Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage (19 page)

"I know him," said Ivo. "He's the one we chased off the beach."

Milos turned. Vuk and Ivo stood side by side. "You think he could be the one on the phone?"

Vuk shook his head. "Not the same voice. And the man we chased was too afraid of a fight to try anything like tonight."

"I'm not so sure," Ivo said, squinting at the screen. "We saw a man who did not
want
to fight, but I would not say he was afraid."

Milos considered Ivo the more perceptive of the two. And he did not bleach his hair, which was another plus. "We must find this man."

"No problem," Dositej said. Milos turned and saw the image of the car frozen on the screen. Dositej was pointing to the bumper. "There's his license plate."

Milos felt a grin spreading across his face as he stared at the numbers. Whoever you are, he thought, I will find you. And I will make you wish you had never been born.

13

Luc cradled the bottle of 1959 Chateau Lafite-Rothchild in his arms like a baby. He smiled at the thought. He and Laurell had had no children—thank God… she probably would have turned them into monsters just like her—but his wines were a consolation. Better, in fact. Each year, instead of costing you more, a good wine increased in value as well as flavor.

This Lafite, for instance. One of the finest ever produced, and never abandoned by its true parents. Every couple of decades or so Chateau Lafite sent over a team of experts from France to recork and top off its older vintages. This particular bottle had been recorked by the cMteau in the mideighties; they'd even affixed a label as proof.

And a wine, unlike a wife or a child, will never break your heart.

When Laurell had sued him for divorce, she'd added injury to insult by demanding half of his wine cellar. The slut knew nothing about wine—she drank white zinfandel and wouldn't have been able to distinguish jug wine from premier
cru.
She wanted his only because she knew it was valuable and that splitting it up would break his heart.

She'd wanted to hurt him. She'd already forgiven him for two affairs, but the third had sent her over the edge. He'd tried to tell her that none of them meant anything to him, and that was true; he'd sworn that he loved her and only her, but that of course wasn't.

When was the last time he'd loved? Curious question. He
made
love, but that was different. He preferred brief, intense affairs, where both parties went their own ways afterward with no strings.

The ultimate had been that afternoon with Nadia. Such intensity, such abandon. He felt himself growing hard at the memory. Nadia hadn't wanted strings then and maybe wouldn't now. He'd love an encore, and he'd go for it if he were sure it wouldn't interfere with her work. He'd have to wait and see. Stabilizing that molecule was the top priority.

Another priority was packing this wine, the wine Laurell had coveted. She'd thought she'd crush him, but he'd anticipated her. As their marriage had deteriorated toward the breaking point, he'd methodically smuggled out his best bottles and substituted junk. Laurell wound up with a nice selection of
vin ordinaire.
She'd howled when she got the appraisal, but when asked which specific wines were missing, she hadn't a clue.

Luc gently nestled the Lafite into the excelsior-lined rack within the wooden packing crate, then took a sip of another wine and let it roll around on his tongue. He'd opened a 1982 Haut-Brion, a fabulous Graves, to help him through the ongoing chore of packing up his wine collection. All 600 bottles had to be removed from their temperature-controlled lockers and packed and ready to go within the next week or two.

He was not taking any chances. He had great faith in Nadia, but stabilizing the Loki molecule might be beyond her, might be beyond anyone. And if she failed, he did not intend to be around on June 22 when Dragovic learned that he'd just received his last shipment of Loki. No, Luc would be back in France, and his wines with him.

He hadn't told Brad and Kent. He smiled, wondering if they were in their own homes right now, making similar preparations. He doubted it. They both had wives and children to tie them down. And they didn't have anyplace to go.

He'd leave them to the Serb. They deserved it. After all, they were the ones who'd got the company into this mess in the first place.

He carried his glass out of the wine closet and through to his study. He would hate losing this grand place, but if as expected the creature died during the next few weeks, and if Nadia's work didn't show signs of real progress by mid-June, he would leave and never look back.

He almost wished that would happen… to force him to turn his life upside down and start it up again—in a new place, as a new person.

He picked up the vial of pale blue powder from his desk. This was it. A sample from the new batches being synthesized from last night's blood sample. Loki… the stuff that had made him rich, the stuff that could ruin his life.

Luc drained his glass. He would have loved another, but it was time to cab over to the warehouse and test the potency of this new batch.

Luc's stomach lurched… perhaps the last test he'd ever run. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or scream.

14

Jack hung up and rubbed the flesh in front of his ears. That Thurston Howell lockjaw accent was tough on the jaw muscles. But he thought the call had accomplished its two purposes: first, to get Dragovic thinking he was the target of some snooty locals willing to take extreme measures to get him out of the neighborhood—ludicrous, but it would serve to muddy the waters for the next few days; second, to set up Dragovic for the call Jack would make after the Sunday night party; that was the pivotal point. If that call didn't work, the whole plan would fall apart.

He took one last look at Monnet's building. The doctor wasn't going anywhere at this hour. Time to head home for part
deux
of the Dr. Moreau festival: the Burt Lancaster-Michael York version from 1977. Not as atmospheric as
Island of Lost Souls
—Lancaster's Moreau could never match the oozing perversity of Laughton's—but Barbara Carrera's presence went a long way toward making up for that.

But as Jack turned to go he saw a cab pull up to the front entrance. The doorman opened the glass door and Dr. Monnet stepped out. Jack whirled and dashed up to Lexington where he'd parked the Buick.

The night wasn't over yet.

15

"I'm in!"

Doug pushed back from the keyboard and his chair rolled away on its casters. He felt like jumping up and doing a little dance but he was a lousy dancer. Instead he rose and headed for the kitchen, making a pit stop along the way. He grabbed another Jolt from the fridge, filled a bowl with Quisp and milk, and was back in front of his monitor in minutes.

