Fearful he might lose him, Jack ran to the street and flagged down a cab of his own.
"I hate to say this," he said to the driver as he jumped into the rear seat, "but follow that cab."
The driver didn't even look back. "Which one?"
"It's just pulling away over there—the one with the Times ad on the back."
"Got it."
As they moved into the uptown flow of traffic on First Avenue, Jack leaned back and studied the driver's ID photo, taped to the other side of the plastic partition that separated him from the passenger area. It showed a beefy black face sitting on a bull neck. Arnold Green was the name under it. A hand-lettered sign saying “Green’s Machine” was taped to the dashboard.
"You get many 'Follow-that-cab' fares?" Jack asked.
"Almost never."
"You didn't act surprised."
"As long as you're paying, I'll follow. Drive you around and around the block till the gas runs out if you want. Just as long as the meter's running."
Kusum's cab turned west on Sixty-sixth, one of the few streets that broke the "evens-run-east" rule of Manhattan. Green's Machine followed. Together they crawled west to Fifth Avenue. Kusum's apartment was in the upper Sixties on Fifth. Probably going home.
But the cab ahead turned downtown on Fifth. Kusum emerged at the corner of Sixty-fourth and began to walk east. Jack followed in his cab. He saw Kusum enter a doorway next to a brass plaque that read: New India House. He checked the address of the Indian Consulate he’d jotted down that morning. It matched. He’d expected something looking like a Hindu temple. Instead, he saw an ordinary building of white stone and iron-barred windows with a large Indian flag—orange, white, and green stripes with a wheel-like mandala in the center—hanging over double oak doors.
"Pull over," he told the cabby. "We're going to wait awhile.”
Arnold pulled his machine into a loading zone across the street from the building. "How long?"
"As long as it takes."
"Could run into money."
"That's okay. I'll pay you every fifteen minutes so the meter doesn't get too far ahead. How's that sound?"
Arnold stuck a huge brown hand through the slot in the plastic partition. "How about the first installment?"
Jack gave him a twenty.
He turned off the engine and slouched down in the seat. "You from around here?" he asked without turning around.
"Sort of."
"You look like you're from Cleveland."
"I'm in disguise."
"You a detective?"
That seemed like a reasonable explanation for following cabs around Manhattan, so Jack said, "Sort of."
"You on an expense account?"
"Sort of."
"Well, sort of let me know when you sort of want to get moving again."
Jack laughed and got himself comfortable. His only worry was that there might be a back way out of the building.
People began drifting out of the consulate at 5:00. Kusum wasn't among them. Jack waited another hour and still no sign of Kusum. By 6:30, Arnold was sound asleep in the front seat and Jack feared Kusum had somehow slipped out of the building unseen. He decided to give it another half hour. If Kusum didn't show by then, Jack would either go inside or find a phone and call the Consulate.
It was nearly 7:00 when two Indians in business suits stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk. Jack nudged Arnold.
"Start your engine. We may be rolling soon."
Arnold grunted and reached for the ignition. Green’s Machine grumbled to life.
Another pair of Indians came out. Neither was Kusum. Jack was edgy. Still plenty of light, no chance for Kusum to slip past him, yet he had a feeling that Kusum could be a pretty slippery character if he wanted to be.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
He watched the two Indians walk up toward Fifth Avenue…walking west. With a flash of dismay, Jack realized that he was parked on a one-way street going east. If Kusum followed the same path as these last two, Jack would have to leave this cab and find another on Fifth Avenue. And the next cabby might not be as easygoing as Arnold Green.
"We've got to get onto Fifth," he told Arnold.
"Okay."
Arnold put his cab in forward and started to pull out into the crosstown traffic.
"No, wait! It'll take too long to go around the block. I'll miss him."
Arnold gave him a baleful stare through the partition. "You're not telling me to go the wrong way on a one-way street, are you?"
"Of course not," Jack said. Something in the cabby’s voice told him to play along. "That would be against the law."
