Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Right. So where is it?"

  "Uptown," Jack said. "Or maybe farther north of here."

  "Because that's the way it keeps running?"

  "Got to be," he said, taking the chassis from her. " 'Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?' Remember?"

  Jack put it on the floor and let it arc across the carpet to end bumping its front end on the uptown wall.

  "I think—no, I'm sure its quest is the transmitter."

  "So what are you going to do? Put it down on Fifth Avenue and follow it uptown?"

  "No… I've got a better idea." He retrieved the chassis and turned off the motor. "Is there a back way out of here?"

  "Yes. Ask Raymond. He'll show you."

  "Swell. See you later." He stopped at the door and turned. "Hey, I almost forgot. How's the little guy—the one with the haircut?"

  "Hector Lopez?" Alicia said, looking away, not wanting to see his face. "He died this morning."

  "Aw," Jack said, more of a sigh than a word. "I'm sorry."

  "Yeah," Alicia said through her constricting throat. "He was a good little guy."

  And then, as precipitously as he'd arrived, Jack was gone, leaving the toy Rover's black plastic body on her desk.

  Alicia swallowed to loosen her throat, then let Hector fade from her mind as she remembered the key they'd found along with the truck last night—last night? Had it only been last night? She wondered if Jack had learned what lock it fit.

  And then the possibility of broadcast power took over. How many billions might something like that be worth? She thought of what she could do with all that money. She could start a foundation, find homes for kids like those at the Center, fund research to find ways to save future Hectors.

  Broadcast power… the power to change the world… hers…

  Hers because that man… that monster… had left it to her…

  Alicia closed her eyes. She didn't want anything that man had touched. Anything. He had to have known that. So why had he left her this? Was he laughing now from his spot in the darkest, coldest, nastiest corner of hell?

  She picked up the Rover body and hurled it against the wall.

  9.

  Jack bought a good compass and started in his own apartment. He marked the truck's starting point at the downtown end of his living room and ran a string to where it ended up against the uptown wall. He checked that and found that the string ran a few degrees west of due north. He unfolded his brand-new map of New York State and drew a line from mid Manhattan up along the Hudson through Albany and Troy, through a little town called Elysium in the Adirondacks, then onto Lake Placid and into Quebec. Theoretically, the line could be heading all the way to the Arctic Circle and beyond. Jack hoped it stayed in New York State.

  He didn't feature trekking all the way out to Sag Harbor again, so he took his next reading in the little park on the Flushing side of the Whitestone Bridge. This time the line traveled a more westerly path, crossing the first line in Ulster County.

  Could be good news or could be a fluke. The next reading would tell.

  The lower left corner of Jack's New York map showed a portion of North Jersey. He took the Lincoln Tunnel into the lovely paved vistas of the Garden State and followed Route 3 to where it crossed the Parkway. Since that particular intersection was on his map, he stopped in a nearby strip mall parking lot and let the chassis take another run.

  Jack smiled when he checked the path with his compass: this time it headed east of due north. Good. At least they wouldn't have to go to the north pole to find the transmitter.

  The third line met the others in Ulster County, a little west of New Paltz.

  If he was right, if the receiver was designed to point the way to its power source, then the transmitter was somewhere in the vicinity of intersection of those three lines.

  Looked like he and Alicia would be on their way to the Catskills tomorrow—if Sam Baker and his boys didn't interfere. Jack had told Sean to call Thomas's lawyer and start the paperwork to sell the house. Hopefully that would keep Kemel off balance enough to allow Jack and Alicia to sneak out of town.

  Alicia… he'd been so wound up about this broadcast power thing that he'd almost forgotten about the filth in those envelopes. A big part of him was pushing to build a fire and reduce them to ash, but another part said that it might make Alicia's world a brighter place if she could watch those negatives curling and blackening and smoking in the flames.

  But giving her the envelopes meant he'd have to be there when she realized what was in them. He didn't want to see her face, didn't want to imagine what she'd be feeling at that moment. Because he could never imagine.

