Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage (46 page)

Shit! He closed his eyes and slammed his fists against his thighs. He wanted to break something. What
else
could go wrong today?

But his spirits suddenly lifted as he realized Oz hadn't wanted to park his troupe near the police barracks—he'd had no choice. Maybe Nadia was still alive.

The roustabout had stopped ahead and was motioning him to hurry up. Jack did just that and soon came to the trailer he recognized as Oz's. The man himself was standing before it, watching the repair work on the truck.

"It got loose, didn't it?" Jack said as he came up beside him.

The taller man rotated the upper half of his body and looked at Jack. His expression was anything but welcoming.

"Oh, it's you. You do get around."

Took most of Jack's dwindling self-control to keep from taking a swing at Oz right then and there. He was bursting to ask about Nadia but forced himself to stick to the rakosh. That was old news between them; he'd cover that, then press on.

"Had to feed it, didn't you? Had to bring it up to full strength. Damn it, you knew the risk you were taking."

"It was caged with iron bars. I thought—"

"You thought wrong. I warned you. I've seen that thing at full strength. Iron or not, that cage wasn't going to hold it."

"I admire your talent for stating the obvious."

"Where is it?"

For the first time Jack detected a trace of fear in Oz's eyes.

"I don't know."

"Swell." He glanced around. "Where's that guy Hank?"

"Hank? What could you want with that imbecile?"

"Just wondering if he was bothering it again."

The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm. "I thought he'd learned his lesson. Well, he'll learn it now." He turned and called into the night. "Everyone—find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!"

They waited but no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.

"It appears he's run off," Prather said.

"Or got carried off."

"We found no blood near the truck, so perhaps the young idiot is still alive."

"He is alive," said a woman's voice.

Jack turned and recognized the three-eyed fortuneteller from the show.

"What do you see, Carmella?" Oz said.

"He is in the woods. He stole one of the guns and he carries a spear. He is full of wine and hate. He is going to kill it."

"Oh, I doubt that," Oz said. "Going to get himself killed is more likely."

Jack understood taking a gun, but not the spear; then he remembered the pointed iron rod Hank and Bondy had used to torture it. Neither would do the job. If Hank ever caught up with the rakosh, he wouldn't last long.

He stared at the mass of trees rising on the far side of the parkway. "We've got to find it."

"Yes," Oz said. "Poor thing, alone out there in a strange environment, disoriented, lost, afraid."

Jack couldn't imagine Scar-lip afraid of anything, especially anything it might run across around here.

"On the subject of lost, alone, and afraid," Jack said, motioning Oz toward his trailer, "I need to ask you something."

Oz followed him until they were all but leaning on the battered wall of the old Airstream, out of earshot of the others.

"What?"

"Where's Nadia Radzminsky?"

Oz's eyes told him nothing, but the way his body tensed spoke volumes.

"Nadia… who?"

"The one Dr. Monnet paid you to eliminate. Where is she?"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're—" Oz spotted the pistol Jack had pulled from his waistband.

"I have it straight from Dr. Monnet and his partners," Jack said softly as he began unscrewing the silencer. "They say they hired you to 'remove' Douglas Gleason and Nadia Radzminsky, so playing dumb won't cut it." He lowered the barrel, pointing it at Oz's right knee. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and if you give me any more bullshit, I'm going to shoot you. Nothing immediately fatal, but it's going to hurt like hell. And then I'm going to ask you again. And if I don't get the truth, I'll shoot you again, and so it will go."

Jack had to hand it to Oz—he was cool. He glanced at a pair of his doggie roustabouts—how many did he have?—who had noticed the pistol. Low growls rumbled in their throats as they edged closer.

"They'll tear you to pieces before you get off that second shot. Perhaps before you get off the first."

"Don't count on it." Jack leveled the barrel at Oz's midsection. "I can pull this trigger
lots
of times before I go down. Any idea what a hollowpoint round, even a twenty-two, can do once it breaks up inside you?"

Jack's pistol was loaded with FMJs, but no need to tell Oz that.

