Some day. When was it going to end? He was pretty sure the Berzerk had cleared his system, but his aches and pains seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Especially his head. He'd had the radio on earlier and some station had played "You Keep Me Hanging On." Now it kept droning through his frazzled brain, Diana Ross's voice like a power saw hitting a nail.
And worst of all, he saw a good chance this whole trip might be for nothing. Had no idea how often or how much a rakosh ate, but if it had fed on Bondy first, then Gleason, he might still have a chance of finding Nadia alive. A slim one, but he had to give it a shot. Might have a hard time living with himself if he didn't.
He'd figured a train of freak show trucks and trailers would be next to impossible to miss, but he damn near did. He was too intent on an all-news station's big breaking story as he flashed by the New Gretna rest area…
"… mass murder in midtown: gangland figure Milos Dragovic, known in many quarters as 'the Slippery Serb,' is dead, apparently of stab wounds, along with three top executives of a pharmaceutical firm. The four were found locked in a conference room in the GEM Pharma offices in midtown by a cleaning crew a short while ago. This is not Dragovic's first appearance in the news today. He was—"
Jack was a good hundred yards past the rest stop, congratulating himself on how well that stunt had worked, when something familiar about the motley assortment of vehicles clustered in the southern end of the parking lot registered in his consciousness.
He slowed, found an official use only cutoff, and made an illegal U-turn across the median onto the northbound lanes. Half a minute later he pulled into the rest area and found a parking spot near the Burger King/ Nathan's/TCBY sign where he had a good view of the freak show vehicles.
At this hour on a Wednesday morning in May, the rest area was fairly deserted. Except for a few couples straggling back from Atlantic City, Oz's folk had the lot pretty much to themselves. But why this rest area of all places? This was the only one Jack knew of that had a State Police barracks for a neighbor.
He slumped in the seat. Bad thought: if Oz was traveling with someone he'd abducted, this would be the last place he'd stop. Sick foreboding settled on Jack like a wet tarp.
But he'd come this far…
He scanned the area. No way to sneak up on them, so he settled for a direct approach. Of course the smart thing to do was to dime Oz out to the New Jersey State cops a couple hundred yards away, but that didn't sit right. Never would. And besides, if Nadia had become rakoshi chow, the state cops would find nothing. And the Scar-lip problem would remain.
Jack opened the trunk and stared at the gasoline can. His plan had been Scar-lip first, then Nadia. He'd have to reverse that now. Find Nadia if possible, then go for the rakosh. He pulled the silenced .22 from where he'd hidden it beneath the spare, stuck it in the waistband under his warm-up, walked toward the Oddity Emporium vehicles.
Counted two 18-wheelers and twenty or so trailers and motor homes of various shapes and sizes and states of repair. As he neared he heard hammering sounds; seemed to come from one of the semi trailers. Two of the dog-faced roustabouts stepped from behind a motor home as Jack reached the perimeter of the cluster. They growled a warning and pointed back toward the food court.
"I want to see Oz," Jack said.
More growls and more emphatic pointing.
"Look, he either gets a visit from me or I walk over to the State Police barracks there and have them pay him a visit."
The roustabouts didn't seem to feature that idea. Looked at each other, then one hurried away. A moment later he was back. Motioned Jack to follow him. Jack lowered the zipper on his warm-up top to give him quicker access to the P-98, then started moving.
One of the roustabouts stayed behind. As Jack followed the other on a winding course through the haphazardly parked vehicles, he saw a crew of workers trying to patch a hole in the flank of one of the semi trailers. He pulled up short when he saw the size of the hole: five or six feet high, a couple of feet wide. The edges of the metal skin were flared outward, as if a giant fist had punched through from within. And Jack was pretty sure that fist had belonged to something cobalt blue with yellow eyes.
Shit! He closed his eyes and slammed his fists against his thighs. He wanted to break something. What else could go wrong today?
But his spirits suddenly lifted as he realized Oz hadn't wanted to park his troupe near the police barracks—he'd had no choice. Maybe Nadia was still alive.
The roustabout had stopped ahead and was motioning him to hurry up. Jack did just that and soon came to the trailer he recognized as Oz's. The man himself was standing before it, watching the repair work on the truck.
"It got loose, didn't it?" Jack said as he came up beside him.
The taller man rotated the upper half of his body and looked at Jack. His expression was anything but welcoming.
"Oh, it's you. You do get around."
Took most of Jack's dwindling self-control to keep from taking a swing at Oz right then and there. He was bursting to ask about Nadia but forced himself to stick to the rakosh. That was old news between them; he'd cover that, then press on.
"Had to feed it, didn't you? Had to bring it up to full strength. Damn it, you knew the risk you were taking."
"It was caged with iron bars. I thought—"
"You thought wrong. I warned you. I've seen that thing at full strength. Iron or not, that cage wasn't going to hold it."
"I admire your talent for stating the obvious."
"Where is it?"
For the first time Jack detected a trace of fear in Oz's eyes.
"I don't know."
"Swell." He glanced around. "Where's that guy Hank?"
"Hank? What could you want with that imbecile?"
"Just wondering if he was bothering it again."
The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm. "I thought he'd learned his lesson. Well, he'll learn it now." He turned and called into the night. "Everyone—find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!"
They waited but no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.
"It appears he's run off," Prather said.
"Or got carried off."
"We found no blood near the truck, so perhaps the young idiot is still alive."
"He is alive," said a woman's voice.
Jack turned and recognized the three-eyed fortuneteller from the show.
"What do you see, Carmella?" Oz said.
"He is in the woods. He stole one of the guns and he carries a spear. He is full of wine and hate. He is going to kill it."
"Oh, I doubt that," Oz said. "Going to get himself killed is more likely."
Jack understood taking a gun, but not the spear; then he remembered the pointed iron rod Hank and Bondy had used to torture it. Neither would do the job. If Hank ever caught up with the rakosh, he wouldn't last long.
He stared at the mass of trees rising on the far side of the parkway. "We've got to find it."
"Yes," Oz said. "Poor thing, alone out there in a strange environment, disoriented, lost, afraid."
Jack couldn't imagine Scar-lip afraid of anything, especially anything it might run across around here.
"On the subject of lost, alone, and afraid," Jack said, motioning Oz toward his trailer, "I need to ask you something."
Oz followed him until they were all but leaning on the battered wall of the old Airstream, out of earshot of the others.