Repairman Jack 06 - The Haunted Air

by F. Paul Wilson

  Charlie stared at it. "Gotta be one of the tau crosses from the blocks in the wall. They musta buried them after they pried them out. But we found one!" He held it high. "It's a sign!"

  "It's a digging tool!"

  "Dig? I think we deep enough already."

  "Not down—in. We can use this to dig footholds and handholds so we can climb out of here."

  Charlie grinned. "Why didn't I think of that?" He gripped the base and swung the cross at the wall. The crosspiece dug in and sent dirt flying. "Oh, yeah! We on our way. We beat this ghost yet."

  12

  "Shit!" Jack rose and stepped back from the door. "Latch won't budge. We'll have to do this the hard way."

  The hard way? Lyle had thought they were already doing it the hard way. Here he was standing in his socks on a rooftop in Soho while the guy he was with tried to break into the building below. He felt exposed, as if he were on an open-air stage. At least there was no moon, but plenty of light leaked in from the city around them. All someone had to do was look out a window in one of the higher buildings nearby and see them trying to jimmy the lock on the roof door. A 911 call would get them arrested for criminal trespass, attempted B and E, and who knew what else.

  Still, better to be caught now than after they'd picked up what they'd come for; kidnapping was a capital offense.

  Half an hour ago Jack had left Lyle at a bar named Julio's; he'd returned a few minutes later in a different set of clothes and carrying a gym bag that clinked and rattled with the metallic sound of tools. They'd driven here in Jack's car and parked outside. Jack had stood across the street from the building and studied it for a few minutes, then moved on. Half a block down they'd sneaked up a fire escape and traveled across three other roofs to reach this one. Sure, easy for Jack; he was dressed for this sort of thing. Lyle was still in a dress shirt and suit pants—and black leather shoes no less. Jack had made him take them off when they reached this particular roof.

  So, if what they'd been doing was the easy way, what was the hard way?

  Jack lifted his jersey and began unwinding a length of nylon cord from around his waist. Where'd that come from?

  He handed Lyle the free end of the rope and whispered, "Tie this to that vent pipe over there."

  Lyle was more used to giving orders than taking them, but this was Jack's show, so he deferred to his expertise. Jack seemed to know what he was doing. With somebody else this sortie might have turned into a male-bonding experience, but Jack had changed after leaving the house. He went silent and into himself. The easygoing manner had fallen away, replaced by cool crisp efficiency behind an impenetrable hardshell exterior. A man on a mission, determined to bring home the goods at whatever cost. Lyle found him a little scary. As if he'd locked all the gentler human emotions in a small back room, leaving his dark and raw side unfettered.

  "Tie why?"

  "I'm going over the side."

  Lyle's chest tightened. He stepped to the parapet and peeked over. He stood atop a three-story building. Falling from here would be like jumping out a fourth-story window. A surge of vertigo gripped him and threatened to pull him over, but he hung on until the spinning passed. He expected to see a brick wall; instead he saw smooth beveled surfaces and ornate columns.

  He turned back to Jack. "You're crazy. There's nothing to hold on to."

  "Yeah. These old ironclads can be a bitch."

  Lyle felt a seismic tremor start from his center and pulse out to his extremities.

  "I don't think I can do this, Jack." Actually he was absolutely positive he could not go over that ledge.

  Jack gave him a hard look. "You backing out on me?"

  "No, it's just… heights. I'm—"

  "You thought you were going over that wall?" He shook his head. "Not a chance. You're here to watch the rope and make sure that pipe doesn't start to bend."

  Lyle sighed with relief. That he could do.

  Jack pulled on a pair of work gloves and took the rope from Lyle. He tied it around a steel pipe jutting vertically from the roof, tested the knot, glided to the parapet, and sat on the edge.

  "How do we know this guy's even home?"

  "We don't. But the third floor—where I assume the bedrooms would be—is dark. The second floor is all lit up and a television is on."

  "How can you tell?"

