Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (20 page)

“With la Chirurgienne, ‘IV’ means
Infernum Viventes
.”

“Still no help.”

“It’s Latin.” Burkes’s grin was not a pretty thing. “It means ‘living hell.’”

Abe finally took a great-white bite of his sausage-and-egg McMuffin. Jack had known it would not go untouched for long. He doubted any news, no matter how tragic, could kill Abe’s appetite.

After swallowing, Abe shook his head. “A mensch we’ve lost.”

Jack bit into his own McMuffin. He loved these things. “How well did you know him?”

A shrug. “Heart-to-hearts we never had. But in some men you can detect the mensch without many words. A man may hide a lot of himself, but the mensch always manages to peek through.”

Abe shook his head as he stared at him. “In town not three years and already you’ve run into smuggling, mass murder, Dominican gangs, human trafficking, torture, and international terrorism.  How does this happen?”

“Just lucky I guess.”

“After all this
tummel
,” Abe said, “how are you going to go back to being Repairman Jack?”

“I was
never
Repairman Jack. That’s
your
thing.”

“No, it’s
your
thing.” He pulled a sheet of paper from under the counter and pushed it across. “Here: for the personals pages.”

Jack stared, dumbfounded.

When all else fails…

When nothing else works…

REPAIRMAN JACK

Abe said, “I can see you’re speechless with wonder and admiration.  I was quite taken myself when I realized what I’d created. Like poetry it reads.”

Jack burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I should be kidding about your career? Your future? This is what you need to bring people with troubles to your door
– or at least to your table in that bar. Just add whatever phone number you want and you’re all set.” 

“How about I add yours?”

Jack said, “There’s a law somewhere: Olga’s can’t close. It’s an institution.”

She opened the menu. “Everything changes,” she said, “but not this place. Look. They still serve turkey croquettes with mashed potatoes and gravy. Ugh.”

“How can you say ‘ugh’? You never tried them. Ever.”

She’d been South Burlington County Regional High School’s only vegetarian
– at least the only one as far as he knew.  He could still hear her saying,
If it had a face or a mother, I don’t want it on my plate
.

“Well, they just
sound
awful. But not as awful as creamed chipped beef – which they also still have.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Remember how you used to order that just to gross me out?”

“On toast. Mmmm.”

One time she refused to kiss him after he’d eaten it.

“And remember how you tried to convince me that chipped beef never had a face or a mother?”

“Since the scientific community has yet to present convincing evidence to the contrary, I persist in my contention.”

Julio came by. “Drinking?”

Burkes said, “Thought you’d never ask. I’m desperate for a bevvy.” He pointed to Jack’s glass. “What’s that?”

“Rolling Rock.” Jack hadn’t been able to look at a brew yesterday. But that had been yesterday.

Burkes made a face. “An American lager? Not likely.”  He turned back to Julio. “Got anything
good
to drink? Something with some body to it?”

“You mean like Guinness?”

Burkes slapped the table. “Now you’re talking, lad!”

“We ain’t got none.”

Jack pushed back a laugh. He’d seen that coming.

Read the rest here:
Fear City

Feb
ruary

SIBS

Sibs
is the only one of my fifty-plus novels with a strong erotic element.  I usually avoid sex scenes. (Yeah, I hear you:
Write what you know, Wilson
.) But really, they offer too much potential for purple prose.  And in too many cases I think they're unnecessary.

But they were necessary in
Sibs
.  The villain is a voluptuary and sex is what he's after. So I had to show rather than simply hint. The result is a mixture of horror and police procedural, with erotica fueling the plot.

The seeds of
Sibs
were planted decades before its publication when I was writing and rewriting a short story about a unique form of sexual domination.  When I finally got it right,
Weird Tales
published it as "Menage a Trois" (later reprinted in the first
Hot Blood
anthology).

But all along I'd been thinking about another variant on the story, and when I devised the final twist in the spring of 1990, I had to drop everything and write it.  I was in the middle of
Reprisal
but I put it aside and sat down and wrote
Sibs
in nine weeks (as a part-time writer). I was doing 50 pages a day sometimes. Like taking dictation.  It's a wonderful experience every writer should have. It consumed me.  That fire is reflected in the pace of the book.
Sibs
has, perhaps, some shortcomings in that hellbent-for-leather pace, but I didn't want go back and tinker with it. Something special there, the way it gushed from me.  I can't say it's a terribly nuanced novel, but it's one of my favorites for the sheer joy of being able to rap that thing out. It grabs you by the throat and does not let go.

