8

“He’s late, isn’t he, Mom?”

Gia DiLauro kept both hands on her daughter’s shoulders as they stood at the window in the front parlor and watched the street. Vicky was fairly trembling with excitement.

“Not quite. Almost, but not quite.”

“I hope he doesn’t forget.”

“He won’t. I’m sure he won’t.” Although I wish he would.

Two months since she had walked out on Jack. She was adjusting. Sometimes she could go through a whole day without thinking about him. She had picked up where she had left off. There was even someone new creeping into her life.

Why couldn’t the past ever stay out of sight where it belonged? Take her ex-husband, for instance. After their divorce she had wanted to cut all ties with the Westphalen family, even going so far as to change her name back to the one she had been born with. But Richard’s aunts had made that impossible. They adored Vicky and used every imaginable pretext to lure Gia and her daughter over to Sutton Square. Gia had resisted at first, but their genuine affection for Vicky, their insistent pleas, and the fact that they had no illusions about their nephew—”a bounder and a cad!” as Nellie was wont to describe him after her third glass of sherry—finally changed her mind. Number Eight Sutton Square had become a second home of sorts. The aunts had even gone so far as to have a swing set and a wooden playhouse installed in the tiny backyard just for Vicky.

So when Nellie had called in a panic after Grace had been discovered missing on Tuesday morning, Gia had come right over. And had been here ever since.

Grace Westphalen. Such a sweet old lady. Gia couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to harm her, and no ransom demand had been made. So where was she? Gia was frightened and mystified by the disappearance and she ached for Nellie, whom she knew was suffering terribly behind her stoical front. It had only been out of love for Nellie and her deep concern for Grace that she had agreed to call Jack this morning. Not that Jack would be much help. From what she had learned of him, she could safely say that this was not his sort of job. But Nellie was desperate and it was the least Gia could do to ease her mind.

Gia told herself she was standing here at the window to keep Vicky company—the poor child had been watching for an hour already—yet there was an undeniable sense of anticipation rising inside her. It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love.

What was it, then?

Probably just a residue of feeling, like a smear on a window that hadn’t been properly wiped after spring cleaning. What else could she expect? It had only been two months since the break-up and her feelings for Jack until then had been intense, as if compensating for all that had been missing from her aborted marriage. Jack is the one, she had told herself. The forever one. She didn’t want to think about that awful afternoon. She had held the memory off all day, but now, with Jack due any minute, it all rushed back at her…

She was cleaning his apartment. A friendly gesture. He refused to hire a cleaning lady and usually did it himself. But to Gia’s mind, Jack’s household methods left much to be desired, so she decided to surprise him by giving the place a thorough going-over. She wanted to do something for him. He was always doing little things for her, yet he was so self-contained that she found it difficult to reciprocate. So she “borrowed” an extra key to his apartment and sneaked in after lunch one day when she knew he was out.

She knew Jack as a gentle eccentric who worked at odd intervals and odd hours as a security consultant—whatever that was—and lived in a three-room apartment stuffed with such an odd assortment of junk and hideous old furniture that she had attacks of vertigo the first few times she visited him. He was crazy about movies—old movies, new movies, good movies, awful movies. He was the only man she had ever known who did not have a Master or Visa card, and had such an aversion to signing his name that he didn’t even have a checking account. He paid cash for everything.

The cleaning chores went smoothly until she found the loose panel at the rear of the base of the old oak secretary. She had been polishing the secretary with lemon oil to bring up the grain and make the wood glow. Jack loved oak and she was learning to love it, too—it had such character. The panel swung out as she was storing away some of his latest “neat stuff”—an original red and green Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine shake-up mug and an official Tom Corbett Space Cadet badge.

Something gleamed in the darkness behind the panel. Curious, she reached in and touched cool, oiled metal. She pulled the object out and started in surprise at its weight and malignant blue color. A pistol.

Well, lots of people in the city had guns. For protection. Nothing unusual about that.

She glanced back into the opening. There were other gleaming things within. She began to pull them out. She fought the sick feeling that intensified in the pit of her stomach as each gun was delivered from the hiding place, telling herself that Jack was probably just a collector. After all, no two of the dozen or so guns were alike. But what about the rest of the contents: the boxes of bullets, the daggers, brass knuckles and other deadly-looking things she had never seen before? Among the weapons were three passports, an equal number of driver’s licenses, and sundry other forms of identification, all with different names.

Her insides knotted as she sat and stared at the collection. She tried to tell herself they were things he needed for his work as a security consultant, but deep inside she knew that much of what lay before her was illegal. Even if he had permits for all the guns, there was no way the passports and licenses could be legal.

Gia was still sitting there when he came back in from one of his mysterious errands. A guilty look ran over his face when he saw what she had found.

“Who are you?” she said, leaning away as he knelt beside her.

“I’m Jack. You know me.”

“Do I? I’m not even sure your name’s Jack anymore.” She could feel the terror growing within her. Her voice rose an octave. “Who are you and what do you do with all this?”

He gave her some garbled story about being a repairman of sorts who “fixes things.” For a fee he found stolen property or helped people get even when the police and the courts and all the various proper channels for redress have failed them.

“But all these guns and knives and things… they’re for hurting people!”

He nodded. “Sometimes it comes down to that.”

She had visions of him shooting someone, stabbing him, clubbing him to death. If someone else had told her this about the man she loved, she would have laughed and walked away. But the weapons lay in front of her. And Jack was telling her himself!

“Then you’re nothing but a hired thug!”

He reddened. “I work on my own terms—exclusively. And I don’t do anything to anybody that they haven’t already done to someone else. I was going to tell you when I thought—”

“But you hurt people!”

“Sometimes.”

This was becoming a nightmare! “What kind of thing is that to spend your life doing?”

“It’s what I do. More than that, it’s what I am.”

“Do you enjoy it when you hurt people?”

He looked away. And that was answer enough. It was like one of his knives thrust into her heart.

“Are the police after you?”

“No,” he said with a certain amount of pride. “They don’t even know I exist. Neither does the State of New York nor the IRS nor the entire U.S. government.”

Gia rose to her feet and hugged herself. She suddenly felt cold. She didn’t want to ask this question, but she had to. “What about killing? Have you ever killed someone?”

“Gia…” He rose and stepped toward her, but she backed away.

“Answer me, Jack! Have you ever killed someone?”

“It’s happened. But that doesn’t mean I make my living at it.”

She thought she was going to be sick. The man she loved was a murderer! “But you’ve killed!” “Only when there was no other way. Only when I had to.”

“You mean, only when they were going to kill you? Kill or be killed?” Please say yes. Please! He looked away again. “Sort of.” The world seemed to come apart at the seams. With hysteria clutching at her, Gia began running. She ran for the door, ran down the stairs, ran for a cab that took her home, where she huddled in a corner of her apartment listening to the phone ring and ring and ring. She took it off the hook when Vicky came home from school and had barely spoken to Jack since.

“Come away from the window now. I’ll tell you when he arrives.”

“No, Mommy! I want to see him!”

“All right, but when he gets here, I don’t want you running around and making a fuss. Just say hello to him nice and politely, then go out back to the playhouse. Understand?”

“Is that him?” Vicky started bouncing up and down on her toes. “Is that him?”

Gia looked, then laughed and pulled on her daughter’s pigtails. “Not even close.”

Gia walked away from the window, then came back, resigned to standing and watching behind Vicky. Jack appeared to occupy a blind spot in Vicky’s unusually incisive assessment of people. But then, Jack had fooled Gia, too.

Jack fooled everyone, it seemed.