The Dark at the End (Repairman Jack)

by F. Paul Wilson

  17

  “I’m sure you’re thoroughly confused and have a million questions,” Drexler said. “But I can answer them all with one simple statement.”

  They stood in a shadowed, recessed doorway across the street from the loft building, watching the entrance. The fresh cold air was like a tonic for Jack. The nausea had receded and his head felt clearer.

  “Hit me.”

  “I wish to prevent the Change.”

  Jack almost laughed. “As the saying goes, ‘I may have been born at night, but not last night.’”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “I was hoping that what just transpired in that loft would add credence to my statement.”

  Jack digested that, looking for the angle.

  Rasalom knew Glaeken was powerless, leaving only the Lady blocking his path to the Change. He knew too that Jack was the Heir. So how could Drexler’s approaching him with this off-the-wall change of heart work to Rasalom’s advantage?

  Jack couldn’t see the trip wire—at least not yet.

  Nor could he see how this could have been set up. No one had known he’d be visiting Drexler tonight. No time to set up a big-store type scam like this. Especially since it involved the deaths of three members of the Order, including Drexler’s right-hand man.

  “Let’s just say I buy that. Why?”

  “That is not something I care to discuss. Take it or leave it.”

  Wait … something Szeto had said tonight …

  I answer only to the One. In fact, soon I may be Drexler’s master.

  Was a palace coup in the offing? Or threatened? Was that why Drexler had executed Szeto?

  Jack tried to read Drexler’s expression in the shadows as he replied.

  “You think the One is going to abandon you when the Change comes. Is that it?”

  Drexler didn’t react. “I repeat: I want to stop the Change. Take it or leave it.”

  “You think killing off the Order’s enforcers is the way to do that?”

  “The only way I know to stop the Change is to stop the One. You told me tonight that you are set on doing that. Therefore our goals are confluent. I will help you make the attempt.”

  Jack shook his head. “‘Attempt.’ Not exactly a vote of confidence.”

  “I am nothing if not a realist and a pragmatist. And you … you are not a fool. You must know you face a daunting challenge.”

  Jack sighed. “Yeah. I do. But if I find him, I’m gonna hit him with everything.”

  “You must. It must be your personal Armageddon.”

  “But the key word is find. If I can’t find him, I can’t take him out. You’ve no idea where he is?”

  Drexler shook his head. “None. But I haven’t been looking. That changes as of tonight. I will work with you. Only you. No one must know of my involvement. Are we agreed?”

  Jack hesitated. This was the weirdest damn turn of events. Working with Ernst Drexler against the One. Surreal. So surreal, he couldn’t fully buy into it. Blagden seemed a dead end. Rasalom and the Order were connected, so tapping into the Order’s datastream seemed a good way to go.

  But he’d keep one eye looking over his shoulder.

  Jack extended his hand. “Agreed.”

  They shook.

  Drexler looked about to say something when his gaze fixed over Jack’s shoulder.

  “There he is.”

  Jack turned and saw Hank Thompson fast-walking along the sidewalk, carrying a paper bag. Containing an X-Acto knife, perhaps? To remove a man’s eyelids?

  Jack fought the urge to start after him … and failed. But Drexler grabbed his arm as he stepped from the doorway.

  “No. I have need of him.”

  Jack stepped back.

  As they waited for Thompson to enter the loft building, Jack said, “One last question: When you let Hans and Fritz through the door—”

  “Hans and Fritz?”

  “The two German guys. Why did you step out and close it?”

  “Obvious, I should think: I didn’t want to risk blood spatters on my suit or coat.”

  “Right. Obvious.”

  As soon as Thompson was through the entrance, Drexler handed Jack the balled-up remnants of the duct tape that had bound him, then hurried across the street.

  Jack watched him go. So weird. Could he trust Drexler to hold up his end of the bargain? Well, at least as long as their goals remained—to use his term—confluent. Jack harbored no doubt that if Drexler got a better offer, their deal would be as dead as Szeto and the Katzenjammers.

  18

  Ernst caught up to Thompson just as he was entering the big, open elevator.

  “Mister Thompson. Hold that.”

  Thompson smiled. “Well, well. Look who got invited to the party. I didn’t know if Tyleski had got to you or not.”

  “Tyleski?” The name threw Ernst for a second, then he remembered. “Oh, yes. That was the name he gave you.”

  “Bogus as all hell.” He raised the paper sack he was carrying. “But these will bring out the truth. Before the night is over, we’ll know everything about this guy.”

  Ernst removed the Taser from his pocket and held it up.

  “This will help too.”

  “That’s way too tame, man.”

  “But if he is the one who Tasered us last summer, it is only fair, no?”

  Thompson grinned. “Well, maybe for appetizers.”

  The elevator stopped at the top floor and he let Thompson lead the way across the foyer.

  “Hey, everybody,” he said as he opened the door to the loft. “It’s party ti—”

  He stopped dead one step inside the threshold. Ernst was expecting that but purposely ran into him from behind, pushing him farther into the room.

  “Oh, shit!” Thompson cried. “Oh, fuck!”

