Crisscross rj-8 Page 4

"Really." This was an interesting twist. "How could he know that?"

  Another look away. "It has to do with the photos. I can't say any more."

  "All right then, why not simply quit that position?"

  "He said if I don't pay, or if I quit working with the fund, he'll make the photos public and ruin me and the fund. The fund's having such a tough time as it is, a scandal will sink it."

  "Whatever they show, you can say they're fake. You wouldn't believe how they can manipulate photos these days. Seeing used to be believing. Not anymore."

  "First off," she said, "that would be lying. Secondly, I have been working closely of late with the other person in the photos. What they show would not seem so preposterous to anyone who knew us."

  "So what you're saying is even if they were fakes, very good fakes, they'd still mess up your life and the building fund."

  She nodded, started to say something, but couldn't get the words past her trembling lips.

  Jack felt his jaw clench as he watched tears of helplessness rim her eyes. Sister Maggie seemed like good people. The thought of that slimy, belly-crawling son of a bitch turning the screws on her, and probably enjoying every minute…

  Finally she found her voice. "He stole something from me… a very private moment…"

  "And you want it back."

  She looked up at him. "No. I want it erased." She pointed to her heart. "From here"—then touched her forehead—"and from here. But that can't happen while those pictures are out there."

  "Don't worry about it. Ill take care of it. *

  She looked into his eyes and didn't seem to like what she saw there.

  "But without violence. Please. 1 can't be a party to violence."

  Jack only nodded. No promises. If an opportunity to put the hurt on the slob presented itself, he might not be able to resist.

  He'd have dinner with his ladies tonight, then he was going to pay a visit to fat Richie Cordova.

  7

  After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Jack stuck Sister Maggie's hundred-dollar bill into a padded envelope, addressed it to Cordova, and dropped it in a mailbox. Just in time to make the late pickup.

  Then he stopped in at the Isher Sports Shop on the way to Gia's. The front doorbell jangled as he pushed through. Jack wound his way toward the rear of the store through the tilting, ready-to-topple shelves overcrowded with basketballs, snowboards, baseball bats, even boxing gloves. He found Abe, proprietor and sole employee, out of his usual spot behind the rear counter and over by the rack of hockey sticks. He was talking to a young woman and a boy who looked maybe ten.

  "All right," Abe was saying to the boy in a testy tone. "Stand up straight already. Right. Unstoop those shoulders. No jaded slouch till you're at least twelve—it's a law. There. Now you should look straight ahead while I measure the stick."

  Abe with a sporting goods customer—usually a theater-of-the-absurd playlet. Jack stood back and watched the show.

  Abe stood five-two or -three and was a little over sixty with a malnourished scalp and an overfed waistline. He wore his customary half-sleeve white shirt and black pants, each a sampling menu of whatever he'd eaten during the course of the day. This being the end of the day, the menu was extensive.

  He grabbed a handful of hockey sticks and stood them one at a time in front of the kid. The end of the handle of the first came up to the level of the kid's eyes.

  "Nope. Too long. Just the right length it should be, otherwise you'll look like a kalyekeh out there on the ice."

  The kid looked at his mom who shrugged. Neither had the faintest idea what Abe was rambling about. Jack was right with them.

  The second stick reached the kid's chin.

  "Too short. A good match this would be if you were in your skates, but in shoes, no."

  The end of the third stick stopped right under the kid's nose.

  "Perfect! And it's made of graphite. Such tensile strength. With this you can beat your opponents senseless and never have to worry about breaking it."

  The kid's eyes widened. "Really?"

  The mother repeated the word but with narrowed eyes and a different tone.

  Abe shrugged. "What can I say? It's no longer a sport, hockey. You're equipping your kaddishel to join a tumel on ice. Why put the little fellow in harm's way?"

  The mother's lips tightened into a line. "Can we just pay for this and go?"

  "I should stop you from paying?" he said, heading for the scarred counter where the cash register sat. "Of course you can pay."

  Her credit card was scanned, approved, a slip was signed, and she was on her way. If her expression hinted that she'd never be back, her comment left no doubt.