For those interested in inter-story connections,
Sibs
has a number of links to the Secret History: The most obvious is that the Gati family has obviously been touched by the Otherness.  How that happened, we’ll never know. What we do know: Jack uses Dr. Gates' house as part of a fix in
Legacies
; in
All the Rage
, Luc Monnet bids on wine offered by the Gates estate; the Gati family in
Sibs
is featured in "Menage a Trois" where a Detective Burke plays a part in the framing sections, just as he does in "The Cleaning Machine," which happens to be about one of the Seven Infernals.

Here’s the opening chapter. 
You’ve got to admit it’s a doozy…

SIBS

(sample)

February 4

12:45 a.m.

The evening was uneventful until it got crazy. Craziness had been the farthest thing from Ed Bannion's mind when he invited his younger brother into the city.

Phil came in through the Lincoln from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, and Ed met him at a midtown parking lot. No special occasion, just keeping in touch. They went downtown and then began a steady march back up: Before-dinner drinks at The Airplane in SoHo, an off-off-Broadway play in Kips Bay, shrimp in green sauce at El Quijote in Chelsea, and finally a nitecap in the Oak Bar at the Plaza. And it was there in the Oak Bar, there in the heart of the jewel in Ivana Trump's tiara, while they were standing side by side, each with a foot on the brass rail, staring at the misty painting of the Plaza fountain behind the cash register, that the young blonde squeezed between them and ordered a double JD on the rocks.

"Hi, guys!" she said, bright and cheery with a smile that made Ed wince in its glare.

A real piece. She looked around twenty-five but she could have been thirty. Either way, she was younger than Ed. Her wavy blond hair was like a pale cloud around her head, and her face had a fresh, All-American look that contrasted sharply with the high-slit leather mini-skirt and the low-cut sweater that exposed smooth, bouncy crescents of her breasts. She had what they call a bod that wouldn't quit. Sexy as all hell, and not the least bit shy.

"So, what's happening here with you Plaza-type dudes?"

"We're not–” Ed began but Phil cut him off.

"Just hanging out," Phil said. "Waiting for something to happen."

"Yeah?" she said. "My name's Ingrid, and I'm waiting for the same thing. Isn't that something?"

"That's something, all right," Phil purred.

Ed stared at his brother who had suddenly become cool, smooth, and seductive. He hardly recognized him. Ed was a bachelor, but good lord, Phil had a wife and child back home in Jersey!

"You guys look alike. You related?"

"We're brothers," Ed said, feeling he should add his two cents. The clash of her bold and brassy attitude with her angel-soft good looks excited him. "I'm the older one – but not by much."

"Yeah?" she said with a seductive smile. "You never could tell. You guys come here often?"

"This is our headquarters whenever we're in the Apple," Phil said.

Ed struggled to keep from laughing out loud.

"Me, too," Ingrid said. "I've got an appointment with Mike Nichols this week. He's shooting his next feature right here in Manhattan, you know, and my agent's got me an audition with him. So I'm just killing some time while I wait for Solly to firm up the exact time and place. What're you guys in town for?"

"We're in textiles," Phil said with this oily grin. "Y'know...rugs and stuff? We sell textiles by the mile."

Ed was shocked by his brother's facile way with a lie. Phil was a Wa-Wa manager. He wouldn't know a broadloom from a flying carpet.

"Really?" Ingrid said. "That sounds boring as shit. Can you guys fuck?"

Ed saw his brother's eyes bulge as he felt his own jaw drop. That sweet face, those innocent eyes. And talking like that!

Phil glanced quickly at Ed, then back at Ingrid.

"Sure we do. What do you think we are, queer?"

"I don't know," she said. "I've been crammed in between the two of you and neither one of you has even tried to feel me up. Something's wrong here."

"My brother and I were raised to be gentlemen," Phil said.

"I kinda like that," she said, slipping a finger inside Phil's shirt, "but you can carry that polite shit too far. Want to come up to my room? It's got a great view of the park."

"I don't know about that," Phil said. "What's it gonna cost me?"

Her smile was sweet. "Cost? Nothing. My treat. But there's a condition."

Ed didn't like the sound of this.

"Phil, uh, maybe you should
–”

"The both of you have to come," Ingrid said.

Ed swallowed and wet his dry lips.

"You want both of us?"

She looked at him and laughed. His expression must have reflected the excited turmoil within him.

"Yeah! Guys always run out of steam before I do. One ain't enough, know what I mean? So I like to have a back-up along. That too kinky for you fellows?"

Thoughts of herpes, syphilis, the clap, and AIDS ran through Ed's mind. Then she ran a hand over his crotch. From the startled look on Phil's face, Ed guessed that she was doing the same to his brother.

Phil's voice was strained. "What floor?"

Before long they were twelve stories above Central Park South. Ingrid wasted no time once they were in the room. She offered them each a toot from the small vial of coke she produced, took a good snort herself, then knelt down between them and unzipped their flies.

And as the interlude progressed, it got crazier and crazier. This was one
hungry
lady.