  Still undecided, he headed back to New York.

  10.

  Yoshio stood in a doorway where he could see both the front entrance to the AIDS Center and the length of the alley that ran along its uptown flank. Earlier this afternoon he had been parked in his usual spot when he had seen Jack-san enter the Center. He had not seen him come out, and had assumed that he was spending the afternoon there.

  But just moments ago Yoshio had been startled to see Jack-san—carrying a large Staples shopping bag—reenter the Center. Yoshio knew he had not missed his exit. This could only mean that there was another way out.

  He discovered the alleyway after a minute or two of hurried searching. How careless of him. But he wasted no time berating himself. He had missed the earlier opportunity to follow Jack-san, but he would not sneak away so easily again.

  Yoshio rushed back to his car when he saw Jack-san and Alicia Clayton leave by the front entrance and walk along Seventh Avenue. Jack-san still carried the Staples bag. He followed them around the corner as they headed east. He kept waiting for them to hail a taxi or get into a car, but instead they ducked into a subway entrance on Sixth Avenue.

  Yoshio groaned and pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Yes, he could park the car—legally or otherwise—and follow them on foot, but that would be futile. Even if he caught up to him, Jack-san would have no trouble spotting him.

  The ronin was taking no chances.

  Yoshio sighed. Another missed opportunity. He was not likely to see Jack-san or Alicia Clayton again tonight, so who else should he watch? Samuel Baker, Kemel Muhallal, or the other Clayton?

  He would choose later. Right now he wanted to make preparations for the next time Jack-san tried one of his tricks. Yoshio would be ready for him.

  He hoped.

  11.

  "Don't tell me this is another one of your decoy homes," Alicia said, "because I won't believe it."

  What am I doing here? she wondered as she wandered among the antiques and wall hangings on the second floor. They'd taken the F train down to West Fourth, then grabbed the A back up to Twenty-third, and now here she was in this elegant Victorian town house in Chelsea.

  "No, afraid not," Jack said, watching the street from a front window. "I just happen to have a key to it."

  "You seem to know your way around the place. Where's the owner?"

  "He's dead."

  "Hiding in a dead man's house…" Alicia shivered. She didn't like this place. "I feel like a fugitive."

  "In a way, you are." Jack turned from the window.

  Something about the way he was looking at her now. The same something she'd sensed during their subway ride. Something wasn't right.

  "But hopefully it's just for tonight," he said. "If we can find that transmitter tomorrow, and go public with it, you should be home free."

  "Why should that stop them?"

  "All right, it may not stop Thomas—he'll still think he deserves a share, and every shyster in the world will be banging on his door saying they can get him a piece of the broadcast power pie. But as for Kemel… it's game over. His whole mission here was to suppress this invention, to keep the world from even guessing it exists. But once the word is out, he's done for. My guess is he'll wind up swinging by his neck from a Saudi oil rig. And that's probably all those rigs'll be good for by then
."

  He picked up the Staples bag and put it on the low ornately carved table between them.

  "Are you finally going to tell me what's in there?" Alicia said.

  He'd been so secretive about it on the way here, saying, "Later… I'll show you later," every time she'd asked him.

  "I found the safety deposit box that key fits," he said, looking down into the bag as if he'd suddenly found something very interesting inside.

  "And?"

  "All it contained were these."

  Still not looking at her, he reached into the bag and began pulling out manila envelopes—half a dozen or so—and laying them on the table.

  "Anything in them?"

  Finally he looked at her. The words came out just above a whisper.

  "Photos."

  All color and texture drained from the room, and Alicia found herself in a chair, feeling weak, feeling sick.

  "You okay?" Jack said, coming around the table and moving toward her.

  Alicia held up a shaky hand—she didn't say yes or no, didn't nod or shake her head. Couldn't. Just wanted him to stop where he was, didn't want him closer, not near her, nobody near her.

