Hosts

by F. Paul Wilson

  "You've got a sister, Jack?" Vicky said from the back seat. "I didn't know you had a sister. Can I play with her?"

  "Sure. She's my big sister, you know."

  "Oh." Vicky's voice fell. "You mean she's old."

  Jack drew in his lips, covering his teeth, and hoarsened his voice to sound like an old codger. "Yesh, she'sh sho old she'sh got no teeth, jusht like me."

  Vicky laughed and said, "Is that a joke, Mom?"

  Gia said, "Very loosely defined, yes."

  "Goody! That means I can give you the present I brought you from Iowa."

  "A present?" Jack said, exaggerating his surprise. "For me? Oh, you shouldn't have."

  While Vicky was fumbling in her backpack, Jack's beeper chirped.

  Only three people had the number, and one of them was sitting next to him. Had to be Abe or Julio. Checked the display: it read simply, J.

  That bothered him. Julio usually left messages on Jack's voice mail. This was the first time he'd ever used the beeper. Something must be wrong.

  "Got to call Julio."

  "Want to use my cell phone?"

  He shook his head. "Never know who else is on the line. I'll find a gas station."

  Until recently Gia might have made a remark about his being paranoid. But a few weeks ago someone had traced the tags on her car thinking it belonged to Jack and she'd wound up with a couple of Bosnian goons hanging around outside her door.

  "Where's my present?" he cried out, raising his right hand over his shoulder and thrusting it backward, palm up. "Gimme, gimme. I can't wait!"

  A fusiform shape in a papery sheath landed in his palm. He glanced at it.

  "Corn? You brought me an ear of corn? I'm at a loss for words, Vicks. No one's ever, ever given me a gift like this."

  "Mom thought of it. She said to give it to you next time you told one of your jokes."

  "Oh, she did, did she?"

  He glanced at Gia who was staring straight ahead, wind fingers from the open window running through her short blond hair as a barely perceptible smile played about her lips.

  Jack had been teaching Vicky to tell jokes. One of the many wonderful things about an eight-year-old was that even the hoariest, lamest one-liners got a laugh. She loved puns, and a joke the caliber of What's the difference between a fish and a piano? You can't tuna fish! was the absolute funniest thing she'd ever heard. Trouble was, Vicky practiced her act on her mother who had to listen to the same joke again and again and be expected to laugh every time.

  "I think this calls for a new knock-knock, Vicks," Jack said. He had a really bad one he hadn't told her yet.

  Gia groaned softly. "No. Please, God, no."

  "Knock-knock," Jack said.

  Vicky replied, "Who's there?"

  "Banana."

  "Banana who?"

  "Knock-knock."

  "Who's there?" she repeated with a giggle.

  "Banana."

  "Banana who?"

  "Knock-knock."

  Vicky was laughing now. "Who's there?"

  "Banana."

  "Not again! Banana who?"

  "Knock-knock."

  "Who's there?" She made "there" a two-syllable word this time.

  "Orange."

  "Orange who?"

  "Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?"

  Vicky dissolved into belly laughs. A child laughing—Jack couldn't think of a more wonderful sound. She went on so long that he began laughing himself. Only Gia seemed to miss the humor. She'd closed her eyes and thrown her head back against the headrest.

  "The only good thing about knock-knocks," she said in a low voice, "the only thing, is that they're short. But now you've gone and taught her one that's triple length. Thank you, my love."

  Jack pressed the ear of corn against the side of his head. "What's that? Your voice sounds husky. I can't ear you."

  Vicky burst into another laugh so loud and hard that even Gia had to smile—though she hid it behind her hand.

  "I got a million of 'em, Vicks. Want to hear another?"

  "Let's talk about your sister instead," Gia said quickly. "How on earth did she find you?"

  Jack took a moment to allow himself to switch gears. "It's complicated but in the end it comes down to this: this friend she's babysitting after brain tumor therapy has been acting weird and got herself involved with some sort of cult. A stranger gave her my number."