"And don't think the shots will go unnoticed over there." Jack cocked his head toward the State Police barracks. "So not only will you be dead, but a bunch of troopers will be treating this whole area as a crime scene. They'll go through it with a fine comb. What'll they find?"

Oz's expression fluctuated between fear and rage. Jack pressed on, heading for home.

"You've gathered a nice little family around you, Oz. What will happen to them when you're gone and they've been broken up and scattered because of certain crimes you've committed? All because you wouldn't answer a simple question."

Jack hoped the bluff would work. He knew he'd be beaten to a bloody pulp if he pulled the trigger, and even if he survived, he feared police scrutiny as much as Oz. More. But Oz couldn't know that.

"Let's suppose, just suppose," Oz said, "that they were here. What happens?"

They
? Jack fought to keep from showing the relief surging within him.

"They leave with me and that's that."

"How do I know you won't stop at the first phone and report us?"

"You've got my word," Jack said. "I've got nothing against you, Oz. I have a business relationship with Nadia. If I get her out of this, you and me are even. I'm happy never to see or hear of you again, and I'm sure it's mutual."

"But what about them?"

"I think I can square it with them. Let's go ask."

Oz held back. "There's still the matter of Dr. Monnet. He—"

"He's dead."

The eyes narrowed. Oz wasn't buying. "Really." He drew out the word.

"Just turn on the radio. It's on all the news stations."

"You?"

"Never laid a finger on him. Dragovic, I'd guess."

"I see," Oz said, nodding. A small smile played about his lips. That obviously made sense to him.

"Monnet paid you to off them," Jack said, "but I assume you had other plans. Sushi for the rakosh, right?"

"The creature's eating habits appear to be similar to those of a big snake," Oz said, neither confirming nor denying. "It gorges itself, then doesn't eat again for days. I haven't had time yet to learn its cycle."

"And now that it's gone, you've got no use for the food you've stockpiled for it. Am I right?"

He nodded and sighed. "I suppose that settles it, then."

He led Jack toward the center of the vehicle cluster. Playing it safe, Jack followed close behind, his pistol trained on Oz's back. The roustabouts—three now—followed. Oz stopped before an exceptionally run-down red trailer.

Jack heard something thumping against the inner walls and faint cries for help. Oz pointed to the padlock on the door and one of the roustabouts unlocked it.

As the door swung open, Jack slid his pistol behind his thigh. An idea of how to make this a smooth extraction was forming, but it might not work with artillery on display.

The cries and pounding ceased. For a moment nothing happened; then a sandy-haired man poked his head out. He looked pale, haggard, uncertain, but Jack recognized him as Douglas Gleason from the photo Nadia had shown him. Then Nadia appeared beside him.

All right, Jack thought. All
right
. Now to get them out of here.

"Good evening, Dr. Radzminsky," he said.

Her head pivoted toward him and her eyes widened in recognition and relief.

"Jack!" she cried, her voice harsh and ragged from shouting for who knew how long. "Oh, Jack, it's you!"

"Jack? Who's Jack?" Gleason was saying, but Nadia shushed him.

"It's all right. He's a friend. Jack, how did you get here? How did you manage—?"

"Long story. Suffice for now that Monnet and his partners arranged for Mr. Prather here to kill you and your fiance."

"Oh, no!" she said with more despair than shock.

"Knew it!" Gleason said. "Had to be him!"

"But why?"

"He and Dragovic were making Berzerk, and you knew it. But Mr. Prather is not a murderer," Jack said, nodding toward Oz, whose eyes widened in surprise. "So he merely kept you out of sight and out of harm's way until he could find a solution for your, um, predicament."

Jack was winging this. He glanced at Oz for a little backup.

"Yes," Oz said, barely missing a beat. "Dr. Monnet was blackmailing me, so I couldn't go to the police. I didn't know what to do. But now that he's dead—"

"Dead?" Nadia said. She looked at Jack.

"Milos Dragovic killed him."

"With him gone," Oz said, "it's safe for me to release you."

Jack said, "But there's one matter we have to settle first: This never happened. Mr. Prather needs your word on that."

Gleason needed about a second before nodding. "I can handle that."

But Nadia hesitated, frowning, not onboard yet.

