Dark City (Repairman Jack - Early Years 02) (32 page)

“Was Bertel ever with the CIA or FBI or anything like that?”

“I should know? He shows up, he disappears, he shows up again. Otherwise his rep is a mensch. If he’s a fed, I should have been raided six times already. I’ve never known him to be involved in anything even remotely legal, but illegal operations and government service aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.”

Jack remembered Bertel’s hard look when he’d told him that Reggie had been instrumental in Tony’s murder. Maybe that had been his intent: revenge on Reggie for Tony, and all the rest of the damage was collateral.

As Jack mulled that, he noticed that the pile of bagel innards had disappeared. Only a few crumbs remained.

“Probably better if you don’t get a pet for cleanup, Abe. It’ll starve.”

10

Jack bought another coffee and ambled west until he hit Riverside Drive. He found himself at loose ends, with nothing scheduled until Saturday when he took up the Zalesky trail again. A couple of empty days ahead. He could hang out with Julio and Lou and Barney at The Spot, but felt like being alone for a while. Well, he’d make an exception for Cristin, but she was busy planning her parties and events.

He crossed into the park that buffered the Upper West Side from the Henry Hudson Parkway. The late morning sun had crested the old brick apartment buildings that lined the east side of the drive. Last night’s wind had died, allowing old Sol to leaven the chill in the air. Not warm by any stretch, but … nice.

The extra caffeine had done nothing to revive him, so he dropped onto one of the benches that lined the footpath. As his gaze came to rest on a sign wired to the low fence directly opposite—reminding him that his dog must be leashed—a middle-aged blond woman strolled by with an unleashed husky. It looked well behaved.

He pointed to the sign. “They ever fine you?”

She stopped and her dog stopped with her. Both stared at him for a second, then she spoke with a strange accent.

“No one fines me.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You should not sit there,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It is not a good spot. It could be dangerous.”

How? Jack wondered. Muggers?

Didn’t seem likely out in the open near midday. Besides, he had the Semmerling strapped to his ankle.

“I’ll chance it.”

Another long stare, then she strolled off with her dog.

Through the naked trees he could see the boat basin and the glittering Hudson River. With the sun warming his back and the traffic murmuring behind him, Jack stretched out his legs and closed his eyes. Maybe he could catch forty or so winks here. If so, it would be his first sleep in close to thirty hours.

He felt himself start to drift … he loosed the tether …

—jolted awake / something slamming into him / opens his eyes to darkness / something over his head, over his shoulders and arms / black plastic of some sort / “Hey! What the—!” / tries to go for the Semmerling / arms pinned at sides / can’t reach it / lifted / carried / “Hey!” / voices speaking Spanish to each other / Oh, shit, not— / tossed onto a metal surface / a door slides and clangs shut / moving / floor bouncing / angry shouting in Spanish / getting kicked / can’t defend / blows to his head / blows to his face / the darkness deepens / he goes away …

11

Jack came to coughing, his face dripping cold water. He blinked, went to wipe his face and found his arms wouldn’t move. He shook his head and the move blasted pain through his skull and down his neck. His gut threatened to hurl.

Don’t do that again.

He opened his eyes and as his vision cleared he realized he wasn’t alone. In some sort of garage or warehouse or abandoned factory—concrete floor and walls, high windows with weak sunlight struggling through the dirty glass. Eight or nine young Hispanics surrounded him. He recognized Rico first, standing closest with an empty, dripping, plastic bucket. Then Carlos, Juan, and Ramon of Two Paisanos Landscaping came into focus, grinning like idiots. He didn’t know the others. A couple of them had their shirts off, revealing a gallery of tattoos as they strutted around. They wore fierce looks on their faces and strings of red, white, and blue beads around their necks. One of them was playing with the Semmerling.

DDP.

Shit.

He looked down at his arms—bungeed tightly to the arms of a heavy, beat-up office chair. His left leg was bungeed to a leg of the chair. He rocked the chair but it seemed solid—way solid. His right leg, though, was stretched out and bungeed in place on a low workbench that looked like steel. His boot and sock were gone, as was his ankle holster. The leg of his jeans had been rolled up almost to the knee.