  "Get out while you can," she muttered to Jack as she passed. "This guy is a loon."

  "Really?" Jack said.

  Abe had settled himself onto his stool and assumed his customary hands-on-thighs posture as Jack reached the counter. Parabellum, his blue parakeet and constant companion, sat in his cage to the right pecking at something that looked like a birdseed popsicle.

  "Another highwater mark in Abe Grossman customer relations," Jack said, grinning. "You ever consider advertising yourself as a consultant?"

  "Feh," Abe said with a dismissive gesture. "Hockey."

  "At least you actually sold something related to a sport."

  The street-level sports shop would have folded long ago if not for Abe's real business, locked away in the cellar. He didn't need sports-minded customers, so he did what he could to discourage them.

  "Not such a sport. Do you know they're making hockey sticks out of Kevlar now? They're expecting to maybe add handguns to the brawls?"

  "Wouldn't know," Jack said. "Never watch. Just stopped by to let you know I won't be needing that transponder I ordered."

  "Nu?" Abe's eyebrows lifted toward the memory of his hairline. "So you're maybe not such a customer relations maven yourself?"

  "No, she's still onboard. It's just that I've already dealt with the guy who's squeezing her. He's the one the last transponder led me to."

  "Cor-bon or something, right?"

  "Close. Cordova. Some coincidence, huh?" He waited for Abe's reaction.

  "Coincidence…" His eyes narrowed. "You told me no more coincidences for you."

  Jack hid his discomfort. "Yeah, I know, but coincidences do happen in real life, right?"

  Abe shrugged. "Now and then."

  "Watch: I'll probably find out he's a closet Dormentalist."

  "Dormentalist? He's a rat, maybe, but is he meshugge?"

  Jack told him about Maria Roselli and her missing Johnny, then asked, "You know anything about Dormentalism?"

  "Some. Like a magnet it attracts the farblondzhet in the head. That's why the Dormentalists joined the Scientologists in the war against Prozac back in the eighties. Anything that relieves depression and allows a clearer view of life and the world is a threat to them. Shrinks the pool of potential members."

  "I need to do a little studying up. What's the best place to start, you think? The Web?"

  "Too much tsuris separating fact from opinion there. Go to the source."

  He slid off the stool and stepped into the little office behind the counter area. Jack had been in there a few times. It made the rest of the store look neat and spare and orderly. He heard mutters and clatters and thuds and Yiddish curses before Abe reemerged.

  "Here," he said as he slapped a slim hardcover on the counter. "What you need is The Book of Hokano, the Torah of Dormentalism. More than you'll ever wish or need to know. But this isn't it. Instead, it's a mystery novel, starring a recurring hero named David Daine, supposedly written by Dormentalism's founder, Cooper Blascoe."

  Jack picked it up. The dust jacket cover graphic was a black-and-white melange of disjointed pieces with the title Sundered Lives in blazing red.

  "Never heard of it."

  Abe's eyebrows rose again in search of the Lost City of Hair. "You should have. It was number one on the Times' bestse
ller list. I bought it out of curiosity." He rolled his eyes. "Oy, such a waste of good money and paper.

  How such a piece of turgid drek could be a bestseller, let alone make number one, makes me dizzy in the head. He wrote six of them, all number ones. Makes one wonder about the public's reading tastes."

  "Whodunnit?"

  "I have no idea. Couldn't finish it. Tried once to read The Book of Hokano and couldn't finish that either. Incoherent mumbo jumbo." He pointed to the book in Jack's hand. "My gift to you."

  "A bad novel. Gee, thanks. You think I should buy The Book of Hokano then?"

  "If you do it should be used already. Don't give those gonifs another royalty. And set aside a long time. A thousand or so pages it runs."

  Jack winced. "Do they have Cliff Notes for it?"

  "You might find something like that online. All sorts of nuts online."

  "Still, millions of people seem to believe in it."

  "Feh! Millions, shmillions. That's what they say. It's a fraction of that, I'll bet."

  "Well, it's soon going to be a fraction plus one. I'm a-goin' to church."

  "You mean you're joining a cult."

  "They call themselves a church. The government agrees."

