Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack (15 page)

“
A
little
crazy? You call what she did a
little
crazy?”

Jack shrugged. He handed back the ME’s report and opened the car door.

“
Your sister crammed ten years of pay back into three hours. She’s going to need a lot of help to recover from those ten years.
And
those three hours.”

Schaffer pounded his mahogany steering wheel.

“
Shit! It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this!” Then he sighed and turned to Jack. “But I guess things don’t always go according to plan in your business.”

“
Hardly ever.”

Jack got out of the car, closed the door, and listened to the Jag roar to life. As it screeched away, he headed back to Julio’s. A new customer was due at noon.

introduction to “The Long Way Home”

Toward the end of May, 1990, Joe Lansdale called, looking for a story for
Dark at Heart
, an anthology he was editing with his wife Karen. He wanted it
dark
but without any supernatural. I suggested a New York mean-streets story starring Jack. He loved the idea. “The Long Way Home” was the result. I started it in late May but due to a crowded plate, didn’t finish it until the end of July.

Fifteen years later my agent contacted me about Amazon Shorts, a new feature at Amazon.com that would allow readers to download a short story for a nominal fee. Could I write something for them?

What was on my plate at the time: The tenth Jack novel, an RJ short story for ITW’s
Thriller
, scripting five issues of
The Keep
graphic miniseries, adapting four short stories for
Doomed
, revising the text and writing a foreword to the Infrapress edition of
Wheels Within Wheels
, revising
Reprisal
for Borderlands Press, revising
The Tery
and “The Last Rakosh” for Overlook Connection Press.

No, I couldn’t do a short story.

But I did have a long-lost Repairman Jack piece called “The Long Way Home” from Joe and Karen’s four-hundred-copy anthology that hadn’t been seen since 1992. I showed them that.

On the morning of May 11, Amazon, adamant about no previously published material, rejected it. By afternoon they’d reversed themselves. I was told that Jeff Bezos himself had said to screw the technicality in this case.

So I revised the story to bring it into the twenty-first century and sent it in. Amazon Shorts launched in August. “The Long Way Home” became the second most downloaded piece (and the #1 fiction download) during the program's first eighteen months.

The Long Way Home

1

Jack saw the whole thing. Another minute’s delay in leaving for home and he’d have been a block away when it went down. And then a different man would have died on the pavement.

But Julio had held him up, detailing his current bitch about all the yuppies chasing out his tavern’s regular customers. He was especially irate about one who’d offered to buy the place.

“
You believe that?” Julio was saying. “He wanna turn it into a bistro, meng. A
bistro
!”

An incomprehensible stream of Puerto Rican followed. Which meant Julio was royally pissed. He was proud of his command of English and only under extreme provocation did he revert to his native tongue.

“
He was only asking. What’s wrong with that?”

“
Because he offer me a lot of money, meng. I mean a
lot
of money.”

“
How much?”

Julio whispered it in Jack’s ear.

Right: A
lot
of money.

“
I repeat: What’s wrong with that? You should be proud.”

“
I don’ know ‘bout proud, but I was tempted to take it.”

“
No!” Jack said, genuinely shaken. “Don’t say that, Julio. Don’t even think it.”

“
I couldn’t help it. But I tol’ him to get lost. I mean, I like money much as the next guy, meng, but I only risk so much for it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the motley collection of scruffy locals leaning on the bar behind him. “You know what those guys do to me if I sol’ out to a yuppie? Have to run for my life.”

“
You may still have to if Maria finds out how much you turned down.”

“
Don’ tell her. Don’ breathe a word, Jack.”

“
Your secret’s safe with me.”

Jack left with his cold six-pack of Rolling Rock long necks and turned the corner onto Amsterdam Avenue, heading downtown. Quiet on the Upper West Side tonight. A lot of the restaurants were closed on Mondays and it was too cold for a casual stroll. Jack had the street pretty much to himself.

Gentrification had slowed in these parts – mainly because everything had been pretty well gentrified – and was seeping into Harlem and even Morningside Heights. This neighborhood, once ethnically and socioeconomically mixed, had homogenized into an all-white, upper-income enclave; neighborhood taverns had metamorphosed into brasseries and bistros, mom-and-pop grocery stores and bodegas into gourmet delis, sidewalk cafés, overpriced boutiques and shoppes – always spelled with the extra “-
pe.
” Rents had taken up residency in
Mir
’s old orbit.

At the next corner Jack spotted a blue-and-white parked by the fire hydrant in front of Costin’s. His first instinct was to turn and walk the other way, but that might draw attention.

He checked himself out in his mental mirror: average-length brown hair, NY Jets warm up Jacket over a flannel shirt, worn jeans over dirty white sneakers. Just an average Joe. Virtually invisible.

So he stayed on course.

Waiting on the curb for a car to pass, he did a quick scan of the scene. Quiet. Only one cop in the unit, in the passenger seat, looking relaxed. His partner was stepping into Costin’s. The light filtering through the open door revealed a very young-looking cop. Baby-faced. Probably picking up some donut-shaped teething biscuits.

Costin’s had been there forever – a Paleolithic prototype of the convenience store. Now it was one of the last mom-and-pops in the area. Old Costin had to stay open all hours just to meet the rent. The locals left over from the old days remained loyal, and most of the cops from the Two-oh stopped in regularly to help keep them going.

Jack was halfway across the street when he heard a boom. He knew that sound. Shotgun. Instinctively he ducked behind the nearest parked car on the far side. The sound had been muffled. An indoor shot.

