Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack (8 page)

“
Great. When?”

“
Ten thirty.”

“
That’s kinda soon–”

“
I know. But I’ll feel safer.”

“
Hey, don’t worry! When Aldo D’Amico gives his word, you can take it to the bank!”

And I promise you, punk, you’re a dead man!

“
Yeah, well, just in case we don’t hit it off, I’ll be wearing a ski mask. I figure you didn’t get a real good look at me in that laundry and I don’t want you getting a better one.”

“
Have it your way. See you at ten thirty.”

He hung up and called to his wife. “Maria! Get Joey on the phone. Tell him to get over here now!”

Aldo went to his desk drawer and pulled out his little Jennings .22 automatic. He hefted it. Small, light, and loaded with high velocity longs. It did the job at close range. And Aldo intended to be real close when he used this.

*

A little before ten, Jack climbed up to the roof of the Highwater Diner and sat facing the old Borden building. He watched Reilly and five of his boys – the whole crew – arrive shortly afterwards. They entered the building from the rear. Two of them carried large duffel bags. They appeared to have come loaded for bear. Not too long after them came Aldo and three wiseguys. They took up positions outside in the alley below and out of sight on the far side.

No one, it seemed, wanted to be fashionably late.

At 10:30 sharp, a lone figure in a dark coat, jeans, and what looked like a knit watch cap strolled along the sidewalk in front of the Highwater. He paused a moment to stare in through the front window. Jack hoped George was out of sight like he had told him to be. The dark figure continued on. When he reached the front of the Borden building, he glanced around, then started toward it. As he approached the gaping front entry, he stretched the cap down over his face. Jack couldn’t see the design clearly but it appeared to be a crude copy of the one he’d worn last night. All it took was some orange paint...

Do you really want to play Repairman Jack tonight, pal?

For an instant he flirted with the idea of shouting out a warning and aborting the set up. But he called up thoughts of life in a wheelchair due to a falling cement bag, of Levinson’s missing toes, of bullets screaming through Gia and Vicky’s apartment.

He kept silent.

He watched the figure push in through the remains of the front door and disappear inside. In the alley, Aldo and Joey rose from their hiding places and shrugged to each other in the moonlight. Jack knew what Aldo was thinking:
Where’s my car?

But they leapt for cover when the gunfire began. It was a brief roar, but very loud and concentrated. Jack picked out the sound of single rounds, bursts from a pair of assault pistols, and at least two, maybe three shotguns, all blasting away simultaneously. Barely more than a single prolonged flash from within. Then silence.

Slowly, cautiously, Aldo and his boys came out of hiding, whispering, making baffled gestures. One of them was carrying an Uzi, another held a sawed off. Jack watched them slip inside, heard shouts, even picked out the word “car.”

Then all hell broke loose.

It looked as if a very small, very violent thunderstorm had got itself trapped on the first floor of the old Borden building. The racket was deafening, the flashes through the glassless windows like half a dozen strobe lights going at once. It went on full force for what seemed like twenty minutes but ticked out to slightly less than five on Jack’s watch. Then it tapered and died. Finally… quiet. Nothing moved.

No. Check that. Someone was crawling out a side window and falling into the alley. Jack went down to see.

Reilly. He was bleeding from his mouth, his nose, and his gut. And he was hurting.

“
Get me a ambulance, man!” he grunted as Jack crouched over him. His voice was barely audible.

“
Right away, Matt,” Jack said.

Reilly looked up at him. His eyes widened. “Am I dead? I mean...we offed you but good in there.”

“
You offed the wrong man, Reilly.”

“
Who cares...you can have this turf...I’m out of it...just get me a fucking ambulance! Please?”

Jack stared at him a moment. “Sure,” he said.

Jack got his hands under Reilly’s arms and lifted him. The wounded man nearly passed out with the pain of being moved. But he was aware enough to notice that Jack wasn’t dragging him toward the street.

“
Hey...where y’takin’ me?”

“
Around back.”

Jack could hear the sirens approaching. He quickened his pace toward the rear.

“
Need a doc...need a ambulance.”

“
Don’t worry,” Jack said. “There’s one coming now.”

He dumped Reilly in the rearmost section of the Borden building’s back alley and left him there.

“
Wait here for your ambulance,” he told him. “It’s the same one you called for Wolansky’s kid when you ran him down last month.”

Then Jack headed for the Highwater Diner to call Tram and tell George that they didn’t need him anymore.

introduction to “The Last Rakosh”

In 1990 I was slated to be guest of honor at the World Fantasy Convention along with Susan Allison, Robert Bloch, L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond Feist, David Mattingly, and Julius Schwartz. (What a lineup!) It’s traditional for the guests to contribute a story to the convention program. The chairman that year was Bob Weinberg and his wife, Phyllis, was a major Repairman Jack fan. She begged me for a Repairman Jack story. How could I say no?

I began with the premise that not
all
the rakoshi had died when Jack blew up Kusum’s ship, and then I some of the new characters into
Freak Show
, the anthology I’d started putting together for HWA. And that eventually led to “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium.”

The Last Rakosh

Saturday

Vicky’s scream pierced them, froze them.

