

  Jack slapped his forehead. "That's right! She's got school tomorrow. Okay, Vicks: only one."

  As Gia went on about Vicky's schedule, Jack wondered at the awesome responsibility of caring for a nine-year-old girl, even for a day.

  He'd stepped into Family Affair—without Mr. French.

  Cordova and the Dormentalists weren't half as scary.

  TUESDAY

  1

  Jack spent the night in the guest bedroom at the Sutton Square place. Lucky for him, Vicky turned out to be pretty self-sufficient.

  More than self-sufficient.

  Next morning, after showering and getting herself dressed, she insisted on making Jack bacon and eggs before it was time for the school bus. Bacon here meant strips of bacon-flavored soy.

  She seemed in good spirits, not the least bit worried. Dr. Eagleton had told her that her mother was going to be fine and that was enough for Vicky. If Mom's doctor said so, that's how it was going to be.

  Oh, to be nine again and have that kind of faith.

  As he watched her bustle around the kitchen—she knew exactly what she needed and where everything was—and listened to her chatter, he felt his heart swell. Vicky was going to be a wonderful big sister to the new baby.

  New baby… his appetite took a nose dive. He hadn't heard any bad news, so he gathered Gia had had a quiet night. He hoped so.

  During breakfast Jack called Gia to get a progress report—and give one.

  She'd had a good night but wouldn't be released until late afternoon, which meant Jack had to arrange to be home to meet Vicks when she returned from school.

  No problemo.

  Vicky talked to her mother for a few minutes, then it was time to run. He walked her to the bus and gave her his cell phone number, telling her to call if she needed anything—anything.

  Then he showered, shaved, and headed across town to Tenth Avenue.

  2

  Pedestrians flowed around the sandwich board sign propped in the center of the sidewalk.

  ERNIE'S ID

  ALL KINDS

  PASSPORT

  TAXI

  DRIVER'S LICENSE

  No business at this hour, so Jack had Ernie all to himself.

  "Hey, Jack," Ernie said from the rear of the tiny store. He stood maybe five-five, weighed a hundred pounds after a five-pound meal, had a droopy, hangdog face with perpetually sad eyes, and spoke at a hundred-and-twenty miles an hour. "How y'doin', how y'doin'. Do the thing with the door there, will ya?"

  Jack locked it and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. On the way to the rear, next to the bootleg videos, he passed a display pole festooned with high-end handbags—Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada—none of them the real deal. Not with twenty-dollar price tags. Everything Ernie carried was a knockoff of one sort or another.

  "Into women's accessories now?" Jack said as he reached the display case that served as the rear counter.

  "What? Oh, yeah. Outta towners come in and buy three, four at a time. Can't hardly keep 'em in stock." He pulled a manila envelope from behind the counter. "Wait'll you see this, Jacko. Wait'll you see!"

  He dumped the contents onto the scratched glass: a driver's license with Jack's photo and two credit cards—a Visa gold and a platinum AmEx.

  "That's it?"

  Jack couldn't see what all the excitement was about. Ernie furnished him with this sort of thing all the time.

  "Checkitout, checkitout." He was literally vibrating with excitement. "Check the license."

  Jack leaned over for a closer look, then picked it up. His picture, but the name was Jason Amurri, and the language was…

  "French?"

  "It's Swiss," Ernie said, "and it's perfect. And the credit cards are both exact duplicates of his, right down to the expiration date and the verification number. Just don't use 'em or you'll blow everything."

  "And just who is Jason Amurri?"

  Ernie grinned. "Lives in Vevey. That's on the Swiss Riviera—you know, Montreux, Lake Geneva, those kinda places. Celine Dion and Phil Collins and people like that got homes around there."

  "Okay. He lives in a ritzy area in a foreign country. That's a good start. Give me the details."

  "You're gonna be impressed."

  Jack had set strict criteria for this set of ID. He hoped Ernie had come through.

  "I'll decide that after you tell me."

  Ernie told him.

  And Jack was impressed.

  "Nice work," he said, forking over Ernie's stiff fee. "You deserve every penny."

  "I do." If he rubbed his hands together any faster his palms would catch fire. "I do, I do."

  "Looks like I'm going to have to get a room at the Plaza," Jack said.

  "Nah. Every nobody who thinks they're somebody stays at the Plaza. I mean, they got rooms for a couple hundred and change. You need better than that. You want someplace where the money that knows goes. The Ritz Carlton… now there's a hotel."

  "If you say so."

  Maybe Mrs. Rossi hadn't been so overly generous with her advance. This was turning out to be one expensive fix.

  3

  Instead of the bubbly Christy, the equally bubbly Jeanie was on duty at the Dormentalist temple's metal detector this morning. She checked her computer, made a call, then guided Jack through the detector.

  "Your RT will be with you
in a minute, Mr. Farrell."

  "RT?"

  "Sorry. Reveille Tech. Oh, here she comes now."

  Jack saw a large frizzy blond woman waddling his way on legs like Doric pillars. Instead of the ubiquitous uniform, she wore a sleeveless yellow tunic that looked a size too small for her. Maybe two sizes. And of course she was grinning ear to ear.

  In a high-pitched, lightly French-accented voice, she introduced herself as Aveline Lesueur and led him to the double elevator bank. When she called him "Jack" it sounded like "Jock."

  In the elevator on the way up he noticed a sweaty odor about her. He was glad it was a short trip.

  On the fourth floor she pointed out the Male RC Changing Room, explaining that RC meant Reveille Candidate and he should go in, pick out a locker, and change into the RC uniform he'd find there.

  "Like yours?"

  She shook her head. "I am afraid not. This is only for RTs, and only while we are conducting sessions."

  "A gray one then?"

  "Not until you qualify for FI—Fusion Initiate—status. Until then you must wear RC colors."

  Although her English was good, she still hadn't mastered the "th" sound, resorting to a soft "z" instead.

  In the Male RC Changing Room—he was surprised they didn't call it the MRCCR—Jack found a dozen lockers. Ten stood open, each containing a dark green jumpsuit, each with a key in its lock. He shucked his street clothes and slipped into the jumpsuit. It was too big for him but he wasn't going to bother searching for one that fit. He noticed it had no pockets—just a tiny pouch on the left breast big enough for the locker key and nothing else. He'd have to leave his wallet and effects in the locker.