By the Sword rj-12

by F. Paul Wilson

  Usually Gia avoided mention of Emma and rarely visited her at St. Ann's. But every once in a while she felt the need to stand over her daughter's grave and speak a few words to her.

  Jack understood that—all too well. What he'd never understood was why she had insisted on this particular cemetery. St. Ann's was in Bayside, way out in the far eastern hinterlands of Queens. Practically in Nassau County. The reasons had been cryptic: Because Emma had communicated during Gia's coma that she wanted a view of the water… and wanted to be here to comfort someone. Who that someone might be, Gia couldn't say, because Emma had never told her.

  And now Gia had forgotten the dreams and that she'd ever said those things. The memories were gone but Emma would remain at St. Ann's till whenever.

  Other memories… of the burial… crashed around him. The snow-covered grass, the hard-frozen ground, the cutting wind, the tiny white coffin…

  And no Gia. Although she and Vicky were recovering from their comas and injuries at what every doctor and nurse in New York Hospital had called "a miraculous pace," they remained in the trauma unit. Emma needed burial but no way could they venture out of intensive care. Which left all the funeral arrangements to Jack.

  Looking back now he recalled little of his meeting with the undertaker, or arranging the burial plot out here in Bayside. He'd been too numb. He vaguely remembered Abe, Julio, Alicia Clayton, Lyle Kenton, and a few others at the graveside. Father Edward Halloran had somehow heard about Emma and showed up, insisting on saying a few words over the grave.

  And so whenever Gia wanted to visit, Jack would take her. Because he needed a visit now and again too, and didn't like the idea of her alone in a cemetery.

  He'd been planning to call her this morning when the phone rang and there she was, asking if he'd drive her.

  Perfect.

  She sat on the ground now, running her hand through the new grass over Emma's grave. Her lips were moving in silence. Jack wondered what she was saying to her unborn child, the daughter she'd known only from within her.

  To give her some space, he wandered off across the grass with no particular destination. St. Ann's Cemetery was small and old, crowded with headstones dating back a hundred years or more. As he wound among them, reading the inscriptions, he heard a male voice cursing in Spanish. He'd never studied Spanish, but a few years working for a local landscaper had taught him how to curse and swear in the language.

  He headed in that direction and found a gardener kicking at the dirt of a bare patch near the high stone wall. When the man realized he had an audience, he stopped and flashed Jack a sheepish, gold-flecked grin.

  "Excuse my words, señor." He gestured at the headstones. "Especially here among the dead."

  Jack shrugged. "I haven't heard any complaints. What were you kicking there?"

  "This ground… nothing will grow on it. I mix in the finest topsoil, I seed it, I water it, yet no grass will grow. I put sod down, it dies. I become very angry."

  "I saw that. Ever think of trying some ground cover?"

  "I have planted periwinkle, pachysandra, and ivy. They all die. I think the soil is poisoned, so I dig down six inches, bring in new earth. Still the same. Nothing will live here. Not plants, not even ants. Nothing."

  Jack stared down at the four-foot oblong patch of bare ground. It looked like normal topsoil. The grass around it was in beautiful shape. Just this one patch…

  He spotted a beetle scurrying through the grass toward the bald spot. He watched it veer left just before it reached it. The bug walked around to the far side of the patch, then continued on its way.

  A chill ran over Jack's skin. What the hell was wrong with that patch of ground that even bugs wouldn't cross it? Had something been spilled there? Or more unsettling, was something buried there?

  "I've got your solution," Jack said. "Astroturf."

  The gardener shook his head. "No. I shall win. This dirt will not beat me."

  Jack waved and headed back toward Gia and Emma. "Good luck."

  He found Gia waiting for him on a rise.

  "Ready?"

  She took a deep shuddering breath and nodded. "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why do I have to come here to be with her? Why isn't she with me? Why did this have to happen?"

  "I wish I could tell you, Gia."

  And that was true to the extent that Jack found himself unable to speak the words that would answer her question.

