He stood looking at the sap.
This was the sort of thing that had frightened Gia off. He swung it once more, harder, striking the edge of a wooden shipping crate: a loud crack; splinters flew.
"This'll do fine. How much?"
"Twenty."
Jack reached into his pocket. "Used to be fifteen."
"That was years ago. A lifetime one of these should last."
"I lose things." He handed over a twenty-dollar bill and put the sap into his pocket.
"Need anything else while we're down here?"
Jack ran a mental inventory of his weapons and ammunition. "No. I'm pretty well set."
"Good. Then let's go upstairs and we'll have some cake and talk. You look like you need some talk."
"Thanks, Abe," Jack said, leading the way upstairs, "but I've got some errands to run before dark, so I'll take a rain check."
"You hold things in too much. I've told you that before. We're supposed to be friends. So talk it out. You don't trust me anymore?"
"I trust you like crazy. It's just..."
"What?"
"See you, Abe."
15
It was after six when Jack got back to the apartment. With all the shades pulled, the dark front room matched his mood.
He had checked in with his office; no calls of any importance waiting for him. The answering machine here had no messages waiting.
He had a two-wheel, wire shopping cart with him, and in it a paper bag full of old clothing—woman's clothing. He leaned the cart in a corner, then stripped down and got into a T-shirt and shorts. Time for his workout. He didn't want to—he felt emotionally and physically spent—but this was the only thing in his daily routine he’d promised himself he would never let slide. His life depended on it.
He locked his apartment and jogged up the stairs.
The sun had done its worst and was on its way down the sky, but the roof remained an inferno. Its black surface would hold the day's heat long into the night. Jack looked west into the haze that reddened the lowering sun. On a clear day you could see New Jersey over there. If you wanted to. Abe had once told him that if you died in sin your soul went to New Jersey.
The roof was crowded. Not with people, with things. Appleton's tomato patch sat in the southeast corner; he had carried the topsoil up bag by fifty-pound bag. Harry Bok had a huge CB antenna in the northeast corner. Centrally located was the diesel generator everybody had pitched in to buy after the 2003 blackout; clustered along its north side like suckling piglets against their mama were a dozen two-gallon cans of number-one oil. And above it all, waving proudly from its slim two-inch pole, was Neil the Anarchist's black flag.
Jack went over to the small wooden platform he’d built for himself and did some stretching exercises, then went into his routine. He did his push-ups and sit-ups, jumped rope, practiced his tai kwon do kicks and chops, always moving, never stopping, until his body was slick with sweat and his hair hung in limp wet strands about his face and neck.
He spun at footsteps behind him.
"Hey, Jack."
"Oh, Neil. Hi. Must be about that time."
"Right you are."
Neil went over to the pole and reverently lowered his black flag. He folded it neatly, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the steps, waving as he went. Jack leaned against the generator and shook his head. Odd for a man who despised all rules to be so punctual, yet you could set your watch by the comings and goings of Neil the Anarchist.
Back in the apartment, Jack stuck six frozen egg rolls in the microwave while he took a quick shower. With his hair still wet, he opened a jar of duck sauce and a can of Diet Pepsi, then sat down in the kitchen.
The apartment felt empty. It hadn't seemed that way this morning, but it was too quiet now. He moved everything into the TV room. The big screen lit up in the middle of a comfy domestic scene with a husband, a wife, two kids and a dog. It reminded him of Sunday afternoons when Gia would bring Vicky over and he would hook up the Playstation and teach the little girl how to shoot monsters or hunt for treasure. He remembered watching Gia putter about the apartment; he’d liked the way she moved, so efficient and bustling, like a person who got things done. He found that immensely appealing.
He couldn't say the same about the homey show that now filled the screen. He quickly flipped around the dial and across the cable, finding everything from news to reruns to a bunch of couples two-stepping around hip-to-hip like a parade of Changs and Engs dancing to a country fiddler.
Definitely time for part two of Repairman Jack's unofficial James Whale Festival. The triumph of Whale's directorial career, Bride of Frankenstein, was ready to run.
16
"You think I'm mad. Perhaps I am. But listen, Henry Frankenstein. While you were digging in your graves, piecing together dead tiss-yoos, I, my dear pupil, went for my material to the source of life..."
Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Praetorius—the greatest performance of his career—was lecturing his former student. The movie was only half over, but it was time to go. He'd pick up where he left off before bedtime. Too bad. He loved this movie. Especially the score—Franz Waxman's best ever. Who'd have thought that later on in his career the creator of such a majestic, stirring piece would wind up doing the incidental music for turkeys like Return to Peyton Place? Some people never get the recognition they deserve.
He pulled on a D12 T-shirt; next came the shoulder holster with the little Semmerling under his left arm; a loose short-sleeved shirt went over that, followed by a pair of cut-off jeans, and sneakers—no socks. By the time he had everything loaded in his mini shopping cart and was ready to go, darkness had taken over the city.
He walked down Amsterdam Avenue to where Bahkti's grandmother had been attacked last night, found a deserted alley, and slipped into the shadows. He hadn't wanted to leave his apartment house in drag—his neighbors already considered him more than a little odd—and this was as good a dressing room as any place else.
First he took off his outer shirt. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out the dress-good quality but out of fashion and in need of ironing. That went over the T-shirt and shoulder holster, followed by a gray wig, then black shoes with no heels. He didn't want to look like a shopping-bag lady; a derelict had nothing to attract the man Jack was after. He wanted a look of faded dignity. New Yorkers see women like this all the time, in their late sixties on up toward eighty. They're all the same. They trudge along, humped over not so much from a softening of the vertebrae as from the weight of life itself, their center of gravity thrust way forward, usually looking down, or if the head is raised, never looking anyone in the eye. The key word with them is alone. They make irresistible targets.
And Jack was going to be one of them tonight. As an added inducement, he slipped a good quality paste diamond ring onto the fourth finger of his left hand. He couldn't let anyone get a close look at him, but he was sure the type of man he was searching for would spot the gleam from that ring a good two blocks away. And as a back-up attraction: a fat roll of bills, mostly singles, tight against his skin under one of the straps of his shoulder holster.
Jack put his sneakers and the sap into the paper bag in the upper basket of the little shopping cart. He checked himself in a store window: Well, he'd never make it as a transvestite. Then he began a slow course along the sidewalk, dragging the cart behind him.
Time to go to work.
17
Gia found herself thinking of Jack and resented it. She sat across a tiny dinner table from Carl, a handsome, urbane, witty, intelligent man who professed to be quite taken with her. They were in an expensive little restaurant below street level on the Upper East Side. The decor was spare and clean, the wine white, dry, cold, the cuisine nouvelle. Jack should have been miles from her thoughts, and yet he was here, slouched across the table between them.