Repairman Jack 04 - All the Rage

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Me?" Brad said, his lower lip quivering. "Just me? What about you?"

  Kent shook his head. "I'll blow a big hole through my brain before it ever gets that far."

  Luc wanted to scream. He'd heard all this before. "Can we return to the matter at hand? What do we do if this hacker breaks in and learns enough to bring us down?"

  Kent did not miss a beat. "He gets the Macintosh treatment." He looked around, daring anyone to challenge him.

  Luc had a flash of Macintosh's face as he died… the bulging eyes, the startled O of his open mouth…

  Not again… please, not again…

  "Let us hope we won't be faced with that choice," he said. "If it was indeed an intrusion, perhaps it was just a capricious stunt by an otherwise disinterested hacker who will target another system tonight."

  "But if he doesn't," Brad said. "If he chooses to come back, we'll track him and find him."

  They fell into silence. The meeting was over, but no one moved to leave. Luc didn't know how the others felt, but the world beyond their insulated, isolated, soundproof, bug-proof boardroom seemed full of danger and menace, a giant trap waiting to snap shut on him. He wanted to delay venturing outside this sheltering cocoon as long as possible.

  6

  Jack spent much of the late morning on his computer, designing an attorney business card. He'd used the program only twice before and still hadn't got the hang of it. He botched the first couple of attempts, then came up with a design that looked like the real thing. Running off a single sheet yielded a dozen cards. Plenty.

  At one o'clock exactly, showered, shaved, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie, John Gavin, attorney-at-law, presented himself and his brand-new card to the doorman at the Millennium Towers on West Sixty-seventh Street. A call upstairs confirmed tbat he was expected, and he was pointed toward the elevator.

  The Butler condo was on the twenty-first floor. On his way up Jack reviewed his options. He hadn't yet worked out just how he was going to handle Butler—hang him out the window for a while or maybe break his other leg—a lot would depend on how Jack felt when he saw him again. Right now he was in a pretty good mood. A shame to spoil it like this, but some things you could let slide; other things you couldn't.

  A private nurse, her black skin seeming even darker against her white uniform, greeted him at the door. Jack recognized her accent from his phone call. She led him to the study and left him with Mr. Butler.

  Jack felt the old fury scald his insides again as he stared at the bastard. Butler wore a Princeton sweatshirt and matching sweatpants with one leg cut off at mid-thigh to accommodate his cast. And he still looked like Porky Pig.

  "Gavin, right?" he said, thrusting out a hand. "Bob Butler. Thanks for coming over." When Jack didn't shake hands, Butler said, "Something wrong?"

  "Don't I look familiar?" Jack said.

  "Not really." He smiled apologetically. "I assume you're a Barny if you're working for the alumni association, but I can't recognize some of the guys in my own class, let alone—"

  "Last night," Jack said through his teeth.

  Butler's smile faded. He averted his eyes. "Yeah. Last night. I suppose you want to know about that."

  "I know all about it," Jack said. "I was there, remember?"

  Butler looked up at him again. "You were?"

  Jack leaned closer, pointing to his face. "Remember?"

  "No," Butler said. "Everything's kind of a blur."

  If he was lying, he was damn good at it.

  Butler rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. "I remember being at the reception hall. Because it was our twenty-fifth, we mixed up a batch of our traditional 'everything punch.' We lugged in a galvanized tub and filled it with blocks of ice, fruit juices, and bottles of the cheapest vodka and rum we could find, just like in the old days. I remember downing a couple of glasses of that; I remember some of the guys getting loud and a couple of them even swinging fists at each other. After that…" He shrugged.

  "You don't remember being in a mob that terrorized a bunch of people on the museum steps?"

  He sighed and nodded. "I remember being in the street, then on some steps, fighting with… someone. But that's pretty much it. I don't remember details, though. I'm told I had a concussion. I woke up in the hospital with a broken leg and no idea how I got it. You say you were there. Did you see me?"

  Jack nodded, watching for the slightest hint that he was lying.