  He still hadn't found the right time to tell her the truth. Maybe he'd never find the right time to say, Because of me, because of your importance to me, because some cosmic something beyond knowing thought it could better use me if you and Vicky and Emma weren't around.

  As he took her hand and they started back toward the car, he remembered how Gia had said the dream-Emma wanted to be here at St. Ann's "to comfort someone."

  He looked back at the gardener raking up the soil of the bare spot.

  Could it be…?

  Nah.

  "I want to come home with you, Gi. Vicky's at school so I was hoping maybe we could…"

  "Talk?"

  "Yes. Talk. And do other stuff."

  "Other stuff?"

  "Other stuff."

  "I am in need of other stuff, Jack. Especially after being here. I need to lose myself for a little while."

  "Me too."

  She smiled that smile. "Goody."

  2

  Hideo had wanted to search further through the police database last night but the need for sleep and the time zone change had caught up with him. He'd awakened late this morning fully refreshed and ready for the next step.

  His target was anyone connected with Hugh Gerrish. First was to search for a list of "known associates," but he could find no such list. Perhaps because Gerrish had never been a fugitive. He had served no jail time, so there was no cellmate Hideo could look up.

  He went back to the crime itself and found the arrest record. His spirits lifted as he read through it: Gerrish had not been alone on the break and enter. He'd been captured along with a man named Alonzo Cooter.

  Hideo searched the database for that name and found the mug shot. A beefy, surly black face stared back at him. Not a cooperative face. The belligerence in his eyes said he was not a man who would frighten easily.

  But that was what the yakuza were for.

  He called for Kenji, then hit the print button. While he was waiting, Hideo found Cooter's last known address—he hoped it was good—and printed that screen too. Then he scanned through Kaze Group's properties in the five boroughs. Cooter lived in the South Bronx. Kaze owned a boarded-up building awaiting demolition near Yankee Stadium. Cooter lived less than a mile away.

  "Takita-san," Kenji said with a quick bow upon arrival.

  Hideo wrote the building's address on one of the printouts, then handed him the sheets.

  "Find this man. Bring him to this address. Then call me."

  Another quick bow and Kenji was gone.

  Hideo nodded. Complications had been encountered and overcome. Soon he would be talking to Hugh Gerrish.

  Now… if only he could find the ronin.

  He called up the mystery man's photo and stared at it, trying to devise a way to track him down.

  And he would. Hideo was sure of it.

  3

  "As nice as that was, it's not an explanation."

  Gia lay to his left on the bed, head on hand, propped on an elbow, gazing at him as she trailed fingers through his chest hair.

  Jack laughed. "Nice? Nice? It was fantastic. At least for me."

  He wasn't kidding. He loved pleasuring her with his fingertips, his lips, his tongue, and she'd experienced a couple of little deaths along the way, but after they'd fitted themselves together, Gia had taken over with an uncharacteristic hunger that left him feeling as if he'd been dissected organ by organ and then reassembled.

  She smiled. "Okay, it was fantastic for me too."

  "What did you do to me?"

>   "I'm not sure. It's kind of fuzzy now."

  "Whatever it was, I think I'm going to need a walker to get out of here."

  "Sorry. No walkers around. Only Nellie's old cane."

  "I'll take it."

  He closed his eyes relishing the touch of her fingers on his chest. He felt wiped out.

  "Well?"

  He looked at her and saw her expectant expression. No way out of this. He'd have to tell her something, and it had to be the truth. He wasn't going to start lying to her.

  He glanced at the clock. He wanted to get to Belmont noonish. Still plenty of time, so he couldn't use that as an excuse.

  He raised a finger and began tracing concentric circles on her left breast, languidly gyring toward the nipple.

  "A rosy-tipped breast, as the novels like to say."

  She pushed his hand away. "That tickles. And if you're trying to distract me, it might work, so stop it and tell what's been going on."

  Jack sighed. Where to begin?

  "Last month I learned that I have big chunks of bad DNA floating around my chromosomes." He didn't mention that she and Vicky carried a little of it too. That everyone did to varying degrees.

  She frowned. " 'Bad'? What's wrong with it?"

