The Dark at the End (Repairman Jack) Read online

  Jack looked at Weezy and read the concern in her eyes—not much different from his own, he imagined. Was Glaeken failing? He seemed as solid and steady as ever, but this was a new twist. He’d been shuttling back and forth to the Lady’s apartment via the stairs since he’d moved her in. Why couldn’t he manage them now? His heart? His knees?

  He was an old man, had been aging since his mortality was restored on the eve of World War II. His chronological age was mind-boggling. But what was his body age? That was what mattered. One day his body would give out, just like everybody else’s.

  And then Jack would step into his shoes—or so he’d been told.

  Hang in there, Glaeken, Jack thought. You keep on being the Defender, and I’ll stay perfectly happy being the Heir.

  Bill too looked concerned. “Okay. See you upstairs.”

  The elevator arrived and Glaeken pressed the Lobby button once the three of them were aboard.

  “Kind of a roundabout way to go,” Jack said for lack of anything better.

  Glaeken sighed. “I don’t have my key.”

  The building had two elevators: Glaeken’s private express to his penthouse, and the local that required a key to reach his floor.

  He turned to Weezy. “How is Dawn searching for her baby?”

  “She tracked down one of the doctors at her delivery—a pediatrician—and she’s haunting him in the hope the baby will show up at his office. I’m worried about her. She’s become obsessed with finding that baby. It’s all she talks about anymore.”

  Motherly concern infused the descending cab. Still in her teens, Dawn had awakened Weezy’s maternal instincts. Not surprising. The girl was young enough to be her daughter—Weezy would have had to deliver her as a teen herself, but it was biologically possible. She’d never said so, but Jack suspected Weezy’s subconscious saw Dawn as the child she’d never had and most likely never would.

  Glaeken turned to Jack. “Perhaps, when you’re not in active pursuit of the One, you might help her.”

  Jack had been thinking about that.

  Rasalom, posing as a Mr. Osala, had hidden Dawn away during her pregnancy under the guise of protecting her from the baby’s father. He arranged for prenatal care and for a skilled delivery team … which promptly whisked the newborn away to parts unknown.

  Obviously the child—which according to Dawn had some pretty scary deformities—meant something to Rasalom. And if it meant something to Rasalom, maybe it could be used as a lure.

  “Yeah. Not a bad idea.”

  The elevator arrived at the lobby. Weezy said good-bye and walked toward the entrance, but Glaeken grabbed Jack’s arm and held him back.

  “What do you plan for the baby if you find it?” he whispered.

  Jack shrugged. “Not sure.”

  “I know what you should do.”

  Glaeken put his fists together and gave them a sharp twist. The meaning was clear and it shocked Jack. So unlike Glaeken …

  “What?”

  “Too much is at stake—humanity is at stake. Nothing good can come of that creature. Only evil.”

  With that he turned away and pressed the button on his private elevator. Jack stared a moment, then slipped back into his bloody jacket.

  “What did he say?” Weezy said as he joined her on the sidewalk.

  “He wants the baby found too.”

  “I’m glad he’s on board with that. Maybe then Dawn can find some peace.”

  Don’t count on that, Jack thought.

  3

  “Doctor Heinze?” Dawn Pickering said as he approached her stalking spot.

  That was what she called this stretch of hallway in the McCready building where she’d set up watch on Kenneth Heinze, MD. She’d totally memorized his office hours and had made a point of being in the building whenever he was. Sooner or later Mr. Osala or Gilda or Georges would appear with the baby, bringing him in for a checkup.

  Or so she hoped. He’d been present at the delivery. Didn’t it stand to reason that whoever had the baby would follow up with Dr. Heinze? At the time she’d been impressed at how Mr. Osala had totally thought of everything, even going so far as to have a pediatrician on hand to check out her newborn.

