Cold City (Repairman Jack - the Early Years Trilogy) (3 page)

“It’s Jack. You rang?”

“Why don’t you have a goddamn phone?”

“Because nobody calls me.”

And because the phone company wanted all sorts of ID.

“I do.”

“Yeah, well…”

Jack usually called Giovanni so he’d know where to meet up the next morning.

“Anyways, you messed up Rico pretty bad.  His knee’s swole up like a cantaloupe.”

“Really.” 

Jack rubbed his swollen cheek.  Couldn’t dredge up much sympathy for the guy.  All he felt was bewilderment about how much damage he’d inflicted so quickly. 

“Yeah.  Really.  He can’t work.  Which means I’ve got a short crew.”

“The four of us can handle–”

“Ain’t no four of you. Only three.  You can’t come back.”

Jack tightened his grip on the receiver. “What?”

“They’ll kill you, Jack. You show up, you’re gonna get cut up.”

Jack swallowed.  “You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish.”

“They didn’t look all crazy mad when I left.”

“That’s ’cause they was in shock.  Me too.  None of us ever seen anything like that.  You was like – I don’t know what you was like.  Like a psycho.  But after you left and they figured out what kinda shape Rico was in, they was gonna go after you.  I told them they leave the job, don’t come back.”

“You don’t think they’ll cool off?”

“No way.  They’re super pissed because Rico’s down and won’t be bringing in his rent and food money and they’ll have to stake him that until he’s back on his feet. You know my Spanish ain’t that good, but I heard them talking about some new gang – ‘day-day-pay’ or something like that.  They want to sic ’em on you.”

D-D-P? 

“Never heard of it.”

He’d heard of Bloods and Crips and Latin Kings, but knew next to nothing about New York’s gang culture.

“You know those machetes they like to use to clear brush?  Well, they was swinging them around and talking about looking you up.  They don’t know where you live – neither do I, for that matter – but they see you, they gonna cut you up in little pieces.”

“Jeez.”

“Yeah.  Jeez.”

The realization hit him.  “So I’m out of a job.”

“No way you can come back, man.  Season’s coming to a close anyway.  I can send what I owe you.”

Jack gave him the address of the mailbox he rented over on Tenth Avenue. 

“Hey, Jack – good luck and… get yourself a gun.”

“What?”

“I’m serious.  Somebody brings a knife, you bring a machete.  Somebody brings a machete – like these guys – you better bring a gun.”

A gun…jeez.

“Well, it was good knowing you, Giovanni.”

“Yeah, me too.  You’re a good worker, Jack.  Sorry to lose you.  Remember what I said.”

“Giovanni… just one thing.”

“What?”

“Fuck you.”

He slammed the phone down and, as soon as it hit the cradle, thought, Why’d I say that?

Really…what was the matter with him?  Giovanni was a good guy.  He’d just warned him about a possible threat to his life.

What’s wrong with me?

Jack returned to his apartment and stepped to his window.  One floor below, Sixth Avenue churned in the growing darkness.  Bumper-to-bumper cars and people heading home from their jobs.

He shook his head.  He’d started the day with a job and not an enemy in the world.  Now he was out of work and had a bunch of Dominicans out for his blood.  But the worst of it, he was having trouble remembering the fight.  Fight?  Could he call it a fight?  Rico had landed the first shot and became a punching/kicking bag after that.  Jack remembered the dark surge swelling within, and then something else had seemed in control. The rock was the scariest part of it all.  Would he have really crushed Rico’s skull if Giovanni hadn’t stopped him?

Wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed someone.

He’d given into that darkness once before, but he’d had some control then and remembered every detail about that time.

Giovanni’s words came back to him.

You was like – I don’t know what you was like.  Like a psycho.

He guessed he’d just snapped. The combination of Rico’s riding him day after day, week after week, had built up a charge and the punch had hit the detonator. Never happened before.  Hoped it never happened again.  He didn’t like being out of control.

…get yourself a gun.

Maybe not a bad idea.  He’d wanted one since he was a kid but his father would never allow a gun in the house.  No longer a matter of want.  Now it appeared he
needed
one. 

