Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross (31 page)

"Great idea. What about tomorrow?" Her words picked up velocity as she went on. "I'll borrow a camera from one of the staff photogs. We should leave in the morning so we can maximize our light hours."

Jack ran his fingers lightly over the pocks in Anya's skin as he thought about Jamie's proposal. Tomorrow looked like a good day for a road trip. But first he needed to drop in on Maria Roselli. Ostensibly to tell her about Johnny, but mostly to give her a grilling. He had a feeling she knew a lot more about the pattern on this thing than she'd admitted.

He refolded the skin. "Okay, let's do it. I'll drop you off a few blocks from your place and let you walk home."

He'd probably never set foot in a Dormentalist temple again, but he didn't want to be seen yet. Always keep your options open.

He noticed Jamie's worried expression.

"Don't worry. I'll follow to make sure you get home safe."

Jamie smiled and held up her hand for a high five. "Awright!"

Jack poked her palm with the tip of an index finger. When she gave him a questioning look, he simply shrugged. It always tended to be an awkward moment. Jack didn't do high fives.

She slid out of the booth. "You know what I might do? I think I might just tap on those watchdogs' car window and ask them how their Hokanos are hangin'."

"What kind of word is 'Hokano' anyway?" he said as he bagged the skin and slipped out to join her. "Made up or from some other language?"

"Probably just made up. The closest I could find was the Japanese
hoka no
—but they don't put the accent on the middle syllable like the Dementedists do. Means 'other.'"

Jack stood paralyzed as ice crystalized along every nerve in his body.

"What… what did you say?"

"Other.
Hoka no
means other." She stared at him, concern etching her features. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"

Jack felt as if he'd taken a battering ram to the solar plexus. It was happening again. He was being sucked in again.

He shook it off as best he could and turned to Jamie.

"Can you find this place in the dark?"

"The cabin? Pretty sure. But—"

"Good. Because that's where we're going."

"Now? But it's—"

"Now."

No way Jack could let this sit till tomorrow.

13

Jensen was getting sick of waiting. "No word on those tags yet?"

"She's faxing it through now."

Fortunately one of the DMV Dormentalists had been on the night shift.

A few moments later Jensen had the sheet in his hand. But what to make of it?

The owner of the getaway car was one Vincent A. Donato, resident of Brooklyn. Somehow the guy pretending to be Jason Amurri didn't look like a Vincent Donato. Something else bothered him.

He looked up at Margiotta. "Donato… Donato… why does that sound familiar?"

"Rung one of my bells too, so I asked her to send over a photo." The fax rang in the other room. "That'll be it now."

A moment later Margiotta returned, saying, "Oh-shit, oh-shit, oh-shit."

Jensen didn't like the sound of that. "What's the matter?"

"You know why it sounded familiar? Vincent A. Donato is Vinny the Donut."

Jensen levered forward in his seat and snatched the fax from Margiotta.

"What? There's got to be—"

But there on the sheet was a pudgy, jowly face known to pretty much everyone in New York—at least anyone who read the
Post
or the
News
. At various times over the past ten years Vinny the Donut had been indicted for loan sharking, for prostitution, or for money laundering. But before any charges could be brought to trial, witnesses seemed to develop memory lapses or give in to an urge to visit relatives in foreign countries. Not a single charge had stuck.

"Can you believe it?" Margiotta said. "He's driving Vinny the Donut's car! Our phony is mobbed up!"

"Got to be a mistake. Lewis flubbed the tag number."

"That's what I thought, but look what the Donut drives—a black Crown Vic. And what kind of car whisked Grant off the street? A black Crown Vic. And I doubt very,
very
much that he stole Vinny's car. You do
not
steal from Vinny the Donut."

Jensen felt adrift on a rough sea. None of this made sense.

"But what possible interest could the mob have in Dormentalism?"

"Maybe they want to horn in. Maybe they hired Grant to get inside info on us."

Jensen shook his head. "No. It's got to be something else."

"Like what?"

I don't know, he thought, but I'll come up with something.

Jensen knew he'd better have some sort of explanation when he laid this double bombshell on Brady tomorrow morning.

Not only was the SO's pet recruit
not
Jason Amurri, but he was connected to the mob. Brady was going to shit a brick.

14

Jamie had to admit that her current situation had her a little scared. Here she was in the dark, heading toward the wilds of upstate New York with a strange man she'd met only days ago.

At least he wasn't driving fast or lane hopping. She hated that. She had a feeling he wanted the pedal to the metal but he'd set the cruise control to sixty-five and was sticking to the right or middle lanes. Very sane, very sensible. Also a pretty sure way to avoid being stopped by a cop.

It wasn't his driving. It was him… the way he'd changed when she'd told him what Hokano meant. He'd become another person. The regular fellow in the booth at the bar had become this grim, relentless automaton encased in a steel shell.

"What if it's not Blascoe?" she said.

He didn't turn his head. His eyes remained fixed on the road. "Then we've made a mistake and we've wasted some time."

"What if he
is
Blascoe and doesn't want to talk?"

"He won't have a choice."

His matter-of-fact tone chilled her.

"You're very scary right now. You know that, don't you?"

She saw his stiff shoulders relax a little. Very little. But it was a start, a hint that a thaw might be possible.

"Sorry. You've got nothing to worry about."

"Yeah, I do. I started out the night with Dr. Jekyll, and now I feel like I'm driving with Mr. Hyde."

"Did I suddenly sprout bushy eyebrows and bad teeth?"