  Jack looked impatient. "Different kind of light. And besides, he hasn't been very mobile since our last meeting." He glanced down. "Here's the plan…"

  Lyle listened, nodded a few times, then helped Jack ease over the edge. Shifting his attention between Jack and the vent pipe, Lyle watched him ease down the iron facade and stop next to the window directly below. Further down, Lyle saw passing cars and strolling pedestrians.

  Please don't look up.

  Jack placed a foot on the ledge and eased up the window. Great. It was unlocked. But then, who locks a third-story window? Especially in summer.

  Jack disappeared through the opening and seconds later the free end of the rope sailed back out. Lyle quickly hauled it up and untied the other end from the pipe. He coiled the rope as he padded back to the roof door, then shoved it into Jack's gym bag. As instructed, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and was ready and waiting when Jack opened the door from the inside.

  As Jack exchanged his work gloves for a latex pair, he whispered, "Here's where it could get dicey. If Bellitto's alone, we're golden. But if that big guy I told you about is here…"

  He reached into the bag and pulled out a pistol with a dark matte finish. Lyle didn't know much about guns, but he knew a semi-automatic when he saw one, and assumed it was a 9 mm. And he knew that fat cylinder stuck on the end of the barrel was a silencer.

  The sight of it, and the casual way Jack handled it, made him queasy.

  It had seemed like such a good idea back at the house, a simple, straightforward plan: Trade Tara's killer for Charlie and Gia. But the farther they'd traveled from the surreality of Menelaus Manor into the reassuring hard reality of Manhattan, the more the idea of kidnapping a child murderer—suspected child murderer; they had no real proof—from his own apartment seemed downright insane.

  And now… a gun.

  Lyle swallowed. "You're not really going to use that, are you?"

  Jack's voice was flat. "I'll use whatever I have to. He's no good to us dead, so I want him alive, if that's what you're worried about. But I'll do what needs to be done to get him." His cold dark eyes, the ones that had seemed such a mild brown this morning, bored into Lyle. "Maybe you should wait here."

  "No." That was Charlie trapped in that house back there. His brother. His blood. Lyle would help Jack and worry about law and morality later. "I've come this far. I'm in."

  Jack nodded once. "Want the Glock?"

  Glock? Oh, the gun.

  "I'd better not."

  "Well, no way you're going in empty-handed."

  He reached back into the gym bag and came up with something Lyle recognized: a black leather sap.

  "Comfortable with this?"

  Lyle could only nod. He wasn't comfortable at all, and doubted he could crack that weighted end against anybody's skull, no matter who they were, but he took the heavy thing and stuck it in his pocket.

  Next Jack pulled out a roll of duct tape and began tearing off strips, some long, some short. These he stuck to the front of his jersey.

  Then they were ready. Jack worked the slide on his pistol, picked up the bag, and started down the stairwell.

  "Hey, wait," Lyle whispered as something occurred to him. "Shouldn't we be wearing masks? You know, like stockings or something?"

  "Why?"

  The reason was so obvious he was surprised Jack hadn't thought of it. He seemed to have thought of everything else.

  "So this guy doesn't see our faces."

  "Why should we care?"

  "Because what if Tara doesn't want to trade? Then we're left with a guy we've kidnapped who knows what we look like. He can go to the cops—"


  "He won't be going to the cops."

  "Why? Because he's a child killer and he's got more to hide than we do? Maybe. But we're taking him to my house, not yours. He'll know where I live, not—"

  "Won't matter what he knows."

  "It'll matter to me, damn it."

  Jack looked at him, his eyes colder and darker than ever, and spoke very slowly. "It… won't… matter."

  The full meaning of the words struck Lyle like a runaway D train.

  "Hey, listen, Jack, I don't think I want to be part of—"

  Jack turned away. "You won't be. Not your problem. Come on. Let's bag this mutant."

  Jack started down the stairs. Lyle held back, weighted down by the cold lump of lead that had formed in his stomach. But the thought of Charlie spurred him to follow.

  At the bottom of the stairwell they entered a dark hallway lined with a number of doors, all closed. No light seeped around them. Cooler here. Air-conditioning doing its job. The smell of fried onions in the air. Light filtered up from a stairway at its far end, and with it the sound of canned laughter—a sit-com on the TV.

