Conspiracies

And don't tell me paper cylinders.

"Cardboard mailing tubes. The 'paper cylinder' bit was my father's idea. Thought it sounded classier than cardboard mailing tubes. He retired, left the place to me. And yeah, I know I don't look it, but I own it, run it, and make a decent living at it. But I'm not here to talk about me. I want to find my wife. She's been gone three days and I don't know how to get her back."

His features screwed up and for a moment Jack was afraid he was going to cry. But Lew held on, sniffed twice, then got control.

"You okay?" Jack said.

Ehler nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay. Let's start at the beginning. When did you last see your wife—Melanie, right?"

Another nod. "Yes. Melanie. She left Sunday morning for some last-minute research and—"

"Research on what?"

"I'll get to that in a minute. The thing is, she said something that didn't sound so strange then, but sounds kind of creepy in retrospect. She told me if I didn't hear from her for a few days, not to get worried, not to report her missing or anything. She'd be all right, just out of touch for a while. 'Give me a few days to get back,' she said."

"Get back from where?"

"She didn't say."

"Don't know about you," Jack said, "but that sounds pretty strange from the git-go."

"Not if you knew Mel."

"Got a picture?"

Lew Ehler fished out his wallet. His long bony fingers were surprisingly agile as he whipped a creased photo from one of the slots and handed it across the talkie.

Jack saw a slim, serious-looking brunette in her mid-thirties wearing a red turtleneck sweater and tan slacks, pictured from the hips up. Her hands were behind her back and her expression said she wasn't crazy about having her picture taken. She had pale skin, thick black hair and eyebrows, and dark penetrating eyes. Not a raving beauty, but not bad looking.

"How recent is this?"

"Just last year."

Jack suddenly had a bad feeling where this was going: younger pretty wife leaves older, limping scarecrow husband to run off with younger man ... and maybe tries to run a game on him in the process.

"No," Lew said, smiling thinly. "She's not having an affair. Mel's probably the most direct person you'll ever meet. If she were leaving me, she'd simply say so and go." He shook his head and looked again like he was going to cry. "Something's happened to her."

"But you know she's alive, right?" Jack said quickly. "I mean, you heard from her last night."

He bit his upper lip and shrugged.

Jack said, "What did she say?"

"She told me she was okay, but needed help, and that she wasn't where I could find her. 'Only Repairman Jack can find me,' she said. 'Only he will understand.'"

But Jack did not understand. He was baffled. "She gave no hint where she was calling from?"

Lew licked his lips. He seemed uncomfortable. "Let me explain a few things about Melanie first."

Jack leaned back with the beer bottle between his fingertips. "Be my guest."

"All right," Lew ran his fingers through his thinning hair. "I met her through my accountant. He had a heart attack and his firm sent her over to do Keystone's quarterly tax estimate. Melanie Rubin ... " Lew's lips curved into a smile as he said the name. "I've never met anyone before or since so full of energy, so determined, so focused. And yet so pretty. It was love at first sight for me. And best of all, she liked me. We went out for a while, and five and a half years ago we were married."

"Any kids?"

He shook his head. "No. Mel doesn't want any."

"Ever?"

"Never."

Sounded like Melanie Ehler ruled the roost. Jack hesitated, mulling his phrasing ... the next question was a bit delicate.

"I couldn't help but notice that you said it was love at first sight on your part, but she 'liked' you. Is that ... ?"

Lew's smile was shy, his shrug a little embarrassed. "We have a good relationship. We live a quiet life, with very few close friends. Melanie loves me as much as she can love anyone. But she's too driven to really, truly love anyone."

"Driven by what?"

A deep sigh. "Let's see ... how do I put this? Okay ... Melanie might be considered a kook by some standards. She's been involved in fringe groups since she was a teenager."

"Fringe groups? How fringey? Objectivism, the Church of the Sub-Genius, Scientology?"

"More like SITPRCA, MCF, CAUS, ICAAR, LIU-FON, ORTK, the New York Fortean Society, and others."

"Wow." Jack hadn't heard of any of those. "Alphabet city."

Lew smiled. "Yeah, they love their acronyms almost as much as the government. But they're all concerned with one sort of conspiracy or another."

"You mean like who really killed JFK and RFK and MLK, and who's covering it up and why?"

"Yeah, some of them are like that. Others are really far out."

Swell, Jack thought. A missing conspiracy nut. He could feel the rear exit door beckoning from behind him. If he jumped up and ran now, he could be out before Lew Ehler could say another word about his lost wife.

But the missing Melanie had said that only Repairman Jack would understand, hadn't she. He wondered what she'd meant.

Something must have showed on his face because Lew started waving his hands in front of him.

"Don't get me wrong. She wasn't really into all that stuff—she was more of an interested observer than a serious participant in those groups. She was looking for something—she's been looking for something most of her life—and didn't know what it was. She once told me she wasn't looking for answers from these groups, just enough information to know what questions to ask."

Could have been a Bob Dylan lyric.

"And did she find it?"

"No. And she was very frustrated until last year when SESOUP was formed."

"Sea soup?" Sounded like an appetizer.

"The Society for the Exposure of Secret Organizations and Unacknowledged Phenomena."

"SESOUP ... " Jack had heard that name, but couldn't remember where. "For some reason, that sounds familiar."

"It's an exclusive organization, started by—" Lew froze as he glanced toward the front. "There!" he said, pointing at the window. "Tell me that guy isn't watching us!"

Jack looked—and damn if Lew wasn't right. A figure was silhouetted against Julio's front window, nose pressed against the glass, hands cupped on either side of his face. He sure as hell seemed to be staring their way.

Jack jumped up and headed for the door. "Come on. Let's go see."

The figure ducked away to the left, and by the time Jack reached the door, he'd vanished into the rest of the foot traffic on the sidewalk.

"See anybody who looks familiar?" Jack said as Lew joined him in the doorway.

Lew eyed the stream of shoppers and workers and mothers with strollers, then shook his head.

"Could have been a thirsty guy just checking the place out," Jack said as they returned to the table.

Of course that didn't explain why he'd hurried off when Jack started moving.

"Could have been," Lew said, but no way he believed it.

"All right. You were telling me about this soup society or something."

"SESOUP." Lew looked spooked, and kept glancing at the window as he spoke. "It was put together by a fellow named Salvatore Roma. Membership is by invitation only, which has caused a lot of bad feeling in the conspiracy subculture—some well-known names were excluded. It's designed as a clearing house for most of the major conspiracy theories. Roma's idea is to sort through them all for the purpose of finding common elements among them. Melanie loved the idea. She's sure that's the path to the truth."

"The truth? About what?"

"About what's really going on in the world. Something that would help identify the powers, the planners, the string-pullers behind the mysteries and mayhem and secret organizations that plague the world." He held up his hands again. "Not my words—Roma's."