What the—?

“So, you awake now,” Rico said with his heavy accent.

Jack was tempted to compliment him on his powers of observation, but thought better of it. He was helpless and in deep shit and couldn’t see an upside to antagonizing this guy.

“Rico. Good to see you.”

His throbbing head felt twice normal size and he must have been kicked in the jaw at some point because it hurt to talk.

“Good?” Rico tossed the bucket aside. “You don’t think it’s good too long. Not when I finish with you.”

That sounded real bad. Jack’s gut made knots as he tested his bonds. The bungees had been pulled supertight. He could barely feel his hands and feet. He wiggled his fingers. They moved but were numb.

Christ, Jack thought as he watched Rico limp over to Carlos. His knee still isn’t right?

He hadn’t meant to put that kind of hurt on him. He had an awful feeling he was going to regret it even more. The misgivings turned to terror when he saw Carlos hand him a wicked looking machete. This wasn’t one of the crude, sharpened lengths of steel these guys used in gardening and landscaping. This was one of the DDP models, polished and tapered to a nasty point.

“Aw, no, Rico.”

“Yes!” He slashed it back and forth and the flashing blade whispered through the air as he approached. He touched the point to Jack’s foot. “This is the foot that wreck my knee, yes?”

Jack struggled with the bungees but they held. Helpless. He began to sweat. His bladder cried out to empty.

Rico spread his legs and began to raise the machete. “Say good-bye to your foot.”

The DDP guys egged him on, chanting, “
¡Córtalo! Córtalo!
” Carlos, Juan, and Ramon didn’t join in. Their grins had faded and they looked a little green around the gills.

Jack’s mind raced. This couldn’t be happening. Try as he might he saw no way out. Beg? That would only incite him. Reason with him? He didn’t see any way either would work. Rico looked beyond the reach of mercy and reason.

Or was he? Jack saw a flicker of something in his eyes as the machete reached the high point over his head. He hesitated. Second thoughts? Amputate a foot in exchange for a bum knee—a bit over the top?

But as the “
¡Córtalo!
” chant rose in volume, his expression hardened.

Oh, shit!

Jack was about to shout,
Don’t, Rico!
when a high-pitched scream pierced the air.

“Rico, no! No-no-no-no-no!”

For a second, a little girl stood silhouetted in the doorway, then she was running forward.

“No, Rico, no!”

Rico turned, lowering the machete. Then Jack recognized her.

“Bonita?”

Rico spun back toward him, his expression questioning how Jack knew her name. Then he turned back to the little girl racing toward him. She leaped against him, wrapping her arms around him in a desperate hug. Tears ran down her cheeks as she pointed to Jack and began speaking Spanish at blistering speed, way too fast for Jack to follow.

Rico was staring at him, his jaw gaping.

“You?” he said at last. “It was
you
?”

Bonita released him and rushed to Jack, throwing her arms around his neck. She sobbed against him.

After numerous
¿Qué pasas?
from Carlos, Juan, Ramon, and the DDP guys, Rico began explaining in Spanish. Jack followed some of it. Knowing the story ahead of time helped.

When he’d been held at the Outer Banks house last year, he’d seen the young girls offloaded from the boat offshore, and then he’d spotted an animal called Moose dragging one of them out to the dunes. Jack had followed with a tire iron and dented his skull—perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, because Moose died there in the sand. Only Jack and the girl returned. Along the way he learned that her name was Bonita.

Bonita and the rest of the girls had wound up with the Mikulskis, and now she was with Rico. The word
hermana
kept popping up in Rico’s story. Sister?

Finally he turned back to Jack. “You saved my sister? You’re the one?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. She’s your sister? I had no idea.”

Rico was staring at Bonita. “How does this happen?”

Jack was asking himself the same question, although in the long run he figured he could do without knowing how. He was too relieved that it
had
.

Bonita began pulling at the bungee encircling his right leg. Rico dropped the machete and began to help.

