Dark City (Repairman Jack - Early Years 02) (3 page)

The guy who opened the door to the small, third-floor walk-up apartment had a wrinkled face despite his portly physique. Didn’t seem old enough for all those wrinkles. The Wilford Brimley mustache was impressive, though.

He looked Jack up and down through wire-rim glasses, his gaze lingering on the bloody shoulder. “Jee-
zus!
” he said in a deep voice with a faint southern or southwest accent. “What in tarnation did Abe send me?”

“You’re Doc Hargus?”

“One and the same.”

“Sorry for the dirt. Didn’t have time to shower.”

“Well, that’s a shame, ’cause you can’t come in here like that. Get undressed.”

“Where?”

“Right here.”

Jack looked up and down the hall. “But—”

“You got skivvies on?”

“What?”

“You goin’ commando?”

“No.”

He was wearing boxers under the jeans.

“Well, then, strip down to your shorts and leave everything else here.”

“But—”

The guy gave him a look. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about anyone stealing that mess.”

Jack sighed. “Guess not.”

As Hargus disappeared inside, Jack stripped and got his first look at the wound—a good two-and-a-half-inch gash across the belly of his deltoid. Removing the flannel shirt dislodged a clot and the blood flow graduated from an ooze to a steady trickle. Hargus reappeared with a wad of gauze squares.

“Slap these over it and come on in.”

He closed the door behind them. He had a roll of tape spindled on his index finger and he used that to fix the gauze in place.

“Bathroom’s over there. Wash up those hands real good before we do anything. Face too.”

Jack complied—took three scrubs before they were presentable. When he stepped back into the narrow hall, he heard a voice call from the other end.

“Down here.”

He followed it to an examination room where the doc had a suturing set laid out next to an open bottle of Pilsner Urquel. He lifted the bottle with a latex-gloved hand and took a swig as he gestured for Jack to sit next to him.

“Let’s take a look at that.”

He peeled off the blood-soaked gauze and peered at the wound. He took a pair of tweezers and probed around. Jack couldn’t see what he was doing, but he could feel it—a creepy sensation but not terribly painful.

“What sort of blade did this?”

“Machete.”

Doc’s eyebrows lifted. “I’d’ve said something sharper, like a bowie knife or a box cutter.”

“This wasn’t your mother’s machete. This was chromed and seriously honed.”

“Well, you’re lucky. It cut through the full thickness of your skin, through the subcutaneous fat—what little you’ve got—and just grazed the muscle.”

“‘Lucky’ would be if he’d missed.”

“The good news is, I won’t have to do any subcutaneous suturing.”

Jack wasn’t sure why that was good, but good was good.

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news will be my bill.”

“What’s that gonna run?”

“Figure five hundred, give or take.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I don’t have a great call for my services, but people who need me tend to need me real bad, so I charge up the wazoo. You good for it?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t have much more than lunch money on me at the moment.”

“Well, since Abe sent you, I’ll assume you’re good for it.”

“You said ‘give or take.’ Give or take what?”

“I’ll tell you the exact bill after I see how many sutures I have to put in to hold this thing together. Oh, and you’ll need a tetanus booster too.”

“Fire away.”

He opened a small fridge stocked with vials of injectables and bottles of beer.

“Can you spare one of those?” Jack said, pointing to the green bottles. “You can add it to my bill.”

Doc looked at him. “You old enough to drink?”

This again.

“Twenty-two last month.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Can’t help that.”

“Nah, guess you can’t. Probably pisses you off, doesn’t it.”

“Gotta say it does.”

“Well, hang in there, because years from now you’ll love it when the younger women make passes at you.” He snorted. “A problem I never had.”

He used a church key to pop the top and handed him the bottle.

“After all that dirt you were rolling around in—where the hell were you, anyway?”

Jack took a sip—
good
Pilsner—and tried to sound casual. “Top of an A train.”

Doc stared at him. “No, really.”

“Really. Long story.”

“Well, with that kind of filth, I should put you on some antibiotic as well.”

“You’re the doc.”

“That’s the spirit. Defer to them’s what knows whereof they speak.” He hefted a syringe filled with clear fluid. “This is lidocaine to numb you up. Gonna burn like hellfire at first, but after that you won’t feel a thing.”