  Jack handed the bag to Lyle and moved toward the stairs with his pistol before him. Lyle followed. At the top step he motioned Lyle to wait, then he descended the stairs one at a time with excruciating slowness, keeping his sneakered feet against the wall at the very edge of each tread. He reached the bottom and disappeared for a moment, then returned to motion Lyle down. Walking in his socks—his noisy leather-soled shoes were stowed in the gym bag—Lyle followed Jack's example, staying near the wall end of the treads.

  At the bottom he looked around. They stood in a small, spare dining room. Dinner plates still cluttered the mahogany table. The kitchen to the left, and another room beside it; Lyle guessed from the glowing computer screen that it was some sort of office. The living room lay to the right; the TV sounds came from there.

  Lyle jumped as a phone rang in the office. He looked to Jack to see what to do but Jack was already moving like a cat toward the living room. He reached the entrance at the same time another man dressed in gray suit pants and a white shirt with French cuffs came out. He was older, a six-footer with pale skin and dark receding hair, and he was moving carefully, as if movement was uncomfortable. This had to be the man they'd come for, the Eli Bellitto Jack had told him about.

  Jack shoved the silencer under the man's chin and grabbed a handful of hair at the back of his head, yanking it back to expose his throat.

  "Hello, Eli," he said in a low, harsh voice. "Molest any little boys today?"

  Lyle didn't think he'd ever seen anyone more terrified. The man looked ready to collapse from shock and fear as Jack backed him into the living room.

  "W-what? How—?"

  Lyle, still carrying the gym bag, followed at a distance. In the living room a big Sony—a thirty-something-incher—was playing a Seinfeld rerun.

  "Down! On the floor!"

  Bellitto's face twisted in pain as Jack kicked the back of his knees, sending him down to a praying position.

  "No! Please! I'm hurt!"

  The Seinfeld audience laughed.

  "That's the least of your worries," Jack said, his voice still low.

  He pushed Bellitto face down on the bare hardwood floor, then half straddled him, pressing a knee into the small of his back. Bellitto groaned in pain.

  Lyle kept reminding himself that this creep had killed Tara Portman and who knew how many other kids, and that Jack was closer to this situation than he—after all, he'd seen the guy snatch a kid firsthand. He was playing rough, but if anyone deserved it…

  Jack pulled a short strip of duct tape from his shirt and slapped it over the man's mouth. Then he looked up at Lyle.

  "Over here."

  Lyle hesitated, then approached. Jack handed him the pistol.

  He winked at Lyle. "He tries anything cute, shoot him in the ass."

  The Seinfeld audience laughed again.

  "Yeah." Lyle cleared his throat. His saliva felt like glue. "Sure thing. Which cheek?"

  Jack smiled—a quick one, the first Lyle had seen tonight—and gave him a thumbs up. Then he pulled Bellitto's arms back and used the longer strips of tape to bind his hands. He stood and held out his hand; Lyle gladly returned him the pistol.

  "One down." Jack looked around. "Maybe one more to go. Maybe not."

  Lyle hoped not. Barely thirty seconds had passed since the phone ring, but in that brief period he knew he'd gone from flimflam man to class-A or -B felon. He wasn't made for the rough-and-tumble scene, for guns and violence. It had him shaking from his fingernails to his spine.

  Jack gestured with his pistol toward Bellitto. "Help me get him up."

  They each grabbed the trussed man under an arm and lifted him into a soft, cream-colored chair. Bellitto winced in pain but Jack seemed unmoved.

  Lyle grabbed his shoes from the gym bag and slipped them on. No further need for stealth that he could see, and it felt good to have something on his feet again besides socks.

  "Anybody else here, Eli?"

  When Bellitto didn't respond Jack leaned close, grabbed his hair, and pulled his head up so that they were nose to nose.

  "Where's your buddy Minkin? Is he around? You can nod or shake, Eli. Now."

  Bellitto shook his head.

  "You expecting him or anyone soon?"

  Another head shake.

  Jack shoved him back. "Right. Like I'd believe you." He turned to Lyle. "Get out your sap and stay close to him. He tries to get up, clock him down."

