"How're you feeling?"
"Thith hurtth," he said, pointing to his splinted left arm where the IV tube drained into an antecubital vein.
"We'll take that out as soon as you're better."
"Today?" he said, brightening.
"Maybe. Your fever's got to come down first."
"Oh."
Alicia turned to Jeanne Sorenson, the nurse who was accompanying her on rounds today. The big blonde was barely twenty-five but already a grizzled veteran of the AIDS war.
"Who's been in to see him?" she said in a low voice.
Sorenson shrugged. "No one that I know of. His foster mother called—once."
"All right, then," Alicia said. "Who's Hector's buddy on this shift?"
"We haven't assigned one yet."
Alicia suppressed an angry snap. "I thought we agreed that all my kids would have one buddy per shift," she said evenly.
"We haven't had time, Dr, Clayton," Sorenson said, looking flustered. "It's been hectic here, and we figured he'd be out in a couple of days, so—"
"Even if it's one day, I want them assigned a buddy. We've been over this, Sorenson."
"I know that," the nurse said, looking sheepish.
"But apparently it didn't sink in. You know how scary a hospital is for an adult, so imagine yourself a child confined to bed in a place where a bunch of strangers have taken your clothes and sneakers and started sticking needles in you and telling you what you can eat and when you can go to the bathroom. But at least most kids can count on a mother or father or someone familiar showing up and lending a little reassurance. Not my kids. They've got nobody to fall back on. Their support system is a black hole. Can you imagine what that's like?"
Sorenson shook her head. "I've tried, but…"
"Right. You can't. But trust me, it's terrible."
Alicia knew. She'd been hospitalized a few weeks into her first year at college—for dehydration secondary to a viral gastroenteritis very similar to what had brought Hector here. She was in only two days, but it had been an awful experience. No boyfriend and no close friends, no one to visit her or even ask after her, and damned if she was going to call home. She'd never forgotten that feeling of utter helplessness and isolation.
"So that's why they need someone on every shift who'll come in and talk to them and smile and hold their hand every hour or so, someone they can count on, just so they don't feel so damn alone. It's almost as important as the medicine we pump into them."
"I'll get on it right away," Sorenson said.
"Good. But don't do it for me. Do it for him." She turned and rubbed Hector's bristly head. "Hey, guy. That buzz cut looks as mad as ever."
Now she got a smile. "Yeth. It'th—" He coughed. He tried again but interrupted himself with more coughing.
"Easy, Hector," Alicia said.
She sat him up and parted the back flaps of his hospital gown. Pressing the head of her stethoscope against his ribs, she listened for the soft cellophane crinkle that would herald pneumonia. She heard nothing but an isolated wheeze.
Alicia checked Hector's chart. The admitting chest X ray had been negative. She ordered a repeat, plus a sputum culture and gram stain.
She stared down at his bony little body. She didn't like that cough one bit.
2
"Oh, no," Alicia said as she rounded the corner and saw the police cars in front of the Center. "What now?"
She had her donut and coffee from the hospital cafe in one hand, the fat Sunday Times in the other. She usually spent the rest of Sunday morning at the Center. They still had kids coming in for their treatments, just like every other day, but it was a lot less intense than the rest of the week—nowhere near as many phone calls, for one thing—so she used it to catch up on her paperwork.
She had also planned to devote some of today to figuring out her next step in the saga of the will and the house that supposedly belonged to her but no one wanted to let her have.
But now…
Just inside the front door she nearly collided with two cops, one white, one black, talking to Raymond. Raymond. He was devoted to the Center, but he rarely if ever showed up on Sunday.
"Oh, Alicia!" he said. "There you are! Isn't it wonderful?"
"Isn't what wonderful?"
"Didn't anyone tell you? The toys! The toys are back!"
Suddenly Alicia wanted to cry. She turned to the pair of policemen. Raymond introduced her. She wanted to hug them.
"You found them? Already? That's… that's wonderful!" Better than wonderful—fantastic was the word.