Jack tensed as the needle went in—not so bad—then the doc began injecting. He hadn’t been kidding. Hellfire times two.

“It’s okay to say ‘ow’ or wince,” the doc said.

“No, it’s not.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Why wasn’t it? “Because it’s just … not.”

A smile lifted his mustache as he refilled the syringe for another dose. “Not manly?”

“Maybe that. But also pointless.”

“Oh?”

“Do I want the pain to stop? Yes. Do I want you to stop injecting? No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want this gash closed and it will hurt more without the injections, right?”

“Right.”

“There you go: Pointless.”

“You always put that much thought into everything you do?”

“Try not to think. It’s mostly automatic.”

“Thinking’s not bad.”

“But overthinking’s not good. I guess I’m an underthinker. You know many overthinkers?”

“Plenty.”

“Well, I’m making up for them.”

“You’ve got an attitude, I’ll hand you that.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“I’ll bet.”

The pain faded. The doc clamped a curved needle trailing shiny blue thread between the jaws of some fancy, stainless steel mini-pliers.

“Looks like fishing line,” Jack said.

“In a way, it is—just like nylon line, except it’s sterile.”

“Thanks for that. But your gloves aren’t.”

“How so?”

“Well, you’ve been holding that beer bottle.”

“Not a problem. These aren’t to protect you from me, they’re to protect me from whatever’s crawling around in your bloodstream.”

“Nothing but blood.”

“So you say, but I’ll wear the gloves just the same.”

Jack watched as he got to work, deftly piercing the skin and tying a knot to draw the edges together. Cutting the thread, then starting again. That injection had worked—didn’t feel a thing.

“I figured you’d be putting in just one long thread.”

“A continuous suture?” He shook his head. “Not good for what you’ve got here. Needs a mattress suture—individual ties. This is going to take a while. So why don’t you tell me about how you wound up on the roof of a subway car.”

“Okay, if you’ll tell me something.”

“Shoot.”

“Abe said you don’t have a license. How come?”

“Don’t you think you should have asked me that before you let me shoot you up and start sewing?”

“I trust Abe.”

Doc glanced up over his glasses. “Don’t we all.” He paused for a sip of his beer. “Opiates did me in. I started taking them for a herniated lumbar disk, then I started taking them because I liked the way they made me feel, then I was taking them because I couldn’t imagine life without them. Stopped caring about my patients, stopped caring about my family. My marriage died and my practice dwindled. My only patients were fellow addicts. The dopers have an excellent grapevine and it got around real quick that I was an easy touch for oxycodone. Soon my practice was thriving again—as a prescription mill. Guy’d come in saying he has terrible back pain, I wouldn’t examine him or anything, just scribble an Rx for whatever he wanted. He’d pay the fee and walk out with his precious little slip of paper.”

“So basically you were selling prescriptions.”

“Selling? I was flat-out pimping them. Some of those patients turned out to be DEA types who established a pattern and hauled me in. I got my license suspended a couple of times, made sham attempts to clean up. Finally the board rescinded it permanently. That was when I hit bottom. I finally cleaned up but they wouldn’t let me back in. I’d fooled them a couple of times before and they weren’t buying. So I’m reduced to this.”

“You seem okay with it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t need a Mercedes or a big house. I’d prefer a better class of patients—no offense.”

“None taken.”

“I limit myself to a few beers a day, watch a lot of TV and videotapes. It ain’t the high life, but it’s my life.”

Jeez, he thought. Sounds like me lately. Except the beer limit.

The doc said, “Now tell me the story of this wound here. And make it a good one.”

Jack took another sip. “Well, it all started last fall…”

4

Tony and Vinny both got to their feet when Mama Amalia stopped by their table. Tony got a hug, then introduced Vinny, who got a gnarled handshake. Vinny had been here before—who hadn’t?—but had never met her.

She wore widow’s black and shuffled along. God knew how old she was. She’d been running her tiny Little Italy restaurant on Hester Street forever. The tourists visiting what was left of Little Italy and the few locals who weren’t chinks ate in the main room at long tables covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. But she’d known Tony almost as long as she’d had the restaurant—called Amalia’s, what else?—and so when he showed up, even for a late lunch like this, he got to eat in the little private room in back.