  She’d had no idea what they had in mind. She’d been whisked in and out of a surgicenter she could not identify. She’d tried contacting Dr. Landsman, the obstetrician, but he said he’d never heard of her and had left instructions with his office building’s security that she was not to be allowed in. During her pregnancy he’d examined her in his office during off-hours and done his own ultrasounds. She’d thought she was getting VIP treatment but now she realized no one on his staff would remember her. And Mr. Osala and his entire household had vanished.

  Her only link was Dr. Heinze. She remembered thinking of “fifty-seven varieties” when she’d first heard his name. But when she looked she found only one pediatrician named Heinze in the five boroughs. She’d thought she was on the wrong track when she learned he was a pediatric surgeon. Why had they thought they needed a surgeon? But one look at this tall, fair-haired man with the round, apple-cheeked face totally dispelled all doubts. He was the one.

  But still … why had they wanted a surgeon who specialized in children on hand?

  Maybe they’d expected problems. After the quick glimpse she got of her child she wasn’t surprised. The black body hair, almost like fur, the clawlike hands—nobody had prepared her for that. But the most horrifying of all was the tentacle springing from each of his armpits, writhing in the air like little snakes.

  And then they’d said he’d stopped breathing and they whisked him away. The next day they told her he hadn’t survived. She’d been so not ready for that. And since she’d already signed him away for adoption, they never let her see him.

  But she didn’t believe he was dead. Neither did Jack. And so she was totally determined to find him. She’d let her baby down before—tried to abort him, signed him away to be raised by strangers—but things had changed. She was so not going to let him down again.

  Dr. Heinze walked past. He either hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her. She had a chance to back off. And maybe she should. Confronting him was dumb. She needed to hang back and keep lurking. She’d made a point of dressing in business casual and staying on the move so she looked like she belonged here. The research wing of the McCready Foundation’s headquarters had restricted access, but the outpatient areas were open to the public.

  Patience, she told herself. Sooner or later the baby would show.

  But her patience had thinned, and now it tore. Totally.

  “Doctor Heinze?” she repeated.

  He stopped and gave her a pleasant smile. “Yes?”

  “Remember me?”

  He stared at her with no hint of recognition. “Should I? Were you once a patient?”

  “My name’s Dawn Pickering and you stole my baby.”

  His eyes widened and the apple in his cheeks faded. Now he recognized her.

  “I-I did no such thing.”

  “Then you helped. Where’s my baby, Doctor Heinze? Where’s my baby?”

  He pushed open his office door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please leave.”

  She followed him inside.

  “Where’s my baby, Doctor Heinze?” She felt herself losing it. No turning back now. “Where’s-my-baby-where’s-my-baby?” Startled looks from parents and little patients in the waiting area as her voice rose in pitch and volume. “Where’s-my-baby-where’s-my-baby?” The receptionist grabbing the phone and calling someone, had to be security, but Dawn was screaming now and it felt so good to scream. “WHERE’S-MY-BABY-WHERE’S-MY-BABY-WHERE’S-MY-BABEEEEE?”

  4

  “Well, well,” Mack said with a smile as he admitted Jack to the foyer of Rasalom’s former residence. “If it isn’t the hit man.”

  Like Glaeken, “Mr. Osala” had occupied the top floor—in this case, floors, since the penthouse was a duplex. Jack had come looking for
him, not knowing he was Rasalom, only to learn that he had moved out just a day or two before and taken everything with him.

  “Hey, Mack. Osala or any of his staff been around?”

  Mack shook his graying head. He had deep brown skin, a Sammy Davis Jr. build, and a Redd Foxx beard. McKinley—his first name—was engraved into the brass name tag that graced his gray uniform.

  “No sign, not a word from them.”

  No surprise.

  “Too bad,” Mack added.

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “Because I loooove his ride. A black 1980 450SEL 6.9.”

  “An old Mercedes? I had him figured for a Maybach, or maybe a Bugatti.”

  Mack shook his head. “Uh-uh. That ain’t just an ‘old Mercedes.’ Don’t you dare call it that. It’s one of the greatest saloons ever built.”

  Jack knew Mack was baiting him with the term. He knew what he was talking about but bit anyway.

