F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

"You broke it!" He rolled onto his belly and then back onto his side. "I'll have your ass for this, pig!" He moaned and whined and swore incoherently, all the while cradling his injured hand.

"Pig?" Jack said in his softest voice. "No such luck, friend. This is personal."

The moaning stopped. Patch peered through the darkness with his good eye, a worried look on his face. As he placed his good hand against the wall to prop himself up, Jack raised the sap for another blow.

"No fair, man!" He quickly withdrew the hand and lay down again. "No fair !"

"Fair?" Jack laughed as nastily as he could. "Were you going to be fair to the old lady you thought you had trapped here? No rules in this alley, friend. Just you and me. And I'm here to get you."

He saw Patch's eye widen; his tone echoed the fear in his face.

"Look, man. I don't know what's goin' down here, but you got the wrong guy. I only came in from Michigan last week."

"Not interested in last week, friend. Just last night… the old lady you rolled."

"Hey, I didn't roll no old lady! No way!" Patch flinched and whimpered as Jack raised the sap menacingly. "I swear to God, man! I swear!"

Jack had to admit the guy was good. Very convincing. "I'll help your memory a little: Her car broke down; she wore a heavy necklace that looked like silver and had two yellow stones in the middle; and she used her fingernails on your eye." As he saw comprehension begin to dawn in Patch's eye, he felt his anger climbing towards the danger point. "She wasn't in the hospital yesterday, but she is today. And you put her there. She may kick off any time. And if she does, it's your fault."

"No, wait, man! Listen—"

He grabbed Patch by the hair at the top of his head and rapped his skull against the brick wall. " You listen! I want the necklace. Where'd you fence it?"

"Fence it? That piece of shit? I threw it away!"

"Where?"

"I don't know!"

"Remember!" Jack rapped Patch's head against the wall again for emphasis.

He kept seeing that frail old lady fading into the hospital bed, barely able to speak because of the beating she had received at this creep's hands. A dark place was opening up inside him. Careful! Control ! He needed Patch conscious.

"Alright! Lemme think!"

Jack managed a slow, deep breath. Then another.

"Think. You've got thirty seconds."

It didn't take that long.

"I thought it was silver. But when I got it under a light I saw it wasn't."

"You want me to believe you didn't even try to get a few bucks for it?"

"I… I didn't like it."

Jack hesitated, not sure of how to take that.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't like it, man. Something about it didn't feel right. I just threw it in some bushes."

"No bushes around here."

Patch flinched. "Are too! Two blocks down!"

Jack yanked him to his feet. "Show me."

Patch was right. Between West End and Twelfth Avenues, where Fifty-eighth Street slopes down toward the Hudson River, was a small clump of privet hedge, the kind Jack had spent many a Saturday morning as a kid trimming in front of his parents' home in Jersey. With Patch lying face down on the pavement by his feet, Jack reached into the bushes. A little rummaging around among the gum wrappers, used tissues, decaying leaves, and other less easily identifiable refuse produced the necklace.

Jack looked at it as it gleamed dully in the glow from a nearby streetlight. I've done it! Goddammit, I've done it!

He hefted it in his palm. Heavy. Had to be uncomfortable to wear. Why did Kusum want it back so badly? As he held it in his hand he began to understand what Patch had said to him about it not feeling right. It didn't feel right. He found it hard to describe the sensation more clearly than that.

Crazy! he thought. This thing's nothing more than sculpted iron and a couple of topaz-like stones.

Yet he could barely resist the primitive urge to hurl the necklace across the street and run the other way.

"You gonna let me go now?" Patch said, rising to his feet. His left hand was a dusky, mottled blue now, swollen to nearly twice its normal size. He cradled it gingerly against his chest.

Jack held up the necklace. "This is what you beat up an old lady for," he said in a low voice, feeling the rage pushing toward the surface. "She's all busted up in a hospital bed now because you wanted to rip this off, and then you threw it away."

"Look, man!" Patch said, pointing his good hand at Jack. "You've got it wrong—"

Jack saw the hand gesturing in the air two feet in front of him and the rage within him suddenly exploded outward. Without warning, he swung the sap hard against Patch's right hand. As before, there was a crunch and a howl of pain.

As Patch sank to his knees, moaning, Jack walked past him back toward West End Avenue.

"Let's see you roll an old lady now, tough guy."

The darkness within him began to retreat. Without looking back, he began walking toward the more populated sections of town. The necklace tingled uncomfortably against the inside of his palm.

He wasn't far from the hospital. He broke into a run. He wanted to be rid of the necklace as soon as possible.

20

The end was near.

Kusum had sent the private duty nurse out into the hall and now stood alone at the head of the bed holding the withered hand in his. Anger had receded, as had frustration and bitterness. Not gone, simply tucked away out of sight until they would be needed. They had been moved aside to leave a void within him.

The futility of it all. All those years of life cancelled out by a moment of viciousness.

He could not dredge up a shred of hope for seeing the necklace returned before the end. No one could find it in time, not even the highly recommended Repairman Jack. If it was in her karma to die without the necklace, then Kusum would have to accept it. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing he had done everything in his power to retrieve it.

A knock at the door. The private duty nurse stuck her head in. "Mr. Bahkti?"

He repressed the urge to scream at her. It would feel so good to scream at someone.

"I told you I wished to be alone in here."

"I know. But there's a man out here. He insisted I give you this." She held out her hand. "Said you were expecting it."

Kusum stepped toward the door. He could not imagine…

Something dangled from her hand. It looked like—it wasn't possible!

He snatched the necklace from her fingers.

It's true! It's real! He found it ! Kusum wanted to sing out his joy, to dance with the startled nurse. Instead, he pushed her out the door and rushed to the bedside. The clasp was broken, so he wrapped the necklace about the throat of the nearly lifeless form there.

"It's all right now!" he whispered in their native tongue. "You're going to be all right!"

He stepped out into the hall and saw the private duty nurse.

"Where is he?"

She pointed down the hall. "At the nursing station. He's not even supposed to be on the floor but he was very insistent."

I'm sure he was . Kusum pointed toward the room. "See to her." Then he hurried down the hall.

He found Jack, dressed in ragged shorts and mismatched shirts—he had seen better dressed stall attendants at the Calcutta bazaar—leaning against the counter at the nursing station, arguing with a burly head nurse who turned to Kusum as he approached.

"Mr. Bahkti, you are allowed on the floor because of your grandmother's critical condition. But that doesn't mean you can have your friends wandering in and out at all hours of the night!"

Kusum barely looked at her. "We will be but a minute. Go on about your business. "