Cold City (Repairman Jack - the Early Years Trilogy) Read online

  She smiled. “I’ll find us an interesting place. But we need to establish an important ground rule: We go Dutch or we don’t go.”

  She definitely seemed serious about no relationship.

  “Fair enough. I’ll be on the road most of Sunday, so–”

  A sly smile. “On the road where?”

  “I’ll ignore that and call you Saturday afternoon.”

  “You’d better.”

  She waved as she turned and began walking east. Jack waved back and headed west, wondering how all this would turn out. Because he was already looking forward to Sunday.

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  Tony was late.

  Jack had pulled into the Lonely Pine’s parking lot as usual and waited off to the side, idling. This was the first time he’d arrived without Tony waiting.

  Okay, no problem.

  But after half an hour and still no Tony, he pulled the truck into a parking space and shut off the engine. He eyed the mobile phone on the seat next to him. Time to call Bertel? He didn’t want to get Tony in hot water with the boss, but maybe something had happened in New York. Jack didn’t know how Tony had been involved in the Kahane shooting – maybe on the shooter’s side, maybe on Kahane’s side as protection, or maybe something else – but he had little doubt he’d been involved. And maybe he’d got himself caught. Maybe he was sitting in a cell in the Tombs as an accomplice.

  The only thing Jack knew for sure at the moment was that Tony wasn’t here.

  He decided to call and was pulling Bertel’s number from his wallet when someone tapped on the passenger-side window. Jack jumped and tensed, then he recognized the face. He’d shaved his beard, but no question who it was.

  Tony.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he said, leaning across and unlatching the door.

  The courtesy light didn’t come on when the door swung open. Jack had taped down the button in the door frame.

  “The shit has hit the fan,” Tony said without preamble as he slid into the passenger seat. His voice sounded shaky. “Big time.”

  Swell. Just what Jack needed to hear.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We were raided.”

  “ ‘We’?”

  “Our little warehouse. NC state cops and ATF goons showed up and sealed the place.”

  Jack fought a sinking feeling.

  “How’d you get away?”

  Tony lit a cigarette. His lighter’s flame wavered.

  “By not being there. I was just about to make my turn into the driveway when I saw the flashers. I kept on driving, parked down the road, and came back on foot for a look-see.”

  “They didn’t get Bertel, did they?”

  Tony exhaled a cloud. “Naw. He hardly ever comes down from New York. Twice a month, maybe, and this wasn’t one of those times.”

  “He lose a lot?”

  Tony nodded. “We unloaded a shipment of Winstons just this afternoon, but that’s not going to burn him up as much as somebody ratting him out.”

  Jack rolled down his window – as much to let out the smoke as to allow a better look at the Lonely Pine’s parking lot. All quiet.

  “Who’d do that?”

  “Good question. It’s a small operation and Bertel keeps it broken into compartments.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “You and me? I don’t think so. But Billy is.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “One of the warehouse guys who helps me load the trucks. I saw him sitting in the back of one of the cop cars.”

  Jack gave the lot another quick scan. “Shouldn’t we be on the move?”

  Tony shook his head. “Billy knows me but doesn’t know you or the other drivers. And he doesn’t know where I meet up with you guys. All he knows is I show up out of the night with a truck that we load up, and then I disappear back into the night. He can’t even tell them what kind of truck I’ll arrive in because Bertel rents different kinds in random order. He doesn’t know my last name, I don’t know his. He doesn’t know Bertel’s name at all – just knows him as ‘the boss’ – and doesn’t know where he’s from. And you… you don’t know Billy and don’t have a clue where the warehouse is.”

  “All compartmentalized,” Jack said, nodding with appreciation. He’d suspected as much, and expected nothing less from Bertel. “Smart.”

  “But none of that protects against one jerk with a big mouth.” He shook his head. “Billy, I bet.”

  “But he got caught.”

  “Billy likes his beer. Five’ll get you twenty he had a few – more than a few – and mouthed off in front of the wrong person, who then went and dropped a dime.”