  He stopped, staring.

  And then she was breathing again, deep gasps to help keep down the bile that threatened to spew all over the room, telling herself to keep calm, keep calm…

  But how could she keep calm with those… those… pictures in the same room and knowing that Jack must have seen them, had to have seen them, else why the skittering eyes and that stricken look on his face? He knew, oh, God, he knew!

  And worse, now she could see them. If she wanted to… if she dared to…

  She'd never seen them, never dared try to imagine what they could be like because that would mean resurrecting the memories of those hours and days and months on the bed or the couch in the cellar with Daddy making her do things to Thomas and making her let Thomas do things to her, things that hurt her sometimes, just so Daddy could take pictures, so many pictures…

  She took one last deep breath, held it, then forced herself to meet his gaze.

  "Did you look at them?"

  He nodded.

  Had he stared at them? Ogled them? My God, how long had he had them? What must he think of her?

  "All of them?"

  "No. Enough to realize what and… who they were, and to make sure the envelopes didn't contain anything else. Alicia I'm sorry. I—"

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why did you bring them here? Why would you do this to me? What are you going to do with them?"

  "Not what I'm going to do with them." He upended the Staples bag, and a wide box slipped out. "What you are."

  He lifted the box so she could read the illustrated label on its front.

  She squinted her blurry eyes. "A paper shredder?"

  "Right." He pointed to the envelopes. "These aren't just photos. The negatives are in here. I could have burned them—for a while I seriously considered it. But I figured you might want to turn them into confetti yourself."

  He pulled the shredder from the box, placed it on the floor in front of her, and plugged it in.

  "Why are you doing this for me?" she said.

  "Why wouldn't I? I've guessed you've been carrying around something heavy. I never realized how heavy."

  She looked away. "I'm so ashamed."

  "Of what?"

  "How can you say that?" she said, hearing her voice rising. She didn't want to lose control—not here, not now. "You've seen. God, what you must think of me."

  "I don't think you're to blame, if that's what you're getting at. No more than a battered child is to blame for his bruises. They call this kiddie porn—such a goddamn cutsey name. Call it what it is: pictures of children being sexually abused."

  He picked up one of the envelopes and offered it to her.

  "Go ahead," he said. "Time to put this behind you."

  She forced her hand forward. About halfway to the envelope it stopped, as if it had run into an invisible wall. She pushed through that wall and willed her fingers to grip the envelope and take it from Jack.

  He turned on the shredder and stepped back. She heard the blades begin to whir below the slot in its top.

  She'd managed to touch the envelope, but when it came to reaching inside…

  "You can do it," he said.

  "This won't solve anything," she said. "There must be hundreds of prints in collections around the country. That man traded them for pictures of other kids."

  "But these will be gone. No one will see them. And with the negatives gone, no one will be able make fresh copies from them. Maybe it's more symbolic than practical, Alicia, but it's a start."

  Alicia looked at Jack and wanted to cry. How could she have so underestimated this man?

  Yes, she thought, it is a start.

  She realized that for the first time in her life she had control—power—over a set of these prints. And power over the negatives too. How could she do anything but destroy them?

  She reached into the envelope and pulled out three or four prints, eight-by-ten sheets with glossy color surfaces—no, she would not look at them—and fed them into the top of the shredder. Whirring, grinding, then thin little strips cascading from the bottom, twisting into a tangle of paper spaghetti.

  Yes! It worked. The images were destroyed, all coherency lost in the hundreds of divisions. No one but a madman would try to put them back together, and the more strips she added to the tangle, the harder it would be. A hundred, no, a thousand years to reconstruct even one image.

  Sensing that this might be some sort of watershed for her, Alicia dug into the envelope and pulled out more to feed into the whirring maw. She felt tears running down her cheeks and heard herself laughing.

  This felt so good… so good!

  12.

  BZZZZZZT!