  "Did… did I do anything… bad?"

  Jack forced calm. "You tried to kill an eight-year-old girl."

  "What?" The depth of horror in Butler's expression could not be faked. "I did what?" His eyes pleaded with Jack. "Tell me she's all right! Please tell me I didn't hurt a child!"

  "Somebody pulled her away from you just as you tried to chuck her off the top of the steps."

  "Thank God!"

  Butler's genuine relief cooled Jack's anger, hut that didn't let him off the hook.

  "You guys had to be doing more than cheap rum and vodka to mess up your heads like that."

  "We were, but we didn't know about it. At least most of us didn't. But that bastard Dawkins did."

  "Dawkins?"

  "Yes. Burton Dawkins. Didn't you hear?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "That's why I thought you were here—about Burt. The police were immediately suspicious that the punch had been drugged, so they tested it right away and found out it was. That's why we were released without being charged. They arrested Dawkins for spiking the punch." He shook his head. "Who would have thought a dweeb like him would do something like that. But the cops caught him red-handed with a whole bag of the drug."

  "What drug?"

  "They haven't said yet, but I called someone I know down at the commissioner's office, and he told me they think it's some new designer drug that's been popping up all over the country the past few months."

  "What's it called?"

  "He said it's sold under lots of names. They didn't have the lab report back yet, but he suspected it was a highly concentrated form called Berzerk."

  "Sounds appropriate."

  "I'm told it's spelled with a z."

  "Like the old arcade game."

  Butler flashed a smile. "Yeah. I remember that. Used to be my favorite when I was a kid. But there was nothing fun about this stuff. Potent as all hell. Between you and me, I smoked my share of weed in my younger days, snorted coke once or twice, did some speed-rite-of-passage stuff, you know? I've been high before, but I've never felt like I did the other night. I remember this sensation of awesome power, as if I were king of the world. It was truly wonderful for a while, but then it turned into this anger, this… this rage because this was my world and everything in it belonged to me and there were these other people around who were keeping me from what was rightfully mine." He grinned sheepishly. "I know it sounds insane now, but at the time it all made perfect sense. I felt like a god."

  Jack hadn't heard of anything that did that to your head, but then he didn't hang with druggies.

  "Sounds like you had a whopping dose of whatever it was."

  "I guess so. I just know I don't want any more. Ever." He shook his head. "Imagine… trying to hurt a child. I've never even spanked one of my own kids—not once." He set his jaw. "Let me tell you something: Burt Dawkins is not going to get away with this. When the criminal courts are through with him, I'm going to haul him into court and sue his ass for every penny he's worth."

  "You do that," Jack said, feeling deflated now that his anger had leaked away. He stepped toward the door. "Well, I've learned what I came for. I'll be in touch."

  "Wait," Butler said. "You were there. Did you see how I got hurt?"

  "Um, yeah. When someone grabbed the little girl from you, you, um, tripped and went down the steps yourself."

  He paled. "I could have been killed. I guess I'm pretty lucky."

  "You've got that right," Jack said, turning away.

  7

  "You're
not hungry?" Mom said in her thick Gdansk accent. "Or you don't like my cooking no more?"

  Nadia stared down at her half-empty plate. "You still make the best pierogies in the world, Mom. I'm just not that hungry."

  Her mother sat across the rickety table from her in a kitchen where the smells of cooked cabbage and boiled kiszka permeated the walls. A thin, angular woman with a heavily lined face that made her look older than her sixty-two years, but her bright eyes still had a youthful twinkle.

  Mom had already finished eating and was working toward the end of her second boilermaker. She nursed two of them every night, sitting there with a bottle of Budweiser and a shot of Fleischman's rye—"Flesh-man's," as she said it—alongside. She'd pour an ounce or two of beer into a tumbler, sip it down, then pour a little more; every so often she'd nip some of the rye. Up until a few years ago she'd have been smoking a Winston as well. Nadia had got her off the cigarettes, finally convincing her that they were what had done Dad in, but Mom wasn't about to give up the boilermakers. This was how she'd learned to drink, and no one, not Nadia or anyone else, was going to change that.