  “Really?” Jack found that hard to believe. “You hear a guy in a bar blabbing about running cigarettes and you say to yourself, ‘I think I’ll go give ATF a call.’ People really do that? I can see if he’s bagging heroin for kids, but cigarettes?”

  “Never know where you’re going to run into a busybody. But more likely someone traded Billy for a future favor. Whatever, Billy got himself tailed and blew a sweet operation.” He shook his head. “Shit.”

  “What now?”

  “You go back empty. But don’t count on getting paid for the trip.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault.”

  “If Bertel doesn’t get his dough, you don’t get yours.”

  Jack banged his fist on the steering wheel – once. Ah, well, he should have known it was too sweet a gig to last.

  “Bertel know?”

  Tony nodded. “Course. Called him, and is he pissed. This could screw his whole deal with the Mummy. If he can’t guarantee a steady supply of butts, the greasy bastard will get ’em from someone else. So the boss has got some scrambling to do. Take him a while to get a new operation set up and running, though.”

  Jack sighed and leaned back. He should head north now. Since the truck was empty, he didn’t have to worry about getting stopped. He could take the interstate all the way and make good time. But he’d been on the road all night. A short nap would hit the spot.

  “Do we have the usual room?”

  Tony shook his head. “Never got around to renting it. You don’t want to stay here anyway.”

  “I thought you said this Billy guy doesn’t know about it.”

  “He doesn’t. But Elizabeth City isn’t exactly Raleigh. The ATFers are probably at the warehouse waiting for me to show up with the truck. When I don’t, they’ll go looking. So I’m not staying here and neither are you.”

  Jack bristled at that. “I’ll decide–”

  Tony jabbed a finger at him. “You know what I look like. They nab you, they’ll sweat you, and before I know it, there’s a drawing of my puss circulating all over the mid-Atlantic states.”

  “I wouldn’t–”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t, maybe you would. I don’t know you, Jack. I get to see you for maybe twenty minutes every few days. You seem like a standup guy, but I can’t risk it. Neither can the boss. And I’ve gotta look out for him too. So we put some distance between this town and this truck and we bunk you somewhere else.”

  Much as he resented taking orders from Tony, the logic was unassailable: Staying here was plain stupid.

  He reached for the ignition. “Where do you suggest?”

  “Well, we can get lost in Newport Beach. I’ll think on it while you drive me to my car.”

  “Your car?”

  “Yeah. It’s a few blocks away. You didn’t think I was just going to tool in here and park, did you?”

  Duh, Jack thought, and drove him three blocks to a black BMW 530i.

  “Nice ride.”

  “Nothing else to spend it on,” he said as he hopped out.

  He opened the Bimmer’s door and Jack heard a ringing within. A bag phone sat on the passenger seat. Tony lifted the receiver and slammed the door as he took the call. After what looked like an animated phone call, he hung up and rolled down the driver window.

  �
��Bertel again. Like it’s my fault this happened.” He shook his head. “I’ll deal with it in the morning. Meanwhile, you need to crash somewhere.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Hey, I know a place on the Outer Banks that’s–”

  “Outer Banks?” Jack knew where it was on the map, knew the Wright Brothers had lifted off on their first flight there, but mostly he knew it from news footage of its population evacuating during hurricane threats. “How far is that?”

  “A quick jump. We’re in the off season now, so it’s empty. No one’ll bother us. You can sleep as long as you want, then take off.”

  2

  Tony’s quick jump took more than an hour. But he was right about the lack of people. Granted the hour was early, but once they hit the barrier island – or was it a peninsula? – the roads were empty.

  Jack followed Tony’s speeding Bimmer north through some town with the unlikely name of Duck and farther along to where the houses thinned out to the point where each sat alone on the high dune that ran along his right. On his left a nameless bay reflected a half moon in the predawn sky. When the land had narrowed to the point where little more than a thousand feet of sandy soil separated the bay from the Atlantic, Tony made a sudden right into a driveway. A huge house loomed on the dune ahead. Jack saw a car and a truck like his in the driveway. A light glowed in an upper window. He’d expected an empty house.