12

It took a while for the circulation to return to Jack’s hands, and even longer for the sick fury at what had almost happened to abate. He helped it along by telling himself that if he hadn’t done such a number on Rico’s knee, this never would have happened. Of course, another part of him had to put out a reminder that nothing would have happened in the first place if Rico hadn’t sucker-punched him.

But it took the longest to put today’s story together, since Bonita spoke virtually no English and Rico’s command was as limited as Jack’s Spanish. The three of them sat in a corner apart from the others—Rico with his leg straight out—and managed to put the story together.

Rico and Bonita’s mother had died years ago. Their father had married again, and that was when Rico had left for the States. Unknown to him, his father had died within months of his departure, and their stepmother had sold Bonita to the traffickers.

Not so terribly unusual, unfortunately. Probably happened every day all over the world.

She couldn’t go back to the DR, so whoever repatriated the kids for the Mikulskis learned from Bonita that she had a brother in New York City who sent them money when he could. She tracked down Rico and left Bonita with him, along with a nice chunk of change.

Okay … big coincidence.
Huge
coincidence. But the story of how Bonita had managed to travel from the heart of Brooklyn and end up in this empty West Side garage just in time to save Jack’s foot moved way beyond coincidence into the bizarre.

Bonita had been sitting in the cramped apartment she and Rico moved into using the Mikulski money she’d been given. They hadn’t figured out a way to get her into a school, so she spent most of the day watching TV and picking up what little English she could from
Scooby-Doo
reruns. Sometime before noon she’d been interrupted by a woman who rushed into the apartment and grabbed her by the arm, saying her brother was in terrible trouble and only Bonita could help him.

The woman said she came from Puerta Plata, just like Rico and Bonita, and that she’d known their mother. She even spoke with their local accent. Bonita couldn’t help but believe her and they ran downstairs to her car. Along the way the lady explained that Rico was going to do a terrible thing to the very man who had saved her that night on the beach. Bonita hadn’t believed it, but when the woman had dropped her off and she’d opened the door and seen her brother raising a machete over Jack, she’d realized it was all true and she’d screamed.

Jack listened in a daze. How could the woman have known? Not just about what was
going
to happen, but what
had
happened? Bonita had known the face of the man who had saved her, but never knew his name. And it was obvious Rico had had no idea it was Jack.

Who was this woman?

According to Bonita, she was slim, about the age their mother would have been—probably early forties—with dark hair and what she described as “cinnamon” skin. Apparently that meant something in the DR. She’d driven an old black Lincoln; Bonita had sat in the front while the woman’s little brown dog jumped around the backseat. The last thing she’d said to Bonita as she pushed her out the car door was “
¡Prisa!
”

Hurry!

Despite pointed questioning, Bonita swore she’d never seen her before.

The three of them sat in silence for a while, then Rico said, “Jack, I do not know what to say. I would not hurt the man who saved Bonita.”

That was good to hear.

“Your English is much better since I last saw you.”

His expression darkened as he patted his bum knee. “I been seeing much TV.”

Ouch.

“Hey, I’m sorry about your knee. I lost it when you punched me. I didn’t mean to do permanent damage.”

Not quite true. Jack remembered wanting to kill him at the time.

“I can’t work,” he said. “I am living on my little sister’s money. It makes me
loco.
”

“I hear you.”

He felt bad. The guy had been a hard worker and he’d just let jealousy of Jack get the better of him. He had a lot of pride—maybe an excess. And that reminded Jack of Julio.

Julio … who wouldn’t let Jack help him. But maybe Rico …

“Maybe I could pay for you to see a doctor.”

He waved his hands back and forth. “I do not want your money.”

“I’m just trying to fix what I did. All you might need is a simple operation and—”

“
¿Cirugia?
No-no-no!”

Like dealing with another Julio. Jack tried a different tack.

“Okay, so you can’t work. Can you be boss?”

“Boss? Me? Who I boss?”

“Carlos, Juan, and Ramon, for starters.”

“You loco.”

“No, I’m not. You know landscaping, you know gardening, you know how to run the machines. What’s Giovanni got that you don’t?”

He laughed again. “Carlos, Juan, and Ramon!”