"No. But you changed—your eyes, your expression, your demeanor. You're a different person."

She saw the tiniest hint of a smile in the backwash of light from a passing car.

"So I guess we're in the Spencer Tracy version."

Jamie had no idea what he was talking about.

"What did I say—what was it about the translation of Hokano that set you off? You were fine until then."

He sighed. "You've already heard some strange stuff tonight. Ready for something even stranger?"

What could be stranger than that piece of human skin he was carrying around? Even if it was fake, even if it was some other kind of hide, the story he'd attached to it was bizarre as all hell. How could he top that?

"Seeing as we still have some time to kill," she told him, "fire away."

If what she'd heard already was any indication, it would not be boring.

"All right. It's more than a matter of killing time. You might be getting involved—hell, you're probably already involved—and you should know what you're getting into."

"How many more preambles are you going to lay on me? Can we get to the story, I mean before morning?"

He laughed—a short, harsh sound. "Okay."*

Then whatever lightness had crept into his voice in the past minute or so deserted it.

"What if I told you that there's been an unseen war going on between two vast, unimaginable, unknowable forces for eons, for almost as long as time itself?"

"You mean between Good and Evil?"

"More like Not So Bad and Truly Awful. And what if I told you that part of the spoils of this war is all this"—he waved his hand at the countryside sliding past—"our world, our reality?"

"I'd say you've been reading too much Lovecraft. What's the name of that big god of his?"

"Cthulhu. But forget about any fiction you've read. This—"

"How can I? That's what it sounds like. Earth is a jewel that all these cosmic gods with funny names slaver for."

"No, we're just one insignificant card in a huge cosmic deck. We're no more important than any other card, but you need all the cards before you can declare yourself the winner."

Was he kidding her? She couldn't tell. He sounded pretty serious. But really…

"No offense, but I've heard it all before and it's ridiculous. And if you believe it, that's scary."

"Trust me, I don't
want
to believe it. I'd rather
not
believe it. I was much happier knowing nothing about it. But I've seen too many things that can't be explained any other way. These two forces, states of being, whatever, are real. They don't have names, they don't have shapes, they don't have faces, and they don't dwell in forgotten jungle temples or sunken cities. They're just… there. Somewhere out there. Maybe everywhere. I don't know."

"And you came by this arcane knowledge… how?"

"I've been told. And somewhere along the way I became involved."

"Involved how?"

"Too complicated, and it doesn't bear directly on what we're talking about."

"All this informationus interruptus is starting to fray my nerves."

"Let me just say that I'm a reluctant participant and leave it at that. I'm sure I've already stretched my credibility to its tensile limit."

No argument there, Jamie thought.

She was going to ask him what side he was "reluctantly" involved with, but dropped it. She couldn't see him siding with "Truly Awful."

"All right. We'll leave it there. But what's the connection to Blascoe and

Dementedism and Hokano? That one little word was the jumping-off point for this story, remember?"

"I remember, and I'm getting to it. Just listen. These two forces I mentioned… whatever names we might call them are human invention, because we humans like to name and classify things. It's the way our brains work. So through the millennia, the people who've had a peek at the doings of these forces, their intrusions into human affairs, have given them names. They call the Not-So-Bad force 'the Ally,' and the—"

"See?" Jamie said, exasperated. "That's where all these situations fall apart. Why should this 'vast, unimaginable, unknowable force' want to take our side? It's just plain—"

"It's
not
on our side. I didn't say it was. It's indifferent to our well-being. We're just a card in the game, remember? It keeps us safe simply because it doesn't want to lose us to the other side."

"To the 'Truly Awful' force."

"Right. And through the ages the Truly Awful force has been designated 'the Otherness.'"

"Ah. Lightning strikes. That's why you were so upset when I told you that Hokano means 'other.' But Jack, lots of words mean 'other.' It's in every language on Earth."

"I know that." He sounded a bit testy. "But here's what I've been told about the Otherness: When a world or a reality—a playing card, if you will—falls into its hands, the Otherness changes it to something more like itself. And that change will not be human friendly. If it happens here, it will be the end of everything."

Jamie's mouth felt dry. She'd just flashed on something… pieces had clicked together into an unsettling shape.

"The Dementedist Holy Grail—the Great Fusion—it's… it's all about this world commingling with the Hokano world…"

"Yeah. The 'other' world." He jerked a thumb toward the back seat. "The lady who used to wear that piece of skin knew all about the Ally and the Otherness. She told me she was involved in the war too, but was connected to a third player, one that wanted no part of either of them. The pattern on her back matches the pattern on Brady's globe, and since the goal of Brady's cult is the fusion of this world with the 'other'… can you see why I got a little shaky back there in the bar?"

Jamie's first mental impulse was to deny it all as a fever dream, a world-view even loonier than Dementedism; but a primitive part of her, a voice from the prehistoric regions of her hindbrain, seemed to know something her forebrain didn't. It whispered that it was all true.

Feeling as if she were drowning, Jamie grasped at straws.

"But… but you can't be buying into all their nonsense about split xel-tons and such. Please tell me you're not."

"No, of course not. But maybe there's a grain of truth at the heart of their mythos. What if—now, I'm just making this up as I go—but what if Dormentalism was somehow inspired by the Otherness? For what specific reason, I don't know, but I know it can't be good. What if there's a little bit of Otherness in all of us? Maybe that's what the xelton concept represents, and the purpose of the Fusion Ladder is to identify those who carry more Otherness than most and band them into a group."