Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage (24 page)

10

Gia stopped her paintbrush in midstroke and listened. Was that the doorbell? She and Vicky had come out to the sunny backyard—Vicky for her playhouse, Gia to work on her painting—and they were a long way from the front door.

She heard the chime again, clearly now. With a glance at Vicky, who was setting a Munchkin-size chair before a Munchkin-size table by her playhouse, Gia wiped her hands and stepped inside.

As she headed through the house toward the front door, she wondered who it could be. Jack had said he'd be tied up most of the day, Gia hadn't arranged a play date for Vicky, and this was not a neighborhood where people popped in for a cup of coffee.

Despite the months of living in this grand old East Side town house, Gia still didn't feel she belonged here. Vicky's aunts, Nellie and Grace, had owned it but they were gone now, officially missing persons since last summer. But Gia knew the truth—the two dear old women were dead, devoured by creatures from some Hindu hell. If not for Jack, Vicky would have suffered the same fate. And thanks to Jack, the creatures were as dead as Nellie and Grace, incinerated on the ship that had brought them, their ashes sent swirling into the currents of New York Harbor. Vicky would inherit the house when Grace and Nellie were declared legally dead. Until then, she and Gia lived here, keeping it up.

Gia padded across the thick Oriental rug that lined the foyer floor and approached the front door as the bell rang again. Probably Jack and he'd forgotten his key, but just to be sure, she put her eye to the peephole—

And froze.

Gia's heart kicked up its tempo as she recognized the two men standing on her front step—from the other day on the beach in front of Milos Dragovic's house. No way she'd forget the obnoxious one with the bad bleach job.

What were they doing here? How had they found her?
Why
?

Jack. Had to be Jack.
Always
Jack. He'd been interested in Dragovic, and the objects of Jack's interest tended not to be the happiest bunch after he finished with them. But now Jack—and she as well, it seemed—had attracted the attention of the city's most notorious mobster.

Gia jumped as the bell chimed again. She looked back down the hall, hoping Vicky wouldn't hear it and come charging in expecting to find Jack. The best thing was probably to stay quiet and hope they'd conclude no one was home. Since the town houses here all sat cheek by jowl along the sidewalk, there was no way for them to go around to the rear. Maybe they'd just give up and go away.

She heard them talking on the other side of the door. It didn't sound like English.

Finally they walked back to the black Lincoln sedan at the curb. Gia breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away, but they didn't go far. They parked at the end of the cul-de-sac and lit cigarettes.

They're watching for us. Damn them!

Gia felt a quiet anger begin to simmer beneath her uneasiness. She and Vicky were trapped in their own home. And they had Jack to thank for that.

She picked up the phone and dialed his beeper. He got us into this; he can damn well get us out.

11

"Whatsa matta?" Sal Vituolo said, giggling as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "You don't think that's funny?"

Sal had just run the tape of last night's raid on the little TV-VCR set in his office.

"I think it's perfect," Jack said.

Ten minutes ago he would have had some good yucks watching Dragovic's goons running and ducking as the tires chased them. That would have been before he'd spoken to Gia and learned that two of those goons were parked outside her door at this very moment.

He knew how they'd found her: had to be that hidden security camera by Dragovic's front gate.

My fault. Should have spotted it sooner. Must have recorded a picture of the car, and they traced her from the plate.

Damn! Never should have taken them along.

The good news was that Dragovic couldn't know that Gia had any connection to last night's rubber rain. He was just flailing about.

Trouble was, the man might get lucky.

Jack's first thought had been to tell Gia to call the cops and complain about two suspicious-looking guys lurking outside. That would chase them, but not far. They'd move, but they would not go away.

So he'd have to handle this but be careful as to how. His first reflex had been to take them out, permanently, leave the police to clean up the mess. Since they both work for Dragovic, everyone would write it off as a mob hit.

Everyone except Dragovic. He'd know why those two were there, and removing them would be like erecting a big neon sign over Gia's door saying, I'm involved.