  Gia frowned. "A stranger just happens to give your sister your number. Do you buy that?"

  "I know it's one hell of a coincidence, but it happened. What else could it be? I know 1 was the last person on earth Kate was expecting to meet. You should have seen the look on her lace when she saw me. Looked like she'd been poleaxed."

  "Still," Gia said, shaking her head. "Very strange. What does she look like?"

  "Not too much like me. She takes after my father's side. But you can see her in person tonight if you want. She called this morning and invited us over for dinner."

  "Us?"

  "Yeah, well, I told her about you. Are you up for it?"

  "Are you kidding? Pass up an opportunity to get first-hand dirt about you when you were in knickers?"

  "I never wore knickers."

  "I wouldn't miss it for the world!"

  "Swell."

  He spotted an Exxon sign and pulled off. Called Julio and heard what he had to say. When he returned to the car he must have looked as ill as he felt.

  Gia took one look at him and said, "What's wrong?"

  Time to tell her. "We had an incident on one of the subways while you were gone," he said, trying to be oblique.

  "The bang-bangs," Gia said, catching on that he wanted to keep Little Miss Big Ears in the back seat out of the loop. With practice they'd managed to raise vagueness to an art. "That made the news even in Ottumwa."

  "Then you've heard about the man they're looking for."

  "The one they're calling the Savior?"

  Jack looked at her and nodded. "Uh-huh."

  Gia met his eyes, then she paled and jammed her hand against her mouth. "Oh, God, Jack, no!"

  "What is it?" Vicky said from the rear. "What happened?"

  "A car came too close, honey," Gia said.

  "Oh." She went back to her Harry Potter book.

  Gia stared at him. "I heard about it on the news. I worried about you, if you were one of the victims, but that lasted only an instant because then they were talking about someone who'd stopped the, um"—her eyes flashed toward the rear seat—"carnage and then taken off, and the first person I thought of was you, because you wouldn't let something like that happen, and you certainly wouldn't hang around afterward." She took a breath. "But I never really believed it was you. It must have been awful!"

  "It was. But it's getting worse. Julio says someone was flashing what looks like a police artist's sketch of me around his place this morning. And from Julio's description it sounds like this kid from The Light who was sitting near me when it went down."

  "The Light!" Gia made a face. "What are you going to do?"

  "Not sure yet. But I've got to do something."

  Jack drove on with a cold weight in his stomach. Couldn't let this kid go on flashing his picture around the Upper West Side. Sooner or later—sooner, Jack bet—someone would recognize the kid as the eyewitness reporter from The Light and two and two would add up to him.

  5

  The good thing about the lower end of Riverside Park, Sandy had decided, was that it was narrow enough to allow him to see from one side to the other. Luxury midrise apartment houses climbed to the east, and the Hudson sparkled in the late morning sun to the west beyond the trees and the highway. The bad part was that the man he was looking for was nowhere to be seen.

  He'd wandered from the Eleanor Roosevelt statue all the way to the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial and back. The mild weather was drawing more and more people outdoors. He checked out the basketball courts, the sunbathers, the readers, the snoozers, the frisbee tossers, the dog
walkers, even the baby carriage pushers, showing his printout to anyone he could collar.

  No luck. Zero. Zilch.

  A beautiful day but he wasn't in the mood to appreciate it as he stood near the bronze statue of a very young-looking Eleanor and wondered, Have I been had?

  Could this Julio guy have sent him on this wild goose chase just to get rid of him so he could start his own search?

  Sandy looked around, trying to decide whether to leave or hang in a little longer. He'd shown the printout to everyone in sight…

  … except the man on the bench downslope from where he stood. When had he arrived? He slouched on the seat, chin on chest with his arms folded and a baseball cap pulled low over his face, catching forty winks.

  Sandy walked toward him. He felt a brief flutter of apprehension about disturbing a sleeping man but he was determined to leave no stone unturned.