  "You have a fight with Douglas? That is why you're eating dinner with your mother on a Friday night?"

  Nadia shook her head and pushed a pierogi around her plate. "No, he's just busy."

  "Too busy for the girl he's to marry?"

  "It's a project he's working on."

  Doug had said he wanted to get back to his GEM mainframe hack before he got cold. He was determined to break through the final barriers tonight. She thought of him alone, hunched over his keyboard, not eating or drinking, totally absorbed in the data flashing across his screen. She'd been a little hurt, but then she realized she was developing an obsession of her own.

  "Work, work, work. That's all you two do. That's all young people do these days. At least now that you are not in residency, you have off the weekends. You will see him tomorrow."

  "Maybe."

  Mom's eyebrows lifted. "Saturday he is working too?"

  "Not him. Me."

  Now her eyes fairly bulged. "You? This company is paying you by the hour?"

  "No. It's salaried. But there's a project—"

  "If they not pay you for going in on Saturday you should not go. See, if you were working as a real doctor with real patients instead of this research silliness you would make extra for doing extra."

  "I will. I get a bonus if I complete the project before a certain date."

  Mom shrugged. "A bonus? A big bonus?"

  Nadia didn't want to tell her the million-dollar figure. She didn't want Mom working herself up with anticipation.

  "Very big."

  "A big-enough-to-be-working-on-Saturday bonus? Big enough so that after you get it you will quit this company and become a real doctor with real live patients?"

  Nadia laughed. "Ooooh, yes."

  "Then I think," Mom said, smiling, "that you should go to work tomorrow."

  8

  Sal Vituolo huddled on an East Hampton dune and wondered what the hell he was doing. Freakin' long ride to get here, and the sand being damp and chilly wasn't helping matters much. He hoped this was going to be worth all the trouble.

  And expense. This Repairman Jack guy didn't come cheap. Sal had tried to pay him in car parts but it was cash—and lots of it—or nothing. He hadn't particularly featured handing over that much dough with no receipt, no guarantee. Guy could be a scammer and just take off, but sometimes you just had to put aside everything you'd learned in the school of hard knocks and go with your gut. Sal's gut said this Jack was a stand-up guy.

  But maybe not wrapped too tight. Tires? What did he want with a freakin' truckload of old tires?

  The guy had shown up this afternoon to pick up the rubber and his money. Then he told Sal to go out and rent a videocam, a professional model with the best zoom lens and low-light capabilities, and haul it out here to where he could see Dragovic's house. Keep your distance but get as close as you can without being spotted, he'd said. Sal wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but here he was.

  He glanced around uneasily, hoping no one was watching him—especially no one from Dragovic's crew. No telling what would happen to him if he got caught spying on the party.

  He checked his watch. Ten o'clock. Jack had said start taping at ten, so Sal flicked on the power and settled into the eyepiece. He'd been practicing with the videocam since he got here and had the workings down pretty good. At maximum zoom, the telephoto night lens magnified the light and the house to the point where Sal felt like he was looking at the place from twenty feet away.

  He'd peeped the party off and on. Looked like the Slippery Serb was tossing a bash for his boys and his big customers. The crowd was all guys, some in suits, some in sweaters or golf shirts. Sal knew the type from their haircuts and their swagger—Eurotrash and local tough guys, probably the kind Dragovic's lawyers would refer to in court as "business associates."

  Sal had watched them chow down on the best damn buffet he'd ever seen—whole lobsters, soft-shelled crabs, a sushi chef, carvers serving everything from prime-rib to filet, a raw bar, a caviar bar with bottles of flavored vodkas jutting from a mound of shaved ice—until he got so hungry he had to turn off the camera.

  As he focused the scene now, he noticed something new going on at the party. A bunch of bikinis were splashing around in the pool. Where'd they come from? The guys were all hanging around the water, sipping after-dinner drinks, smoking fat cigars, and watching.