Vinny listened politely as they gabbed in Italian, then the mussels marinara arrived and she moved on.

Reseating himself, Tony “the Cannon” Campisi tucked his napkin into his collar and stubbed out his cigarette. He was wire thin except for his deep barrel chest.

“Dig in.”

He’d done all the ordering. Vinny would have preferred to order his own lunch—just on principle—but had no problem with what was coming. What wasn’t to like about these mussels, linguine and clam sauce, and veal piccata with lemon and capers? Besides, if your capo wants to order for you, he orders for you, and you don’t say nothing.

The waiter had brought a double order of the mussels in a big bowl, plus two smaller empty ones for the shells. They each dug in and began using their little two-tined shrimp forks to pluck the plump meats from their shells.

After a little small talk about how fucking cold it was but at least there wasn’t a lot of snow and all that bullshit, Tony got down to the reason for inviting Vinny to lunch. Not that Vinny didn’t know.

“Okay,” Tony said. “You probably know what this is about.”

“Yeah.” Vinny’s stomach turned sour. “Tommy.”

Tony nodded. “I got all kinds a heat on me, Vinny. If John was out and about, it wouldn’t be no problem. He’d tell me to handle it my way and I’d tell Tommy to get his own fucking junkyard.”

Vinny raised his hands. “Everybody says the Chief’s calling the shots from inside.”

Back in December, when the feds raided the Ravenite Club—just around the corner from here on Mulberry Street—and hauled off Gotti and Sammy the Bull and others on a laundry list of charges, the family lost its boss and underboss in one shot. Not to worry, everyone said. The Chief right away set up a ruling panel—or like he called it, an “administration”—of four made guys to oversee the family business. That business ran to half a billion a year, so no one was taking this lightly.

“He is. But he’s only calling them where the big picture’s concerned. This piddly-ass shit—”

“Piddly to you, maybe.”

“Look,” Tony said. “You’re a good soldier, and you’re a smart guy. That junkyard shows you’re thinking of the future, and you’ve shown me respect from the get-go. Don’t think I ain’t noticed.”

The little speech seemed to wind him. He took a couple of deep breaths while he plucked his next mussel.

Vinny preferred to call it a salvage company—Preston Salvage—but he let the junkyard remark go. The idea was to have a way to show the taxman where your money was coming from. Tony had his appliance store in Ozone Park, Vinny had bought a little salvage yard in Canarsie. Aldo was related to Sammy the Nose but that didn’t stop him from looking for his own situation. Tommy, though … Tommy “Ten Thumbs” Totaro was too fucking lazy to start his own front. The goddamn cokehead wanted in on Vinny’s.

Vinny had been careful to give to Tony C a share of whatever came in. Vinny was a member of Tony’s crew. As capo, Tony had a right to respect and Vinny had an obligation to show it. After all, he owed Tony for just about everything he had.

Back in the seventies, when he was nearing the end of his teens in the Flatlands, he started collecting a street tax from the pot sellers in his neighborhood. That part of Brooklyn was Gambino territory at the time, with Roy DeMeo’s crew hanging at the Gemini Lounge, but none of the dealers was connected. Vinny was bigger than most of them and wasn’t afraid to lay a little hurt on them as a convincer. He came from the Mangano wing of the family but his dad steered clear of all the rackets and stuff. Vinny couldn’t claim direct connection with anyone currently in power, so he’d been on his own.

As time went by he teamed up with Aldo D’Amico to augment his shake-down money with smash-and-grab stuff like ripping radios out of luxury cars. Tony the Cannon was lower down the Gambino pecking order then. He didn’t have the appliance store yet, but had a little social club off Avenue J where his small crew would hang out. Tommy Totaro, a couple of years older and a connected Gambino, was already in with them. Vinny and Aldo would bring the radios there and deliver them to Tony in the back room. He was paying between one-fifty and two for a digital Becker. Vinny and Aldo were so regular with their merchandise that Tony told them to hang around and call his club home. Maybe he’d have some work for them.

That was how it began. Tony brought him in, showed him the ropes, gave him work. Tony’s crew grew as he worked his way into other rackets. Vinny helped Tony run his craps and card games, his numbers, and his pony parlors.