“Right now,” Tom said, “I don’t feel like eating at all. Hard to be hungry when there’s someone out to get you. If I knew who or why, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d still be scared, but…”
“Maybe I can help there,” Jack said softly.
“You? How?”
The phone rang. It was the front gate, wanting to know if he was expecting any packages.
“Not that I know of. Wait.” He turned to Jack. “Are you expecting a delivery of some sort?”
“Yeah!” He grinned. “It’s here already? Great. Good old Abe.”
Tom told the gate to send the truck through, then turned back to Jack.
“You were saying something…?”
Jack cleared his throat. “I checked out the medical records on Borger, Leo, and Neusner last night and—”
“How on earth did you do that?”
“I got in through one of the clinic’s windows.”
“What?”
“No biggee. I popped the lock on one and crawled through. Don’t worry. You’d have to look pretty close to the underside of the sash to even suspect someone was there.”
Tom couldn’t believe this. His own son breaking and entering—and the clinic of all places.
“Dear God, why?”
“Stay calm. I wanted to see if any of them had had physicals recently—the answer turned out to be yes to all three, by the way—and to see how they did.”
“What if it had an alarm, or what if you were caught on camera? You could go to jail for something like that!”
“Only if I got caught, which I didn’t. No alarm, no surveillance cameras. I checked that out first. But I found what I was looking for: Each one of them passed their physical with flying colors.”
“A lot of good it did them. They’re all dead.”
“I think they diedbecause they passed with flying colors.”
“Oh, you’re not going back to that Gateways conspiracy thing you were talking about yesterday, are you?”
“Follow the money, Dad. Whenever you wonder if something funny might be going on, follow the money. And the money leads to Gateways.”
Had he gone completely paranoid?
“Jack—”
“Think about it: It’s only younger, healthy widows and widowers being attacked—the ones who stand the best chance for holding on to their houses the longest. Coincidence?”
“You’re talking about a billion-dollar corporation, Jack. This is penny-ante stuff. Imagine the impact of four extra resales in a year on a nine-digit bottom line. Meaningless!”
“It may be meaningless globally, but what about locally? What if someone in Gateways South needs to boost his bottom line and this is a way—just one of a number of ways, say—to do it?”
Tom didn’t know what to say. Breaking into offices, digging up “clues”…he had to admire Jack’s initiative, and was touched that he’d go to all that trouble for him, but…Jack seemed to think he was Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. And he wasn’t. He was an appliance repairman, and he was going to get in over his head and in deep trouble if he kept this up.
“I suppose you can make a circumstantial case for it, but it just doesn’t add up. You’re implying that Ramsey Weldon or someone at his level of management went out and hired those men to smash up my car and then have me eaten by an alligator. It’s preposterous.”
Jack scratched his head. “I know it seems that way, but so far he and Gateways South are the only ones I can see benefiting from your passing. I’ll have to go with Weldon for the time being.”
Tom felt a surge of acid in his stomach. “‘Go with’? What does that mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said with a smile that did nothing to relieve Tom’s anxiety. “Have a little tête-à-tête or something like that.”
“Don’t. Please, don’t. You’re just going to get yourself in trouble.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be discreet. The very soul of discretion.”
Somehow Tom doubted that. But before he could say anything else, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Jack said.
A delivery man stood at the door holding a cardboard carton.
“I’ve got four packages for ‘Jack.’”
“That’s me.” Jack took the box and placed it on the floor. “I’ll help you with the others.”
As Jack followed the man outside to his truck, Tom stepped over and looked at the return address:Bammo Toy Co.
Toys?
He noticed too that the shipping label was addressed to “Jack” at this address. No last name, just “Jack.” Odd.
When all four cartons were inside the door, Jack tipped the driver, then lifted one of the boxes.
“I’m going to put these in the spare bedroom, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
As Jack headed for the bedroom, Tom lifted one of the packages to help. He hefted it…heavier than he’d expected.
Jack had already relocated the first box and almost ran into Tom in the bedroom doorway. He took the package from him—rather quickly, Tom thought.
“Hey, no, Dad. Thanks, but that’s okay. I don’t want you hurting your back.”
“Don’t be silly. They’re not that heavy.”
He returned to the living room and picked up another package. Jack was right behind him, hovering like a mother hen.
“Dad, really—”
Tom ignored him and carried the carton into the bedroom.
When all four were piled against the wall, he said, “It says they’re from a toy company. What kind of toys are we talking about? Toy robots? I mean, they’re heavy enough.”
“Just toys.” Jack seemed tense.
“Do you mind showing me one?”
A heartbeat’s hesitation, then Jack said, “I guess not. But we’ll need a knife to cut the tape.”
“I’ll get one.”
Tom found an old serrated steak knife in the kitchen drawer, but by the time he’d returned, Jack had the smallest box already open.
He held up a folder with a curved blade. “I forgot I had one in my pocket.”
Inside, Tom saw an odd-looking stuffed toy, some unidentifiable little animal a little bigger than a football. “What’s that?”
“It’s a Pokemon. This one’s Pikachu. They were all the rage with kids a few years ago.”
“But why are you buying them?”
“I’ll probably wind up giving them to a local kids’ charity.”
Tom shook his head. What an odd man his son had turned out to be.
4
Jack found Carl waiting on the street outside his trailer park in knee-high green rubber boots; a short wooden paddle protruded from his right sleeve.
“Where’s the boat?” Jack said as Carl slid into the passenger seat.
“It’s waitin. A guy I know’s lettin me borrow it.” He stuck out his hand. “My money?”
Jack handed him an envelope. “As promised.”
He’d come down with about a thousand in cash. His deal with Carl was going to leave him short, so he’d stopped at an ATM for an advance on the John L. Tyleski Visa card. Another envelope with the balance of the fee was tucked into a back pocket.
Carl checked the contents. Didn’t take long to count five bills. The reverent way he touched them made Jack wonder if Carl had ever seen that much money at once.
“I hope I ain’t makin a big mistake,” he said, still staring into the envelope.
“Don’t worry. A few hours from now you’ll be sitting in front of your TV with another one of those in your pocket.”
He sighed and folded the envelope. “Okay. Let’s go.”
As they pulled away, Jack noticed high chain-link fencing disappearing into the foliage; a rusted length of chain with a beat-upNO TRESPASSING sign spanned a gap that looked like an entrance.
“That the quarry I’ve heard about?” Jack said.
Carl nodded. “Some company carved a mess of limestone blocks outta there, then went outta business.”
“What’s it like down there?”
Carl shrugged. “Just a big hole in the ground. Used to have a big pool of water in its bottom, but not this year.”
“Much security?”
“None I ever seen. You can’t steal a hole in the ground. Kids sneak in there at night to drink, smoke dope, and screw. Never seen anyone kick em out. Why you so interested?”