"I guess you could say we found them," the black cop said, scratching his buzz-cut head. His name tag read POMUS. "If you can call opening up a truck parked on the sidewalk by your front door really 'finding' them."
"Wait a minute," Alicia said. "Back up just a bit. What truck?"
"A panel truck, Alicia," Raymond said. "Filled with the toys. The police think it was the same one used to haul them away. Someone drove it up on the sidewalk last night and left it there."
"Any idea who it was?" she asked, although she had a pretty good idea of the answer.
The white cop—SCHWARTZ on his tag—grinned. "According to the guy tied to the bumper, it was Santa Claus himself."
"Guy tied to what?"
They went on to explain about the man they'd found lashed to the front of the toy-filled truck. Someone had "knocked the crap out of him," as Officer Pomus put it, and taped some rubber antlers to his head. The battered man admitted to the theft and swore that his assailant had been Santa Claus—even admitted to shooting Santa, rambling on about shooting him in the heart without killing him.
"But of course, you can't kill Santa," Officer Schwartz said, grinning.
"He's obviously a user and he sounds like an EDP, so we don't know what to believe," Officer Pomus added. "We've got him up on Bellevue's flight deck now, under observation."
"Flight deck?"
"You know—the psych ward. Sooner or later, we'll get the straight story out of him."
"And throw the book at him, I hope."
"Oh, yeah," Pomus said. "No question about that. But he's already had worse than a book thrown at him." He grinned. "A lot worse."
"Yeah," Officer Schwartz said. "Someone worked him over real good before dropping him here. The creep seemed almost glad to be arrested."
After they were gone, Alicia and Raymond went to the storeroom and inspected the gifts. Except for a little wrinkling of the paper and an occasional bumped corner, most were in the same condition as before the theft. She told Raymond to get hold of a locksmith—she didn't care that it was Sunday—and have him secure that door, even if it meant putting a bar across it.
Then she went to her office and sipped her coffee, lukewarm by now, and thought about that nothing-special-looking man named Jack—"Just Jack" Niedermeyer.
On Friday afternoon he'd said he'd see what he could do. Thirty-six hours later, the gifts were back and the thief in custody.
A man who could do that just might be able to solve her other problem.
Alicia looked up a number in her computer's directory and began dialing.
3
Jack winced as he reached for the phone. He could think of only one person who'd be calling him this morning, so he picked up before the answering machine.
"Jack, you're wonderful!" Gia said. "Just wonderful!"
"I think you're pretty swell too, Gia."
"No, I'm being serious here. I just got a call from Dr. Clayton, and she told me the toys are back."
"Is that so? Gotta hand it to New York's finest. When they get on the job—"
"Right," she said, and damned if he couldn't hear her smile. "You had nothing to do with it."
"Not a thing. You said you didn't approve, so I gave it up."
"Okay. Be that way. But Dr. Clayton said as far as she can tell, every single gift is back, and the guy who stole them is locked up. I don't know how you managed it, but—"
"I simpl
y E-mailed Santa and he did the rest."
"Well, Santa may have to do some more. Dr. Clayton asked me for your number."
Jack stiffened. "You didn't give it to her."
"No. I didn't give her any number. I told her I didn't know it by heart, and I'd have to look it up and get back to her."
Jack relaxed. "You done good, Gia. The perfect answer. Any idea what she wants?"
"Something about a personal matter. She didn't offer any details, and I didn't ask."
"Okay. Write this down." Jack rattled off the number at the Tenth Avenue drop. "Tell her to leave a message on the answering machine. Tell her that's how you get hold of me."
"Will do. Are we still on for this afternoon?"
"Sure are. Westchester, right?"
"No," she said, drawing out the word. "FAO Schwartz."
"We'll discuss that later. See you at noon."
4
"Oh, my God!" Gia said. "What's that?"
"Just a little bruise."
Jack looked down at the large purple area on his left chest wall. Damn. He'd hoped she wouldn't notice, but here in the warm afterglow of their lovemaking, he'd forgot all about it.
