The Dark at the End (Repairman Jack) Read online

  “Why not?”

  “Unless you’re very close, the flechettes don’t necessarily land point first. Skip the Beehive. You want the buckshot round. Filled with number-four pellets. Does a nice shredding job close in.”

  “Okay. I’ll take four HE and eight shot.”

  Abe jotted that down on the list, then went to the next item. His head shot up.

  “LX-14? You’re going to trigger a nuclear bomb?”

  “Nooo.” Jack had heard it had been used in nuclear weapons but, although he’d have loved to be able to hit Rasalom with a tactical nuke, he didn’t have one. And Abe wasn’t going to find him one. “I just want max of everything—detonation velocity, brisance, everything. And I’m told this is powerful stuff.”

  “It is. But as far as I know, it’s made only at Livermore in this country. I’ll see what I can do.” He gave Jack a sidelong look. “You’re changing your last name to Kozlowski, maybe?”

  Jack laughed. “Please, no.”

  The Kozlowski brothers, Stan and Joe, had been demolition experts, really got off on blowing things up. Damn near blew Jack to smithereens a couple of years ago. But Jack had learned a few things from them … before he blew them up.

  Abe squinted at the last item on the list. “If I didn’t know better I’d say this says ‘Stingers.’” He looked up and smiled. “But you couldn’t want—”

  Jack was nodding. “Yup. Two of them.”

  Abe threw his hands—and the list—in the air as he gestured to the leaning shelves and crowded aisles running toward the front of the store.

  “Gevalt! This is a sport shop.”

  “What about the armory in the basement? Or did you forget?”

  “Small arms I sell. Small. Stinger missiles are not small arms.”

  “I figure if one guy can carry it and fire it, it’s a small arm.”

  “That’s your definition. Others—like yours truly—would disagree.” He picked up the list and read it again. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Abe shook his head. “I should maybe not complain about you saving the world, but…”

  “But what?”

  He didn’t correct him about the saving-the-world bit. If that happened, fine. But he was out to save Gia and Vicky and Abe and Weezy and Julio and Eddie and a few others.

  “This isn’t your style.”

  “Why? Because of all the firepower?”

  “Yes. With you it’s always up close and personal. This…” He shrugged again.

  “I don’t have a choice, Abe. Get too close to this guy and he can freeze you with a look, paralyze you so all you can do is watch. I’m not giving him that chance. I have to operate from a distance.”

  “But surface-to-air missiles?”

  “Well…” Jack paused. He’d never told Abe this.

  “Well, what?”

  “He can fly.”

  Abe’s eyebrows lifted halfway to his far-receded hairline. “Like a bird, you mean? Like Superman?”

  “No … but he can float. I’ve seen it. I don’t intend to give him a chance to do that. But if he does … he gets stung.”

  Abe sighed as he resettled himself on his stool. “I know the world is not what I once thought it to be. Seeing that thing that came out of the Hudson and cut up your chest—how long has it been?”

  “Three years this coming summer.”

  If summer came. Word was it might not.

  Abe shook his head. “Like a lifetime it seems. Anyway, seeing that happen made it abundantly clear that the world is keeping secrets. Not just the kind I thought it was—and is. Currencies and economies and governments are being manipulated, but that’s gornisht compared to what’s really going on, right?”

  “’Fraid so. It’s cosmic, dude.”

  “Since when you’re a hippie?”

  “But it is cosmic.”

  “And how do you find this Adversary, as you call him?”

  “I hope to pick up his trail tonight.”

  “Where? In the cosmos?”

  “Nope. New Jersey.”

  9

  “They kicked you out?” Weezy said.

  She’d run into Dawn Pickering in the lobby downstairs and they’d rode the elevator up together. They now stood outside their respective apartment doors across the hall from each other. A blue-eyed blonde, Dawn had lost some baby weight in the weeks since she’d delivered, but was by no means slim.

  “Totally. Not just out of his office, out of the building.” She glanced away. “I sort of lost it.”