  A woman in tears was bad enough. Never failed to bum Jack out. What do you do? What do you say? But a woman laughing and crying while she was feeding a paper shredder…

  Very scary.

  But the tears and the laughter soon slacked off, and then she started talking about it, and that was worse, because it made him wish that Ronald Clayton were still alive… so that Jack could kill him… very slowly.

  "I did it for my daddy," she said. "That's how it was. A part of me sensed it was wrong, or bad, especially when it hurt, but my daddy wanted me to do it, and I didn't have much choice. And after all, he was my daddy… the man who took care of me. He wouldn't really make me do something really bad. Not my daddy."

  Her tone was remote, as if she'd cut all emotional ties with the child she was talking about.

  BZZZZZZT… more prints into the shredder.

  "And that was the really sick part of it. Beyond his perversion. That he would take his own child, someone who depended on him, who looked up to him and trusted him, and use that bond of trust and dependency to make her do exactly what he wanted in front of his camera. But that's part of the pedophile's nature: he gets off on the power over the young and weak and small, the power to corrupt innocence through unspeakable acts."

  BZZZZZZT!

  "Of course, I didn't know they were unspeakable then, but there had to be something wrong because I was never allowed to mention them. And some time before I reached ten, the picture taking stopped. I guess I was too old then. I guess the people he was trading pictures with liked their little girls under ten. Whatever the reason, it stopped and… would you believe?… I felt sad. How sick is that? Not because of what I'd actually been doing, but because my father no longer seemed interested in me. He'd never been warm or even vaguely nurturing—the words 'remote,' 'uninterested,' 'disengaged' don't even come close—but at least… at those times… when I was doing those things by myself or with Thomas, I'd had his… attention. Now I didn't even have that. Can you imagine?"

  No. Jack couldn't even begin to imagine. He felt his gorge rise as he thought of someone making Vicky do what he'd seen i
n the few prints he'd glanced at, and fought the urge to grab the phone and call her to make sure she was safe at home with Gia.

  BZZZZZZT!

  "But as I grew older, I learned, and I realized what I had been a part of. I tried to tell myself that it had never happened, that I'd imagined it all, dreamed it, but I knew no imaginings like that could have originated in me. How could I make up those perversions? No… I must have been there. And so I worked on blocking them out, making myself believe they'd never happened, and I was doing pretty well at it… until my early teens when I started developing. That was when I woke up one night and found Thomas with his hand on my breast wanting to 'do it, just like we used to.' I managed to fight him off, but that was confirmation, and it brought it all back. I began sleeping with a knife under my pillow."

  Jack didn't want to know this much about her, but didn't see how he could stop her. And it wasn't as if she was talking to him. She was talking to the air. He could have been a mannequin.

  "I knew then and there that I had to get out. But how? I was too young to support myself and I didn't want anything—anything—from that man. And I know you're probably thinking, 'Why didn't you go to the authorities and—" She stopped and looked at Jack. A wry ghost of a smile twisted her mouth for an instant. "Okay, anybody but you would say that. But how could I? Exposing Ronald Clayton meant exposing myself. It meant making those pictures public. Even now the thought of it makes me want to crawl into a hole, but can you imagine how that prospect looks to a teenage girl? I mean, a pimple on the chin is a reason to hide when you're a teenager. Making my 'sins' public—because I knew that everyone would think I'd been a willing participant—was unthinkable."

  BZZZZZZT!

  "So I worked on getting out. And I mean, I worked. I was pretty much asexual then. I was repulsed by the notion of anyone, boy or girl, touching me, so I became a bookworm. I all but lived in the public library, studying, studying, studying. I got straight A's. I found a book on how to 'package' your child for a scholarship. Well, no one was interested enough to package me for anything, so I packaged myself. And it worked. I got a full academic scholarship to college at USC. That allowed me to move out of that house. I left in August before my freshman year and never looked back. Last night was the first time I've crossed that threshold since."