Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage (32 page)

He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "There. He's probably away for the weekend with—"

"He's not!" she said. Tears were sliding down her cheeks. "He would have told me!"

"Come now," Luc said. "Surely he has other friends. He probably—"

"We're engaged, damn it!"

Luc felt his knees go soft. Now he too needed to sit. "Engaged? But… but I thought…"

"Doug wanted to keep it secret. He had some idea that management might not approve of a close relationship between a sales rep and a researcher."

Gleason had been right, of course. Luc tried to frame a reply, but the only words that formed in his reeling brain were,
What have we done? What have we done .
..
?

With her fiance missing she'll be utterly useless in the lab—and not just for a couple of days.

That's it, then, he thought. Over. Done.
Fin
.

"I've got to call the police!"

Before Luc could stop her, she had the phone receiver to her ear—but only for an instant. She pulled it away and looked at it. "That's right. I forgot. Out of service."

She slammed it down and hurried from the room. Luc struggled to think of some way to stop her, some words that would convince her to hold off calling the police, but his mind was a blank. What could he say? Gleason was missing and his apartment showed unmistakable signs of foul play.

Nadia and the police… a potentially lethal combination. To determine
who
had broken in, she would have to ask
why
.
..
and why they had stolen one computer and smashed another. Luc had to assume that Gleason had told her about his invasion of the GEM computer system. Would she make a connection? Nadia was too bright not to. And she would tell the police. And if she had any suspicions that Loki was a street drug, Luc sensed she would bring up those as well. And then the New York City Police and the DEA and the FBI would be dissecting GEM, and issuing warrants, and ending life as he knew it.

When Nadia returned seconds later, pulling a cell phone from her bag, he was tempted to snatch it away—but then what? Strangle her? He thought of putting his hands around her throat and squeezing… watching her face mottle into blue.

No, he couldn't. And besides, a third missing GEM employee would
guarantee
an investigation. Nadia was as much a danger to him alive as dead.

His gut crawled as he watched her punch in 9-1-1. She paced back and forth as she waited for an answer, then wandered out of the room as she began talking to the operator or dispatcher or whoever handled those calls.

This tore it then. It was all over. He'd have to leave the country immediately. But what about his wine? He needed another two days to pack up the rest and ship it out—just one day if he worked all night…

But what was the use? In France he could hide from Dragovic but not from the U.S. and French governments. He would be found, extradited, and Dragovic's contacts in prison would see to it that he never reached a courtroom.

There had to be a way to stop her. But how?

His nervous, restless, roving gaze came to rest on Nadia's shoulder bag and a plan crystallized. It was beautiful, perfect.

Quickly Luc reached into the bag and rummaged around. He felt a sweat break at the thought of Nadia wandering back and finding him up to his elbows in her personal belongings. He heard a jangle, reached for it, came up with her key ring, and shoved it into his jacket pocket a second before Nadia stepped back into the room.

"They're sending someone over."

She dropped the phone into her bag and stood there. For a moment she seemed lost; then her features twisted. She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

"Where
is
he? Something's happened to him. I just know something terrible's happened!"

Moved by her anguish, Luc rose and put an arm around her shoulders. For a moment he regretted everything, then reminded himself that if Gleason had minded his own damn business, if he'd just kept his nose out of places it did not belong, Luc wouldn't be comforting this young woman while he planned her ruin.

"It'll be all right, Nadia. I know it will be all right."

And he meant that. Every word of it.

But for him, not her.

3

"This is too much!" Sal was saying. "Just too freakin' much!"

Jack had to smile as he watched the destruction of last night's party play out on the thirteen-inch screen. It
was
too much.

Holiday quiet outside the office. Except for the guard dogs padding around behind the fences, he and Sal had the junkyard to themselves.

"Now here comes the best part," Sal said, pointing at the screen. "I musta watched this a hundred times."

Jack watched Dragovic shove a pretty young woman out from under a table, then watched that table collapse under the impact of a tottering overweight party guest. Jack laughed. Beautiful.