But where to find one?  He’d have to get on the radar to buy one legally, and he didn’t want to do that.  So he’d have to go black market.  And if he did find one, how much would it cost? He was out of a job and his life savings were in a Ziploc bag behind the floor molding in his bedroom.  He had monthly rent to pay and food to buy and jobs of any kind were scarce – especially jobs that paid cash.

He realized the middle of a recession had not been the best time to drop off the map.  But he hadn’t thought about that in June when he’d packed up his stuff, emptied his bank account, and hopped on his Harley.  He’d left a note saying he’d be on the road and not to worry.

Impulse had nothing to do with it. 

Whoever Jack had been during the first twenty-one years of his life had begun to fade months earlier when, on a snowy night back in February, he’d let the darkness take over.  But instead of today’s blinding black heat, he’d fallen under the sway of a fury as icy as the wind ripping along the turnpike that night.  He’d hung a man by his feet from an overpass, made him a human piñata that the racing southbound traffic battered to an unrecognizable pulp.

After that, the world changed – or at least the way it looked to him.  Maybe cold-blooded murder does that.  Killing Ed hadn’t eased the rage.  Instead, it seemed to become a part of him, coloring all his perceptions.  His grades at Rutgers plummeted. He was going to fail out so he dropped out.  School, grades, they didn’t seem to matter. 

Nothing mattered and everything – every goddamn thing – annoyed the hell out of him.  His older brother Tom had always been an ass, and good thing he wasn’t around much because he might have ended up like Rico, or worse.  Much as he loved his sister Kate, her marital bliss set his teeth on edge.  And Dad… Dad was the worst.  He hadn’t done anything about Mom’s murder beyond bugging the cops about finding her killer.  Couldn’t he see she was just another statistic to them?  He kept waiting for someone else to handle it.  So many times Jack had wanted to grab him and shake him and scream in his face that he’d be waiting forever because the cops weren’t going to find the guy because Jack had already found him and fixed it so the fucker would never again throw another cinder block off another overpass.  Ever.  In fact he’d never do
anything
again. EVER!

Finally he couldn’t take it any more.  He couldn’t stand being Jack from Johnson another day. He needed to be Jack from nowhere.  No family, no history, no last name except the one he’d chosen for the day or the week or the month or maybe just the moment.

And why the hell not? He was fed up with
belonging
, had it up to here with
participating
.  He wanted out and goddammit he was getting out.  No woman in his life – Karina had left for Berkeley and no one knew what she was into these days, probably Kristin least of all.  He had no one new he cared about or who cared about him. With Weezy and Eddie off to their respective schools and out of touch, he had no close friends.  He was born before a Social Security number was mandatory and had never bothered to apply for one.  No one had ever paid him on the books so officialdom had no tax records on him.  Didn’t even have a driver’s license.  He’d bought the Harley used from a newspaper ad and had never bothered to register it. 

Beyond a name on the Rutgers University class of ’91 student rolls, he had no official existence.

Why not keep it that way?

So he dropped out.

Probably caused a lot of consternation and confusion at home, but he’d spent his whole life being the good son.  No more.  He was now a killer.  And not by accident.  He’d murdered someone in cold blood.  That case was still open.  The cops had expended tons more effort trying to solve Ed’s murder than his mother’s.  After all, Ed’s death had made the national press, blurry photos of his battered body swinging from the overpass appeared in every major paper, while Mom had never been more than a footnote. 

Earlier today on the turnpike, some lady riding along with her husband and son had the life crushed out of her by a cinder block dropped from an overpass.  And in other news…

Subsequent details of Ed’s unsavory past had dimmed the hue and cry for justice.  Eight months now and no announcement of a suspect.  That didn’t mean they couldn’t get a break.  Jack didn’t want to be around if they did.

Committing cold-blooded murder, even if no one else knew about it, seemed to have drawn a line in the sand between him and everyone he knew.

So far, so good.  The building owner didn’t care who he was, only that he paid his rent on time.  The rent included utilities.  Jack paid cash.  He worked for cash.  The only tax he paid – at least knowingly – was sales tax.

The invisible man.

Well, not really.  If truly invisible he wouldn’t need a gun.

