Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (37 page)

"Exactly." Canfield slapped a palm against his forehead. "Why didn't I see this before? All these years I've never understood why Melanie left Monroe to live in Shoreham, but now it's clear. She's been living near Tesla's old property. She must have thought some of his wilder theories and never-executed plans had to do with the Otherness."

Jack remembered what Lew had told him that first day out in their house in Shoreham.

"Lew said she was buying and selling real estate, saying it had something to do with her 'research.'"

"I
knew
it!"

"He said she'd buy a place, hire some guys to dig up the yard, then resell it."

Canfield was leaning forward. "Did he say where she'd buy these places?"

"Yeah. Always in the same development ... along some road ... " Damn. He couldn't remember the name.

"Randall Road?'

"You got it."

"Yes!" Canfield pumped his fist in the air. "Tesla's property ran along Randall Road in Wardenclyffe! That's where he built his famous tower. The old brick building that housed his electrical lab is still standing. No question about it. Melanie was definitely searching for old Tesla documents."

"You think she found something?"

"Most definitely." He nodded and pointed to the crates. "And I think it's sitting right in front of us."

"You think Melanie sent this stuff?"

"I do."

"But why to me? Why not to you?"

Only Repairman Jack can find me. Only he will understand.

Was that why?

"I wish I knew," Canfield said. He sounded hurt. "I certainly wouldn't have left it sitting around for days. I can tell you that."

"Really. What would you have done?"

"Assembled it, of course."

"Maybe she thought you might have ... " He glanced at Canfield's blanket-wrapped lower body. "You know ... trouble putting it together."

"Maybe," he said. He seemed cheered by the thought. "And she was probably right. But now there's two of us, so let's get to it."

"Whoa. We don't know what this thing is, or what it does. We don't know how it got here and we don't even know for sure it's from Melanie."

"It's from Melanie," he said. "I'm sure of it."

Jack wasn't sure of anything about these crates. Assembling the pieces might seem like the next logical step, but something inside him wasn't too keen on taking it.

"I only have one wrench and a couple of screwdrivers. We'll need—"

"Never fear," Canfield said, reaching around the back of his wheelchair. He removed a tool kit from the pouch back there. "I never travel without this. Let's get to work."

Still Jack hesitated. He could buy that this contraption was linked to Melanie, but he was far from convinced she'd sent it. Figuring there was safety in numbers, he decided to get some other people involved.

He pulled Kenway's pager number from his wallet and started dialing.

"What are you doing?" Canfield said.

"Calling in some help."

"We don't need help."

"Look at all those pieces. Sure we do."

"Who are you calling?"

"Miles Kenway."

"No!" He seemed genuinely upset. "Not him!"

"Why not? What's that old expression? Many hands lighten the load."

"He won't understand."

"Then we'll explain it to him."

When Kenway's beeper service picked up, Jack left a simple message: "Call Jack. Urgent." He was sure Kenway knew his room number. Everyone else seemed to.

"You shouldn't have done that," Canfield said, almost sulking. "Kenway doesn't belong here."

What's his problem? Jack wondered.

"He doesn't, but you do? How'd you reach that conclusion? The crates wound up in
my
room, remember?"

"He isn't part of this. We are."

"If what you've said is true, we're all part of this—whatever 'this' might be."

The phone rang. It was Kenway.

"Get up to my room," Jack told him. "I've got something to show you."

"Be right up," Kenway said. "And brother, have I got something to show
you
."

"Bring Zaleski," Jack told him. "And if you've got any tools, bring them along too."

"Will do."

Canfield groaned as Jack hung up the phone. "Not Zaleski too!"

"The more the merrier, I figure," Jack said as he dialed Lew's room number.

"Who now?" Canfield said. "Olive Farina?"

"Olive?" Jack said, watching Canfield closely. "She's been found?"

"No. Where have you been? She still hasn't shown up. A missing person report has been filed. Everybody's still looking for her."

Jack sensed that Canfield didn't know any more about Olive than he was saying.

No answer at Lew's room.

"I was going to ask Lew Ehler too," Jack said, hanging up. "But I guess he's gone back to Shoreham."

