The Last Christmas: A Repairman Jack Novel

by F. Paul Wilson

  “A little wound-up today, are we, Jelena?” Junior’s voice. Mr. Hands. The hands started kneading the muscles. “My, your shoulders are tight.”

  “My shoulders are fine, Robert. Please don’t do that.”

  He didn’t stop. “Just looking out for the employees, Jelena. Speaking of which, some of us are going over to Work for some holiday cheer—y’know, to make up for the busted Christmas party. Why don’t you come along?”

  Work…the snidely named neighborhood dive bar down the street.

  Hi, Hon. I’m gonna be late. Yeah, stuck at Work.

  “I can’t. Cilla’s with her sitter and I need to get home. And please take your hands off me.”

  The hands released her shoulders but she didn’t turn.

  “You know, Jelena,” he said, leaning around her left side, “you need to be more of a team player.”

  “I’m not a bar person.”

  “Well, just a little heads up: Business is off and we may have to lay off a couple of people.”

  Now she turned. A mix of fear and fury made it hard to keep her voice down, but she managed.

  “Are you threatening me, Robert?”

  He straightened and backed up a step. “Hey, no, I—”

  “Are you saying that if I don’t go and hang out at a bar with you, I might lose my job?”

  “Forget it,” he said, his expression hardening. “You’re hopeless.”

  He turned and stalked away.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  She’d thought things couldn’t get worse, but if she lost her job…

  12

  It took Abe a while to return his call—something about inventory.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “What’ve you got?”

  “Whose call am I returning? The bagel man? I got cream cheese here pining for a bagel.”

  Playing games? Okay.

  “This is the burrito man from this morning.”

  “Is it now? He’s the one wants to know what I got? Okay, what I got I’ll tell him. On that reverse phone lookup, I got an address in Wantagh. At least that’s where the Verizon bill goes. You want it now?”

  “Sure. Shoot.” Jack wrote it down as Abe dictated. “Great. Now for the other—”

  “The other! You want to know what I got on the other? I got mishegoss is what I got.”

  Jack was fuzzy on mishegoss but knew it wasn’t good.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I floated inquiries toward people I know who have connections to that investigative wing in that department you wanted me to check into.”

  Abe always assumed his phone was tapped so Jack was used to his verbal tiptoeing and sidestepping.

  “And what did they tell you?”

  “They say they’ve got no one named Quinnell—not David, not John, not nobody.”

  Why am I not surprised? Jack thought. I’m dealing with pathological liars.

  “What about the people at the address I gave you?”

  “In that house, Quinnells you’ve got. Two of them. At least for now, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The mortgage is in arrears and the bank has started foreclosure proceedings. Mother and daughter will be out on the street soon.”

  Jack hated to hear that sort of thing.

  “These Quinnells…they wouldn’t happen to be related to anyone from—”

  “That organization you mentioned? No. However, related to the woman and child you’ve got a father and ex-husband named David Quinnell.”

  “The one who killed the DEA agent.”

  “Also, the one who claimed self-defense.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Jack figured he’d claim all sorts of things in that position.

  “According to my source, Quinnell might well have been telling the truth when he said the agent tried to kill him after he made the buy.”

  “Oh?”

  “This agent had a rep as a paskudnik.”

  “Paskudnik…that’s a new one on me.”

  “Like a momzer only a lot worse.”

  Jack had heard momzer before and it wasn’t a compliment.

  “So, Quinnell could have been telling the truth about self-defense?”

  “Truth, shmooth. What does truth mean when you kill a fed, no matter how bad he was? An example they want to make. So, they made one.”

  “Swell. Truth or not, he’ll end his days in Canaan.”

  “Already they’ve ended.”

  Whoa!

  “He’s out?”

  “Out, yes. But as for enjoying his freedom, probably not so much. He’s dead.”

  Tuesday—December 23

  1

  Snow.

  Swell.