"Come on, Nadj," Gleason said, putting his arm around her. "We weren't harmed. They even fed us."

"I've never been so frightened in all my life!"

"Yeah, but it's better than being dead. He could've killed us—he was
supposed
to kill us, and it would have been easier, but he didn't. We owe him something, don't you think?"

Come on, Nadia, Jack thought, trying a little telepathy. Say yes and we're out of here.

Finally she shrugged. "I don't know about
owing
him," she said, glaring at Oz. "But I guess we can keep it to ourselves."

Jack repressed a sigh of relief. He fished his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Gleason.

"My Buick's in front of the Burger King sign. Wait for me there. I've got one more matter to settle with Mr. Prather."

After Nadia and her beau had hurried from the scene, Jack turned to Oz.

"Where'd the rakosh break out?"

"About a mile back. Right near mile marker fifty-one-point-three, to be exact. We stopped but could not stay parked on the shoulder—we'd have the police asking what happened—so we pulled in here."

"We've got to find it."

"Nothing I'd like better," said the boss, "although I have a feeling you'd prefer to see it dead."

"You've got that right."

"An interesting area here," Oz said. "Right on the edge of the Pine Barrens."

Jack cursed under his breath. The Barrens. Shit. How was he going to locate Scar-lip in there—if that was where it was? This whole area was like a time warp. Near the coast you had a nuclear power plant and determinedly quaint but unquestionably twentieth-century towns like Smithville and Leeds Point. West of the parkway was wilderness. The Barrens—a million or so unsettled acres of pine, scrub brush, vanished towns, hills, bogs, creeks, all pretty much unchanged in population and level of civilization from the time the Indians had the Americas to themselves. From the Revolutionary days on, it had served as a haven for people who didn't want to be found. Hessians, Tories, smugglers, Lenape Indians, heretical Amish, escaped cons—at one time or another, they'd all sought shelter in the Pine Barrens.

And now add a rakosh to its long list of fugitives.

"We're not too far from Leeds Point, you know," Prather said, an amused expression flitting across his sallow face. "The birthplace of the Jersey Devil."

"Save the history lesson for later," Jack said. "Are you sending out a search party?"

"No. No one wants to go, and I can't say I blame them. But even if some were willing, we've got to be set up in Cape May for our show tonight. And frankly, without Dr. Monnet buying its blood, I can't justify the risk of going after it."

"That leaves me."

If Scar-lip got too much of a head start, he'd never find it which he could live with… unless the drive to kill Vicky was still fixed in its dim brain. Seemed unlikely, but Jack couldn't take the chance.

"You're not seriously thinking of going after it."

Jack shrugged. "Know somebody who'll do it for me?"

"May I ask why?" Oz said.

"Take too long to tell. Let's just leave it that Scar-lip and I go back a ways and we've got some unfinished business."

Oz stared at him a moment, then turned and began walking back toward his trailer.

"Come with me. Perhaps I can help."

Jack doubted that but followed and waited outside as Oz rummaged around within his trailer. Finally he emerged holding something that looked like a Game-boy. He tapped a series of buttons, eliciting a beep, then handed it to Jack.

"This will lead you to the rakosh."

Jack checked out the thing: it had a small screen with a blip of green light blinking slowly in one corner. He rotated his body and the blip moved.

"This is the rakosh?" Then he remembered the collar it had been wearing. "What'd you do—rig it with a LoJack?"

"In a way. I have electronic telltales on our animals. Occasionally one gets loose and I've found this to be an excellent way to track them. Most of them are irreplaceable."

"Yeah. Not too many two-headed goats wandering around."

"Correct. The range is only two miles, however. As you can see, the creature is still within range, but it may not be for long. Operation is simple: Your position is center screen; if the blip is left of center, the creature is to the left of you; below center, it's behind you; and so on. You track it by proceeding in whatever direction moves the blip closer to the center of the screen. When it reaches dead center, you'll have found your rakosh. Or rather, it will have found you."

Jack swiveled back and forth until the locator blip was at the top of the faintly glowing screen. He looked up and found himself facing the shadowy mass of trees west of the Parkway. Just as he'd feared. Scar-lip was in the pines.