Scenes from the Secret History

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Well, you sure hit the bull’s eye about that roof!" Jacobi said as he burst into the office.

  Harrison straightened in his chair. "What you find?"

  "Blood."

  "Whose?"

  "The victim's."

  "No prints? No hairs? No fibers?"

  "We're working on it. But how'd you figure to check the roof top?"

  "Lucky guess."

  Harrison didn't want to provide Jacobi with more grist for the departmental gossip mill by mentioning his feeling of being watched from up there.

  But the killer had been watching, hadn't he?

  "Any prelims from pathology?"

  Jacobi shrugged and stuffed three sticks of gum into his mouth. Then he tried to talk.

  "Same as ever. Money gone, throat ripped open by a pair of sharp pointed instruments, not knives, the bite marks on the face are the usual: the teeth that made them aren't human, but the saliva is."

  The "non-human" teeth part – more teeth, bigger and sharper teeth that found in any human mouth – had baffled them all from the start. Early on someone remembered a horror novel or movie where the killer used some weird sort of false teeth to bite his victims. That had sent them off on a wild goose chase to all the dental labs looking for records of bizarre bite prostheses. No dice. No one had seen or even heard of teeth that could gnaw off a person's face.

  Harrison shuddered. What could explain wounds like that? What were they dealing with here?

  The irritating pops, snaps, and cracks of Jacobi's gum filled the office.

  "I liked you better when you smoked."

  Jacobi's reply was cut off by the phone. The sergeant picked it up.

  "Detective Harrison's office!" he said, listened a moment, then, with his hand over the mouthpiece, passed the receiver to Harrison. "Some fairy wantsh to shpeak to you," he said with an evil grin.

  "Fairy?"

  "Hey," he said, getting up and walking toward the door. "I don't mind. I'm a liberal kinda guy, y'know?"

  Harrison shook his head with disgust. Jacobi was getting less likable every day.

  "Hello. Harrison here."

  "Shorry dishturb you, Detective Harrishon."

  The voice was soft, pitched somewhere between a man's and a woman's, and sounded as if the speaker had half a mouthful of saliva. Harrison had never heard anything like it. Who could be–?

  And then it struck him: It was three a.m. Only a handful of people knew he was here.

  "Do I know you?"

  "No. Watch you tonight. You almosht shee me in dark."

  That same chill from earlier tonight ran down Harrison's back again.

  "Are…are you who I think you are?"

  There was a pause, then one soft word, more sobbed than spoken:

  "Yesh."

  If the reply had been cocky – something along the line of And just who do you think I am? – Harrison would have looked for much more in the way of corroboration. But that single word, and the soul deep heartbreak that propelled it, banished all doubt.

  My God! He looked around frantically. No one in sight. Where the fuck was Jacobi now when he needed him? This was the Facelift Killer! He needed a trace!

  Got to keep him on the line!

  "I have to ask you something to be sure you are who you say you are."

  "Yesh?"

  "Do you take anything from the victims – I mean, besides their faces?"

  "Money. Take money."

  This is him! The department had withheld the money part from the papers. Only the real Facelift Killer could know!

  "Can I ask you something else?"

  "Yesh."

  Harrison was asking this one for himself.

  "What do you do with the faces?"

  He had to know. The question drove him crazy at night. He dreamed about those faces. Did the killer tack them on the wall, or press them in a book, or freeze them, or did he wear them around the house like that Leatherface character from that chainsaw movie?

  On the other end of the line he sensed sudden agitation and panic: "No! Can not shay! Can not!"

  "Okay, okay. Take it easy."

  "You will help shtop?"

  "Oh, yes! Oh, God, yes, I'll help you stop!" He prayed his genuine heartfelt desire to end this was coming through. "I'll help you any way I can!"

  A long pause, then:

  "You hate? Hate me?"

  Harrison didn't trust himself to answer that right away. He searched his feelings quickly, but carefully.

  "No," he said finally. "I think you have done some awful, horrible things but, strangely enough, I don't hate you."