  The weather folks had been promising it for days, getting all worked up over wind-chill factors and how many inches and how few degrees, but Jack had thought it too cold to snow. Showed how much he knew. Snowmageddon had arrived. Dark, cold, and overcast one minute; dark, cold, overcast, and blizzardy the next. Anywhere from four to eighteen inches predicted depending on which way the storm tracked. One thing was sure: Whatever came down was going to stick. A good inch had accumulated in no time.

  Jack yawned and kept cruising the perimeter of Aqueduct Racetrack. The dash clock said 1:12 and he was overdue for some coffee. If he were in the city, no problem. But pickings were slim out here in the boonies of Queens. At least the Cross Bay Diner was open twenty-four hours. Maybe later. Jack wanted to stay on the north side of the Belt Parkway for now.

  Because H3 was on this side.

  A tunnel…H3 had to have access to a tunnel—or more likely a number of them. Jack couldn’t think of any other way its blip could appear and disappear the way it did.

  Made sense. The racetrack was called “Aqueduct” for a reason. He’d DuckDucked it and learned that conduits built by the Brooklyn Waterworks in the 19th century funneled water from eastern Long Island through here to the Ridgewood Reservoir. Although the Brooklyn Waterworks was gone and the reservoir decommissioned, he’d bet one of his Little Orphan Annie decoders some of those conduits remained.

  Just after Jack’s talk with Abe, H3’s blip had reappeared—but on the far side of the Belt Parkway. The only way it could have done that was via a tunnel. No way was Jack about to go hunting for its entrance in the dark, but come morning…

  In the meantime, he had to sort out what was true and not true about David Quinnell. Lots of possible permutations here. Jack didn’t care how good Abe’s contacts might be, if the Defense Intelligence Agency didn’t want anyone to know they had an agent named Quinnell, they’d deny his existence. Simple as that.

  So, there might indeed be an Agent David Quinnell and there might indeed be a convicted murderer with the same name who had died of cancer while in Canaan.

  But H3 was drawing a connecting line between the two Quinnells, and Jack had yet to make sense of that. If—

  A blip lit on the tracker screen—south end of the racetrack grounds. Jack hit the accelerator, but before he’d traveled a hundred yards it disappeared again. Same as last night.

  I know where you’re headed.

  He kept up the pace, swerving onto North Conduit, then onto Cross Bay and back into Howard Beach.

  Yep. H3 was headed back to the Quinnell place. Jack could think of only one possible reason at this hour: to wreak some havoc.

  He parked the van in the same spot as before and, tranq gun loaded and ready, headed back into the woods. Lack of sunlight made threading through these brambles and avoiding the trees a whole different experience. He’d brought along a mini Maglite but didn’t want to give himself away, so he took it slow, waving his free hand back and forth before him. At least the traffic noise from the Belt, loud as ever, covered his passage. Belt traffic ran hot and it ran cold, but it never ran thin, even with snowmageddon in progress.

  Jack froze as the Quinnell backyard came into view. Light from Cross Bay Boulevard and the Belt was bleeding and refracting thr
ough the snowy air to provide enough faint, ambient illumination to reveal a figure fooling with a rear window—the same window someone had jimmied earlier. Details were hard to scope through the snow, but whoever was at the window was wearing a short jacket instead of an overcoat.

  Jack didn’t understand what was going on, but he’d bet that window opened into the little girl’s bedroom. He didn’t care who was fooling with it, the guy was not getting inside.

  Starting forward for a closer shot, Jack removed his right glove for a better feel on the trigger, but stopped as movement from another quarter caught his eye. An overcoated figure darted from the trees, flowed over the fence, and attacked the figure at the window, taking him down from behind. After the briefest of struggles, the overcoat rose and stared down at the still form at its feet. Some strange drama was playing out here but Jack couldn’t imagine what. According to the tracker, one of those blips was H3, but which? Had to be the overcoat. So, who was the other?

  Jack watched to see what would happen next.

  Abruptly, H3 lifted the prone figure, slung it over its shoulder, then carried it over the fence with the same flowing grace it had shown on its arrival. A large dark splotch marred the fresh snow under the rear window. Blood?