Arnold smiled. "Just wanted to make sure you wasn't telling."
Without warning he threw the Green Machine into reverse and floored it. The tires screeched, terrified pedestrians leaped for the curb, cars corning out of the Central Park traverse swerved and honked angrily. Jack hung onto the passenger straps as the car lunged the hundred feet or so back to the corner, skidded to a halt across the mouth of the street, then nosed along the curb on Fifth Avenue.
"This okay?" Arnold said.
Jack peered through the rear window. He had a clear view of the doorway in question.
"It'll do. Thanks."
"Welcome."
And suddenly Kusum appeared, pushing through the door and striding up toward Fifth. He crossed Sixty-fourth and walked Jack's way. Jack pressed himself into a corner of the seat. Kusum came closer. With a start Jack realized that Kusum was angling across the sidewalk directly toward the Green’s Machine.
Jack slapped his hand against the partition. "Take off! He thinks you're looking for a fare!"
The cab slipped away from the curb just as Kusum was reaching for the door handle. Jack peeked through the rear window. Kusum didn't seem the least bit disturbed. He merely held his hand up for another cab. He seemed far more intent on getting where he was going than on what was going on around him.
Without being told to, Arnold slowed to a half a block down and waited until Kusum got in his cab. When it rolled by, he pulled into traffic behind it.
"On the road again, Momma," he said to no one in particular.
Jack leaned forward and fixed on Kusum's cab. He was almost afraid to blink for fear of losing it. Kusum's apartment was only a few blocks uptown from the Indian Consulate—walking distance. But he was taking a cab downtown. This could be what Jack had been waiting for.
They chased it down to Fifty-seventh where it turned right and headed west along what used to be known as Art Gallery Row.
They followed Kusum farther and farther west, past the theme restaurants, toward the Hudson River docks. With a start, Jack realized this was the area where Kusum's grandmother had been mugged. The cab went as far west as it could and stopped at Twelfth Avenue and Fifty-seventh. Kusum got out and began to walk uptown.
Jack had Arnold pull in to the curb. He stuck his head out the window and squinted against the glare of the sinking sun as Kusum crossed Twelfth Avenue and disappeared into the shadows under the West Side Highway.
"Be back in a second," he told Arnold.
He walked to the corner and saw Kusum hurry along the crumbling waterside pavement to a rotting pier where a rustbucket freighter was moored. As Jack watched, a gangplank lowered itself as if by magic. Kusum climbed aboard and disappeared from view. The gangplank hoisted itself back to the raised position after he was gone.
A ship. What the hell could Kusum be doing on a floating heap like that?
It had been a long, boring day, but now things were getting interesting.
Jack went back to Green’s Machine.
"Looks like this is it," he said to Arnold. He glanced at the meter, calculated what he still owed of the total, added twenty percent for good will, and handed it through the window. "Thanks. You've been a big help."
"This ain't such a good neighborhood during the day," Arnold said, glancing around. "And after dark it really gets rough, especia
lly for someone dressed like you."
"I'll be okay," he said, grateful for the concern of a man he’d known for only a few hours. He slapped the roof of the car. "Thanks again."
Jack watched the cab until it disappeared into the traffic, then he studied his surroundings: a vacant lot on the corner across the street, and an old, boarded-up brick warehouse next to him.
He felt exposed standing here in an outfit that shouted "Mug me" to anyone so inclined. And since he hadn't dared to bring a weapon to the UN, he was unarmed. Officially, unarmed. He could permanently disable a man with a ballpoint pen and knew half a dozen ways to kill with a key ring, but didn't like to work that close unless he had to. He would have been much more comfortable knowing the Semmerling was strapped against his leg.
He had to hide. His best bet would be under the West Side Highway. He jogged over and perched himself high up in the notch of one of the supports. It offered a clear view of the pier and the ship. Best of all, it would keep him out of sight of any troublemakers.