  Tony pulled to a stop near a detached garage and walked back to the truck.

  “Looks like we’ve got company.”

  “Should we move on?”

  “I’ll see. I recognize the truck. These guys have a game like ours.”

  “Game?”

  “You know…moving merch. They may be staging here. If our being here is gonna queer their action, we’ll move on and find some other place. If they’re cool, we’ll stay. You’ll get some shut-eye and we’ll grab breakfast and be gone our separate ways before noon.”

  That sounded good to Jack. As Tony headed inside, Jack shoved the keys under the driver seat and slid out of the cab. He walked around the truck to stretch his cramped legs. The sky behind the house was doing that rosy-fingered thing. He could smell the ocean on the breeze flowing over the dune. Chilly out. Weren’t the Carolinas supposed to be warm?

  He heard a door slam and saw Tony moving his way, motioning him forward.

  “It’s all good. We can stay. Their shipment’s not due in yet, so they’ll be hanging out till after dark when the boat arrives.”

  Jack felt his neck muscles tighten. “Shipment of what?”

  He smiled. “My first question too. I don’t want to get caught with bales of MJ either. But these guys move hooch.”

  “Booze?”

  “Moonshine. But it’s colored and flavored and sold in Jack Daniel’s bottles.” He winked. “Most folks can’t tell the difference, especially those that mix it with Coke.” He made a face. “Can you imagine – pouring real Jack into Diet Coke? Makes a grown man want to cry. Anyway, the markup is huge. Lots more than Bertel’s cigs.”

  “But you can’t sell hooch to Arabs.”

  “Not to them, but I’ll bet you could get them to act as middlemen. I’m sure they’d grab a fee for handling just about anything.”

  Jack followed Tony around the side and up an outside stairway to a porch that wrapped around the beach side of the place. He stopped and stared a moment at the bright orange crescent just breaking the surface of the Atlantic.

  “Be nice to have a house like this and watch that happen every morning.”

  Tony snorted. “People around here don’t buy these houses to live in. They buy them to rent out. And the true locals never go near the beach.”

  He led Jack inside through a huge kitchen. He stopped at the fridge and pulled out two Coronas, used the magnetized church key stuck to the door to pop the tops, and handed one to Jack.

  Jack looked at it and said, “What? No lime?”

  Tony laughed and clinked his bottle against Jack’s. “Up yours.”

  A beer at dawn. Why not? Not as if it was too early in the day – it was way late.

  They moved on and came upon two men lounging in the family room. Both had Coronas in hand; a porn movie was running on the wide-screen, rear-projection TV.

  Jack put on a gawky expression. “Man, I was like totally into you guys when I was a kid.”

  Tony pointed to a skinny guy with long mullet hair. “Reggie.”

  Reggie lifted his beer.

  Jack wondered why anyone would name a kid Reginald – unless it happened to be the name of a rich uncle or something.

  “And that’s Moose.”

  Moose didn’t look up. His build fit the name. His sleeveless denim jacket revealed pale, muscular, tattoo-bedizened arms; his scalp was bare to the middle; long blond hair flowed straight back from there.

  “No kidding? Moose and Reggie? Where are Betty and Veronica?”

  Reggie pointed to the screen. “You missed them. They were just getting it on together.”

  “This is Lonnie,” Tony said.

  Jack raised his beer. “But you can call me Archie.”

  Reggie laughed, Moose still made like he wasn’t there.

  “Which bedrooms are free?” Tony said.

  “Either of the streetside ones upstairs.”

  “How about downstairs?” Jack said, figuring he could make a quicker exit from there if need be.

  “Stay the fuck away from downstairs,” Moose said, eyes still fixed on the screen.

  It speaks, Jack thought.

  “You got it,” Tony said. “Any particular reason?”