"Just as well." Canfield grunted with annoyance. "Zaleski and Kenway will be more than enough to handle. Whatever you do, don't mention the Otherness or that this device may be a link to it."

"Why not?"

"Because proof of the existence of the Otherness will expose Zaleski's UFO's and aliens and Kenway's New World Order for the shams they are. Who knows how they'll react. They might not be able to handle it." He pounded his fist on the armrest of his wheelchair. "I
wish
you hadn't called them!"

"Relax," Jack told him. "We'll order pizza and beer. We'll make this a party. Like a mini barn raising. You'll see. It'll be fun."

9

Kenway and Zaleski arrived less than fifteen minutes later. They both knew Canfield who finally seemed to have resigned himself to sharing the stage with the two newcomers.

"Take a gander at
this
." Kenway said, holding out a folded sheet of fax paper.

Jack opened the flimsy sheet and stared at the photo of a portly young man, blond, with a fuzzy attempt at a beard.

"Our mutual friend, I presume?"

"Exactly!" Kenway's grin was shark-like, his gray crewcut more bristly than ever as he took back the fax. "Oh, brother, is the shit ever gonna hit the fan when I pass this around tomorrow. I knew there was something phony about our fearless leader!"

Zaleski tried to get a look. "Who? Roma? What've you got there?"

"You'll find out tomorrow," Kenway said.

Jack's thoughts drifted as they argued. If Roma was a bogus identity, who was the guy running the show? Why had he created SESOUP and organized this meeting? Was he connected to Melanie's disappearance? To these boxes? And if so, why had they wound up with Jack, when he hadn't even known he was coming until the night before?

Jack's head was spinning.

"Whatever," Zaleski finally said to Kenway, then grinned at Jack as he displayed an elaborate ratchet set. "You want tools, man? We got tools. What the fuck for?"

Jack explained what he could. Neither of them needed any introduction to Nikola Tesla, it seemed. Zaleski and Kenway were awed by the prospect of assembling a contraption designed by him.

They divided the workload. Jack and Zaleski would assemble the base while Kenway and Canfield tackled the dome. The contents of each crate were dumped onto one of the two double beds, and they had just begun to work when Canfield lifted his hand.

"Shhh! What's that?"

Jack listened. Something scratching at his door. He went to the peephole but saw nothing. Yet the sound persisted. He pulled open the door—

And Roma's monkey scampered in.

"Get that fucking oversized rodent outta here!" Zaleski shouted, tossing a pillow at the monkey.

It screeched and dodged the pillow, scampered a single circuit of the room, then fled. Jack slammed the door after it.

"Don't let that damn thing in again!" Zaleski cried, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Little fucker gives me the creeps."

"For once we agree on something," Kenway said. "It shouldn't be allowed to run free."

Jack was remembering what Olive had told him about that monkey, how she'd overheard it talking to Roma ... or whoever he was.

"Let's get back to business," Canfield said.

"Tesla got royally screwed by J. P. Morgan, you know," Kenway said after a few minutes. "Morgan promised to fund his broadcast power project back at the turn of the century. He let Tesla get the Wardenclyffe tower three-quarters built—"

"That would be out on Long Island?" Jack said, glancing at Canfield.

"Yes, of course," Kenway said. "Morgan let him get to a certain point, then suddenly pulled the financial rug out from under him."

"Why do that?" Jack said. "Broadcast power would be worth zillions."

"Because Morgan was one of the bankrollers of the One World conspiracy, and he and his fellows came to realize that a cheap energy source like Tesla's broadcast power would rev all the world's economies into high gear. They figured that once the secret was out, they'd lose control of those economies. Tesla had a mysterious breakdown somewhere around 1908 and was never quite the same after."

"Bullshit," Zaleski said from the other side of the room. "He had a breakdown in 1908, but it wasn't caused by no J. P. fucking Morgan. Tesla had an in on alien technology, that's why he made all his breakthroughs."

Jack glanced again at Canfield who mouthed,
I warned you
.

