Repairman Jack [10]-Harbingers (2 page)

"Probably cost you twenty-five hundred, although it might go as high as five."

Timmy slumped with relief.

"Done. I can't think of anything better to spend it on."

"Got a pen?" When Timmy handed him one, Jack grabbed a napkin and readied to write. "What's she look like? What was she wearing?"

"She left the house in a blue coat over a typical Catholic girls' school outfit. You know: white blouse, blue sweater, blue-and-white plaid skirt, blue knee socks."

Jack shook his head. "Got to be a gazillion kids dressed like that in the city."

"Yeah, but they don't have Cailin's hair. It's bright red—all natural—and wild. She's always complaining about how nothing she tries will control it."

"Got a picture?"

"Sure." Timmy fumbled in a back pocket for his wallet. "You thinking of posting it around?"

Jack shook his head. He had neither the time nor the manpower for that sort of canvassing.

"Just want to see her face."

Timmy wiggled a wrinkled photo out of his wallet and passed it across.

"Taken maybe a month ago."

Jack stared at the girl in the picture. Cute kid. Round face, freckles, red and green bands on her braces, and a Santa cap squished on her wild red mop.

"You weren't kidding about the hair."

"She goes on and on about it. She'll wear you out with her constant carping about it, but…" He wiped an eye. "I'd give anything to be listening to her right now."

Jack rose and clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'll get on it. Can I keep the photo?"

"Sure. Long as you need it."

"No promises, Timmy, beyond making the calls. It's a long shot."

Timmy grabbed his hand and squeezed.

"I know, but you're all I've got right now."

Jack waved good-bye to Julio and stepped out into the cutting January wind.

Long shot
? Who was he kidding? More like hitting a dime at a thousand yards with a Saturday night special.

2

"Look," Vicky said from where she'd planted herself before the monitor. "I think she's smiling." She was endlessly excited by her impending state of sisterhood.

Jack found the scene vaguely shamanistic. Gia lay on a recliner in Dr. Eagleton's office while a technician angled the magic wand of a fetal ultrasound this way and that over the skin of her swollen, lubricated belly.

She'd popped just before the first of the year. Through careful clothing selection she'd managed to hide it during the first two trimesters, but now she looked undeniably pregnant. Her face had filled out some, but her hair was as short and as blond as ever.

Jack's eyes strayed back to the grainy image on the monitor, melting in and out of the darkness as the ultrasonic flashlight swept over the baby. A big head, a little body, a chain of vertebral beads and, in the center, an opening and closing black hole—the heart.

Jack stared, fascinated. His child—his and Gia's.

"How's the pregnancy going?" the tech said.

Her name tag read LIKISHA. A twenty-something black girl with a Halle Berry smile and hair shorter than Gia's.

Gia opened her mouth to reply but Vicky spoke first.

"She has to sprinkle a lot."

Likisha frowned. "Sprinkle?"

Vicky looked up from the monitor and smiled. "You know—number one."

He loved her big grin. She had dark brown hair—her father's color, he'd been told—woven into a long single braid, and her mother's blue eyes.

The two women in his life.

"Ah." The Halle Berry smile appeared. "Number one. Got it."

"But don't worry," Vicky added. "She doesn't have diabetes. Doctor Eagleton checked her for that."

"That's good." Likisha turned back to Gia with a bemused expression. "How about—?"

"She gets lots of backaches too," Vicky said, eyes back on the monitor. "But that's normal for the third trimester."

Likisha's voice rose an octave as she stared at her. "How old are you, girl?"

"Nine."

"Going on forty." Gia's smile betrayed her pride in her little girl.

"But how—?"

"She reads a lot. Constantly. Sometimes I have to tell her to stop reading and go out and play. She's become a junior obstetrician since she learned I was pregnant."

Jack said, "And she'll be going for her junior pediatrician badge after the baby's born."

"Hey!" Vicky cried. "She's sucking her thumb."

"He, Vicks," Jack said.

'
''She,'"
Gia said.

Jack shook his head. "We haven't established the sex yet, and that looks like a he to me." He glanced at the technician. "What do you think?"

"Can't say for sure—not with the way she keeps that umbilical cord between her legs."

"
His
legs. Okay, then. What's your best guess?"

"I'm not supposed to guess. But if I was guessing, I would guess it's a girl."

Jack feigned offense. "Sure. You women already outnumber us, but does that satisfy you? Noooo. You want me to be the only male in a house full of women."

Likisha smiled. "Only way to go."

"Do you know for sure the baby's
not
a boy?"

She shook her head. "No. But you do enough of these you develop a sixth sense. And my sense is saying 'girl-girl-girl.'"

Jack turned to Gia. "You two worked this out beforehand, didn't you."

Gia smiled that smile and winked. "Of course we did. We're sisters in the international feminine conspiracy to take back the world."

Likisha raised a fist. "Sister power!"

Vicky mimicked her. "Sister power!" Then she turned to her mother. "What's sister power?"