Dusk came and went. The streetlights came on as night slipped over the city. He was away from the streets, but he saw the traffic to the west and south of him thin out to a rare car cruising by. Still plenty of rumbling overhead on the West Side Highway as the cars slowed for the ramp down to street level just two blocks from where he crouched. The ship remained silent. Nothing moved on its decks, no lights showed from the superstructure. It had all the appearances of a deserted wreck.
What was Kusum doing in there?
Finally, when full darkness settled in at nine o'clock, Jack could wait no longer. In the dark he was pretty sure he could reach the deck and do some hunting around without being seen.
He jumped down from his perch and crossed over to the shadows by the pier. The moon was rising in the east—big and low and ruddy now, slightly rounder than last night. He wanted to get aboard and off again before it reached full brightness and started lighting up the waterfront.
At the water's edge Jack crouched against a huge piling under the looming shadow of the freighter and listened. All quiet but for the lapping of the water under the pier. A sour smell—a mixture of sea salt, mildew, rotting wood, creosote, and garbage—permeated the air. Movement to the left caught his eye: a lone wharf rat scurried along the bulkhead in search of dinner. Nothing else moved.
He jumped as something splashed near the hull. An automatic bilge pump was spewing a stream of water out a small port near the waterline of the hull.
He was edgy and couldn't say why. He’d done sneak searches under more precarious conditions than these. And with less apprehension. Yet the nearer he got to the boat, the less he felt like boarding her. Something within him warned him away. Through the years he’d come to recognize a certain instinct for danger; listening to it had kept him alive. Right now that instinct was ringing a frantic alarm.
Jack shrugged off the feeling of impending disaster as he took the binoculars and camera from around his neck and laid them at the base of the piling. A rope, better than two inches thick, ran up to the bow of the ship. Rough on his hands but easy to climb.
He leaned forward, got a firm two-handed grip, then swung out over the water. As he hung from the rope, he raised his legs until his ankles locked around it. Now began the climb: Hanging from a branch like an orangutan with his face to the sky and his back to the water, he pulled himself up hand over hand while his heels caught the finger-thick coils of the rope and pushed from behind.
The angle of ascent steepened and the climb got progressively tougher as he neared the gunwale. The tiny fibers of the rope were coarse and stiff. His palms were burning; each handful of rope felt like a handful of thistles, especially painful where he’d started a few blisters playing tennis yesterday. It was a pleasure to grab the smooth, cool steel of the gunwale and pull himself up to eye level with its upper edge. He hung there and scanned the deck. Still no sign of life.
He pulled himself over the gunwale, then ran in a crouch to the anchor windlass.
His skin prickled in warning—danger here. But where? He peered over the windlass. No sign that he’d been seen, no sign of anyone else aboard. Still the feeling persisted, a nagging sensation, almost as if he were being watched.
Again he shrugged it off. He had to reach the deckhouse. Well over a hundred feet of open deck lay between him and the aft superstructure. And aft was where he wanted to go. He couldn't imagine much going on in the cargo holds.
Jack set himself, then sprinted around the forward cargo hatch to the kingpost and crane assembly that stood between the two holds. He waited. Still no sign that he’d been seen...or that there was anyone here to see him. Another sprint took him to the forward wall of the deckhouse.
He slid along the wall to the port side where he found some steps. He took them up to the bridge. The wheelhouse was locked, but through the side window he could see a wide array of sophisticated controls.
Maybe this tub was more seaworthy than it looked.
He crossed in front of the bridge and began checking all the doors. On the second deck on the starboard side he found one open. The hallway within was dark but for a single, dim emergency bulb glowing at the far end. One by one he checked the three cabins on this deck. They looked fairly comfortable—probably for the ship's officers. Only one looked like it had been recently occupied. The bed was rumpled and a book written in an exotic-looking language lay open on a table. That at least confirmed Kusum's recent presence.
Next he checked the crew's quarters below. Deserted. The galley showed no signs of recent use.