  Abe snorted. "Church smurch. We should listen to the government? Dormentalists give up control to their leaders; all decisions are made for them—how to think, what to believe, where to live, how to dress, what country even! With no responsibility there's no guilt, no outcome anxiety, so they feel a mindless sort of peace. That's a cult, and a cult is a cult no matter what the government says. If the Department of Agriculture called a bagel an apple, would that make it an apple? No. It would still be a bagel."

  "But what do they believe?"

  "Get yourself The Book of Hokano and read, bubbie, read. And trust me, with that in front of you, insomnia will be no worry."

  "Yeah, well, I'll sleep even better if you find me a way to become a citizen again."

  Impending fatherhood was doing a number on Jack's lifestyle, making him look for a way to return to aboveground life without attracting too much official attention. It wouldn't have been easy pre-9/11, but now… sheesh. If he couldn't provide a damn good explanation of his whereabouts for the last fifteen years, and why he wasn't on the Social Security roles or in the IRS data banks as ever filing a 1040, he'd be put under the Homeland Security microscope. He doubted his past could withstand that kind of scrutiny, and he didn't want to spend the rest of his life under observation.

  Had to find another way. And the best idea seemed to be a new identity… become someone with a past.

  "Any more from your guy in Europe?"

  Abe had contacts all over the world. Someone in Eastern Europe had said he might be able to work out something—for a price, of course.

  Abe shook his head. "Nothing definite. He's still working on it. Trust me, when I know, you'll know."

  "Can't wait forever, Abe. The baby's due mid-March."

  "I'll try to hurry him. I'm doing my best. You should know that."

  Jack sighed. "Yeah. I do."

  But the waiting, the dependence on a faceless contact, the frustration of not being able to fix this on his own… it ate at him.

  He held up the book. "Got a bag?"

  "What? Afraid people will think you're a Dormentalist?"

  "You got it."

  8

  "Slow down, Vicky," Gia said. "Chew your food."

  Vicky loved mussels in white wine and garlic sauce. She ate them with a gusto that warmed Jack's heart, scooping out the meat with her little fork, dipping it in the milky sauce, then popping it into her mouth. She ate quickly, methodically, and as she worked her way through the bowl she arranged her empty shells on the discard plate in her own fashion: inserting the latest into the previous, hinge first, creating a tight daisy chain of glistening black shells.

  Her hair, braided into a French twist, was almost as dark as the shells; she had her mother's blue eyes and perfect skin, and had been nine years old for a whole two weeks now.

  Every Sunday since his return from Florida, Jack had made a point of taking Gia and Vicky out for what he liked to think of as a family dinner. To-night had been Vicky's turn to decide where they ate and, true to form, she chose Amalia's in Little Italy.

  The tiny restaurant had occupied the same spot on Hester Street off Mulberry since shortly after the discovery of fire. It had gained the status of a Little Italy institution without becoming a tourist trap. The main reason for that was Mama Amalia, who decided who got seated and who didn't. No matter if a stranger had been waiting for an hour on a busy night, if she knew you from the neighborhood or as a regular, you got the next available table. Countless tourists had left in a huff.

  Like Mama Amalia could care. She'd been running her place this way all her adult life. She wasn't about to change.

  Mama had a thing for Vicky. The two had hit it off from the start and Mama always gave Vicky the royal treatment, including the traditional two-cheek air kiss she'd taught her, a big hug, and an extra cannoli for the trip home. The fact that her mother's last name was DiLauro didn't hurt.

  The seating was family style, at long tables covered with red- and white-checkered cloths. With the crowd light tonight, Gia, Vicky, and Jack wound up with a table to themselves. Jack worked on his calamari fritti and a second Moretti while Gia picked at her sliced tomatoes and mozzarella. She and Vicky were splitting a bottle of Limonata. Normally Gia would have been sipping a glass of Pinot Grigio, but she'd sworn off alcohol as soon as she discovered she was pregnant.

  "Not hungry?" Jack said, noticing that she'd only half finished her appetizer.

