Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross (53 page)

"I hear nothing hurts worse than being gut shot," the guy said in a cold, dead voice. "I hope I heard right."

Richie watched through eyes blurred with pain and tears as the guy turned back to the desk and began shoving all the photos into an envelope. The negatives as well.

The room got gray around the edges and he thought he was going to pass out—if only he would!—but then things came back into focus.

Richie began to sob from an excruciating spasm, the noise snuffling in and out through his nose. Felt like someone had a pitchfork in his gut and was twisting, twisting…

And now the guy was stuffing everything into his shoulder bag.

Richie wailed into the gag. He wasn't going to leave him like this! He couldn't!

Then the guy picked up the cushion and the gun again and stepped up in front of Richie.

"You don't deserve this," he said in that dead voice as he placed the cushion over Richie's chest.

What? No!
NO
!

17

After putting two Hydra-Shoks into Fatso's chest, Jack stepped back and watched him buck and spasm, then go still. His wide, bulging eyes lost focus and his lids dropped to half mast.

The only regret he felt was at not being able to leave Cordova alive. He'd heard it sometimes took three days to die of a gut shot. Three days of constant agony. Barely a tenth of what he deserved.

But sooner or later, when Cordova didn't show up at his office tomorrow morning, and didn't answer his home phone, his receptionist would call someone to check on him. And that might give the fat man a chance of surviving.

No survival for Cordova. Jack not only wanted him dead, he
needed
him dead.

He stared at the fat, bloody corpse a moment longer. Maggie… she hadn't died because of some mistake on Jack's part, she'd died because of her own good heart. Despite Jack's warning, she must have felt a duty to let Metcalf know that he didn't have to pay any more blackmail money. And Met-calf, not knowing the level of scum he was dealing with, had opened his yap.

All of this… so unnecessary… so goddamn unnecessary.

Jack reholstered the Beretta, then retrieved two of the three ejected shell casings from the floor. He kicked the third into the darkroom. He hefted his shoulder bag and did one more sweep of the area. All clean. Nothing to identify him.

All right.

He loped downstairs and headed for his car. On the way home he'd call 911 and report hearing what sounded like gunshots from Cordova's house.

MONDAY

1

Jack paused outside the front entrance of the Dormentalist temple.

He'd stopped home and dropped off all the photos he'd taken from Cordova's house. Then he'd changed into the third-hand clothing store rejects he'd picked up yesterday after his visit to Roselli. He'd used rubber cement to attach scruffy black hair to his face, then pulled a knit watch cap over his head down to the tops of his ears.

He wouldn't fool anyone who knew Johnny Roselli; he doubted even a stranger would be fooled by the beard if he got close enough.

But he wasn't planning on letting anyone that close.

His main concern was whether Roselli had skipped his camping trip and returned to the temple since Jack had left him. If so, his entry card wouldn't have worked and he'd have been issued a new one. Using his old card now could raise an alarm and wreck Jack's plans.

His other concern was Brady. Jack had no idea how long he usually carried on with his hired boys, or if he came home when he was through. The later the better, as far as Jack was concerned. Best case would be if he slept over till morning, which would be the wise thing to do after a night of Scotch and ganja.

But it was all guesswork at this point. He hated it when a fix depended on something he couldn't control, and could be sent off track by someone's whim.

Only one way to find out…

Jack took a breath and opened the door. As he stepped into the unmanned security atrium, he bore right, away from the metal detector and toward the members-only turnstile. The deep-shadowed lobby was deserted. A few bulbs in sconces lit the periphery and the elevator area where one set of doors stood open, waiting. A dozen feet beyond the turnstile a lone burgundy-uniformed TP sat in a pool of light behind his marble kiosk.

Jack gave the guard a friendly wave as he made a show of fishing the card from a pocket. The TP gave a wary, noncommittal nod, watching him.

Jack kept the EC in his left hand, leaving the right free to go for the pistol nestled in the small of his back. After positioning it at the end of the slot, he trained his eyes on the guard and swiped the card through.

He waited as the TP checked the computer. Hopefully a photo of Johnny Roselli was popping onto the screen with the message that he was a lapser—thus explaining his scruffy attire. If the guard's expression changed or he reached for the phone, Jack was out of here. He did not want to be placed in a situation where he'd have to use his weapon.

But the TP's expression didn't change. He looked up from the screen and gave Jack a perfunctory smile and a wave. The turnstile's mechanism clicked, allowing Jack to push through.

Jack released the breath he'd been holding as he waved back and headed straight for the elevators. He kept his head down as he stepped into the open car. Before pressing 21 with a knuckle, he glanced back at the guard and saw him reading from a tabloid newspaper. Probably not
The Light
.

Okay, he thought as the doors pincered closed, I'm in.

Now came the tough part.

He looked at the unlit 22 button and wished he could make the elevator take him there without leaving a record of the trip in the computers. That was something he needed to avoid at all cost.

Still… it would be so much easier than what he had planned.

Jack figured he was pretty much in control from here on in. Success or failure depended on him, not chance or circumstance. Even so, he knew he had a hairy hour or so ahead of him.

2

Jensen sat in his third-floor office gazing over Tony Margiotta's shoulder. The only light in the room came from the computer screen. These things were a pain in the ass but in the right hands, they were amazing. Margiotta had been doing an online search for anything—
anything
—about John Robertson. Even though the guy had been dead two years and retired for years before that, this Google thing had come up with almost a thousand hits. But the hits, a thousand or not, weren't proving very useful.