  This wasn’t good. Weezy, Jack, and Glaeken all wanted to know the baby’s fate. Rasalom had personally involved himself in protecting Dawn during its gestation. He wouldn’t have done that out of the goodness of his heart—he had no goodness anywhere in him, especially his heart. So the baby had to be useful to him. Or potentially so.

  And if it was useful to Rasalom, it might be useful against him.

  “You really think stalking Doctor Heinze is the best way to find your baby?”

  Dawn shrugged. “If you can think of a better way, I’m all ears.”

  “Wish I could.”

  Weezy and Jack had tried, but besides the obstetrician—who seemed to have washed his hands of Dawn since the delivery—Heinze was their only link to the baby.

  “So do I. But until we do, this seems the only way. But it just got harder now that I’m persona non grata at the McCready building. I mean, they won’t even let me through the front door anymore.”

  Weezy had to smile.

  Dawn caught it and frowned. “I hardly think it’s funny.”

  Touchy, touchy, Weezy thought. Dawn was becoming more and more strung out in her quest for her baby.

  “Neither do I. It was ‘persona non grata.’ You don’t hear that too often in daily conversation.”

  “Don’t you mean quotidian conversation?”

  “Um, yeah. That too.”

  Finally Dawn allowed a faint smile. “You know, just because I’m still in my teens and say ‘totally’ a lot doesn’t make me dumb. I aced my SATs, especially the verbal parts. I’d be in my second semester at Colgate right now if I hadn’t…”

  Her smile crumbled as her throat worked and she blinked back sudden tears.

  Weezy’s heart went out to her. This poor kid had been through more heartache in the past year than many people see in a lifetime.

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. If I hadn’t gotten involved with that … that monster, I’d be a college freshman instead of an unwed mother, and my own mother would still be alive.” She shook her head. “She used to fine me every time I said ‘totally’ and ‘like.’”

  Weezy fought an urge to hug her. Dawn was too brittle right now. No telling how she’d react.

  Aw, hell with it, she thought and slipped her arms around her.

  “I’m so sorry. I wish I could say something to make you feel better.”

  Dawn hesitated, then, with a soft sob, returned the hug. She clung to Weezy a moment, then eased away.

  “Just having you to talk to keeps me sane.”

  “You worry about staying sane?”

  “Not really. Well, maybe. The baby’s all I can think about. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, but it won’t stop.”

  Weezy knew how that was. She’d been diagnosed as manic-depressive as a teen—they called it bipolar now. She didn’t know if the diagnosis was accurate, but she’d been medicated and it had helped … some. She still hadn’t been able to turn off the thoughts, but she’d been able to slow them. Having a memory that wouldn’t allow her to forget anything, ever, was no help either.

  Dawn wasn’t bipolar, though, just post-partum and obsessed.

  “Want to come in for some coffee?”

  Dawn shook her head as she turned toward her apartment door. “I know you need to go back to reading your bizarro book, and I need to crash. Haven’t been sleeping much and I need to catch up if I’m going to be fres
h tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  Dawn pushed open her door and stepped inside. “Back to the McCready building.”

  “But you’re, as you say, persona non grata.”

  Her smile was grim. “They can keep me out of the building but they can’t keep me from watching it. Thanks for being a friend.”

  She closed the door, leaving Weezy alone in the hall, wondering how long Dawn could keep going like this.

  In her own apartment, Weezy headed directly for the kitchenette and her coffeemaker. She’d invested in a Keurig personal brewer—named it Katy, of course—and immediately it had become her favorite appliance. Pots of coffee went stale after a while. Her beloved Katy was always ready to brew a fresh cup for her.

  She unlocked the kitchen cabinet where she hid the Compendium of Srem, the “bizarro book” Dawn had mentioned. Almost as old as Glaeken and Rasalom, and virtually indestructible, Torquemada had tried to destroy it during the Spanish Inquisition but couldn’t, so he buried it and built a monastery over it. It wouldn’t stay buried, however, and after a torturous journey through many hands—Hank Thompson’s and Jack’s among them—it wound up here in Weezy’s apartment.