  And that was true. Why didn't he hate this murdering maniac? Oh, he wanted to stop him more than anything in the world, and wouldn't hesitate to shoot him dead if the situation required it, but there was no personal hatred for the Facelift Killer.

  What is it in you that speaks to me? he wondered.

  "Shank you," said the voice, couched once more in a sob.

  And then the killer hung up.

  Harrison shouted into the dead phone, banged it on his desk, but the line was dead.

  "What the hell's the matter with you?" Jacobi said from the office door.

  "That so-called 'fairy' on the phone was the Facelift Killer, you idiot! We could have had a trace if you'd stuck around!"

  "Bullshit!"

  "He knew about taking the money!"

  "So why'd he talk like that? That's a dumb-ass way to try to disguise your voice."

  And then it suddenly hit Harrison like a sucker punch to the gut. He swallowed hard and said:

  "Jacobi, how do you think your voice would sound if you had a mouth crammed full of teeth much larger and sharper than the kind found in the typical human mouth?"

  Harrison took genuine pleasure in the way Jacobi's face blanched slowly to yellow-white.

  You’ll find the rest of “Faces” (along with many other stories)… The Barrens and Others

  1990

  COLD CITY

  The first book in the Early Years Trilogy. Rasalom is laying low, gathering power. Jack is drawn to the city that will be the epicenter of the Ally-Otherness Ragnarok. It’s the same city where Ernst Drexler II and the Order are at work sowing chaos for the One.

  After capping off the Secret History with the collision of the Adversary Cycle and the Repairman Jack saga in the revised Nightworld, I thought that would be it for Jack. But his fans deluged me with requests for more. Since I refuse to go past Nightworld, I agreed to do three prequels since in early 90s Manhattan when Jack first arrives in the city.

  NYC was a different place then. The Disneyfication of Times Square was still years away. A national recession was on, the crime rate was high, and 42nd Street was still Grindhouse Row.

  And Jack…he’s just 21, his mother was murdered earlier in the year, he’s dropped out of college, and he has one helluva chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t know the ropes yet – hell, he didn’t even know where to find the ropes. But he’s a quick learner, adaptable, and choosy about who he’ll call a friend. In other words, a natural-born survivor.

  This Publisher’s Weekly review provides a quick synopsis with no spoilers:

  “In Wilson’s lively first in a projected trilogy of prequels to his Repairman Jack saga, Jack, newly arrived in Manhattan, begins honing the skills that will eventually make him a formidable urban mercenary who operates off the grid. Jack’s talent for finding trouble is already well developed, as becomes clear when his job smuggling cigarettes runs him afoul of Arab jihadists, the mob, and a ring of sex slavers. Wilson expertly evokes Manhattan in all its gritty glory in the early ’90s and introduces series regulars Abe Grossman, Jack’s gunrunner and surrogate father, and Julio, the hard-working barkeep at Jack’s preferred watering hole, the Spot… packs a wallop that whets the appetite for his next early adventure.”

  Here are some opening scenes:

  COLD CITY

&nbs
p; (sample)

  THURSDAY

  1

  Jack might have reacted differently if he’d seen the punch coming. He might have been able to hold back a little. But he was caught off guard, and what followed shocked everyone. Jack most of all.

  No surprise where it came from. Rico had been riding him since the summer, and pushing especially hard today.

  The morning had started as usual. Giovanni Pastorelli, boss and owner of Two Paisanos Landscaping, had picked him up at a pre-designated subway stop in Brooklyn – Jack lived in Manhattan and trained out – and then picked up the four Dominicans who made up the rest of the crew. The Dominicans all lived together in a crowded apartment in Bushwick but Giovanni refused to drive through there. He made the “wetbacks” – his not unaffectionate term for them when they weren’t around – train to a safer neighborhood.

  Jack had arrived in the city in June and came across the Two Paisanos boss in July at a nursery. His landscaping business had started with two paisanos but now had only one, Giovanni, who almost laughed Jack off when he’d asked if he needed an extra hand. He was a twenty-one-year old who looked younger. But he’d worked with a number of landscapers in high school and college, and ten minutes of talk convinced the boss he’d be taking on experienced help.

