F. Paul Wilson: Hardbingers

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 V 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 Fd'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?"

"Ain't got no watch, mister."

Jack did. He checked it: 5:30. Full dark now. Sunset came between four-thirty and five these days, but the streets started to murk up before that. She could have been in there for an hour or more.

"Struggling?"

"Nope. Looked asleep. Or dead maybe."

Cailin or not, he'd have to go take a look. As he stepped toward the curb Rico grabbed his arm.

"Don't I get my money?"

"If it's the right girl, yeah."

"How's about a little advance? I'm a tad short."

Jack nodded toward the sign. "I thought that was a gold mine."

"Traffic's been light. C'mon, man."

Jack fished out a ten and gave it to him. Rico checked it, then grinned, showing both his mustard-colored teeth.

"Bless you, sir! I'm gonna use this to buy me a nice bowl of hot chili!"

Jack had to smile as he crossed the street.

Right.

He approached the rusty, wrought-iron railing that guarded the stone steps to the cellar. He leaned over for a look. Light filtered around the edges of the chipped and warped door at the bottom. But no window.

He stepped back and looked around. To his right he saw an alley just wide enough for a garbage can. In fact, two brimming cans stood back to back at the building line. Behind them, faint yellow light oozed from a small, street-level window. The alley dead-ended at a high brick wall.

Jack placed a hand against each of the sidewalls and levered himself over the garbage cans, then knelt by the window. He wiped off the layer of grime and peered through. Took him a few seconds to orient himself, to make sense out of what he was seeing.

"Shit."

A naked red-haired, teenage girl was strapped to a long table. Jack didn't need to pull out the photo again. He recognized her. Cailin wasn't moving. Her eyes were closed. Could have been dead, but the duct tape over her mouth said otherwise. Didn't need to gag a corpse. She looked unharmed.

Three lean, shaggy-haired men dressed in jeans and sweatshirts hovered around her. Two stood watching as the third drew on her skin. Looked like he was using a black Sharpie to trace weird free-form outlines all over her body. The pattern reminded Jack of Maori tattoos, but much more extensive.

On the wall behind them someone had painted an inverted pentacle in a circle.

Jack nudged the window and felt it move. Slowly, carefully, he eased it inward but it wouldn't pass the inch mark.

"Come on, Bob," said one of the watchers. "What's taking so long?"

"Yeah," said the other. "Get it fucking done."

"Get off my back!" Bob said. "This has got to be done rightl I do a half-assed job, it's all for nothing."

"Nothing?" The first one nudged the second and grinned as he stared at Cailin's naked body. "Oh, 1 wouldn't say that."

The second guy thought that was real funny.

Someone needed to bring this party to a screeching halt. The window was too small to fit through, but he could pull his Glock and break the glass. Or he could go around front and kick in the door.

He'd promised Gia to stay arm's length and do the 911 thing, but he couldn't count on the cops getting here in time. Had to go in.

He'd reached the garbage cans and was just about to hop over them when a big black Chevy Suburban chirped to a halt at the curb before the building. Jack ducked as three men dressed in black fedoras, black suits, black ties, and white shirts stepped out. Despite the darkness, all wore sunglasses. They were either trying to look like the Blues Brothers or the mythical Men in Black from UFO lore.

Or like the two similar-looking characters Jack had dealt with last spring.

The three made a disparate group. One was huge, one short and skinny, one somewhere between.

They looked like they knew where they were going as they crossed the sidewalk and hurried down the cellar stairs. When Jack heard them kick in the door, he scrambled back to the window.