F. Paul Wilson - All the Rage

When he turned on the light, a panicked horde of roaches scuttled for the corners and disappeared.

"Excuse the little guests, man. They weren't invited, but lemme tell you, they're a fact of life when you live under a restaurant."

Manfred the rottweiler had followed Jack and his master to the rear room but didn't enter. Jack immediately knew why. The place smelled like a high school chemistry lab with the drama club doing the experiments—a mixture of paint thinner and dirty cat litter. Trays of white paste sat on benches with fans blowing over them. An exhaust fan in the corner ran into a shiny new galvanized duct that ran up through the ceiling, but the room still stank.

"Just out of curiosity," Jack said, "what do you get for an ounce of the stuff you make?"

"Ounce? Hey, I sell it by the gram, man. My stuff is pure, and my tweakers know it's a long high." He gave Jack a sidelong look. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well, you're practically a legend. You've got to be able to afford better digs than this."

"Oh, I can, man, and someday I will. But creature comforts aren't the important thing now. I'm an artist, you see, and I need to stay close to my work."

Everybody's an artist these days, Jack thought.

"And one of the things about my art is that the, um, materials I use, especially the solvents, have got telltale odors that can bring the heat down on you PDQ. So what I've done is hooked into the hood over the stove in the restaurant upstairs. My fumes mix with their cooking odors and they all come out together on the roof. Pretty cool, huh."

"Very," Jack said. His eyes were burning from the fumes and he wanted to get out of here. "What about the Berzerk?"

"Right over here," he said and started fumbling through a pile of glassine envelopes. "I only deal to finance my art, you know, and lemme tell you, I'm working on something that'll make Berzerk last week's news. I call it Ice-Nine. One hit will give a smooth, utterly bodacious high that'll last a week. It's my Holy Grail. When I reach it, I'll be fulfilled. That's when I'll retire, but not a minute before. Ice-Nine or bust, man."

Right on, Sir Gawain.

"Here 'tis," Tom Terrific said, holding up a small clear envelope with a layer of yellow powder in its lower corner. "It's some sort of blue in its active state—"

"Just what kind of blue is 'some sort'?" Jack said.

"You know," he said with a wavering, uncertain smile, "I can't really say. Ain't that weird. I've been working with the stuff for the past coupla weeks, seen it every day, but I can't quite remember its color. But I know it wasn't yellow. Yellow means it's gone inert." He handed the envelope to Jack. "Here. Take it."

"All of it?"

"Sure. I was gonna throw it out anyway."

"How about some of the active form, just for comparison."

Tom Terrific's ponytail whipped back and forth as he shook his head. "Don't have any. There's always a lag in supply after the old stuff goes inert. The new stuff won't show up for another day or so."

"Strange way to do business," Jack said.

"Tell me about it. Was me, I'd have the new stuff out Day One after the old stuff crashed." He shrugged. "But who knows? Maybe they've got a good reason."

Jack stuffed the envelope into his pocket and turned to go.

"Wait," Tom Terrific said, holding up another envelope, this one half-filled with fine clear crystals. "Here's my latest—Ice-Seven. Want to try a taste?"

"No, thanks," Jack said, moving toward the door.

"On the house. You'll like it. Lasts about three days. Takes tired old reality and makes it much more interesting."

Jack shook his head. "For the last year or so, Tom, reality's been just about as interesting as I can stand."

10

Gia stopped her paintbrush in midstroke and listened. Was that the doorbell? She and Vicky had come out to the sunny backyard—Vicky for her playhouse, Gia to work on her painting—and they were a long way from the front door.

She heard the chime again, clearly now. With a glance at Vicky, who was setting a Munchkin-size chair before a Munchkin-size table by her playhouse, Gia wiped her hands and stepped inside.

As she headed through the house toward the front door, she wondered who it could be. Jack had said he'd be tied up most of the day, Gia hadn't arranged a play date for Vicky, and this was not a neighborhood where people popped in for a cup of coffee.

Despite the months of living in this grand old East Side town house, Gia still didn't feel she belonged here. Vicky's aunts, Nellie and Grace, had owned it but they were gone now, officially missing persons since last summer. But Gia knew the truth—the two dear old women were dead, devoured by creatures from some Hindu hell. If not for Jack, Vicky would have suffered the same fate. And thanks to Jack, the creatures were as dead as Nellie and Grace, incinerated on the ship that had brought them, their ashes sent swirling into the currents of New York Harbor. Vicky would inherit the house when Grace and Nellie were declared legally dead. Until then, she and Gia lived here, keeping it up.

Gia padded across the thick Oriental rug that lined the foyer floor and approached the front door as the bell rang again. Probably Jack and he'd forgotten his key, but just to be sure, she put her eye to the peephole—

And froze.

Gia's heart kicked up its tempo as she recognized the two men standing on her front step—from the other day on the beach in front of Milos Dragovic's house. No way she'd forget the obnoxious one with the bad bleach job.

What were they doing here? How had they found her? Why ?

Jack. Had to be Jack. Always Jack. He'd been interested in Dragovic, and the objects of Jack's interest tended not to be the happiest bunch after he finished with them. But now Jack—and she as well, it seemed—had attracted the attention of the city's most notorious mobster.

Gia jumped as the bell chimed again. She looked back down the hall, hoping Vicky wouldn't hear it and come charging in expecting to find Jack. The best thing was probably to stay quiet and hope they'd conclude no one was home. Since the town houses here all sat cheek by jowl along the sidewalk, there was no way for them to go around to the rear. Maybe they'd just give up and go away.

She heard them talking on the other side of the door. It didn't sound like English.

Finally they walked back to the black Lincoln sedan at the curb. Gia breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away, but they didn't go far. They parked at the end of the cul-de-sac and lit cigarettes.

They're watching for us. Damn them!

Gia felt a quiet anger begin to simmer beneath her uneasiness. She and Vicky were trapped in their own home. And they had Jack to thank for that.

She picked up the phone and dialed his beeper. He got us into this; he can damn well get us out.

11

"Whatsa matta?" Sal Vituolo said, giggling as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "You don't think that's funny?"

Sal had just run the tape of last night's raid on the little TV-VCR set in his office.

"I think it's perfect," Jack said.

Ten minutes ago he would have had some good yucks watching Dragovic's goons running and ducking as the tires chased them. That would have been before he'd spoken to Gia and learned that two of those goons were parked outside her door at this very moment.

He knew how they'd found her: had to be that hidden security camera by Dragovic's front gate.

My fault. Should have spotted it sooner. Must have recorded a picture of the car, and they traced her from the plate.

Damn! Never should have taken them along.

The good news was that Dragovic couldn't know that Gia had any connection to last night's rubber rain. He was just flailing about.