  But Jack’s knowledge of Spanish, rudimentary though it was, clinched the hire. The boss had come over from Sicily with his folks at age eight and had lived in Bath Beach forever. He spoke Italian and English but little Spanish. Jack had taken Spanish in high school and some at Rutgers. The Dominicans who made up the rest of Giovanni’s crew spoke next to no English.

  Giovanni worked them all like dogs seven days a week but no harder than he worked himself. He liked to say, “You’ll get plenty of days off – in the winter.” He paid cash, four bucks an hour – twenty cents above minimum wage – with no overtime but also no deductions.

  Though a newcomer, Jack quickly became Giovanni’s go-to guy. He could understand the Dominicans if they spoke slowly, and was able to relay the boss’s work orders to them.

  Before Jack, that had been Rico’s job. He spoke little English, but enough to act as go-between. He probably felt demoted. Plus, Giovanni loved to talk and would launch long, rambling monologues about wine, women, and Italy at Jack, something never possible with Rico. That had to gall him. He’d been with Giovanni – or jefe, as he called him – for years, then Jack strolls in and becomes right-hand man within weeks of his arrival.

  Jack had come to like Giovanni. He was something of a peacock with his pompadour hair and waxed mustache, and could be a harsh taskmaster when they were running late or weather put him behind schedule. But he was unfailingly fair, paying on time and to the dime.

  He liked his “wetbacks” and respected how hard they worked. But his old-country values didn’t allow much respect for his clients.

  “A man who won’t work his own land don’t deserve it.”

  Jack had lost count of how many times he’d heard him mutter that as they’d unload the movers and blowers and weed whackers from the trailer. Giovanni charged jaw-dropping lawn maintenance fees, but people paid him. He had the quality homeowners wanted most in their gardener: He showed up. On top of that, he and his crew did good work.

  On this otherwise unremarkable late October day, the Two Paisanos crew was in Forest Hills performing a fall cleanup around a two-story Tudor in the shadow of the West Side Tennis stadium. Last month they’d worked at the club itself, planting mums for the fall. His dad was a big tennis fan and Jack remembered seeing the place on TV when the US Open was held here.

  Carlos, Juan, and Ramon were happy-go-lucky sorts who loved having a job and money to spend in the midst of a recession. But Rico had a chip on his shoulder. Today he’d started in the moment he got in the truck. Childish stuff. He was seated behind Jack so he began jabbing his knees against Jack’s seat back. Jack seethed. The months of bad ’tude and verbal abuse were getting to him. But he did his best to ignore the guy. Rico never seemed to be playing with a full deck anyway, and appeared to be missing more cards than usual today.

  When they reached the work site Rico started with the name-calling in Spanish. One thing lacking in his Spanish classes in Rutgers had been vernacular obscenities. But Jack had picked up quite a few since July. Rico was using them all. Usually the comments were directed at Jack, but today Rico had expanded into Jack’s ancestry, particularly his parents. With Jack’s mother buried less than a year now, the guy was stomping on hallowed ground. But he didn’t know that. Jack set his jaw, tamped the fire rising within, and put on his headphones. He started UB40’s latest spinning in his Discman. The easy, mid-tempo reggae of “Labour of Love 2” offered a peaceful break from Rico’s rants.

  Rico must have become royally pissed that he couldn’t get a rise. So pissed he hauled off and sucker punched Jack in the face.

  As his headphones went flying and pain exploded in his cheek, Jack felt something snap. Not physically, but mentally, emotionally. A darkness enveloped him. He’d felt it surge up in him before, but never like this. He took martial arts classes but whatever he’d learned was lost in an explosive rush of uncontrollable rage. Usually he fought it, but this time he embraced it. A dark joy filled him as he leaped at Rico with an animal howl.