What next? The emptiness, the silence, the stale, musty air were all chafing Jack's nerves. He wanted to get back to dry land and fresh air. But he could leave until he’d found Kusum.
He descended to the deck below and found a door marked Engine Room. He was reaching for the handle when he heard it...
A sound...barely audible...like a baritone chorus chanting in a distant valley. It came from somewhere behind him.
Jack turned and moved silently to the other end of the short corridor where he found a watertight hatch. A central wheel retracted the lugs at its edges. Hoping it still had some oil in its works, Jack grasped the wheel and turned it counterclockwise, half expecting a loud screech to echo throughout the ship and give him away. But he heard only a soft scrape and a faint squeak. When the wheel had turned as far as it would go, he gently swung the door open.
The odor struck him an almost physical blow, rocking him back on his heels. The same stink of putrescence that had invaded his apartment, only now a hundred, a thousand times stronger, gripping him, jamming itself against his face like a graverobber's glove.
Jack gagged and fought the urge to turn and run. This was it. This was the source, the very heart of the stench. Here he would learn whether the eyes he’d seen outside his window Saturday night were real or imagined. He couldn't let an odor, no matter how nauseating, turn him back now.
He forced himself to step through the hatch and into a dark, narrow corridor. The dank air clung to him. The corridor walls stretched into the blackness above him. And with each step the odor grew stronger. He could taste it in the air, almost touch it. Faint light flickered maybe twenty feet ahead. Jack fought his way toward it, passing small, room-sized storage areas on either side. They seemed empty—he hoped they were.
The chant he’d dimly heard before had ceased, but he heard rustling noises ahead, and as he neared the light, the sound of a voice speaking in a foreign language.
Hindi, I'll bet.
He slowed his advance as he neared the end of the corridor. The light was brighter in a larger, open area ahead. He’d been traveling forward from the stern. By rough calculation he figured he should be almost to the main cargo hold.
The corridor opened along the port wall of the hold; across the floor in the forward wall lay another opening, no doubt a similar passage leading to the forward hold. Jack reached the end and cautiously peeked around the corner. What he saw stopped his br
eath. Shock swept through him front to back, like a storm front.
The high, black iron walls of the hold rose and disappeared into the darkness above. Wild shadows cavorted on them. Glistening beads of moisture clung to their oily surfaces, catching and holding the light from the two roaring gas torches set upon an elevated platform at the far end. The wall over there was a different color, a bloody red, with the huge form of a many-armed goddess painted in black upon it. And between the two torches stood Kusum, naked but for some sort of long cloth twisted and wrapped around his torso. Even his necklace was off. His left shoulder was horribly scarred where he’d lost his arm; his right arm was raised as he shouted in his native tongue to the crowd assembled before him.
But it wasn't Kusum who seized and held Jack's attention in a stranglehold, who made the muscles of his jaw bunch with the effort to hold back a cry of horror, who made his hands grip the slimy walls so fiercely.
It was his audience. Four or five dozen of them, cobalt skinned, six or seven feet tall, all huddled in a semicircular crowd before Kusum. Each had a head, a body, two arms and two legs—but they weren't human. Weren't even close to human. Their proportions, the way they moved, everything about them was wrong, all wrong…a bestial savagery combined with a reptilian sort of grace. Reptiles, but something more, humanoid but something less...an unholy mongrelization of the two with a third strain that could not, even in the wildest nightmare delirium, be associated with anything of this earth. Jack caught flashes of fangs in the wide, lipless mouths beneath their blunt, sharklike snouts, the glint of talons at the end of their three-digit hands, and the yellow glow of their eyes as they stared at Kusum's ranting, gesticulating figure.
Beneath the shock and revulsion that numbed his mind and froze his body, Jack felt a fierce, instinctive hatred of these things. A subrational reaction, like the loathing a mongoose must feel toward a cobra. Instantaneous enmity. Something in the most remote and primitive corner of his humanity recognized these creatures and knew there could be no truce, no coexistence with them.
The Tomb (Repairman Jack) Page 26