They'd dropped Vicky off at her art class after lunch. She spent most of every Sunday afternoon learning the basics of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Her teacher said she showed a real flair for drawing. Jack figured it had to be genetic, what with her mother an artist and all. Vicky loved the classes, and Jack loved the chance to be alone with Gia on Sunday afternoons.
Their routine was to dash here to Jack's apartment immediately after dropping Vicky off. Often they didn't travel ten feet inside the door before they were tearing at each other's clothes. From there they usually wound up on the nearest horizontal surface. Today, however, they'd made it all the way to the bed.
Jack pulled the sheet up to his neck, but she pushed it down.
"I'd hardly call that 'little.' " He watched Gia's fingers trace over it. "Does it hurt?"
"Nah."
She pressed and he winced.
"Right," she said. "Doesn't hurt a bit. How long have you had it?"
"Since last night." Since a little before midnight, to be exact.
He told her about the creep taking a shot at him, and how the Kevlar vest had saved him.
"Thank God you were wearing it!" she said. She couldn't seem to take her eyes off it or stop touching it. "But if the vest is bulletproof, how come you're hurt?"
"Well, it did keep the bullet from going through me, but the slug's still got all that velocity behind it. Something had to absorb it, and that something was me."
Jack still wasn't sure why he'd given in to the impulse to wear the Santa suit. Usually if he dressed up it was either as a lure or to allay suspicion. Last night's flamboyant performance with the ho-ho-ho's and the beard and red suit was not his style.
But somehow… this time, this job… he'd felt compelled to make a point.
And he'd known that was stupid. Experience had taught him, when you try to make a point instead of simply getting the job done, you up the chances of things going wrong, which ups your chances of getting hurt.
So Jack had taken precautions. He never wore body armor, but had made an exception last night. Normally he would have opened a can of mace and lobbed it into the truck, then taken down the guy or guys with a sap when they tumbled out the door. But doing the Santa thing required more exposure, and he knew sure as hell someone would have a gun.
He'd been right. The guy got off a lucky shot that felt like a four-by-four slamming end-on into Jack's chest. Knocked him off the truck and the wind out of his lungs, but the ten-ply vest had stopped the slug.
Good thing he'd had those weighted gloves. Abe hadn't been able to find white ones, but he'd provided Jack a pair of white cotton gloves to wear over the more traditional black leather. The lead inserts doubled the impact of every punch and allowed him to make short work of the creep.
And then Jack had lost it. Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was thinking how he'd be dead if he hadn't worn the vest, and maybe it was remembering the victims of the slimeball's rip-off. Whatever, the darkness within slipped out of its hole and took over for a little while.
Gia slipped an arm around him and pulled him closer.
One of her breasts rested on the bruise. She nuzzled against his neck.
"When are you going to quit this?" she said.
Jack took a deep breath and felt a sharp stab of pain. He figured the bullet impact had caused a minor separation in his rib cartilage. Not the first time for him, probably not the last.
"Oh, we're not going to get into that now, are we?" he said softly, smoothing her soft blond hair.
"It's just that I get so scared when I think about people shooting at you."
"It's not an everyday occurrence. Most of my fix-ups are strictly hands-off affairs."
"But there's always the potential for things to go wrong. I mean, you're not exactly dealing with upstanding citizens in your line of work."
"You've got a point there."
Maybe if he kept agreeing, she'd let it drop.
"I know I owe Repairman Jack, but—"
"You don't owe him anything."
"Yes, I do. Vicky is alive because of him. That crazy Indian killed Grace and Nellie, and if you had been anybody else, he would have fed Vicky to those things …"
She shuddered and pressed against him.
Jack closed his eyes and remembered the nightmare… Kusum Bahkti had traveled from Bengal to honor a vow of vengeance against the Westphalen family stemming from an atrocity during the Raj. With her aunts Grace and Nellie gone, Vicky was the last of the Westphalen line.