He crunched the cereal as he studied his screen. The internal blocks around the financial files had finally yielded to his assaults. He was in. He'd routed the call through Washington, D.C., this time. No chance of a back-trace, should anyone be trying.

But now the real scut work began: making sense of all the numbers, finding the ones he wanted, and following the R & D money trail.

He rubbed his hands together. Just like the old days. A long night ahead, but he was wired and ready to go. With the right amounts of sugar and caffeine singing through his veins, he wouldn't have to stop until he'd tracked down what he wanted to know.

SATURDAY

1

Belly-crawling along a steel beam twenty feet off the warehouse floor, Jack stopped and pinched his nose to stifle a sneeze.

He could hear the building's resident pigeons cooing and rustling in the corners behind him. He'd upset them by climbing through the skylight during their sleep time, but luckily not enough to send them into panicked flight. Jack guessed they slept in the corners, but it was obvious from the droppings on the beam beneath him that they spent plenty of time right here. Good thing he was in raggedy castoffs. This getup was not going to be salvageable.

Jack had tailed Dr. Monnet from Carnegie Hill in Manhattan to its economic polar opposite in the old Marine Terminal area of Brooklyn, right off the BQE on the waterfront between Bay Ridge and Sunset Park. He hadn't liked the idea of using his own car, but counting on a cab to stop for someone dressed in his current ragman ensemble would have been an iffy proposition.

Monnet had stopped off at the GEM Pharma plant first, and Jack had been surprised to see the place lit up like Times Square. Its parking lot was crowded and the plant seemed to be going full tilt. GEM was running a third shift on a Saturday morning when every other factory around it was locked up tight. Business was evidently very good.

Monnet didn't stay long. Jack next followed him here, back to the same old brick warehouse he'd tailed him to earlier today. Jack had waited outside in the afternoon, and might have done the same tonight, but after watching one rough-looking down-and-outer after another being passed through what looked like a metal detector at the warehouse door, he decided he needed a look inside. Obviously the place was being used for more than just storage.

The building was sealed tight at ground level, with no way up to the roof. But the neighboring building was abandoned and all but leaning against it. Jack had been able to break through a window, make his way to the roof, and then jump the narrow gap to this building.

The interior was a single large open space, three stories tall, crisscrossed by supporting beams and girders, and mostly empty. Only one corner was occupied: a lit-up area covering less than a quarter of the floor had been walled off and partitioned but not roofed over.

Jack eased himself farther along the beam, closer and closer to this glowing island in a dark sea until he could peer down into the two sections of the enclosure. The nearer area was brightly lit. Half a dozen men—the ones he'd seen entering through the metal detector—stood around a small table, drinking from numbered plastic cups.

In an adjacent room beyond the far wall, the lights were lower; a number of indistinct forms huddled there, watching the front room through a cracked panel of tinted glass set in the wall that separated them.

A voice came through the speaker set above the glass.

"Be sure to finish all of your drink. We do not want you to become dehydrated during the test."

Monnet's voice? Jack had never heard him speak but had to assume that was him.

"Everybody finished? "

The men either held up their empty tumblers or said yes.

"Excellent. Now, each participant will take his spot at the test station that matches the number on his cup."

The men milled around, each eventually ending up before a "test station" that consisted of some sort of red vinyl cushion about the size of a bar pizza, set chest high into the wall; LED counters, each reading 000, rested at eye level over each.

Jack slid closer for a better view of the "participants."

"Good. Now, you've all been briefed on how the test works, but allow me to recap for you so that there are no mistakes. When the test is to begin, we will ring a bell. As soon as you hear the bell, you will begin punching the padded impact meter before you. This device measures the strength of each blow. The idea is to punch it as hard as you can as often as you can. You are scored for strength as well as speed, and your cumulative score registers on the readout above your impact meter. The one who ends with the highest score wins an extra two hundred dollars. I must emphasize that there are no losers tonight. Everyone gets three hundred dollars no matter what the score. Please remember that. Is everybody ready?"

Nods and a chorus of grunts.

"Excellent. Now remember, don't begin until you hear the bell. Ready… set
…"

The bell rang and the men began hammering their fists against the pads, some using one hand, others going at it left-right-left.

Jack, stretched out in pigeon guano, literally and figuratively above the fray, watched in bewildered fascination. What the hell was going on here?

The guys putting more power into their blows weren't matching the frequency of the ones with lighter, quick-shot styles, but for the first minute or so the scores stayed fairly even. Then Jack noticed one of the smaller fellows start to pull ahead. He had wide shoulders and short thick arms and was beating the crap out of his "impact device" with a rapid-fire two-handed assault.

This wasn't going unnoticed by the competition. Most of the men were glancing around, checking out their rivals' score, which didn't help their own. When they saw the little guy's, they upped their efforts, pounding harder and faster, but still craning their necks to see what the leader was doing.

He was pulling away, that was what he was doing. He was focused on that pad and he was going at it with everything he had.

Jack could see the frustration building in the others—read it in the hunching of their shoulders and the quick glimpses he had of their faces as they glanced around while they bashed furiously on their pads. But no one was catching up to the little guy.

Finally, one of the also-rans lost it. With a howl of rage he leaped from his station and began pounding on the little guy. As they traded powerful punches without seeming to feel them, they bumped into a third participant who immediately joined the fray. Within seconds all six were tangled in a wild, vicious brawl.

As Jack watched, agog, he was reminded of the mindless violence of the museum steps. But worse: these guys could fight.

Someone's going to get killed, he thought.

Then he noticed jets of yellow gas shooting from the walls. The mist enveloped the brawlers, making them cough, separate, and finally collapse. The gas settled over them like a heavy fog, then was drawn away through vents just above the floor line, leaving a tangle of unconscious forms.