"What do you want?"
"Answers," Jack said. "And maybe to look at some pictures."
"You can't do this," Thomas cried. "I'll call the police!"
Suddenly Jack had a little pistol in his hand and was pointing at Thomas's left knee. Then he shifted his aim to the right.
"Which knee first, Alicia? You choose."
Me? she thought, panic rising. Is he serious? What's he doing? And then she remembered what Jack had told her when they'd entered the apartment: I may have to get rough with him, but whatever I do, play along.
Jack aimed the pistol at Thomas's crotch. "Or how about here?"
Okay, she thought. I'll play along.
"I'm thinking," she said.
"Alicia!" Thomas wailed. "Don't let him! They told me about him! Please don't let him shoot me!"
She noticed a dark wet stain spreading across the crotch of Thomas's slacks. He must have heard some real horror stories about Jack.
"Then bring out 'the master collection' you told me about," Alicia said.
"Okay! Okay! I'll do it. It's in the bedroom. I'll get it."
He got up and hurried past Alicia with Jack trailing him.
"'I'm thinking,' " Jack whispered with a wink as he passed. "Beautiful."
And now that she was alone, she took a look around. This was the first chance she'd had to see the apartment in the light. The place was a mess, littered with dirty clothes and dirty dishes and food containers. And that smell… her best bet was that it came from a pizza box sitting on the windowsill near the radiator.
The two men returned moments later, Thomas carrying two cardboard boxes, and Jack carrying a third… and another gun.
"Look what Thomas has," Jack said. "A cute little .32."
But Alicia had eyes for only the boxes.
He has the collection, she thought with dismay. He really has it. Part of her had been hoping he'd been bluffing.
"That's all of it?" Jack said.
Thomas nodded vigorously. "Yes." Still standing, he turned to Alicia. "Yes, I swear."
"Why, Thomas? Besides its blackmail value, why would you want to keep that filth? It's a catalog of degradation."
"It wasn't so bad. I mean, what's the big deal. No one got hurt."
Jack raised a fist and Alicia thought he was going to hit Thomas, but he glanced at her and she shook her head. All her life she'd wanted never to talk about this part of their childhoods—now she couldn't stop.
"No one got hurt? What about you? What's your life been like? Have you had even one intimate relationship?"
I know I haven't, she thought.
"You think I don't know what a loser I am?" he said, narrowing his eyes as he looked at her. "I know. Believe me, I goddamn well know. And it's Dad's fault. That's why I deserve the house. I need it. You don't. You've done fine for yourself. You're a doctor."
"You don't know a thing about me," Alicia said softly.
That overcoming line she'd fed Jack was just that—a line. A mantra. Maybe if she kept repeating it, she'd come to believe it. Maybe it might even become the truth. But she had a long way to go.
I may look "okay" on the outside, she thought, but inside I… I look like this apartment.
"You 'deserve,' " Jack said, his voice acid. "You 'need.' You make me sick. You wouldn't know what to do with the windfall you'd get from broadcast power."
Alicia caught her breath, wishing Jack hadn't let that slip, but then she saw Thomas's legs buckle. He dropped into the chair behind him. If his face had been white before at his first sight of Jack, it was even paler now. And when Thomas started babbling, she realized Jack's "slip" had been calculated.
"You know? Oh, dear Christ! How'd you find out? It was last night, wasn't it." The words tumbled out. "God-damm it! We turned that house upside down and couldn't find shit! You two waltz in and—wait—do you know where the transmitter is?"
"Come on," Jack said, grabbing his arm and pulling him out of the chair. "We're going for a walk."
"What?" Thomas's knees looked rubbery as he got to his feet. "Where?"
"Outside."
"Wh-why?"
Alicia was asking herself that same question.
"Because you don't have a fireplace here." He held up Thomas's .32. "I'll leave your training pistol here. But bring those boxes with you."
14.
"Give us about an hour with the fire, guys, and I promise you it'll be nice and hot when you get back."
Alicia had followed Jack farther west, down the slope toward the Hudson River, as much in the dark as Thomas as to where he was going. He'd stopped at a trash can fire in the mouth of an alley and handed a twenty to each of the three men warming themselves by the flames.
Now they laughed and grinned and low-fived each other as they hurried off.
"All right," Jack said, pointing to Thomas. "Get to work."
Alicia looked around at the dark, empty, forbidding streets. But she didn't feel afraid. Jack seemed to be in his element, and in complete control.
"You're not listening to me," Thomas said. He'd been talking nonstop since they'd left his apartment.
"Start feeding the fire," Jack said. "And not too fast. We don't want to smother it."
Thomas finally got the idea. He reached into one of the boxes he'd carried here and pulled out a fistful of photos. Alicia watched them flutter into the can, curling and blackening as the hungry flames consumed them, destroying forever the hideous images they bore. She was in there, with Thomas, but other children were there as well… forced or duped like her into performing an obscene dance…
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling almost giddy. She reminded herself that it was only a token, but still… now there would be one less set of prints in existence.
But Thomas didn't seem to care about the photos, seemed only half aware of what he was doing. All he cared about was the transmitter.
"The transmitter's the key, you know," he said, starting in again. "If you know its location, I can make us all wealthy beyond your wildest dreams."
Jack appeared uninterested. "If we have the transmitter, why do we need you?"
"Because your ownership of the technology will be challenged the instant you try to sell it."
"And yours won't?"
"Anybody trying to patent it will run into a wall. That's because…" He paused. "Let me back up and explain this. Then you'll know why you need me."
"This oughta be good," Jack said, glancing at her.
Alicia shrugged. "Just as long as you keep feeding the fire."
Broadcast power was all fine and good. But first she wanted to see those photos reduced to ash.
"I found out about Dad's invention when I stopped by to visit him one day."
"You stayed in touch?" she said. She found that hard to believe.
"Not really." He shrugged. "I was a little short, and he wasn't returning my calls. So I stopped by. Anyway, he left me cooling my heels while he talked on the phone, so I wandered around and noticed he'd left a couple of lamps burning here and there around the house. It being noon and all, and me being a good, ecologically minded son"—he grinned here, but Alicia wouldn't respond and Jack only stared at him—"I, uh, went to turn them off. But as I did, I noticed these little wires sticking up from the bases of their bulb sockets. I looked closer and realized that the damn lamps weren't plugged in. What was powering the bulbs? Had Dad developed some sort of battery-powered lamp? Out of curiosity, I began to tinker with one. By the time he finished his conference call, I'd figured it out."