Sal was almost falling out of his seat. "Can you imagine when that hits the airwaves? "This guy ain't gonna be able to show his face in Burger King, let alone Studio 54!"

Jack started to tell him that Studio 54 was passe now but let it go. He knew what Sal meant, and he was right on the money.

"A fate worse than death," Jack said.

Sal hit the stop button and turned to Jack. "I don't know about a fate worse than death. Not that all this ain't good an' all, but good as it is—"

"Yeah, I know… Somehow it's not enough."

Sal smiled. "Yeah. Am I a broken record or what. But it's just… not. If you know what I'm sayin'."

"I do. But this has only been phase one. These first two hits are what you might call 'baking the cake.' In phase two we ice it."

"And when's phase two?"

"Tonight. This whole gig ends at tonight's party."

Jack was glad of that. After tonight, no more hard guys hanging around outside Gia's. He hoped.

"Tonight? Ain't no party tonight—least not according to my contact."

"Yeah, there is. Got it straight from Dragovic. Special party tonight, but your caterer friend won't be hired for this one."

"Well, we did tires and crankcase gunk," Sal said. "What next?"

"Something very special. You just make sure you and your camera are on that dune tonight. Be ready to shoot as soon as it's good and dark. This one will be the best yet."

"Yeah?" Sal wiggled his eyebrows. "Whatcha plannin'?"

"I'm planning to make a phone call."

"That's it? A call? To who?"

Jack wagged his finger at Sal. "If you knew that, you wouldn't need to pay me, would you. Just make sure you don't miss this party. And have the rest of my money ready. After tonight I don't think you'll be saying, 'it ain't enough.'"

4

"I thought we were going to see a parade," Vicky said.

"I did too, Vicks."

Jack stood on the curb between Gia and Vicky and gazed up and down Fifth Avenue. Saks and Gucci and Bergdorf Goodman lined the sidewalks but no marchers. Blue skies and mild weather, a perfect day for a parade. So where was everybody? Not even a single one of those pale blue wooden horses the police use to block streets to hint that a parade was expected or had already been by.

Jack did a full three-sixty scan, his eye out for more than marching bands. He'd done a careful reconnoiter of Gia's neighborhood before heading out to Sal's this morning, and then again a little while ago, and neither time had he found any signs of surveillance. Pretty much what he'd expected, but it didn't take him off alert. Jack had always found it more comforting to know where the bad guys were than where they weren't.

Since no one was watching them, and since he couldn't get hold of Nadia, he'd decided to take Vicky to a Memorial Day parade. But so far, no luck.

"God, it's good to be out," Gia said. "How much longer are we going to be under house arrest?"

To make the house look empty, Jack had advised Gia to stay inside and out of sight for the long weekend.

"We should be able to loosen up tomorrow."

She looked at him. "That means things come to a head tonight, I take it?"

"If all goes according to plan."

"Hey, look!" Vicky said, pointing. "More sailors."

Sure enough, a trio of young men of various shades—they looked like teenagers, and maybe they were—dressed in bell-bottomed whites and Dixie cup caps strolled their way from the direction of St. Pat's. As usual, the fleet was in for Memorial Day Weekend and white uniforms abounded.

"They're cute," Gia said. "But how do they get their whites so white?"

"Why don't you ask them?" Jack said.

Vicky put a hand on her out-thrust hip as they passed and said, "Hi-ya, sailor!"

The guys all but fell off the curb laughing, and Jack bit the insides of both cheeks to keep from doing the same. Gia turned scarlet and found something interesting atop the Saks building.

"What?" Vicky said, looking at her mother as the still-chortling sailors moved on.

"Where on earth did you hear that?"

"I saw it on MTV."

"There you go," Jack said, finally trusting himself to speak. "The root of the decline of Western civilization, such as it is."

"Well, young lady," Gia said, taking her by the hand and leading her across the street, "I think we're going to monitor your TV habits a little more closely from now on." She glanced back at Jack. "By the way, where are we going?"