  She laid it on the kitchen table and opened it to the leather marker she had left against the last page she’d read. As usual it did not open to that page. The book had this maddening, frustrating tendency to change pages on its own. Nobody knew the exact number of pages in the Compendium—the book was designed to have a finite number of sheets but a virtually infinite number of pages. But something had gone wrong and all the pages were out of order. What you found when you turned the page rarely had anything to do with the page before. And when you turned back, the original page might have changed as well.

  She flipped to a random page, just to see what she’d find. When she saw the header, she caught her breath. The Other Name … she’d seen that mentioned in the past but had never encountered a whole page devoted to it. Glaeken had mentioned something about each of the Seven who championed the Otherness back in the First Age having a secret name. This could be it. But the text that followed caused her to slam on the brakes.

  It wasn’t in English.

  One of the many miraculous things about the Compendium—and what Torquemada must have considered the most Satanic—was its ability to present its text in the reader’s native tongue. Someone born and raised in Riyadh would see Arabic; from the Congo, Swahili; from Johnson, NJ, English.

  Yet this was in some mishmash of symbols and characters that Weezy had never seen. She had a feeling this was important—so important that she couldn’t risk losing the page. She pulled out her cell phone and began snapping photos. As expected, what she saw as English reverted to the Old Tongue in the photos, but the gibberish remained the same.

  She couldn’t wait to show Glaeken.

  10

  The dashboard clock in the Crown Vic read a little after eleven P.M. as Jack exited the Garden State Parkway and began to wind his way along rural back roads in northern Ocean County. The twisting pavement led him along hilly curves until the road crested. He knew what was coming up on his left: an opening through the trees with a concrete skirt abutting the road’s asphalt. The skirt seemed to end at a cliff, but Jack knew better. He turned onto it and descended a steep concrete driveway into a former sandpit, a huge excavation maybe seventy or eighty feet deep, with a hodgepodge of buildings backed up against the near wall.

  All the buildings were dark. He passed a small fleet of cement-mixer trucks and haulers of various shapes and sizes, all lined up and facing front like grunts awaiting inspection. No moving van in sight.

  He pulled up to the office door of the biggest, tallest building. A sign above it showed a stylized black sun that looked like a sunflower, and the words Wm. Blagden & Sons, Inc.

  Yep. They still ran the place.

  He got out and banged on the door, shouting, “Anybody there?” a couple of times.

  If anyone answered, he’d ask for directions.

  No one did. He flashed his penlight on the lock. A Schlage. Good.

  He parked the Vic behind the mixers. Its black color blended nicely into the shadows. He pulled out his Schlage bump key set and returned to the door. Found one that fit the lock, tapped it with the butt of his Glock, and he was in. The place hadn’t been alarmed on his last trip and didn’t appear to be now. After all, what was there to steal? Sand? Loose cement mix?

  Jack flashed his light around the office. Pretty bare bones: a couple of desks, chairs, computer monitors, filing cabinets. His plan was to find a work order for the date Osala was moved and maybe a delivery address to go along with it. A picture window looked out onto the big building’s wide, open floor. Jack aimed his flash through and the beam picked up …

  A truck.

  He stepped out onto the floor and played his beam over it as he approached. A box truck with the Blagden logo on the side. Jack froze as the light picked up something else beyond it. Something big and long and metallic.

  Forcing himself back into motion, he passed the truck and stopped before a large metal tube, maybe twenty feet long and five in diameter, its flanks embossed with odd symbols. Jack knew it well. A year and a half ago he’d come here looking for someone. He’d peeped through the window as this cylinder—standing upright then—had been filled with concrete, unaware that the person he’d come to find was bound inside, and had drowned in the wet mix while Jack watched.