  Ernst put on a suitably shocked expression and pushed past him. Perhaps only partially put on. It always surprised him how much blood the human body contained. And when it ran out through multiple large exit wounds, it formed pools of remarkable size. These three pools had merged into a crimson lake. Clotting had begun.

  Thompson seemed mesmerized by the blood, but he tore his gaze away and focused on the empty chair.

  “He’s gone!”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Ernst said.

  “But how? Szeto and I taped him into that chair ourselves. No way he could have gotten out.”

  Ernst stepped around the pool of blood and inspected the chair.

  “Tape? What tape? There is no tape here.”

  “There’s gotta be!” Thompson’s eyes looked ready to pop from his head. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Szeto once told me he thought he was a ninja.”

  “A ninja? Naw, he was just some American guy, but this—this is like supernatural!” He looked around. “We better get out of here.”

  “I think that is wise.”

  “What about the bodies?”

  This encounter had served its purpose. The Order would want answers. Ernst would say he arrived and found them all dead. Thompson would back that up. But Ernst would wonder aloud about Thompson … the last to see the three men alive … or had they been alive when he’d left? He claimed to have taped the stranger into the chair, but no tape was evident when Ernst arrived … could he be working with the stranger?

  The Order would find no evidence of that, but the questions would focus attention on Thompson while Ernst searched for clues to the One’s whereabouts.

  Even better, the One might contact him. Since he could no longer go to Szeto for “minor logistical support,” as he’d called it, would he turn again to Ernst Drexler? Ernst hoped so.

  If that happened, and if Ernst regained the One’s trust and favor, the deal with Jack would be null and void.

  19

  A sharp intake of breath hissed between Gia’s teeth as she parted the hair on the right side of Jack’s head.
r />   “Oh, Jack, your scalp’s all bruised.”

  He knew. He’d felt the squishy blood under the skin there earlier. Not the first time he’d been knocked cold, but the first time in years. Doc Hargus had called it a hematoma back then—not subdural, subcutaneous.

  He pressed his fingers against the area now. Odd … no squish. The last one had lasted a week.

  And his headache. Last time he’d been knocked out his head had pounded for days.

  More proof that he was being changed in preparation for Glaeken’s impending demise.

  She dabbed at the area with a cold, wet washcloth.

  “You’ve got a little dried blood here from these little tiny scratches.”

  Which were probably bigger an hour ago.

  “Oh, and look. Here’s a teeny piece of glass.”

  “I can shower all that away.”

  “No, let me help.”

  Normally this kind of attention would make him claustrophobic. If she were a nurse in an ER, he’d be pushing her away. But injuries, even minor ones, brought out Gia’s nurturing side. With every passing year Vicky needed less and less nurturing, so she had a lot stored up.

  Gia never made him claustrophobic. The closer the better.

  “Two injuries in two days,” she said as she picked at the glass. “I hope you’re not going to be making a habit of this.”

  He smiled at her. “If tonight ends like last night…”

  “Don’t count on that. You’ve got me worried now. I mean, you seem to be getting hurt lately. First your arm and now this. You never used to get hurt. Are they connected?”

  “In a way.”

  “What way?”

  “Long story. All part of a bigger problem. But this particular part of the problem has been solved.”

  She stopped dabbing at his scalp. “Solved … do I want to know the details?”

  “Probably not.”

  She sighed. “Okay. No details. But just tell me: Is the person responsible for these injuries in a position to cause more injuries?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Good. That’s enough.” She slipped her arms around his shoulders and hugged. “I worry about you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Her attitude had switched a hundred and eighty degrees from last night. The arm wound had seemed old then, well on its way to healing. But this one was fresh. And he could feel her trembling inside.

  Still holding him, she said, “Don’t you feel it’s all unraveling?”

  “‘All’?”

  “The world.”

  “What makes you think it was ever truly raveled?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately I do.”

  Was she sensing Rasalom’s ascent? Ever since her coma she seemed sensitized to the Conflict. She’d seen what she interpreted as a landscape of the future while she was out, and it had ended in impenetrable darkness this coming spring.

  And spring was only weeks away.

  Her hug tightened. “I’m worried.”

  “I know.”

  “Not for myself, so much. I’m worried for you. But most of all I’m worried for Vicky. There’s so much I want for her. I want her to fall in love, I want her to have a chance at motherhood, I want her to…”

  “Live long and prosper?”

  She laughed softly. “Exactly, Mister Spock. Actually, that’s the least of what I want for her. I want everything for her, or at least a chance at it.”

  “I’ll do my damnedest to see that she gets that chance.”

  No more needed to be said.

  FRIDAY

  1

  Dawn was going crazy with boredom.

  Mind numbing. The only way to describe it. She didn’t know how long she could keep up the surveillance on Dr. Heinze before totally losing it and committing mass murder.

  She’d been up since before sunrise, arriving at the doctor’s house and watching it until he’d left. She’d followed him to the hospital where she assumed he made morning rounds. She didn’t know because she’d stayed outside in the visitor lot with a view of his Lexus in the doctors’ lot.