  Yeah. Had to be. That big a puddle could only mean a severed carotid. H3 was carrying a mean blade.

  Jack worked his way through the brush to where it had taken the fence. He had enough light to make out dark splotches within the disturbed snow.

  Decision time. H3 seemed to know its way around the area. The idea of following it in the dark seemed foolhardy at best—downright stupid when you got down to it. But this was his chance to find H3’s tunnel. These tracks would be smothered in half an hour. Less.

  Okay, he’d follow the trail and would not—not—enter the tunnel once he’d found it.

  Jack didn’t have far to go. The tracks followed the edge of the tree line on the Belt Parkway side. Lots more light here as cars on the Belt rolled through the slush not fifty feet away. Jack had worn a brown jacket and brown twill pants—usually an inconspicuous getup, but not against snow. Anyone looking his way would see him. The swirling flakes blurred outlines and features, but still…

  So, he was delighted to find the tracks terminating at a clump of bushes—entering the clump but not emerging.

  A dark shape lay unmoving within that clump. Jack inched forward. Still no movement. A little closer and no doubt: a body. Hidden well enough now in the dark, and after a few more inches of snow, it could stay hidden for days. A week, maybe, if the deep freeze held—hard as a rock with no odor to attract scavengers.

  But who the hell was it?

  He’d need light to get a good look at this guy. He pulled out his mini Mag and, cupping his free hand around the lens, gave a brief flash.

  “Whoa!”

  He’d seen enough. The victim was all human, no resemblance to the photos of H3 Hess and Monaco had shown him. After seeing the blood on the snow—no doubt already covered with a fresh layer—Jack had assumed H3 had a knife. Maybe he did, but it hadn’t been used here. No slice. This guy’s throat had been torn out. In that brief flash Jack had seen the stumps of the trachea and both carotids. No wonder the kill had been so silent: his voice box was somewhere in the Quinnell backyard. Never knew what hit him.

  Slipping around the body, Jack carefully parted the bushes and found a hole in the ground—an open manhole with a six-inch-high rim. He pushed his way forward and took a quick peek into the steel maw. Nothing but featureless blackness down there. He wanted oh so much to flash his little Maglite to see how deep it was but didn’t dare.

  H3 was down there. Probably not right there there, but somewhere in the conduit, no doubt headed back under the Belt Parkway to the Aqueduct area where Jack suspected it had access to another tunnel, maybe one running under the racetrack itself.

  An impulsive part of him clamored to go down there and follow along.

  Uh-uh. No. He had the tracker. He’d wait for H3 to reappear on this side and then nail him with a tranq dart.

  Back to the dead man. Why had he jimmied a rear window on the Quinnell house, and why had he been trying to get in tonight—or this morning, rather? Any relation to H3?

  Jack went through his pockets and found a wallet. His license said he was Barry Wexler and that he lived two doors down from the Quinnells. From the jacket pockets he pulled out what looked like some sort of leather ball gag and a roll of duct tape. His stomach lurched. The guy was a creep and he’d been after Cilla. No other explanation.

  But H3 had taken him out first.

  Jack was getting a very sick feeling about this.

  2

  By six a.m., Jack called it quits. Snow had continued to fall at varying rates. The total had reached four inches and was still piling up. Boredom was pushing him toward sleep at the wheel and the chances of H3 rearing its ugly head diminished as the sky lightened. Add to that the lousy handling of the Econoline in the snow and he had to get off the road.

  Home was not an option. Not just because the Econoline was a menace in the snow, but because someone might be watching his place. He’d lost whoever had been following him yesterday, and no way could they know he was in Howard Beach. Why go through all that bother again when he didn’t have to?

  He drove to the end of Cross Bay Boulevard to the Surfside Motel and took a room for the night. He texted Gia his whereabouts and reassured her he’d make it to her place for Christmas Eve.

  He wished he could text Abe to look into Barry Wexler but Abe didn’t text. Text schmext. Anyone can text. A voice I want to hear.