  Lyle didn't want to be left alone here with this man. "Where're you going?"

  "To check the other rooms. Just to be sure. I've got this bad feeling Minkin's hiding someplace, maybe upstairs. I don't want to leave him behind if he's here. And while I'm at it, I'll see if I can find something to wrap up this garbage." He looked around the bare living room. "Jeez, Eli. You ever hear of a rug?"

  As Jack stalked away, pistol at ready, Lyle pulled the sap from his pocket and took a position behind Bellitto where he wouldn't have to see his cold eyes. He was glad the man's mouth was taped so he couldn't talk or plead. Did he have any idea this was his last night alive?

  Suddenly Lyle heard a hoarse cry—Jack's voice—echo from the other end of the house.

  Oh, shit, what now?

  He tightened his sweaty grip on the handle of the sap as his heartbeat lunged into triple time. Damn, he should have taken that gun when Jack offered it.

  And then Jack flew into the room, face white, teeth bared, the pistol in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.

  Lyle cringed at the look in his eyes. He hadn't thought a human could look like that—like death itself.

  He jumped back as Jack backhanded the pistol across Bellitto's head and held the paper before him.

  "What is this? Who sent it?" He dropped the sheet into Bellitto's lap and ripped the tape from his mouth, then he lowered the pistol till the muzzle was poised over one of the man's legs. "Now, Bellitto, or I start sending your knees to hell, one piece at a time till I hear what I want!"

  13

  "Much as I'd like to see Jack," Charlie said, "I hope he don't pop in right now. This might be just a leetle hard to explain."

  Gia laughed. "I wouldn't even bother. I'd just get on his case about what took him so long."

  Gia's feet rested in a foothold about four feet off the floor of their prison and her arm ached as she dug a new hole above her head in the dirt wall. Charlie was behind and below her, holding her in place by pushing against the backs of her upper thighs. He'd dug out the first four holes in record time—the ability to do something to help them out had galvanized him into a digging machine—stretching as far as he could for the last; then it was Gia's turn. Somebody needed to use the foot-and handholds to dig the next ones. Since she was smaller and lighter, it was easier for Charlie to hold her up.

  "God, this dirt is hard."

  She kept her eyes closed and her face averted to avoid the loose earth
that rained down as she stabbed the cross into the wall. She was covered with dirt; her short blond hair was especially full of it; she felt gritty and grimy, but she kept jabbing away. They were making progress, they were getting out.

  The cross clunked against something in the hole. Another swing, another clunk, with very little dirt falling out.

  "Uh-oh. I think I'm up against a rock."

  "You got it deep enough for a foot yet?"

  Gia gauged the opening to be three inches deep, tops. "Not yet."

  "See if you can dig around it."

  "What if it's too big?"

  She felt Charlie shift behind her.

  "Here. Stand on my shoulders and see if you can get a look. If it too big we shift the hole to one side. If it ain't, see if you can yank it out."

  "You're sure?"

  "Do it. Just don't go droppin' it on my dome."

  Clinging to the shallow depression she'd been digging, Gia lifted one hesitant foot onto Charlie's shoulder, then the other. Straightening her knees, she raised her head to the level of the hole and looked in—

  —to find the empty sockets of a child's skull staring back at her.

  Gia let out a scream of shock and revulsion and lurched back. She lost her grip and started to fall. Terrified, she nailed her arms about but could find nothing to hold on to. Somehow Charlie managed to catch her and save her from injury.

  "What's wrong?"

  Gia sobbed. "A child's skeleton. Maybe Tara herself. I hate this!" she shouted, letting the tears flow. She thought of Vicky, how except for luck that might have been her skull. "This shouldn't happen to anyone, especially not a child!" She wiped at her tears and the back of her hand came away muddy. "What kind of monster—?"

  The ground shook then. Just a little, but enough to bring her around.

  Charlie was turning, looking up at the surrounding walls. "You feel that?"

  Gia nodded. "I sure—"

  A section of the wall near the top broke free then and tumbled onto them. Gia coughed and gagged as she inhaled a cloud of dirt. Another load of earth landed on her back, knocking her to her knees.