"Any names picked out?" Likisha said.

Jack said, "Jack."

Likisha shook her head. "Not very feminine."

"Emma," Gia said, smiling at Jack. "At least we agree on that. And Emma she will be."

Jack groaned, then turned serious.

"But whatever—he or she—the baby looks okay, right?"

Likisha nodded. "Typical thirty-two-week-old fetus with all the standard equipment in working order."

Jack let out a breath. So far—except for a near miscarriage—an uneventful pregnancy. And he prayed it would remain that way. His life otherwise had been anything but—a marching band of bad news. He didn't know if he could handle any more.

His cell phone vibrated against his thigh.

"Excuse me."

He'd made his calls for Timmy, made his reward promises, and left Julio's number. Then he'd picked up Gia and Vicks and brought them here.

He stepped out into the hall and checked the caller ID: Julio.

"What's up?"

"Hey, Meng. Louie G. call. He say he got son'thin." Julio read off a number.

"Thanks."

Jack punched it in and listened to the ring. Louie Grandinetti ran a produce supply in the west twenties. He also ran numbers. He'd give odds on anything and everything. If the meek ever inherited the earth, Louie would be making book on how long they'd keep it.

"Yeah?"

"Louie? Jack. Got something?"

"Got a runner who told some grate sleepers to keep an eye out. One of them thinks he saw something. Might be useful, might be nothing. The guy's an old bearded dude they call Rico. Told him to hang around Worth and Hudson. You were interested you'd stop by."

Down near the financial district. Didn't seem likely, but you never knew.

"Thanks. I'll check it out."

"And should this pan out…"

"Don't worry. I'll be stopping by with a token of my esteem."

"Luck."

"Yeah."

Jack felt a little tingle of anticipation. Maybe, just maybe…

He ducked back into the ultrasonography room, where he found Gia sitting up and adjusting her clothes.

"Gotta run."

"Where?"

"A little business."

Her eyes narrowed. "Really? Nothing rough and tumble, I trust."

"Nope. Missing kid. Strictly arm's length."

"I've heard that before." She reached out her hand and he clasped it. "Only two months to go, Jack. Please be careful."

"1 will. I promise. If I locate the kid I call nine-one-one and walk away."

"Promise?"

Jack held up his three middle fingers, palm out.

"Scout's honor."

She smiled. "You were never a Scout. When did you ever join anything?"

"I'm joining you as soon as Abe comes through for me."

Gia looked at him, locking her eyes with his. They held the stare, then she nodded.

"A little business could be good for you, Jack. You look a lot livelier right now than you have since…"

She didn't have to finish.

Jack kissed her. "You can get home okay?"

She laughed. "I'm pregnant, not crippled."

Jack glanced over at the monitor where Vicky still stared at the image of the baby frozen on the screen.

"Pretty soon, Vicks."

She turned to him, grinning. "Likisha's getting me a picture so I can take it to school!"

"Can I get one too?"

"Really?" Gia said. "What for? To show around Julio's?"

"Someday I'll bore people with photos of my kids, but this one's just for me. I want to be able to take it out and look at him whenever I want."

"Her."

3

Jack hopped out of the cab at Hudson and Worth and looked around. He hadn't taken time to change. Kept the jeans and beat-up bomber jacket he'd worn to the doctor's. He noticed a bearded guy on the corner. A ragged-cut square of cardboard with a crudely printed message dangled from his neck.

The guy could have been anywhere from forty to seventy. A flap-eared cap covered much of his head. A dirty, gray, Leland Sklar—class beard hid pretty much everything else. He wore what looked like a dozen layers of sweaters and coats, none of which had seen the inside of a washing machine since the Koch administration. He jiggled the change in the blue-and-white coffee container clutched in his gloved hand.

Louie had said look for a beard hanging around Worth and Hudson. This could be him.

"Cool sign," Jack said. "How's it working for you?"

"A gold mine," he said without inflection. He kept his eyes straight ahead. "Get 'em to smile and they part with some change."

"Mickey's got an 'e' in it."

Still no look. "So I been told."

"You Rico?"

Now he looked. "Yeah. You Jack?"

"Hear you saw something."

"Maybe. Heard there was a reward for finding a red-haired kid, so I been keeping my eyes open."

"And?"

"Follow me."

He led Jack around a couple of corners, then stopped across the street from an ancient five-story, brick-fronted building.

"I seen three guys carrying a red-haired girl through the cellar door over there."

The building looked deserted. The scaffolding and boarded-up windows said remodeling in progress.

Rico said, "Lucky thing I was looking that way because it happened so fast I'd 'a missed it."

This didn't sound good, even if she wasn't Timmy's niece.

"What was she wearing?"

"Couldn't tell. Had her wrapped up in a sheet but I saw her head. Had Little Orphan Annie hair."

Jack pulled out Cailin's photo.

"This her?"

"Never saw her face, but the hair's pretty much the same."

"When did all this go down?"

"Soon as it started gettin' dark."

"I mean what time?"