"This is all shit," Margiotta said.

"Maybe, but keep at it. I want every one of them looked into.

"But what am I looking for?"

Margiotta hadn't been told any more than he needed to know. He already knew that Jason Amurri had been an impostor, and Jensen had told him that an outside investigation had linked him to Robertson. Any connection or reference to the missing Jamie Grant had been left out of the story.

"Find me something, anything that connects Robertson to New York City—and I don't mean just Manhattan—or to our Church or to any other church or organization that might have it in for us."

Margiotta looked up at him with an anguished expression. "This could take me all night."

Poor baby, Jensen wanted to say, but resisted. "It's already taken half the night. Consider yourself on the homestretch. Besides, you're getting time and a half."

"Yeah, but I've got a wife and a kid—"

"Who'll be glad for the bigger paycheck. Now keep at it."

Margiotta grumbled something unintelligible as he returned to the keyboard.

Jensen gave him a comradely clap on the shoulder as he rose.

"Good man. I'm going to take a stroll around to stretch my legs, maybe get a coffee. You want one?"

Margiotta looked surprised at the offer. And well he should be. Jensen didn't play gopher for anyone. But he wanted Margiotta to stay alert as he followed those hits.

He stepped out into the hallway and began making the rounds.

3

The elevator stopped on the twenty-first floor. As the doors slid open, Jack pressed the lobby button and stepped out of the car—just barely. He stopped as close to the doors as he could without trapping the back of his shirt when they closed.

On his previous tour of the temple he'd noticed stationary visual surveillance cameras in the elevator area of every floor, high in the corners above the doors, facing out. The TPs—if they were of a mind to do so—could watch you in the elevator car and then catch you again when you stepped out onto the floor. The meditation floor was no different.

But Jack had noticed that the fixed angle needed to capture the longest view of the hallway inevitably left a blind spot just outside the elevator doors.

Right where Jack was standing.

He looked longingly at the EXIT sign over the door to the stairwell on his right. That way would be so much simpler but the security cameras covered the approach and he was sure opening the door would be flagged in the security computer.

He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then fished out the big screwdriver and heavy-duty coat hanger hook he'd brought along. He'd freed the hook from its wooden hanger, then tied and glued a length of sturdy twine to its straight end. He hoped he'd done it right. He hadn't had time to call on Milkdud Swigart for a refresher course on how to hack a building.

Back in December he and Milkdud had hacked a Midtown building through the elevator shaft so that Jack could eavesdrop on a conversation in one of the offices. Jack hadn't attempted anything like that since. This would be his first solo hack.

He worked the hook through the space between the top of the elevator door and the lintel. Keeping a grip on the string, he let the hook drop on the far side of the door.

Now the hard part: catching the lever that would open the door.

He fished the hook around, twisting the twine this way and that, then pulling up. If he found no resistance, he went through the process again.

He began to sweat with frustration and maybe a little anxiety. Jack remembered Milkdud saying that old buildings with old elevators had the easiest doors to open. Well, this former hotel was an old building, so why—?

The twine resisted his pull—the hook had caught something.

He sent up a prayer to the goddess of building hackers: Please, let this be the lever.

He tugged and saw the doors move—just a fraction of an inch, but enough to tell him he was in the right place. Pulled a little harder and the doors spread farther, allowing enough space for Jack to slip the screwdriver through. He let go of the string and used the screwdriver to lever the doors open until he had room for his fingers in the gap. He slipped them through, then forced the doors apart. Once past a certain point, they opened the rest of the way on their own.

The open elevator shaft yawned before him. Thick cables ran up and down the center of the shaft, their coating of grease reflecting the glow from the caged incandescent bulb set above the doors.

Jack poked his head into the shaft and looked down. Bulbs lit the way into the dimness below. He couldn't see his elevator car, but the other, marked with a "2" on its roof, waited midshaft about ten floors down.

He looked to his right and found what he wanted. Between the two sets of doors a row of rusty metal rungs had been set into the wall. They ran the length of the shaft.

He pocketed the screwdriver, the hook, and the twine. He grabbed a rung, placed the ridged rubber sole of his work boot on another, lower rung, and swung out into the shaft. He brushed against a spring switch along the way and was startled by the
ding
! of the elevator bell.

So that's what makes it ring.

He would have expected a more sophisticated system, but then again, these elevators were antiques.

He grabbed the lever and pushed down to close the doors, then began the short climb to the top floor.

Brady's floor.

No problem opening the elevator doors from this side: A simple push on the lever admitted him to floor twenty-two.

The only question was whether or not he was alone up here. The lights were on, but that didn't mean much. He listened. Not a sound.

Jack closed the doors but left the screwdriver between them. He stepped through the deserted receptionist area and crossed the office, passing Brady's huge desk as he made his way toward the living quarters.

He tried the door—locked. He knocked, a series of triplets, waited, then repeated. No response. He pulled out his cell and dialed the "personal" number Brady had given him last week. A phone began to ring on the far side of the door. On the fifth ring a voice—not Brady's—told him to leave a message. Jack was reasonably sure Brady would have answered a call at this hour.

So… nobody home. But that could change any minute.

Jack turned and hurried to Brady's desk.