  “Reserved for product.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Jack found a room upstairs. The bed was stripped but the mattress looked relatively new. He pulled the drapes closed and emptied his pockets onto the night table. After polishing off the beer he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

  He thought about Tony. Should he mention sighting him in New York or let it slide? How to bring it up? How far to push it? Mention that he followed him to the Kahane shooting? That could open multiple cans of worms.

  As sleep claimed him he had a feeling his life was going to take another turn.

  THURSDAY

  1

  “Lonnie! Hey, Lonnie! Get your lazy ass out of bed!”

  The voice finally broke through and Jack realized he was “Lonnie” for the time being. He lifted his head and blinked at Tony standing in the doorway.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go get some lunch.”

  Jack’s mouth tasted like stale beer. And then his brain grasped the words–

  “Lunch? What time is it?”

  “After two.”

  “Aw, hell.” He rolled to a sitting position and rubbed his face.

  Tony shrugged. “ ‘Aw, hell’ what? You got someplace to be? Not as if you’re gonna miss a delivery.”

  He had a point. And Jack was starving.

  Tony turned away from the door. “Come on. I’ll drive. I know a sandwich place up the road that’s open all year.”

  “Long as they have coffee.”

  They took Tony’s Bimmer. It had a nice smooth ride. Jack didn’t say much as they cruised south on the only road, passing through Kitty Hawk to a town with the unlikely but cool name of Kill Devil Hills. He knew he wasn’t exactly a loquacious sort, but he found morning small talk, before coffee, physically painful. Plus he was thinking about Tony dressed as a Hasid and when to raise the subject.

  They found a diner – appropriately named the Kill Devil Grill – where Jack washed down a foot-long ham-and-provolone sub with a carafe of coffee. Tony poked at a clump of tuna salad on lettuce.

  “Not hungry?”

  “I used to have a metabolism like you. Could down a whole pizza and a six-pack without gaining an ounce. But once you hit that half-century mark you need to start watching the carbs.”

  Fifty? Tony didn’t look it.

  “You seem to keep yourself pretty trim
.”

  “Yeah, but it used to come naturally. Now I have to work at it.”

  Jack liked Tony. He seemed centered. And best of all, he didn’t call him “kid.” He figured the drive back would be the best time to broach the sighting.

  So, as they cruised back north toward the house…

  “This’ll tickle you,” he said when they’d reached the halfway point. He fixed his gaze not on Tony’s face but on his hands where they gripped the wheel. “I swear I saw you in New York the other day.”

  The hands tightened their grip.

  “I wish. Nothing to do in these parts.”

  “Wait. It gets better.”

  “What?”

  Jack forced a laugh. “You were dressed like a Hasidic Jew!”

  The knuckles whitened slightly as Tony looked at him and grinned. “You gotta be kidding me!”

  “No, I swear. Black hat, black coat, beard, the works. Even had…” What had Abe called them?… “payots.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The long hair by the ears.”

  His laugh sounded as forced as Jack’s. “With all that, how the hell could you possibly think it was me?”

  “Well, he had the same coloring, the same eyes, and, well, I never forget a face. Can’t always come up with a name to go with it, but faces stick with me. And that face was yours.”

  Silence in the car as Tony sat rigid behind the wheel. Jack let it run.

  Finally Tony said, “That wasn’t me.”

  “That’s what I kept telling myself. But I gotta tell you, if it wasn’t you, it should’ve been.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Because he looked so much like you. You got an identical twin?”

  “No.”

  Another silence. When Tony spoke again, his voice was low, almost menacing. “What was my Jewish doppelganger doing?”

  Doppelganger…Jack had suspected him of being better educated than he let on, now he was sure.

  “Getting into a cab.” Jack had a feeling it might be wise to ease back some now. “I hollered at him but he just drove off.”

  Tony seemed to relax a smidgen. “And this was last night?”

  “No, Monday. I’d got off the last run earlier and was coming from a couple of beers when I spotted you.”