No, this called for a more subtle approach. But what…?

Sal's voice jarred him back to Staten Island. "I don't know how many times I've watched it already, but I crack up every time." He popped the cassette out of the set and held it up. "How many copies do I make and where do we send them?
Eyewitness News?

"No copies yet."

"Ay," Sal said, pointing to the new dual-deck VCR Jack had instructed him to buy. "Ain't that why I bought this? To make copies?"

"Right," Jack said. "But we need more. You've got to be on that dune to film the sequel at tomorrow night's party."

"I'll be there, but how about something better'n tires this time? How about glass? Yeah! I gotta shitload of broken glass around here."

He forced his voice to stay calm. "Tires are just phase one. Phase two is where he gets nailed."

"Nails?" He heard an unmistakable note of glee in Sal's voice. "You're gonna use nails? Now you're talkin'!"

Jeez. "No."

"Then what's phase two?"

"All in good time, my man. All in good time. Meanwhile, not to worry. I've got it all figured out."

"But we
done
tires. I don't want to do tires again. Tires ain't enough."

Jack chewed the inside of his cheek and resisted the urge to whirl and get in Sal's face and tell him if he didn't like what was going down he could take over and finish it himself.

That's the worry about Gia and Vicky, he realized.

It was getting to him.

He rose and stepped to one of the windows. Through the grime on both sides of the pane he could vaguely make out the mountains of old cars and scrap metal stretching behind the office.

"Gotta be something better than tires again," Sal whined.

"OK, Sal," Jack said, giving in. "Let's take a walk through your yard. If we find something better, we'll use it. If not—tires again."

And maybe I'll come up with a solution for Dragovic's goons.

As an ebullient Sal led him out into the sunny afternoon, Jack noticed a couple of men piling scrap metal onto the hydraulic lift on the rear of a battered old delivery truck, the same one Jack had used to deliver the tires to the Ashe brothers on Friday.

He watched the old truck's lift return to ground level after another load of scrap had been pushed into its interior. Its rear edge was beveled… like a knife…

That gave him half of an idea. Jack scanned the rest of the yard and spotted some battered and rusted cars lined up against one of the fences. He pointed to them.

"Any of those wrecks drivable?"

Sal stopped and looked around. "Yeah, I s'ppose. Not legal-like. A coupla them'll getcha from here to there, but probably not back."

"I don't need to get back."

"Whatchathinkin'?"

Jack was beginning to feel a little better now.

"I'm thinking I may take out some of my fee in trade after all."

12

"How long are we going to sit here?" Vuk Vujovic said, lighting another Marlboro.

All he'd done today was camp in this damn car in this rich neighborhood and smoke while they waited for this woman to show. He was stiff, restless, bored, and an unbroken chain of cigarettes had left his tongue feeling like soggy cardboard. The Lincoln was comfortable to drive, but he felt as if he'd moved into it. He checked his bleached hair in the rearview mirror. Dark roots were starting to poke through; he was going to need a touch-up soon.

"How many times are you going to check your hair?" said Ivo from the passenger seat. "Afraid it's going to fall out?"

"Not mine, old friend." He glanced at Ivo's dark but thinning hair. "I'll still have plenty when you're as bald as an egg."

"At least I won't look like a girlie-man."

Vuk laughed to hide his irritation at the remark. If anyone in this car was a woman it was Ivo—an
old
woman. "The ladies love the color."

Ivo grunted.

They'd met in the Yugoslav Army and later had gone through the Kosovo cleanup together. With the army and the country in shambles after that, they'd hired on with Dragovic.

Vuk stared at the woman's door. Look at this neighborhood. Elegant brick-fronted town houses on an almost private block that dead-ended at a little park overlooking the East River. No places like this back home, unless you were high in the regime. He tried to imagine what it cost to live here.

"I hate this waiting."

Ivo sighed. "Could be worse. We could still be in Belgrade waiting for our back pay."

Vuk laughed again. "Or waiting on line for a gallon of gas."