Gia turned to Jack and he saw the panic in her eyes. It came again, Vicky’s voice, high pitched, quavering with terror. But where was she? She’d wandered ahead of them down the midway only a moment ago.

Jack took off toward the sound, moving as fast as the crowd would permit, bumping and pushing those he couldn’t slide past. She couldn’t have gone far in just a couple of minutes.

Then he spotted her skinny eight year old form darting toward him through the press, her face a strained mask of white, her blue eyes wide with fear. When she spotted him, she burst into tears and held out her arms as she stumbled forward, her voice a shriek.

“
Jack! Jack! It’s back! It’s gonna get me again!”

She leaped and he caught her in his arms, holding her tight. She was quaking with fear.

“
What is it, Vicks? What’s the matter?”

“
The monster! The monster that took me to the boat! It’s here! Don’t let it get me!”

“
It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said soothingly in her ear. “No one can hurt you when I’m around.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gia hurrying toward them. He gently peeled Vicky off himself and transferred the child to her mother’s arms. Vicky immediately wrapped her arms and legs around Gia.

“
My God, what happened?” Gia said, her expression fluctuating between fear and anger.

“
She thinks she saw a rakosh.”

Gia’s eyes widened. “But that’s–”

“
Impossible. Right. But maybe she saw something that looks like one.”

“
No!” said Vicky from where her face was buried against her mother’s neck. “It’s one of them! I
know
it is!”

“
Okay, Vicks,” Jack said, gently rubbing her trembling back. “I’ll check it out.” He nodded to Gia. “Why don’t you take her outside.”

“
We’re on our way. After what I’ve seen here, I wouldn’t be half surprised if she really had seen one.”

“
I know what you mean.”

Jack watched Gia slip through the crowd, carrying Vicky. When she was out of sight he turned and headed in the direction Vicky had come.

Wouldn’t be half surprised myself
, he thought.

Not that there was a single chance in hell of one of Kusum’s rakoshi being alive. They’d all died last summer on the water between Governor’s Island and the Battery. He’d seen to that. His incendiary bombs had burned them all to a crisp in the hold of the ship that housed them. Of course there had been that one that had come ashore, the one he’d dubbed Scar lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and had never returned. The rakoshi were dead, all of them. The species was extinct.

But if by some miracle one had survived, it might well be part of Ozymandias Oddities. Julio had given Jack the tickets last week, saying it was the weirdest show he’d ever seen. He hadn’t been kidding. Jack had never seen freaks like these. By definition freaks were supposed to be strange, but these folk went beyond strange into the positively alien. Jack hadn’t realized what the “oddities” would be. And the more he’d seen, the less comfortable he’d felt. The very idea of deformed people putting themselves on display repulsed him; it was demeaning; and those who paid to gawk seemed as demeaned as the freaks on display; maybe more so.

But there was nothing sad or pathetic about these freaks. They were bizarre, frightening, and many seemed belligerently proud of their deformities, as if the people strolling the midway were the freaks.

And maybe we are.

Jack moved slowly, steadily through the press, glancing left and right at the little stages on which each freak was exhibited. There were animals – a two headed cow, a five legged goat – and human giants, dwarves, pinheads, and...others, less easily described. Next to a guy with tentacles for arms who called himself “Octoman” was an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages on wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it said “Man Shark.” Jack noticed people leanin across the rope border; they’d peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.

This deserved a look.

Jack pushed to the front of the crowd and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something was there, slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven footer at least. Dark skinned, manlike and yet... undeniably alien.

Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort, or a guy in a rubber suit. A damn good suit. No wonder Vicky had been terrified.

But it couldn’t be the real thing. Couldn’t be...

Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. No stench. The one thing he remembered about the rakoshi was their stench, like rotting meat. Nothing like that here. He got close enough to touch the bars but didn’t. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing. He whistled and whispered, “Hey you in there!” The thing didn’t budge. He rapped his ring on one of the iron bars. “Hey–!”

Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that almost seemed to glow. Imagine the offspring from a pairing of a giant gorilla with a mako shark. Hairless cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose. Huge talons, curved for tearing, extended from the tips of the three huge fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge shark like head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered toward the front of the cage.

Along with the instinctive revulsion, the memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant, the disappearances, the deaths...

Jack backed up a step. Two. Behind him he heard the crowd
Oooh
and
Aaah
as it pressed forward for a better look. He took still another step back until he could feel their excited breaths on his neck. They didn’t know what one of these things could do, didn’t know their power, their near indestructibility. Otherwise they’d be pressing the other way.

Jack felt his heart kick up its already rising tempo when he noticed how the creature’s lower lip was distorted by a wide scar. He knew this creature, this particular rakosh. Scar lip. The one that had kidnapped Vicky, the one that had escaped Kusum’s ship and had almost got to Vicky on the shore. The one that had almost killed Jack. He ran a hand across his chest. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the three long ridges that ran across his chest, souvenir scars from the creature’s talons.

Scar lip was alive.

But how? How had it survived the blaze on the water? How had it wound up on Long Island in a traveling freak show?

The creature was on its feet now, its talons encircling the iron bars, its yellow eyes burning into Jack. It knew him too.