  Sal felt his shoulder muscles, knot… He'd bet his life that somewhere in that crowd were the guys who splattered Artie all over Church Avenue. He could be looking at them right now.

  What am I doing videotaping a party? What for? And where do Jack and my old tires come in?

  Then he heard the helicopter.

  9

  "My, what interesting people," Cino said.

  Her sarcastic tone irritated Milos. They stood in the corner where the main house joined its eastern wing. Drinks in hand—Ketel One for Milos, the ever-present Dampierre for Cino—they leaned on the railing of the highest tier of one of the multilevel decks and surveyed Milos's guests below.

  Cino wore a high-collared embroidered kimonolike dress of red silk that clung to every curve of her slim body on its way to her ankles. With her dark bangs and jet eyes, she looked Oriental tonight.

  "I'm sure you'll be more impressed with Sunday's guest list," he said. "The beautiful people are more your type. But these folk"—he gestured with a sweep of his arm—"are the ones who make this place and this party possible. My buyers, sellers, suppliers, and distributors."

  "Distributors of what?" Cino asked with a mischievous grin as she leaned against him like a cat. She'd been hitting the champagne since midafternoon and her glittering eyes said she was feeling little pain.

  Milos returned her smile. "Of the many items I import and export."

  "What kind of items?"

  "Whatever is in demand," he said.

  "And the bathing beauties," she said, jutting her chin at the pool. "Are they part of your distribution network too?"

  "Hardly. They're items in demand, which I imported from the city especially for the occasion."

  He'd hired the best-looking girls from a number of strip clubs and vanned them out for the night. Their job was an easy one: party, have a good time, wear very little, and be very friendly.

  "Ah," Cino said. "Window dressing."

  "More like party favors."

  Cino seemed to think this was very funny, and Milos enjoyed the ringing sound of her laughter as he watched the girls. Nature and silicone had provided them with fabulous bodies. They were on display now, but their real work would begin after they dried off. They had been instructed as to the pecking order of the guests and, keeping that in mind, were to pair off with anyone who was interested.

  Tonight was supposedly a little bonus for the key people in the network of drugs and guns and currency that fed Milos's operations. Many races
down there on the patio: Italians, Greeks, Africans, Koreans, Mexicans, all soon to be part of his growing empire. His was now an international business, and thus he had to be an international man and deal with everyone. Of course for his personal operations and security he used only full-blooded Serbs, hard, loyal men, blooded in battle.

  But this gathering was more than just a party. It was a testimonial, an affirmation of sorts. They were here as Milos's guests. Some of them might harbor an inkling in the backs of their minds that they could be his equal, but tonight should lay that to rest. This wasn't neutral territory where equals meet. They had come to his place, where he called the shots; they were enjoying themselves on his tab and getting a good look at his impressive new digs. They were in a position where the fact that Milos Dragovic was the man was being pounded home every minute of their stay.

  They were down there with the bimbos; he was up here with the supermodel. Didn't that say it all.

  Forty-eight hours from now things would be very different. No business associates, no bodies in the pool. Sunday would be purely social, to establish and enhance his status among the big names out here.

  "What's that noise?" Cino said.

  Milos recognized the rapid wup-wup-wup that seemed to come from everywhere. "Sounds like a helicopter."

  And then he saw it, maybe a hundred feet up, gliding in from over the ocean. A bulging net of some sort dangled beneath it. Milos couldn't see what was in the net, but it looked full of whatever it was. Some new way of fishing, maybe? But no water was dripping from the net.

  Whatever he was up to, Milos thought, the pilot shouldn't be flying that sort of cargo over homes. If that net should tear…

  "Oh, look," Cino said. "He's stopped right overhead."

  That was when the first suspicion that something might be wrong flitted through Milos's mind. It became stronger when he noticed that the helicopter didn't have any numbers on it. He didn't know the exact rules, but every damn aircraft he'd ever seen had a string of numbers on the fuselage. Either this one didn't have any or someone had masked them.