F. Paul Wilson - Hosts

"Is there any way you can come back later? It's not my place and—"

"Well, it's late and if I don't do it today it could be another week. We've got trunk line problems all over the city."

No incoming calls for a week? Kate unlatched the door and handed back the badge.

"Okay. I guess you'd better check it out."

"Only take a couple of minutes," he said, stepping past her and looking around the front area.

Immediately Kate wished she hadn't let him in. She hadn't sensed it when he was in the hall, but now, enclosed in the same room with him, she found him frightening. He seemed so tense and he radiated… something. She couldn't put her finger on what it was but it seemed malevolent, as if his overstuffed coveralls were bursting with rage instead of flesh. And those narrow eyes, darting everywhere, as if searching…

But when he spoke he was all business. "How many phones you got, ma'am?"

"Three," she told him. She wanted to run out into the hall but kept her cool. "One in the kitchen and two more in the bedrooms."

He placed his toolbox on the kitchen counter and she noticed for the first time that he wore an oversized work glove on his left hand—only his left.

"Okay. I'll work through this one; but I'll need you on one of the others."

"Any particular one?"

He shrugged. "Your choice."

He barely looked her way, didn't seem at all interested in her. Kate began to relax. This strange business with Jeanette seemed to have shifted her imagination into high gear.

After an instant's hesitation she started for the bedroom. "Okay. What do I do?"

"Just pick it up and keep talking. Don't dial—just talk. Count from one to a hundred if you want. Anything."

He waved his left hand as he spoke and Kate saw that some of the fingers of the glove looked empty and others looked stretched to the limit.

Wondering if his deformity was congenital or accidental, Kate entered the bedroom; she picked up the receiver and started counting.

She heard the kitchen phone come off the hook. "That's good," the serviceman told her. "Keep it up. Don't stop."

Through her receiver she listened to him whistling softly as he rummaged through his toolbox. She heard tape rip and wondered what he was doing, but the phone cord didn't stretch far enough to reach the door. She looked around for her pocketbook and saw it on the dresser. At least she knew he wasn't pilfering her wallet.

After three minutes or so she heard a series of beeps through the receiver, then the man's voice.

"Okay, ma'am. All set."

Kate hung up and returned to the front room to find the man snapping the clasps on his toolbox.

"That's it?"

He nodded. "Yours was okay. Have a nice day."

"You too. Thanks."

As she closed the door behind him she wondered at her earlier apprehensions. Just now he'd seemed a different man, calm and serene, as if he'd been relieved of a great burden. Almost… happy.

How silly she'd been.

16

Joe opened the rear door of the car, dumped his toolbox on the floor, then dropped into the front passenger seat.

"Done!"

Stan looked at him. "Fine. And now that it's done, you mind telling me just what it is that's done?"

Half an hour ago Joe had arrived in this stolen Taurus and parked it downstream from the apartment building. He'd looked like a new man—showered, shaved, and dressed like a serviceman. He'd been coy, refusing to say what he was up to until he'd done it.

"Left a little gift for our guy. I was afraid I wasn't going to get in, what with that obsolete Bell Atlantic ID from the old days, but she bought it."

"Lucky. How big a gift?"

Joe grinned. "A brick."

"A whole brick?"

"Damn right."

Stan closed his eyes. Before the Feds had closed in they'd managed to salvage part of their stash of army-issue C-4—foot-long bricks, two inches wide and an inch thick, neatly wrapped in olive-drab cellophane. Lovely stuff. Stable enough to play catch with, still soft and moldable at minus-seventy degrees, no extrudation even at one-hundred-seventy.

In Nam he'd come up with other uses for it beyond explosions. Starting fires, for instance. Cut an inch-thick slice off a block, put a match to it, and instant fire. Stank but it burned hot enough to ignite wet wood. One thing you had to remember, though, was if you wanted to put out burning C-4, you drowned it. You did not—repeat, not —stomp on it. He once saw a guy lose the front end of his foot trying that. Stan even learned the meaning of detonation velocity, and that C-4's was a devastating 8,100 meters per second.

And Joe had set a whole brick of it in that apartment. Shit.

He pressed the buttons that raised the windows and swiveled toward his brother.

"Joe… an old building like that… you just might bring the whole thing down."

A beautiful building… a shame to mess it up.

"Yeah, maybe. But probably not."

"At the very least it'll take out most of the third floor and both apartments above and below his, and blow off the whole front of the building."

Joe stared at him. "And your point is…?"

"He hasn't come back yet. He might not come back before it blows. It might not even be his place."

"Oh, it's his all right. His girlfriend told me it wasn't her place, so that means it's his."

"All right, let's say it is his place. What if he's out all night? If the place blows without him there, then we've tipped our hand. He'll know—"

"He'll know that his girlfriend is dead and that he's next." Joe's voice dipped to a cold rumble. "Let him stew awhile, let him suffer a little, let him be scared, wonderin' when the next shoe's gonna drop. I almost hope he doesn't come home in time. I want to be in the crowd and see his face when he finds what's left of his building."

"It's not our style, Joe. We always placed just the right amount in just the right place to get the job done with a minimum of collateral damage. We were surgeons , Joe."

"Yeah, well, this is a special case. This will send a message that if you mess with the Kozlowskis you die. And not only do you die, but your family and friends and neighbors die. You mess with the K brothers you invite a whole shitload of death and destruction. So think twice. Think three times. Better yet, don't think about it at all."

Stan sighed. No talking to Joe on this.

He glanced in the rearview mirror where he had the apartment house entrance framed. The car seemed far enough away to be safe from the bigger chunks of debris. And it would be downstream from the explosion, which meant they'd be able to cruise away immediately after the blast.

He watched a black Crown Victoria pull into a space directly in front of the doorway. He had to smile. Here was a guy probably thanking his lucky stars for finding such a primo parking spot. He wouldn't be thanking anyone if his car was still there when Joe's bomb blew.

"Joe!" Stan whispered when the driver stepped out of the car. "Take a look!"

Joe did a casual one-eighty in his seat, then jerked up straight when he recognized the man on the sidewalk.

"Yes!" He started punching Stan on the shoulder. "Yes-yes-yes-yes!"

"When does this go down?"

"Soon," Joe said softly. "But not soon enough."

17

"You let him inV Jack said, not quite believing this.

Kate shrugged. "He had a Bell Atlantic ID, with his picture and everything. What was I supposed to do?"

Jack didn't want to go into how easy it was to fabricate photo ID. Someday he'd show Kate his extensive personal collection. But maybe it was all right. Maybe the guy had really been from the phone company and Jack was making more out of this than he should. But the fact remained that Terrence Holdstock seemed to know too much about what went on in this apartment. Maybe one of the bugs had gone bad and he'd sent someone to replace it.