  “Saloon? I thought we were talking about a car.”

  Mack’s eyebrows rose. “We are, my man. That’s the British term for sedan. But that SEL is a saloon.”

  “More like a tank.”

  “Got that right.”

  Jack pushed the conversation back on target. “Okay, so when Osala moved out, did you happen to notice who did the actual moving?”

  Mack gave him an annoyed look. “You take me for some kinda fool who’s gonna let a bunch of yahoos come in here and clean out a tenant’s apartment without knowing who they are and making sure it’s cleared with the tenant ahead of time? Course I did.”

  Jack knew from their previous run-in that Mack took his job very seriously.

  “Was there a name on the truck?”

  “There was.”

  Compared to Mack, a rock was garrulous.

  “What was it?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Crap.”

  “But I do have a work order.”

  Bless you, Jack thought as he followed the bantam of a man to his cubbyhole of an office. Mack pulled open a drawer, fished around, and came up with a yellow sheet of paper.

  “Here it is.”

  Jack reached for it but Mack pulled it away. Jack snagged it on his second try. The name on the header came as a shock, but only for an instant, replaced by an I-should-have-known feeling and accompanied by a Bernard Herrmann cue.

  Mack snatched it back. “Don’t you go grabbing my papers.”

  Wm. Blagden & Sons, Inc.

  A year and a half ago, in South Florida, a Blagden & Sons dump truck had been stolen—supposedly—and used to run down his father, leaving him in a coma. A couple of months later, Jack had followed Luther Brady to the Blagden & Sons’ concrete plant in Jersey … a bad memory there.

  And now the name pops up again. He had known back then the Blagden company was connected to the Order, and that the Order was connected to the Otherness and Rasalom. So not a huge surprise that when Rasalom needed his stuff moved, Blagden & Sons showed up. After all, they had trucks galore. But mostly dump trucks and cement mixers.

  “What kind of truck was it?”

  “Typical box truck.”

  “Like a moving van?”

  Mack glanced ceilingward. “A moving van is a box truck.”

  “Okay, okay. Jersey plates?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess. You don’t happen to remember the plate number.”

  “Don’t have to. Wrote it down. You don’t think I’m going to let them drive off without me knowing that, do you?”

  He jotted the number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Jack.

  “I suppose it would be too much to ask if they happened to have a delivery address on that work order.”

  Mack nodded. “It would.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to ask them.”

  “You really think they’ll tell you?”

  “I can be very persuasive.” He clapped Mack on his upper arm. “Thanks for your help.”

  As he turned to go, Mack said, “Don’t you want the address?”

  “Don’t need it. Been there a couple of times already.”

  On his second trip he’d discovered the plant’s awful secret.

  5

  Ernst Drexler hung the jacket of his white suit on a hanger in his office closet, then adjusted his vest before seating himself behind his desk. He had to look cool, calm, and most of all, in control. He could not reveal the rage and—yes, he admitted it—fear and uncertainty roiling through his gut.

  The man who would knock on the door any minute now could not be allowed to see any of that. Ernst was an actuator, one of the long arms of the Order’s Council of Seven. The man arriving was a tool for that arm …

  A tool who had acted on his own.

  Or had he? That was the unsettling part.

  He rubbed his hands together. Chilly in here. Maybe he should have kept his jacket on. The thick granite walls of the Order’s Lower Manhattan Lodge kept it cool in the summer but made it hard to heat in the winter. And he wasn’t getting any younger. He’d passed sixty years ago. One felt the cold more in one’s seventh decade.

  Or was it just his mood?

  A knock on the door.

  “Come.”

  Kris Szeto entered in his beloved black leather jacket. He had black hair, swarthy skin, and always appeared to need a shave, even when he didn’t. He had been living in America for years but maintained a Eurotrash look. His face still exhibited faint reminders of the severe beating he’d sustained two weeks ago. The bruises had cleared but a couple of fresh scars remained.