  He pounded his face, feeling his nose snap beneath his knuckles, his lips shred against his teeth. Rico reeled back, and Jack quarter spun his body as he aimed a kick at his left knee. His boot heel connected with the outside of the knee, caving it inward. Even over the roaring in his ears he could hear the ligaments snap. As Rico went down, Jack stomped on the knee, then kicked him in the ribs, once, twice. As Rico clutched his chest and rolled onto his side, Jack picked up a bowling-ball-size rock from the garden border and raised it to smash his head.

  A pair of powerful arms encircled him and wrenched him around. He lost his grip on the rock and it landed on the grass, denting the turf. Giovanni’s voice was shouting close behind his left ear.

  “Enough! He’s down! He’s finished! Stop it, for fuck’s sake!”

  The darkness receded, Jack’s vision cleared, and he saw Rico on the ground, his face bloodied, wailing as one arm clutched his ribs and another his knee.

  “All right,” Jack said, relaxing as he stared in wonder at Rico. “All right.”

  What just happened?

  Maybe five seconds had passed. So little time, so much damage.

  Carlos, Juan, and Ramon stood in a semicircle behind Rico, their gazes shifting from Jack to their fallen roommate, their expressions alternating between fear and anger.

  Giovanni released him from behind and spun him around. He looked frightened, upset.

  “What were you gonna do? Kill him?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, no. I guess I lost it.”

  “Lost it! Damn right, you lost it!” He looked over Jack’s shoulder at where Rico lay. “Christ, I never seen anything like it.” His expression darkened. “You better get outa here.”

  “What?”

  “You can catch an E or an F back into the city over on Seventy-first Avenue.”

  Jack felt a new surge of anger, but nothing like before. “Hey, aren’t we forgetting something here? I was the guy who was minding his own business when he–”

  “I know all about it, but you’re still upright and moving. He ain’t walking anywhere after the way you fucked up his knee.”

  “So–”

  “So nothing. I know these guys. They’re thick like brothers. You stick around you’re gonna find some hedge trimmers chewing up your face. Or a shovel flattening the back of your head. Git. They’ll cool down if you’re not around.”

  The heat surged again. He was ready to take on the remaining three right now.

  “They’ll cool down? What about me?”

  “Don’t be a jerk. You’re outnumbered. Move. I’ll call you later.”

  “Yeah?�
�� Jack said, resisting the urge to take a swing at Giovanni. “Don’t bother.”

  Railing silently at the unfairness of it all, he picked up his Discman and started walking.

  The rest of the book is here: Cold City

  1991

  DARK CITY

  Book 2 of the Early Years Trilogy

  It’s half a year after the events of Cold City. Jack still has yet to find his place in the world. Not that he wants to belong, he simply wants to establish a life. He crosses paths with Drexler and the Order, but neither is aware of the other.

  Desert Storm is raging in Iraq but Jack has more pressing matters at home. His favorite bar, The Spot, is about to be sold out from under his pal Julio. Julio wants to take a baseball bat to his nemesis’s head, but Jack has a better plan. He takes the reins and, in classic Jack style, demonstrates his innate talent for seeing biters get bit. With a body count even higher than in the first novel, Dark City hurtles Jack toward the final volume in which all scores will be settled, all debts paid.

  I’m not a big fan of starting books off with a bang. I prefer a slow build. But in Dark City I couldn’t resist this chase along the roof of a subway I’ve ridden at least a million times. (Okay, half a million.)

  Ready? Go!

  DARK CITY

  (sample)

  February 23, 1991

  The van speeding down Seventh swerved toward him as he stepped off the curb. Would have ripped off a kneecap if he hadn’t spotted it out of the corner of his eye and jumped back in time.

  He’d come to West 23rd Street hunting lunch. Despite its grit and grime and unabashedly crass commercialism – or maybe because of it – Jack dug the big two-way cross street. Only a few blocks from his apartment, its mostly tiny storefronts offered a cross section of all the low-end merchandise available throughout the city, a mishmash of deep-discount, off-brand electronics, cheap luggage, Gucci knock-offs, the ever-present XXX peep shows, a dizzying selection of ethnic fast foods, plus an endless variety of VHS tapes, music cassettes, and CDs – all bootleg.