  "Excuse me, sir," he said as he reached him. "Can I ask you a question?"

  What happened next was a blur: the man did not look up but his hand darted out to grab the collar of Sandy's T-shirt, twisting it tight about his throat as he yanked him nearly off his feet to land in a half sprawl next to him on the bench.

  Now the head turned and Sandy knew this face, the face he'd been showing people for two days, but he didn't know the eyes because the mild brown seemed so much darker now and so full of fury. He opened his mouth to cry out but the index finger of the man's free hand was in his face, an inch from his left eye, and he was talking through his teeth.

  "Not a word! Not a sound!"

  Sandy nodded four, five, six times. Sure, sure, he'd say nothing. That was easy. Couldn't speak if he wanted to with his tongue glued to the dry roof of his mouth.

  Sandy's brain screamed: What did I do wrong? Why's he so mad? He's not going to hurt me, is he?

  The man, the Savior, transferred his grip from the front of Sandy's shirt to the back, jerking him upright on the bench. He snatched the printout from Sandy's grasp and stared at it.

  Maybe he's unbalanced, Sandy thought, feeling his body begin to quake. His thoughts flew in wild directions. Maybe he's as psycho as the killer on the train. Maybe he was going to start killing the passengers himself but the other guy started first and that's why he killed him because he'd wanted to do it.

  Sandy struggled to calm himself. Stop being an idiot. The Savior had had that tiny little pistol. Hadn't been equipped for mass murder.

  But sure as hell there was murder in his eyes now.

  Sandy looked around. He was in a public place, people all around. Nothing was going to happen to him here.

  But then anyone on the last car of the Nine the other night might have said that too.

  "Where'd you get this?" the Savior said.

  Sandy's attempt at a reply came out a croak.

  The Savior shook him roughly. "Tell me!"

  "I-I made it."

  "You drew this?"

  "Computer."

  "Who else knows about it?"

  "Just me. Look, I don't know what you're so mad—"

  "How many copies?"

  Sandy figured he'd better tell the truth. "A couple more on me. A bunch more at home."

  "And where's that?"

  He saw where this was going and didn't like it. He realized he was in the grip of a very dangerous man who was royally pissed. Detective McCann's words from that fateful night rushed back at him.

  … fucking executed him… he's a pro…

  Sandy's bladder squeezed. What had he got himself into? He needed some insurance, and fast.

  "I left one in an envelope in my desk!" he blurted. "To be opened in case something happens to me."

  Now he wished to hell he had.

  The Savior stared at him for what seemed like an eternity, then released him with a shove. "Yeah, right." He held out his hand. "Give me the rest of them."

  Sandy fished out the printouts and handed them over. The Savior folded them, then stared out toward the Hudson.

  "Go home, shred those other copies, and mind your own business."

  "But this is my business!"

  "Dogging my ass is your business?"

  "I'm a journalist. I'm not out to hurt you—"

  "That's a relief."

  "I just want an exclusive."

  The Savior looked at him again. "A what?"

  "When you come in, I want an exclusive on your story."

  "You've heard the expression 'when hell freezes over'? Satan will be figure skating when I come in."

  Sandy was stunned. Could he believe this? He'd figured the Savior was consulting with a lawyer and waiting for the media buzz to build to a howling frenzy before coming forward. That he might have no intention of coming in at all had never occurred to him.

  "You can't be serious! You're a hero! You'll be on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the world. Instant celebrity"—he snapped his fingers—"like that! Any restaurant, any club in town—zip—you go right to the head of the line."

  "Yeah? Is that how Bernie Goetz is being treated these days?"

  The Goetz case—was that why the Savior was hiding? It did make sense. Goetz had wound up bankrupt with his life turned upside down and inside out by the trials and suits. But that wasn't going to happen here.