  Then he crashed. But disturbing questions about H3 followed him into the comforting arms of Morpheus.

  3

  “You eat like this every day?” Tier said as he mixed the runny yolk with the Hollandaise sauce.

  Poncia shook his head and spoke around a mouthful. “Nah. I’d be big as a house.”

  Tier bit back an obvious rejoinder.

  Roland had told them to meet for an early breakfast at the mansion and plan out their strategy. Tier had reluctantly agreed—didn’t want to spend a second longer with Poncia than absolutely necessary—but now was glad he had. The cook had gone all out with a platter of Eggs Benedict. The eggs expertly poached, the ham tender, the English muffins toasted to perfection. And the Hollandaise sauce… delicious.

  Poncia put down his fork. “This is missing something.” He called over his shoulder. “Hey, Maurice. Bring the Heinz.”

  The little Frenchman bustled out of the kitchen holding a red bottle.

  “Oh, no, Mister Poncia. You’re not—”

  Poncia held out his hand. “Gimme-gimme.”

  He took the flat-topped bottle, flipped the cap, and upended it over his plate.

  “Please, monsieur. I made the Hollandaise from scratch.”

  “Yeah, but it needs a little zing.”

  Maurice watched with a horrified expression as Poncia slathered his Eggs Benedict in ketchup.

  “Oh, monsieur.”

  Poncia then began to cut himself a chunk. With his splinted pinky and ring fingers sticking into the air, he was a parody of elegance—one of the Three Stooges breakfasting at the Hotel Pierre.

  Forking a red-dripping portion into his mouth, he declared, “Now it’s delicious.” As the cook retreated, muttering and shaking his head, he added, “I think maybe Maurice thinks you’re special because the boss invited you for breakfast. That’s why he went all out.”

  As Poncia paused to drown his hash browns in ketchup, Tier thought maybe Maurice had gone all out because he’d be feeding someone who might actually taste what he’d prepared.

  “Okay, here’s the situation,” Tier said. “Tracking this guy wasn’t going to be easy in good weather, but now we’ve got snow to contend with.”

  “Yeah. Snowpocalypse.”

  Tier had taken the subway here. Even though the snow was still falling like a bitch, the streets along his walk from the st
op looked to be in pretty good shape, though the sidewalks were largely untouched.

  “Our problem, besides the weather, is that there are only two of us, and we have a lot of ground to cover.”

  “What ground? We got his apartment and the bank—two places, two sets of eyes.”

  “What about the sports shop?”

  “He just dropped off some food there.”

  “How do you know he didn’t drop off the Bagaq?”

  “Because I saw him walk out with it.”

  “You saw him walk out with an unseen object in a plastic bag, which he may have pretended to leave in a bank safe deposit box.”

  Poncia slammed his hand on the table. “I seen what I seen, and he didn’t have nothin’ with him when he left that bank. And anyway, why would he pretend?”

  “Because he knew he was being followed, which was why—”

  “He didn’t know shit, Tonto!”

  “Which was why he ditched you when you tried to follow his rental.”

  “I’d still be on him if I’d been driving. The cabbie didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Tier sighed. “Whatever. The upshot is we have no idea where he spent yesterday or last night. He could be anywhere.”

  Poncia grinned. “Could be shacking up with that Medici piece, for all we know. I tell ya, I wouldn’t mind hitting that myself.”

  A flashing image of Poncia pawing at one of the most stylish and stately women Tier had ever encountered—the mind boggled and the gut recoiled.

  He regrouped and said, “Just think about it: Jack brought food to the sports shop, which means he has a friend there, which means he may well return there. That makes three locations. The gas station is the obvious fourth.”

  “Ain’t obvious to me.”

  What an idiot. He struggled to keep his tone neutral.

  “If he rented the van there, he will eventually return it there. The problem is that the station is a good forty blocks downtown from the other three locations. I’m going to start there while you make a circuit of the first three.”

  “Why don’t I start there?” Poncia said.