  "It's not normal. It gives people… violent tendencies."

  There. He'd laid it on the table.

  Gia's expression remained neutral, registering neither shock nor fear nor revulsion.

  "Oh."

  "And I've got a lot of it."

  "Oh."

  After a silence that seemed to last forever she took a breath. "Well, I guess that explains some things—at least it's a hint as to why you're good at what you do—but it doesn't explain your gentleness around here. You're a pussycat with Vicky."

  "She owns me."

  "And you've never once raised your voice against me, let alone your hand, so why have you—?"

  "It feels like a ticking bomb."

  "You can feel it?"

  "No, but just knowing it's there, inside me…" At a loss for words, he shrugged. "I don't know."

  "But I think I do. You're afraid it will hurt us?"

  "No. I seem to be able to control it—most times. I have no doubt that you're safe. But anyone who threatens that safety…" He thought of all the dead yeniçeri back in January. "They're on the endangered species list."

  Her brow furrowed. "Then what? You can't infect us with it."

  "No, but I just injected you with some."

  She looked puzzled for a few heartbeats, then, "Oh." Her eyes widened. "Oh. Emma."

  "Yeah. Emma."

  "You think she inherited some of this bad DNA?"

  "How could she not? She was half me."

  Another long silence, then, "Well, it's kind of scary, but it's moot, isn't it. Emma's gone and I don't want to—I can't go through that again. I'd get my tubes tied if it mattered."

  "Why doesn't it matter? Because of those coma dreams?"

  She nodded.

  She'd come out of the coma this way, sure that the future was short—very short. Veilleur had mentioned something along those lines, and someone he knew who said he could see the future had told him next spring ended in darkness.

  When Gia had been on death's threshold, had she peeked through and seen what was coming?

  Did that mean Rasalom was going to win?

  He shook it off.

  "Look, if anyone's getting tubes tied it's going to be me."

  She smiled. "That's sweet, but it doesn't matter."

  "Please stop saying that."

  "Well, it's true, but I'll stop saying it."

  She rose from the bed. Jack stared at her. He loved Gia's body—the breasts that fit his hands so perfectly, the curve of her hips, the slight swell of her belly. He wanted to reach out and grab her and pull her back.

  She'd taken it well. Seemed like he'd been worried about nothing. But a vasectomy… that was a thought. He didn't want his oDNA going any further.

  He glanced at the clock. Time was moving.

  "Hey, Gi? How should I dress for my day at the races?"

  4

  Gia had thought he should dress down, and suggested his construction worker look: worn jeans, flannel shirt, work boots, Mets cap, dollar-store sunglasses.

  He drove the Long Island Expressway the entire length of Queens and crossed the border into Nassau County where Belmont Park occupies a large chunk of Elmont. He arrived a little past noon. Post time for the first race wasn't until one o'clock, so he had time to settle in. He decided against valet parking, and chose the preferred lots instead, in case he needed his car in a hurry.

  His big problem—besides having nothing more than a blurry photo of his quarry—was not knowing where Gerrish was coming from, or how. The Long Island Railroad's Bellerose stop was only a short distance away. If Gerrish didn't have a car, that might be the way he'd come and go.

  From the outside, the patriotic bunting—bedecked grandstand was pretty much like he remembered it from the old days, except the ivy had spread farther across the brick walls and around the big arched windows.

  He bought a clubhouse admission and a program, and strolled the flagstone floors, checking out the Neiman manqué paintings on the walls as he refamiliarized himself with the place.

  He took the escalator up to the second floor and found a Sbarro's. That hadn't been here before.

  He ordered a slice of pepperoni pie and hung at the counter where he could keep watch on the traffic at the betting windows. Jack was betting on Gerrish being a clubhouse kind of guy—if he was as flush as he'd told folks, he wouldn't hang outside with the hoi polloi. That meant sooner or later he'd show up here.