Kusum had come this close to fulfilling his vow.
"I think ol' RJ owes Gia an equal debt. If you hadn't come back here that night…"
Jack had been cut up pretty bad saving Vicky. He'd lost a lot of blood, and was too weak to cross the room to the phone. If Gia hadn't come looking for him and taken him over to Doc Hargus…
"I'd say we're even," he said.
He felt Gia shake her head against his shoulder.
"No. Anybody off the street could have found you and got you to a hospital. But saving Vicky… if you had been a carpenter or a copywriter, or even a cop, anyone but who you are… she'd be gone. And that's why I feel like such a hypocrite when I tell you to hang up your Repairman Jack suit—"
"Hey, now. You make me sound like Batman."
"Okay, you're not into spandex, but deep down inside, that's who you are, aren't you."
"A crime fighter? Gia, you're one of the few people I know who's not some sort of criminal. I run a business, Gia. A business. I charge for my services."
"You didn't charge for last night."
"And see what I get for it! One freebie, and suddenly I'm Batman. Or that do-gooder who used to be on TV—"The Equalizer." That's why I never do freebies. Once the word got out, everybody would expect me to put my butt on the line simply because they need me."
Gia raised her head and grinned at him. "Oh, yeah. You're so tough."
Jack shrugged. "Money talks, bullshit walks."
"And you're only in it for the money."
"If they've got the dime, I've got the time."
Her grin broadened. "And you don't get emotionally involved."
Jack fought a responding smile. "If you don't stay cool, you act like a fool."
Gia placed her palm over the bruise on his chest. "One more rhyme and I push the purple button—hard."
He tried to roll away but she had him. "Okay. If you stop, I'll stop."
"Deal. But admit it: You do get emotionally involved."
"I try not to. It's dangerous."
"That's my point. You identify with everybody you take on as a client."
"'Customer,' please. Lawyers and accountants have clients. I have customers."
"All right. Customers. My point is, you don't hire out to just anyone who happens to have the necessary cash."
"I go case by case." Jack was growing uncomfortable.
He wanted off the subject. "I mean, I've got to feel I can do the job, otherwise we're both wasting time. I'm just a small businessman, Gia."
She groaned and flopped onto her back. "A small businessman who has no social security number, dozens of last names, and never pays taxes."
"I pay sales tax… sometimes."
"Face it, Jack, this Repairman Jack stuff gives you a rush, and you're hooked on it."
Jack didn't like to think of himself as hooked on adrenaline, but maybe it was true. He had to admit he'd had a bodacious buzz after leaving the creep and the stolen toys in front of the Center last night. He'd been completely unaware of how much he was hurting until he got home.
"Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. But let's just say I retire—hang up the 'Repairman Jack suit,' as you so eloquently put it—what then?"
"Then we begin a real life together."
Jack sighed. A life together with Gia and Vicky… now that was tempting.
And so damn strange. Back in his twenties he'd never imagined himself married or living in any traditional arrangement. And being a father? Him? No way.
But becoming involved with Gia and falling for Vicky had changed all that. He wanted them around, and wanted to be around them, all the time.
If only it were that simple.
"You mean, get married?"
"Yes, I mean get married. Is that so awful?"
"Not the ceremony. And certainly not the commitment. But going to a municipal building and registering my name somewhere…" He faked a minor seizure. "Aaaaargh!"
"You'll use one of your fake identities—we'll pick one with a name that sounds nice following Gia and Vicky—and that'll be it. Easy."
"Couldn't we just live together?" Jack said, though he already knew the answer. But at least they were off the subject of his work.
"Sure. Soon as Vicky's grown up and moved out and married and on her own. Until then, Vicky's mom doesn't shack up with anyone—not even that man Jack who Vicky and her mom love so much."
Gia had been a Manhattanite and an artist for many years now, and seemed every bit as urbane as the next, but every so often the Iowa farm girl nestling deep within her surfaced to call the shots.
Legacies Page 6