"Let's try Broadway. Maybe they've got a parade there."

"You know," Gia said, taking his arm as they walked along, "I love the city on holiday weekends."

"You mean half-empty?"

She nodded. "It's like we've got the place almost to ourselves." She stretched out her arms and did a quick turn. "Look at that. I didn't hit anybody." She took his arm again. "I feel sorry for all these sailors. Of all times to get a leave in New York—one of the two big weekends a year when almost all the girls have left town for the beaches."

"I saw them checking you out pretty well as they passed."

"Don't be silly. I could be their mother."

"They weren't just looking—
ogling
is more like it. And I can't say as I blame them, what with those long stems sticking so far out of those shorts."

"Oh, pshaw."

"Pshaw? Did you actually say, 'Pshaw'?"

"Pshaw, and piffle," Gia said.

But Jack could see she was pleased she'd been ogled, and even more pleased that he'd noticed. But then he was always on watch around the two women in his life.

They came to Broadway. The deco front of the Brill Building gleamed in the sun across the street from them, but no parade flowed between.

Sharing a couple of oversize pretzels from a pushcart, the three of them wandered farther west. Jack slowed as they passed a defunct dance club in the midst of renovation. A sign on the double-doored entry proclaimed it THE FUTURE HOME OF NEW YORK CITY'S MOST EXCLUSIVE NIGHTCLUB—BELGRAVY.

Dragovic's place. Jack understood that Dragovic had begun running his operation from a back office here—when he wasn't in the Hamptons.

One more move against Dragovic tonight and that chapter would be closed—he hoped. And as long as he'd be out on Long Island, he'd look in on the rakosh, just to make sure it was still fading away.

Jack was about to turn everyone around and head back when he saw an older man in a khaki Eisenhower jacket, blue twill pants, and a defiantly angled overseas cap limping toward them. Jack gave him a friendly wave as he came abreast.

"Hi. Isn't there supposed to be a Memorial Day parade?"

The man frowned. "There damn sure should have been. I hear there's a little one on Upper Broadway somewhere. Probably nobody watching it, though. We just had a ceremony on the
Intrepid
with hardly anybody there."

Jack took in all the medals on the right breast of the old soldier's bulging waist-length jacket. He saw a star that looked bronze and recognized a Purple Heart.

"You were in the Big One?"

"Yeah." He looked at Jack. "How about you?"

Jack had to smile. "Me? In the army? No. Not my thing."

"Wasn't my thing either," the guy said, his voice rising. "None of us wanted to be there. I hated every minute. But there was a job to be done and we did it. And we died doing it. My whole platoon, every one of my buddies, was wiped out at Anzio—everyone but me, and I just barely made it. But I did get back, and as long as I'm alive, I'll show up to remember those guys. Someone should, don't you think? But nobody gives a damn."

"I do," Jack said softly, surrendering to an impulse from out of the blue. He thrust out his hand. "Thank you."

The man blinked, then took Jack's hand and squeezed. His eyes puddled up and his lower jaw trembled as he tried to speak. Finally he managed a weak, "You're welcome." Then he limped away.

Jack turned to find Gia staring at him with red-rimmed eyes. "Jack, that was…"

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable.

"No, really," she said. "Don't shrug it off. That was nice. Sweet, even. Especially since I know how you feel about armies and governments."

"He isn't a government or an army. He's a guy. No matter what you think of any particular war, you've got to feel something for some poor guy ripped out of his life and handed a gun and sent somewhere to kill other guys who've been ripped out of
their
lives and sent to do the same thing, and while they're both shivering in their foxholes, scared they're not going to see another sunrise, all the fat cats, all the generals and politicos and priests and mullahs and tribal elders who started the whole damn thing, sit way to the rear, moving their chess pieces around." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he took a breath. "He got handed the dirty end of a dirty stick but he handled it. You've got to respect that."

"So it's another guy thing, huh?" Gia said, punching him lightly on the shoulder, guy style.