Jack held his hand out but Kusum shook his head.
"Every member of my family wears a necklace like this—it is never removed. And so it is very important that my grandmother's be returned to her."
Jack studied the necklace. It disturbed him. He could not say why, but deep in his bowels and along the middle of his back a primitive sensation raised warning. The two stones looked like eyes. The metal was silvery, but not silver.
"What's it made of?"
"Iron."
Jack looked closer. Yes, there was a hint of rust along the edges of a couple of the links.
"Who'd want an iron necklace?"
"A fool who thought it was silver."
Jack nodded. For the first time since talking to Kusum this morning, he felt there might be a slim—very slim—chance of recovering the necklace. A piece of silver jewelry would be fenced by now and either hidden away or melted down into a neat little ingot. But an heirloom like this, with no intrinsic value...
"Here is a picture," Kusum said, handing over a Polaroid of the necklace. "I have a few friends searching the pawnshops of your city looking for it."
"How long has she got?" he asked.
Kusum slowly closed his collar. His expression was grim. "Twelve hours, the doctors say. Perhaps fifteen."
Great. Maybe I can find Judge Crater by then too.
"Where can I reach you?"
"Here. You will look for it, won't you?"
Kusum's dark brown eyes bored into his. He seemed to be staring at the rear wall of Jack's brain.
"I said I would."
"And I believe you. Bring the necklace to me as soon as you find it."
"Sure. As soon as I find it."
Sure. He walked away wondering why he’d agreed to help a stranger when Gia's aunt needed him.
Same old story—Jack the sucker.
Damn!
5
Once back in the darkened hospital room, Kusum returned immediately to the bedside and pulled up a chair. He grasped the withered hand that lay atop the covers and studied it. The skin was cool, dry, papery; there seemed to be no tissue other than bone beneath. And no strength at all.
A great sadness filled him.
Kusum looked up and saw the plea in her eyes. And the fear. He did his best to hide his own fear.
"Kusum," she said in Bengali, her voice painfully weak. "I am dying."
He knew that. And it was tearing him up inside.
"The American will get it back for you," he said softly. "I've been told he's very good."
Burkes had said he was "incredibly good." Kusum hated all Britishers on principle, but had to admit Burkes was no fool. But did it matter what Burkes had said? It was an impossible task. Jack had been honest enough to say so. But Kusum had to try something! Even with the foreknowledge of certain failure, he had to try.
He balled his only hand into a fist. Why did this have to happen? And now, of all times? How he despised this country and its empty people! But this Jack seemed different. He was not a mass of jumbled fragments like his fellow Americans. Kusum had sensed a oneness within him. Repairman Jack did not come cheaply, but the money meant nothing. The knowledge that someone was out there searching gave him solace.
He patted the limp hand. "He'll get it back for you."
She seemed not to have heard.
"I am dying."
6
The money was a nagging pressure against his left buttock as Jack walked the half block west to Tenth Avenue and turned downtown. His hand kept straying back to the pocket; he repeatedly hooked a thumb in and out of it to make sure the envelope was still there. The problem now was what to do with the money. It was times like this that almost made him wish he had a bank account. But the bank folks insisted on a Social Security number from anyone who opened an account.
He sighed to himself. That was one of the major drawbacks of living between the lines. If you didn't have an SSN, you were barred from countless things. You couldn't hold a regular job, couldn't buy or sell stock, couldn't take out a loan, couldn't own a home, couldn't even complete a Blue Shield form. The list went on and on.
With his thumb casually hooked in his left rear pocket, Jack stopped in front of a rundown office building. He rented a ten by twelve cubicle here—the smallest he could find. He’d never met the agent, nor anyone else connected with the office. He liked it that way.
He took the creaking Otis with the penny-studded floor up to 4 and stepped off. The hall was empty. Jack's office was 412. He walked past the door twice before pulling out the key and quickly letting himself in.
It always smelled the same: dry and dusty. The floors and windowsills were layered with dust. Dust bunnies clogged the corners. An abandoned spider web spanned an upper corner of the only window—out of business.
No furniture. The dull expanse of floor was broken only by the half dozen or so envelopes that had been shoved through the mail slot, and by an old vinyl IBM-typewriter cover and the wires that ran from it to the telephone and electrical outlets in the wall on the right.
Jack picked up the maiclass="underline" Three were bills, all addressed to Jack Finch in care of this office. The rest belonged to Occupant. He stepped to the typewriter cover and lifted it. The answering machine beneath appeared to be in good shape. Even as he squatted over it, the machine clicked on and he heard Abe's voice give the familiar salutation in the name of Repairman Jack, followed by a man complaining of an electric dryer that wasn't drying.
He replaced the cover and went back to the door. A quick peek showed two secretaries from the shoe-importing firm at the other end of the hall standing by the elevator. Jack waited until the door slid shut after them. He locked his office, then ducked for the stairway. His cheeks puffed with relief as he started down the worn steps. He hated coming here and made a point of doing so at random intervals at odd times of the day. He did not want his face in any way connected with Repairman Jack; but there were bills to be paid, bills that he didn't want delivered to his apartment. And popping into the office at random hours of the day or night seemed safer than having a post office box.
Most likely none of it was necessary. Most likely no one was looking to get even with Repairman Jack. He was always careful to stay far in the background when he fixed things. Only his customers ever saw him.
But there was always a chance. And as long as that chance existed, he made certain he was very hard to find.
Thumb hooked again into that important pocket, Jack moved into the growing lunch hour crush, luxuriating in the anonymity of the crowd. He turned east on Forty-second and strolled up to the brick front post office between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. There he purchased three money orders—two in negligible amounts for the phone and electric bills, and the third for a figure he considered preposterous considering the square footage of office space he was renting. He signed all three Jack Finch and mailed them off. As he was leaving, it occurred to him to use the cash to pay the rent on his apartment too. He went back and purchased a fourth money order, which he made out to his landlord. This one he signed Jack Berger.
A short walk past an art deco building to the side of the Port Authority Building, then across Eighth Avenue, and he was in Disney World North. He remembered when Times Square and environs were Sleazeville, USA, a never-ending freak show that would have put Tod Browning to shame. Jack had never passed up an opportunity to stroll through the area. He was a people-watcher and nowhere had there been such a unique variety of Homo sapiens low-lificus as in Times Square.
The block ahead had once been Exploitation Row, an almost continuous canopy of grind house marquees touting either triple-X sex, kung-fu imports, or psycho-with-a-knife splatter films from the Emeril Lagasse slice-and-dice school of moviemaking. You could walk along here in the rain and hardly get wet. Stuck in between had been hole-in-the-wall porn shops, stairways to "modeling studios" and dance halls, the ubiquitous Nedicks and Orange Julius stands, and sundry stores perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy—or so their window signs claimed. Mingling among the patrons of these venerable establishments had been hookers and derelicts of both sexes plus a startling array of epicene creatures who’d probably looked like boys when they were little.