  A wave of sadness rippled through him as he returned to the truck. He grabbed the handles on the rear door and heaved. As it rolled up, he flashed his light into the truck’s bay, revealing stacks of gleaming furniture protected by thick mover’s pads.

  He stepped back and checked the license plate. It matched the numbers Mack had given him.

  So … weeks after loading, Osala’s—Rasalom’s—furniture still hadn’t been delivered.

  He hopped into the truck’s cab—it stank of cigarettes—and hunted for papers. None on the seat. In the glove compartment he found maps, matches, and a work order that matched Mack’s copy, but no delivery address. Instead, someone had scrawled Hold until further notice across the bottom.

  Jack had a feeling the “further notice” might never come. But even if they eventually unloaded all this at Rasalom’s new digs, when would that be? More weeks? Months? Jack had no way of knowing. And no way to know about the move if and when it happened.

  He couldn’t set up a stakeout. Not while Rasalom was skulking about, planning who knew what.

  He returned to the rear of the truck and climbed in. Rasalom’s stuff … maybe it would give some clue to the guy.

  He began inspecting things, then throwing them out—pushing them off the edge of the bed to crash on the concrete floor. Chairs got an immediate heave-ho. Dressers and bureaus first had their drawers pulled out and inspected—all empty—then were dumped.

  Empty, empty, empty.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  When he’d finished, he eased himself down amid the splintered remains of the furniture and found himself facing the cylinder. A rush of anger burned away his frustration.

  The Dormentalists had been behind the ritual murder in that tube. The higher-ups behind it had paid, but others hadn’t. William Blagden was a Dormentalist and had been involved, yet life was still business as usual for him. Maybe Jack should do something about that.

  He knew his next step.

  He retrieved the matchbook from the glove compartment and then popped the truck’s hood. Took him a moment to find the fuel line, took only a second to cut it. The sharp smell of gasoline spread as it spilled onto the floor. He waited for a good-size puddle to form, then struck a match, lit the book, and tossed it.

  The gas went up with a woomp! and Jack headed for the door. Outside, he started his car and waited until the truck’s gas tank exploded, blowing out a number of windows. He watched a little longer, to be sure the building was catching. When he was, he put the Vic in gear
and drove away.

  Not at all what he’d come for, but at least the trip hadn’t been a total waste.

  11

  Gia zeroed in on the gauze as soon as Jack pulled off his T-shirt.

  “What’s this?”

  He pulled off the dressing and saw it had further healed to the point where it had stopped oozing. He’d forgotten about it because the pain was gone. This was scary.

  “Just a scratch.” At least it was now.

  Slim, with short blond hair and sky-blue eyes, Gia sat next to him on her bed. Vicky was asleep and they were enjoying a little private time.

  “When? I don’t remember this yesterday.”

  She removed her top and unfastened her bra as he gave her a quick rundown of the incident in Central Park. Her pink-tipped breasts weren’t large and weren’t small. A handful each … just right.

  Her blue eyes were wide. “That shoot-out in the park? That was you?”

  “I was just walking by—”

  “How do you manage to get involved in these things?”

  “I was minding my own business.”

  He was reaching for one of her breasts but she pushed his hand away and leaned close, studying the wound.

  “The news said a man was killed. That could have been you.” She frowned. “This looks almost healed.”

  “Told you it was just a scratch. Doc Hargus said it hardly needed the butterflies.” To prove his point, Jack pulled them off. “There.”

  He stared at the wound. No way the healing should be this far gone.

  “You do heal fast.”

  Jack opened his mouth to tell her, but closed it again. Why try to explain what he didn’t know for sure, what he only suspected? He’d talk to Glaeken first and see what he thought.

  She ran a finger lightly along the line of the wound. “That other bullet scar is round.”

  “That was a direct hit. This was a graze.”

  “Looks like something a knife might make.” He’d expected her to be repulsed, and maybe if the wound looked fresher, she would be. But she seemed fascinated. “Or a sword.”