  Melancholy seeped into his mood as he watched the thin, drab, sadlooking crowd, mostly middle age or older, go through the motions. No zip, no vim or vigor. He seemed to remember a livelier crowd, Runyonesque flashy dressers with style and attitude. But memories are unreliable, tending to be colored by wishful thinking. Maybe it had never been like he thought he remembered. But either way, these folks had more in common with Willie Loman than Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.

  Around 12:45, after doing flybys to check out a couple of guys who turned out to be almosts-but-not-quites, Jack spotted a likely candidate lining up at a window. He had a round, florid face and wore dark blue nylon warm-up pants with white stripes under a loud Hawaiian shirt acrawl with birds of paradise. Brown, wavy hair stuck out below the edge of his Rangers cap.

  Could be.

  Jack slipped the photo from his pocket and gave it a quick look.

  Yeah. A definite possibility. Even had the big diamond stud earring. Trouble was, he wore wraparound shades and had his cap pulled down almost to his eyebrows. The Hugh Gerrish in the photo had a wicked widow's peak, but this guy's hat was obscuring his hairline. Jack needed a way to sneak a peek at the peak.

  He hurried over and slipped behind him in the betting line.

  "Rangers fan, huh?"

  The guy turned and looked at him. "You got a problem with that? You gonna give me some Islander shit?"

  The Islanders had just won the Stanley Cup and Ranger fans were not happy.

  Jack smiled. "Hey, easy. I'm a Ranger guy too." Lie. Jack hated hockey. He hated high fives almost as much, but held up his hand for one. "Next year the cup is ours."

  The guy smiled and gave Jack's raised palm a good-natured slap.

  "From your lips to God's ear."

  Jack made a point of staring at his cap. "That's a nice one. Where'd you get it? The Garden?"

  He nodded. "Cost an arm and a leg but worth every penny."

  "Yeah. Nice quality. Wonder who made it. Mind if I see the label?"

  "Sure."

  The guy took it off, revealing a huge widow's peak. Jack couldn't help staring at it.

  Lily, call Herman—we've found Eddie.

  "I thought you wanted to see it."

  Jack shook himself and took the proffered hat, pretended to look at the label, then
handed it back.

  "Cool. Thanks. Gotta get me one. You live in the city?"

  A suspicious light sparked in his eyes as he fit the cap back on his head. "Why you wanna know?"

  Jack put on a flustered look. "No particular reason. Just wish I could get into the Garden more. Get me one of those hats."

  The suspicious light faded. "I'm in Jamaica. The train takes me right into Penn."

  "Yeah?" Jack's mind raced. "I'm in Jamaica too. Briarwood, actually. Put everything I had into a tiny two-bedroom ranch nine years ago and am I ever glad."

  Gerrish nodded. "You must be sitting pretty. But, hey. It's just as easy for you to get to the Garden as me."

  Jack shook his head. "Not at night… the wife don't like me going out at night."

  He snorted a laugh. "Been there, done that. That's why she's now my ex-wife."

  They shared a manly heh-heh-heh and then came Gerrish's turn at the window.

  Jack leaned close to listen in, planning to bet the same horse. Gerrish supposedly knew his ponies, and winning would give Jack a chance to reconnect with him at the payout. But a glance over the bird of paradise on his shoulder gave him a shock. No human being at the window. Some sort of cash register sat there instead.

  When did this happen?

  He watched in dismay as Gerrish worked the thing like an accountant on an adding machine, then took the ticket that popped out and started to walk away.

  "Luck to you," Jack said.

  Gerrish didn't turn. "Yeah. Same."

  As Gerrish moved off, Jack stepped up to the machine and studied it for a few seconds. He had no idea what to do, and no time to figure it out, so he faked working it, then walked off in the same general direction as Gerrish.

  5

  Dawn sat chin deep in the hot tub and stared at Henry.

  "You mean you still haven't changed your mind?"

  "It's not a matter of changing my mind, miss. It's simply that I have not been able to reach the Master and do not have permission. I would help if I could but I cannot risk it again. I break out in a sweat just thinking about what could have happened."

  What was it with this guy? Didn't he have any balls?

  Balls… there was a thought. Henry seemed like totally sexless. She never caught him looking at her. Not once.