  “You wished to see me?” he said in Eastern Bloc–flavored English as he came to a stop before the desk.

  Control … keep the voice steady.

  “Yes. It has come to my attention that Claudiu Ozera is dead.”

  The incident was all over the news. Four men had opened fire on an elderly woman in Central Park this morning. A fifth gunman came to her aid, killing one of her attackers before whisking her away. The dead man had not been identified to the public, but a brother of the Order who was also a member of the NYPD had reported it to the Council. The news came as a shock. Ozera had been assigned to Szeto. Szeto was assigned to Ernst. The Council was in an uproar over it: Why was a member of the Order involved in a public shootout? Why hadn’t the actuator informed them?

  For a very good reason: Ernst had known nothing about it. But he was about to find out.

  “Yes. Most unfortunate. An unforeseen circumstance.” Szeto’s tone was flat, matter-of-fact, as if explaining a spilled quart of milk. “My team engaged target as instructed—”

  As instructed? Ernst let it pass for now.

  “—and fire many times, make many hits, but she does not go down. Then other man appears, firing. He kills Claudiu and wounds Filip. I am watching from side. Since Lady is not going down, I order retreat.”

  Ice shot through Ernst’s veins. No … it couldn’t be.

  “‘Lady’ … do you mean the Lady?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But she cannot be hurt by bullets.”

  “I know this. But if the One wishes to have her shot, then I must shoot her, yes?”

  Ice was fire compared to the interstellar cold exploding within him now. He couldn’t help himself—

  “The One? How would you know what the One wishes?”

  Szeto’s bland expression finally changed. “He came to me and told me.”

  “You idiot! That was not the One. You’ve been duped!”

  Szeto’s face darkened. “I know the One. Is my mother not his housekeeper?”

  Yes. Yes, she was. The connection had slipped Ernst’s mind. Women weren’t allowed in the Order, of course, but the Order supplied the One with staff, and traditionally any woman supplied would be related to a brother.

  “But the One knows better than all of us that the Lady can’t be shot.”

  Szeto shrugged. “He tells me shoot Lady, I shoot. I do not question the One
.”

  No one questioned the One.

  Szeto’s eyes narrowed. “Why is it you do not know of this?”

  Ernst had been dreading the question, but was prepared for it.

  “I have been out of town on Council business. Most likely he did not want to wait until I returned. The One is not known for his patience. And since he knows you are my right-hand man, he went directly to you.”

  Szeto nodded slowly as he stared at Ernst. “Yes. That must be it.”

  Ernst hoped Szeto swallowed the lie. He hadn’t been anywhere but here and home in his apartment. The One could have contacted him any time.

  Yet he hadn’t. He had bypassed Ernst the actuator and gone straight to Szeto the enforcer.

  The One had been furious when the Internet meltdown Ernst had engineered failed to remove the Lady. Had he given up on Ernst because of that?

  He took a breath and looked at Szeto. “I have not spoken to the One recently. Did he say why he thought bullets might harm the Lady?”

  “No. He tells me where she will be and when, and says to gun her down. So that is what I do.”

  “Of course. And no effect, I assume.”

  “None.”

  “And the man who came to her defense? Was he a bodyguard?”

  “We observed before we acted. She was walking alone, no sign of anyone following. And besides, Lady does not need bodyguard.”

  No, of course she doesn’t. I’m not thinking straight.

  How could he with his world turning upside down?

  “Did you recognize him?”

  Szeto shook his head. “He was wearing hat and had pistol held before face. And I was helping Filip escape. But he took Claudiu’s gun. We have seen this happen before.”

  Yes … last summer, when Max and Josef were gunned down at the hospital, and just a couple of weeks ago when Fournier was killed.

  “Do you think it’s the same man who was protecting Louise Myers and Edward Connell? That would mean he has collected three of your guns in the course of killing half a dozen of your men.”

  Ernst put the slightest emphasis on each your.

  Szeto spoke through clenched teeth. “If it is same man, I want him. The Myers woman can lead me to him…”