"Back in 1908, with Morgan pulling the plug on his finances, Tesla needed a dramatic demonstration that his Wardenclyffe tower worked. Peary was making a second try to reach the North Pole at the time, so Tesla contacted the expedition and said they should be on the lookout for an unusual occurrence. On June 30, he aimed a beam of energy from Wardenclyffe to an arctic area where the explosion would be seen by the Perry team. But nothing happened. He thought he'd failed. Then he heard about Tunguska."

"What's Tunguska?" Jack asked.

"A place in Siberia," Canfield said. "Half a million square acres of forest were utterly destroyed by a mysterious cataclysmic explosion on June 30, 1908."

"Right!" Zaleski said. "The
same day
as Tesla's demonstration.
And
Tunguska is on the same longitudinal line as Peary's base camp."

"Researchers have estimated the force of the blast at fifteen megatons," Canfield added. "The boom was heard over six hundred miles away. It's never been explained."

Zaleski grinned. "But Old Nik knew the truth. His beam had overshot its mark."

"It was a meteor!" Kenway said.

"Really?" Zaleski's eyebrows floated halfway to his hairline. "Then how come no meteor fragments were ever found?"

"An antimatter meteor," Kenway said, not backing down an inch. "When antimatter meets matter, there's cataclysmic destruction, with total annihilation of one or the other."

"Uh-uh, Miles, old boy. Tesla did it, and the total awesomeness of the destructive power he'd unleashed blew his circuits. He had a nervous breakdown."

"Wrong," Kenway said. "J. P. Morgan's betrayal caused the breakdown."

"Gentlemen, please," Canfield said. "We're not going to decide this here. Suffice it to way that something happened to cause Tesla to stop communicating with people for a while and to sell his land and dismantle his tower. Let's just say that Nicola Tesla was never the same after 1908 and leave it at that."

"All right," Kenway said. "As long as there's no more talk about alien technology."

"Or New World Order bullshit," Zaleski said.

"Can we just build this damn thing!" Jack snapped. "I don't want to be at it all night."

He avoided looking at Canfield. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe including these two had been a bad idea.

10

"They're assembling it!" Mauricio cried as he rushed into the room. "And as I was listening at the door I heard Miles Ken way say something about a 'our fearless leader' being a 'phony!' It's all falling apart!"

"Keep calm," Roma said. "We knew the deception would not last forever."

Sal Roma—he'd immersed himself in the character so deeply that he'd become comfortable with the name. Might as well keep up the pretense. He didn't care what name he was known by, as long as it was not his own.

"But this is too close. And we do not have the device—
they
do!"

"Just who is 'they?'"

"Canfield, Kenway, Zaleski, and the stranger."

"Quite a crew. I wonder if this was what Canfield wanted to see me about—that he had learned about the device?"

"Who
cares
why he wanted to see you?" Mauricio screeched. "The device is
ours! We
are supposed to use it!"

"And we shall, dear friend. Without the bother of assembling it ourselves. This is all working out very nicely."

"You are insane! The plan was—"

"Hush now, Mauricio, before you anger me. The plan is heading for the right place, it is simply taking a different course—I do not know why that is, but in good time I am sure I shall. We need only watch and follow, and step in when it is to our advantage."

Mauricio crouched on the bedspread, and wrapped his thin arms around his folded legs. His sulking pose. "This will come to a bad end, I tell you."

"A bad end ... " Roma smiled. "That is the whole point, is it not?"

SUNDAY

1

Assembling the Tesla gizmo turned out to be a much more complicated chore than Jack had anticipated, especially the dome. It was close to two A.M. when they finished.

The beds had been pushed aside and now a five-foot oil derrick topped with a giant, warty mushroom cap stood in the middle of the floor.

One weird-looking contraption, Jack thought.

Something about it gave him the willies.

Nothing terribly strange about the eight-legged base. A bitch to assemble with all those crisscrossing struts, but it functioned as nothing more than a supporting framework. The dome was a whole other story. Curved sheets of shiny copper studded with dozens of smaller copper globes, larger toward the perimeter, and getting progressively smaller as they neared the center.

Jack could almost go along with Zaleski about its having been inspired by alien technology. He'd never seen anything like it.