  Gia had let her blond hair grow out a little but it was still short by most standards. She wore black slacks and a loose blue sweater. But even in a tight top he doubted anyone would know she was pregnant. Despite nearing the end of her fourth month, Gia was barely showing.

  She shrugged. "Not particularly."

  "Anything wrong?"

  She hugged her arms against herself as she glanced at Vicky who was still absorbed in her mussels. "I just don't feel right."

  Now that she'd said that, Jack noticed that she did look a little pale.

  "A virus?"

  "Maybe. I feel kind of crampy."

  Jack felt a stab of pain in his own stomach.

  "What kind of cramps?" He lowered his voice. "It's not the baby, is it?"

  She shook her head. "No. Just… cramps. Only now and then, few and far between. Don't worry."

  "Don't worry about what?" Vicky said, looking up from her mussel shell rosette.

  "Mommy's not feeling so hot," Gia told her. "Remember how your stomach was upset last week. I think I may have it now."

  Vicky had to think a moment, then said. "Oh, yeah. That was gross, but not too bad. You'll be okay if you drink Gatorade, Mom. Just like me."

  She went back to arranging her shells.

  A virus… Jack hoped that was all it was.

  Gia grabbed his hand. "I see that look. Don't worry, okay? I just had my monthly checkup and Dr. Eagleton says everything's going fine."

  "Hey, if she can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl yet, how do we know she—?"

  Gia held up her hand in a traffic-cop move. "Don't go there. She delivered Vicky and she's been my gynecologist ever since. As far as I'm concerned she's the best OB on the planet."

  "Okay, okay. It's just I worry, you know? I'm new to this whole thing."

  She smiled. "I know. But by the time March rolls around, you'll be a pro."

  Jack hoped so.

  He poked at his calamari rings. He wasn't so hungry anymore.

  9

  Jack returned to his apartment after dropping off Vicky and Gia—who was feeling better—at their Sutton Square townhouse. He'd been carrying his .380 AMT Backup at the restaurant but wanted something a little more impressive along when he visited Cordova's place—just in case he got backed into a corner.

  He wound through
the Victorian oak furniture of his cluttered front room—Gia had once called it "claustrophobic," but she seemed used to it these days—and headed for the old fold-out secretary against the far wall. He occupied the third floor of a West Eighties brownstone that was much too small for all the neat stuff he'd accumulated over the years. He didn't know what he was going to do with it once he and Gia were married. It was a given that he'd move to Sutton Square, but what would happen to all this?

  He'd worry about it when the time came.

  He angled the secretary out from the wall and reached for the notch in the lower rear panel. His hand stopped just inches away. The hidden space behind the drawers held his weapons cache—and, since Florida, something else. That something else tended to make him a little queasy.

  He pushed his hand forward and removed the panel. Hung on self-adhering hooks or jumbled on the floor of the space lay his collection of saps, knives, bullets, pistols. The latest addition was a souvenir from his Florida trip, a huge Ruger SuperRedhawk revolver chambered for .454 Casulls that would stop an elephant. Not many elephants around here, and the Ruger's nine-and-a-half-inch barrel made it impractical as a city carry, but he couldn't let it go.

  Another thing in the hidden compartment he couldn't let go—or rather, wouldn't let go of him—was a flap of skin running maybe ten inches wide and twelve long. Another leftover from that same trip, it was all that remained of a strange old woman named Anya. Yeah, a woman with a dog, a heroic little chihuahua named Oyv.

  He'd tried to rid himself of this grisly reminder of the horrors that had gone down in Florida, but it refused to go. He'd buried it once in Florida and twice again during the two months since he'd returned, but it wouldn't stay. By the time he got home it was already here, waiting for him. As little as a year ago he would have been shocked, repulsed, horrified, and questioning his sanity. Now… he simply went with it. He'd come to the gut-wrenching realization that he was no longer in control of his life. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever been.

  After the third try he'd given up on burying the skin. Anya had been much more than she'd let on. Her strange powers hadn't prevented her death, but apparently they stretched beyond the grave. For some reason she wanted him to have this piece of her and was giving him no choice about it. That being the case, he'd go with the flow, certain that sooner or later he'd find out why.