  "Look, I'm no lawyer, but there's no parallel. Goetz's attackers hadn't killed anybody and they had no guns when he opened up on them. The guy you shot had two guns, had just murdered six people, and was only getting started. Goetz saved himself from getting mugged and maybe cut up, you saved other people's lives—lots of them."

  "Including yours."

  "Yeah. Including mine. For which I'll be eternally grateful."

  "Well, in return, you forget you ever saw me and we'll call it even."

  Low-grade terror still crawled through Sandy's gut, but something in him refused to let him cave.

  "Look, I can't. I've got a higher calling: the people's right to know."

  "And your exclusive right to tell them? Cut me a break, kid. If I show up, I face a gang of charges: owning an unregistered weapon and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, just for starters. You and those others are alive today because of multiple criminal acts on my part."

  Criminal acts… what a great hook.

  "Hey, don't worry about that. You'll be such a hero, what DA would dare bring you to trial? Instant celebrity! Think of it! Every door will be open to you. People dream about an opportunity like this!"

  "Some people don't."

  Didn't this guy realize what he was throwing away?

  The Savior rose. "Like I said before: shred the drawings and forget about this."

  He turned and started to move away.

  "I can't forget it!" Sandy heard himself cry out. "This is my life! My future! I can make you come in! I can have that drawing in tomorrow morning's paper!"

  The Savior stopped, turned, and Sandy quailed when he saw the look in his eyes. Maybe he'd overdone it; maybe he'd pushed this man just a little too far… pushed a man who shouldn't be pushed.

  "You know… you make me wish I'd waited just a little bit longer before taking that guy out."

  The realization of how much he owed this man slammed into Sandy now with the force of a runaway train.

  He saved my life.

  Talk about clichés. How many times had he heard people say that about saving just about everything but a life? Somebody finds a lost set of keys, helps finish a paper or report, provides a breath mint before an important meeting: You saved my life.

  Not even close.

  But with this man, it was a fact. Sandy knew he should be saying, You saved my everything. Sandy owed him his boxed byline in the paper yesterday, owed him last night with Beth, owed him the big fat hairy future he envisioned, a future he'd been planning to ride to on this man's back.

  The Savior said, "Do your damnedest," and started to turn away again.

  "Wait! Please! I'm being a shit."

  "No argument here."


  "Can't we work something out?"

  "I doubt it."

  "But there's got to be a way I can get my exclusive and you stay out of the spotlight."

  Out of the spotlight… Sandy was still baffled by the man's reluctance to take credit for his heroism, but he owed him too much not to try and honor his wishes, no matter how shortsighted.

  "I don't see how," the Savior said. "If you get your exclusive it means you've seen me. Then the pressure for a description is on, not just from your bosses, but from the cops—especially the cops."

  "I could claim I'm protecting the confidentiality of my source."

  "And then you're slapped with obstruction of justice. How many nights you think you'll last in Rikers before you cave?"

  Sandy hated to admit it, but he doubted he'd hang on through an hour at Rikers. And then an idea struck.

  "Not if I say you called me and I got the story over the phone!"

  The Savior seemed to be considering this as he stood silent and stared at Sandy.

  Finally he nodded. "That'll work. You go ahead and make up something—whatever you want. Say I said it and that'll be that."

  "No-no. That won't cut it. I want this to be real. The truth."

  They were talking about his future here. He couldn't base it on a fabricated story.

  "The truth? Since when does anyone care about that?"

  "I do. Pretty much."

  The Savior stared at him. "You're not going away, are you."

  Sandy mustered all his courage and shook his head. Would the man who'd saved his life, take it? He thought not.

  "Sorry. I can't drop this. I just can't."

  A long silence with the two of them standing statue still, facing each other, while growing moisture soaked Sandy's armpits.

  Finally, "What do you want, kid?"

  "I'll need some background, but I'm sure people will be mainly interested in how you learned to shoot and why you were carrying a pistol that night, and most important, what was going through your mind before and after you killed the killer."