Shit. Costin’s.

He set the six-pack down and peeked over the hood. The cop was out of the unit’s passenger seat now and on the sidewalk, drawing his pistol. Just then the door to Costin’s burst open and a giant leapt onto the top step. He stood six-six at least and looked completely bald under the flat black leather cap squeezed onto the top of his head; the loose sweatsuit he wore only emphasized his massive, bulked-up frame. He was snarling, his shiny black features contorted in rage. He held a sawed-off ten-gauge pump-action against his hip, aimed down at the cop.

In the clear air, lit by the mercury vapor lamps lining the block, the scene had an unreal look, like something out of a movie.

The cop raised his pistol, giving warning, going by the book.

“
Drop it or I’ll–”

He never got to finish the sentence. The big guy barely blinked as he pulled the trigger.

The left side of the cop’s face and neck exploded red. His pistol flew from his hand as he was spun to his left to land face down on the hood of the unit. He left a wet, red smear as he slid across the hood. He rolled over the grille and landed on the asphalt in front of the bumper, flat on his back, twitching.

The big black guy’s face changed as soon as the cop went down. The snarl melted into a smile, but the rage remained, hiding behind the teeth he showed. Casually laying the shotgun across his shoulder, he approached the cop like a gardener strolling toward a cabbage patch with his hoe.

“
Well, Mr. Man in Blue,” he said, standing over the moaning cop. “How’s it feel to bleed?”

The cop couldn’t speak. Even from down the street Jack could see the blood pumping from his neck. Another sixty seconds and he’d be history.

Jack found himself on the move before he knew it, his sneakers whispering along the pavement as he raced down the sidewalk in a crouch, watching the scene through the windows of the parked cars he kept between himself and the other side of the street.

A voice inside urged him the other way. Cops were the enemy, a threat to his own existence.

This isn’t your fight – butt out.

But another, deeper part of him overruled the voice and made him pull the Semmerling from his ankle holster. Still in a crouch, he started across the street.

“
You know,” the big black was saying, “I could let you bleed some more and make a bigger puddle, and pretty soon you’d be just as dead as if I blowed your head off.” He grinned as he worked the pump on the sawed-off. A red-and-brass cartridge arced into the street. “But somehow that wouldn’t be the same.”

He leveled the truncated barrel into the cop’s face.

“
Forget it,” Jack said as he came up behind him. He had the Semmerling pointed at the back of the guy’s head. “You’ve done enough for one night.”

The guy glanced over his shoulder. When his eyes lit on the Semmerling, he smiled.

“
Ain’t never been threatened with a pop gun before.”

“
Just drop the hog and take off.”

“
You mean you ain’t gonna arrest me?”

Jack had acted on impulse. At the moment, the best course seemed to be get rid of the shooter and call an ambulance for the cop. Then disappear.

“
One more time. Drop it and go.”

The guy’s voice jumped. “You kiddin’ me, man? I could take a couple from that pop gun and sit down for breakfast.”

“
It’s a Semmerling L-4,” Jack said. “World’s smallest forty-five.”

The gunman paused.

“
Oh. Well, in that case–”

The guy ducked to his right as he made a hard swing with the shotgun, trying to bring it to bear on Jack. Jack corrected his aim and pulled the trigger. The Semmerling boomed and bucked in his hand. The gunman’s right eye socket became a black hole and his leather cap spun away like a Frisbee. Red mist haloed his head as it jerked back with enough force to yank his feet off the pavement. The sawed-off tumbled from his hand and skittered along the sidewalk as he sprawled back on the sidewalk and flopped around until his body got the message that what little remained of the brain was mush. Then he lay still.

Jack knelt beside the fallen cop. He looked like hell. The mercury light further blanched the deathly pallor of his face. Eyes glazing, going fast. Where the hell was old man Costin? Where was the cop’s partner? Why wasn’t anyone around to call an ambulance? Jack felt naked and exposed out here on the street, but he couldn’t take off now.

He switched the Semmerling to his left hand, located the spot in the fallen cop’s throat that was doing the most pumping, and jammed his thumb into it. The flesh was wet and hot and sticky. He’d read novel after novel that mentioned the coppery smell of blood. He didn’t get it. He’d never known copper to have an odor worth mentioning, and if it did, it sure as hell didn’t smell like this.

Jack was about to look around again for help when he heard footsteps behind him.

“
All right! Hold it right there, you fucker!”

Jack turned his head and saw a uniformed cop crouched on his right, taking two-handed aim at his head with a Glock. Another blue-and-white blocked the street behind him.

Jack’s gut looped into a knot and pulled tight.

“
I’m holding it.”

“
Drop the gun and put your hands up!”

Jack dropped the Semmerling and raised his left hand.

“
C’mon!” The cop said. “Both of them!”

“
This guy’s already half dead,” Jack said. “If I take my hand off this pumper, he’ll go the rest of the way in no time.”

“
Christ!” the cop said, then shouted: “Gerry – you make the call?”

“
Ambulance and back-up on the way,” said a voice from the unit.

“
All right. See who’s down.”

Another uniform dashed out of the darkness behind the first cop and stopped within half a dozen feet of Jack. He squinted at the ruined face above Jack’s hand.

“
Oh, Jeez, it’s Carella!”

“
Shit!” said the first cop. He spoke through clenched teeth as he glared at Jack. “You dirty–”