Again…where to find one?  No clue.  But he had an idea of a guy who might point him in the right direction.

5

Jack was relieved to see the OPEN sign in the door to the Isher Sports Shop.  A bell dinged as he opened it.

Down a narrow aisle a heavyset man looked up from behind the rear counter where he perched next to a dusty cash register.  His eyes fixed Jack over the wire rims of his half-frame reading glasses.

“It’s the boychick from Jersey.  I find him an apartment and what does he do?  Does he call?  Does he write?  Never.  Deaf, mute, and illiterate he becomes.”

Jack felt bad about that.  He’d first met Abraham Grossman maybe seven or eight years ago as a kid while working at Mr. Rosen’s store.  He’d come into USED one day and – without saying he was the owner’s nephew – tried to game Jack into gypping his boss.  When that didn’t work, he’d left his card, saying anytime Jack was in town to look him up:
“You got a friend in the big city, kid.”
  He never visited USED again but Jack kept the card and took him up on the offer as soon as he’d found a garage for his Harley.

The man he’d found had less hair and a bigger waistline than he remembered, but the staccato patter was the same.  Jack visited the Isher Sports Shop maybe a half dozen times in the first month he’d been here, and each time Abe was dressed the same: a half-sleeve white shirt with a black tie over black pants, sometimes belted, sometimes not.  He stood maybe five-five or –six; he had twenty or so years and at least twice that many pounds on Jack. 

He needed either a bigger store or lots less stock. Bicycles hung upside down from the ceiling like bats; floor level was a post-tornado rat’s nest of rods and reels and clubs and racquets, hoops and nets and bats and balls of every imaginable size, color, and consistency.

“Hey, sorry, Mister Grossman,” he said, approaching through the maze. “I got this job and–”

“Job, schmob.  And it’s
Abe
.  I told you that.  Mister Grossman was my father,
alev ha-sholem
.”

Abe was always throwing weird expressions about.

“What’s that mean?” Jack said as he arrived safely at the scarred counter.

Close up now he could see that today was a
not
day for a belt.  But Abe had accessorized instead with a rainbow of stains.  Jack had seen the yellow of mustard and the red of catsup before, and those were in evidence today, but he’d somehow added green to the mix.  Guacamole?  The white specks that dusted his black pants might have been dandruff, but dandruff didn’t smear. Powdered sugar, no doubt.

“What’s what mean?” Abe said.

“
Alev
…something.”

“
Alev ha-sholem
.  If you grew up in Brooklyn you’d know already.  But you had a deprived childhood in the wilds of New Jersey, so you’re forgiven.  I know my uncle Jake had a tough life, but what made him settle there I’ll never know.”

“I think he liked being alone.  And I still don’t know what that
alev
thing means.”

“It’s the Yiddish equivalent of ‘rest in peace.’”

“Oh.  Sorry.”

“Don’t be.  He’s long gone.”  He fixed Jack again with a hard stare.  “Nu?  You got no phone?”

“No.”

He looked genuinely shocked.  “Who doesn’t have a phone?”

“Me?”

“Well, you ought to get one of those new ones you carry around with you in a bag.  What do they call them?”

“Um, bag phones.”

“No-no. Something else.  They’re smaller now.  Like a brick with a straw sticking out.  I’ve seen them.”

“Mobile phone?”

“That’s it!” he said, pointing at Jack.  “A mobile phone you should get so you can call your uncle Abe and let him know how you are doing out there in the world.”

Uncle
Abe?  When did that happen?

“Mostly getting fired.”

He frowned.  “Uncle Jake always said you were such a good worker.  A
nar
you work for!”

Jack explained the circumstances.

“He told you to buy a gun?”

Jack nodded.  “So I came to you.”

Abe seemed to freeze.  Not that he ever moved much, but he’d suddenly become a statue.

“Do I look like a gun dealer?”  He gestured at the crowded aisles.  “Do you see guns here?”

“No.  But that’s just it.  I don’t really want to go to a gun dealer.  I’m looking for someone with a gun to sell.  You know, a private deal.”

“Why on Earth would you come to me for a black market gun?”

Jack noticed the Yiddishisms had disappeared and the accent had flattened into everyday New Yorkese.