"Do you ever think about home?" Ivo said, his voice softer.

"Only when I think about the war." And he thought about that every day.

Such a time. How many woman had he taken? How many men, some KLA, most simply able-bodied males, had he marched into fields or stood against walls and shot dead? Too many to count. How powerful he'd felt—a master of life and death, surrounded by cries and wails and pleas for mercy, a master whose whim decided who lived and who died, and how they died. He'd felt like a god.

Vuk missed those days, missed them so much at times it nearly brought him to tears.

"I try not to."

Vuk glanced at his companion but said nothing. Ivo had always been soft, and now he was going softer. This was what happened when you lived in America. You went soft.

I'm going soft too, Vuk admitted. I used to be a proud soldier. Now what am I? A bodyguard to a gangster—a Serb by birth, yes, but more American than Serb—and sent on wild-goose chases like this one. But he knew he was better off than others of his generation still in Belgrade.

"Do you think this
DiLawopizda
has any connection with last night?" Vuk said, reluctantly moving their talk back from the past to the present.

"Could be," Ivo said. "But even if she is, she seems gone for the holiday, just like everyone else around here."

All they'd seen in their many hours on watch were a few children with their nannies. Vuk had checked in twice with the East Hampton house to report that nothing was happening, hoping they'd be called back. Instead they'd been instructed to stay right where they were.

"We're wasting our time," Vuk said.

"You got us into this."

"Me? How?"

"You had to identify the man on the video." He mimicked Vuk's voice: " 'I know him. He's the one we chased off the beach.' You never know when to shut up."

Vuk had turned, ready to give Ivo hell, when he saw him straighten in his seat.

A delivery truck with no markings had turned into Sutton Square. It rattled toward them, then angled sharply toward the curb.

"He must be lost," Ivo said, easing back into his seat.

Vuk agreed. The truck might have been white once, but now it was so dented and scraped and covered with grime he could only guess at the original color. The driver had a thick white beard and wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. His features were blurry through the windshield. Vuk watched him pull out a map and look at it.

Dumb, Vuk thought. How do you get lost in a city where the streets and avenues are all numbered?

But the driver apparently found what he was looking for, because he began moving again, pulling head-on into the opposite curb. As the truck began backing into the second leg of a three-point turn, Vuk noticed that its rear loading platform was lowered and riding about two feet off the ground. But instead of stopping or even slowing when it had reversed to the middle of the street, the truck picked up speed and kept coming.

Vuk leaned on the horn and pressed back in the seat as he saw the rear corner of the truck angle around and loom larger and larger in the windshield.

"He's going to hit us!" Ivo shouted.

Vuk covered his eyes and braced himself. The impact jarred him forward but wasn't as bad as he'd expected. When he opened his eyes he realized that the corner of the lift platform had punched into the grille. Their car had been spared the full impact of the truck itself.

"Sranje!" Vuk shouted.

Ivo too was cursing a blue streak as they pushed open their doors. This idiot driver was going to wish he'd never turned in here.

But the truck was moving again. This time forward.

"He's taking off!" Ivo shouted.

Vuk sprinted after it, but it was picking up speed too quickly. He motioned Ivo back into the car. The truck ran the red light across Sutton Place and headed up Fifty-eighth—wrong way against the traffic.

"He's insane!" Ivo cried as they watched the truck weave a zigzag course as it dodged cars in the oncoming traffic. Tires screeched, horns blared, but the truck kept going.

Vuk wasn't about to let some old
govno
in a rust-bucket truck outmaneuver him. "Jebi se!" he shouted. "So am I!"

High beams on and horn blaring, he gunned the Lincoln across the street and up Fifty-eighth. Luckily there wasn't much traffic, but still it was scary.

Up ahead the truck had made a right on First Avenue, and they got there just in time to see it make a left onto Fifty-ninth.

"He's heading for the bridge!" Ivo said.

Vuk followed and spotted the truck taking the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge.

He floored the Lincoln up the incline, screeched into the turn, and pulled onto the span.