  After an hour and a half or so in the hospital, he’d returned to his car and she’d followed him to the McCready Foundation offices.

  Was all this worth it? She had to wonder if this would ever pay off, if she’d ever see her baby. She could be wasting her time on a total wild-goose—

  Wait. A silver Lexus pulled out of the parking garage, and Dr. Heinze was behind the wheel. Leaving early today. Maybe things were slow at the office. Maybe he had a golf game—no, wait … too cold for golf.

  She followed him toward the east side. When he got in line for the Midtown Tunnel, she wanted to scream. She was so not in the mood for the LIE and another trip to Forest Hills. But she hung in, following him through the tunnel and onto the Long Island Expressway. But instead of turning off onto Woodhaven Boulevard like he had yesterday, he kept heading east.

  And farther east.

  Soon they were out of Queens and into Nassau County. And still he kept speeding east.

  Dawn followed. This was something different. This could prove to be nothing, or might be the break she’d been waiting for.

  2

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Jack said with all the gosharooty enthusiasm he could muster as he, Weezy, and the Lady cruised south on Route 206. “Let’s sing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer’!”

  He’d awakened early feeling pretty decent, considering what he’d gone through the night before. Maybe too decent. His bruises were already fading.

  He’d tried to fall back to sleep but began imagining what he would have gone through if Drexler hadn’t gotten cold feet about the Change. The possibilities had made sleep impossible.

  Later he’d rented a Jeep Cherokee for the Jersey trip and now had the wheel. Not the cushiest ride, but this one had a high suspension that would come in handy once they hit the Pine Barrens.

  He thought about their destination, the pyramid. He still couldn’t imagine how that fifteen-foot construct of standing triangles with open spaces between them—he remembered Eddie describing it as half a dozen Godzilla pizza slices standing on end—could hide anyone from anything. But real life had been leaving his imagination in the dust lately, so why not?

  “‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer’!” Weezy said with equal faux glee from the passenger seat. “My favorite! You take the first ten verses by yourself, and then the Lady and I will sing harmony on the rest.”

  “I do not sing,” the Lady said from behind him.

  Jack wasn’t sure why, but he was glad for that.

  “Neither does Weezy,” he said.

  Weezy looked offended. “You don’t know that.”

  “You used to howl in the shower when you were staying with me.”

  “I didn’t howl.”

  “Caterwaul, then. Whatever it was, you can’t call it singing. And ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ of all things. What happened to Bauhaus?”

  She reddened. “I had a closet crush on Simon le Bon.”

  Jack checked his phone. No missed calls.

  “You keep doing that,” Weezy said.

  “I’m waiting to hear back from a couple, three charter boats I contacted.”

  Earlier he’d made a few calls to fishing boats in the Coney Island area. No one had answered, so he’d left messages about chartering the boat for a day trip.

  Weezy nodded. “Oh, right. Disposing of the katana. No responses?”

  “March isn’t exactly charter fishing season. Gotta be colder than hell out there.”

  “Obviously you left your number. We’ll be back by early afternoon.”

  Back from Johnson … he hadn’t been back to Johnson since his father’s funeral, and that had been—what?—a year and a half or so ago. Dad and Mom were buried side by side.

  Weezy turned in her seat. “I’ve got something serious to discuss.”

  Jack said, “Uh-oh.”


  “It’s about Eddie. He wants to join the fight.”

  “Against what?”

  She shrugged. “The Order, the Otherness, whatever we’re fighting.”

  “Since when does he know about any of that?”

  “Since yesterday when I spent half the day educating him.”

  “And he’s convinced?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much. It’s a lot to swallow, but the Compendium is an excellent persuader.”

  Jack hesitated. He didn’t want to offend her. “Don’t take this wrong, but … what’s he bringing to the table?”

  “A new way of looking at things, maybe?”

  “Good enough.” He couldn’t see a downside. He turned to the Lady. “Any objection?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  Jack had to smile. “To tell the truth, I can’t wait to see his face when we seat him at a table with Mrs. Clevenger.”

  Weezy laughed. “That makes two of us.”

  They passed through Tabernacle and now farms lined the highway.

  “Nothing changes much around here,” Weezy said. “I haven’t been back in forever and it’s like I never left.”

  “Big change up ahead,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “You remember the blinker at 206 and Quakerton Road?”

  “Of course. Johnson didn’t rate a full stoplight.”

  “It does now.”

  And it was red when they reached it. As they waited to hang a left, Weezy pointed out the window.

  “Look. The Krauszer’s is still here, and Burdett’s is now an Exxon.”

  “Well, it is the twenty-first century.”

  Joe Burdett had kept up his Esso sign for decades after the company changed its name. What had once been Sumter’s used-car lot was now a discount furniture store.

  Quakerton Road split the north and south halves of Johnson and sported a couple of new stores. USED, where Jack had worked as a kid, was a mom-and-pop drugstore now. Mr. Rosen, his old boss, had died back in the 1990s. The bridge over Quaker Lake was wider but otherwise Old Town looked pretty much the same as it had when they were kids. The two-story stucco box of the Lodge remained unchanged.