F. Paul Wilson - Legacies

"Welcome to my office," Jack said, shaking hands.

Used to be, Jack met all his potential customers at Julio's. It was still his favorite place for a first meet. Julio was an excellent screener—had a sixth sense about people, and he could pat someone down without their having an inkling they'd been searched. But then Jack began to worry that he was getting too closely connected with the place—and that could be bad for him and Julio.

So he'd started varying the location of his "office." Pinky's Drive-in was a new one. He kind of liked the idea of a place with no parking and no drive-through that had the guts to call itself a drive-in. He liked the tacky retro ambiance of the turquoise-and-white tile and pink neon in the service area below, and the hubcaps—not shiny new hubcaps, but old banged-up veterans of the road—nailed to the wall up here in the second-floor seating area. Liked this high perch over the street, liked the emergency exit door at his back that opened onto a stairway to the first floor.

Plus it was easy enough to find: Go to Seventh and Thirty-third and look for a place with a big neon Cadillac above the door.

Jorge deposited a quarter-pound Pinky Burger and a Budweiser on the table as he seated himself.

"So let's talk," Jack said. "I know the basics, but I want to get more details to see if this is workable."

According to Jorge, he was an Ecuadorean who ran a small office-maintenance business. Nothing big, just a couple of crews of three—he worked on one of the crews himself—who cleaned offices by night. Hard work, long hours, but it was a living. He was able to pay his bills and his workers. But he had a problem: a deadbeat client named Ramirez.

"And what really pisses me off," Jorge said, "is he's a brother."

"Your brother ?"

"No way, man. I mean a brother of Ecuador. He tol' me he was giving me the work because we come from the same country. He say he is a peasant who come here and make good, and he want to help me, a brother peasant, become rich like him." He swigged his Bud and slammed it on the table. "All bullshit! The real reason he hire me and my guys is he know he can rip us off."

"You said he owes you six thousand."

"Right. And I never would have let the bastard get so far behind. But he keep telling me that business is slow, that his own customers are not paying him, but a big contract is due at the end of the year and he will settle up everything then with interest. And because he is a fellow Ecuadorian, a brother peasant" —he spat the word—"I believe him and keep coming back with my crew, night after night, week after week." Another sip, another slam on the table. "More bullshit! He never intend to pay me. Never!"

"Here's where I start to lose you," Jack said. "You must have some sort of contract with him."

Jorge nodded. "Of course. I always get one."

"But you tell me you've tried every legal means of getting the money back. Seems to me if you have a contract—"

"Can't," Jorge said, shaking his head.

"Why not?"

"My crew. Two of them are cousins of my wife." His gaze shifted away. "They are not, um, legal."

"And this Ramirez guy knows that?"

"He know it from the start."

"Ah-ha." Jack leaned back and took a sip from his Snapple. "The plot sickens."

"Eh?"

"Nothing. So how do things stand between you two now?"

"I finally tol' him I can't go on working for him without some payment. He give me that same dance about the contract coming in, and when I tol' him it was supposed to be in by now, he get mad. We go roun' and roun' about the same old stuff, but I do not back down this time. I was not going away empty-handed as I had every time before."

"So what did he do?"

"He fire me."

Jack had to smile. " He fired you! That took balls."

Jorge bared his teeth. "It is worse. He tell me I do inferior work. Me! Let me tell you, Mr. Jack, my work is de pri-mera !"

Jack believed him. He could see the fierce pride in his eyes. This was a man trying to build something; more than a business—a reputation… a life. Jack sensed his anger, and something else: hurt. He'd been betrayed by someone he'd trusted.

"Jorge," he said. "I think you're right. I think our friend Ramirez was planning to rip you off from the start. And I'll bet that even as we speak, he's hunting up a new office cleaning service."

"Yes. I will not be surprised. He would steal from a dying man. But what do I do now?"

"Well," Jack said, "you and your cousins can go break his legs."

Jorge smiled. "Yes. I have thought of that. We have even talked of killing him, but we are not that sort of people."

"The other thing is to do about $6,000 worth of damage to his property."

"Yes, but I would rather have the money. The sweet taste of revenge will not pay my bills. And I am trying to avoid trouble with the police. The truth is, Mr. Jack, I need money more than I need revenge. I just want what is mine. Will you help me?"

Jack leaned back, thinking. Jorge was the type of customer that kept Jack in the business. A guy with a genuine beef and nowhere else to turn. But right now, Jack had no idea what he could do for him.

"I will if I can. But I need to know more about Ramirez. Tell me all you know about him. Everything you've learned during all these months of working for him."

Slowly, as Jorge spoke, a plan took shape…

6.

Alicia wasn't hungry, so she put off lunch. She liked this quiet time when no IV-therapy sessions were scheduled for the clinic and the day-care kids were having lunch; the staff and volunteers who weren't with the kids were out grabbing a quick bite. Usually she stayed in her office and caught up on her paperwork. But today she was restless.

And she didn't know why. It wasn't because of Hector—the little guy with the "mad buth cut" seemed to be responding to the antibiotic. She simply had to move.

She left her cluttered desk and took a stroll through the empty halls, lost in thought, wondering what to do next. Wait for Jack, or make another contact? She'd scraped up the name of someone else. Should she—?

She stopped. She'd heard a sound… almost like a whimper. She stood frozen, her body tingling as she listened.

And then she heard it again, fainter. And then a low voice, whispering… from somewhere around the corner…

Moving on tiptoe, and glad she was wearing sneakers, Alicia peeked around the corner and saw…

An empty hall.

She was beginning to think she'd imagined the noises when she heard the whisper again… coming from a hall closet just a few feet away. The door was cracked open, and the voice was definitely male…

"See? Didn't I tell you it wouldn't hurt? There now… doesn't that feel nice?"

Biting back a surge of bile that almost choked her, Alicia reached for the door. She watched her hand tremble like a leaf in a gale as it neared the knob. She forced it to grip it and pull.

And then she saw them, like a flash picture: a middle-aged white man—a volunteer she'd seen around recently but didn't know by name yet—blinking in the sudden light, his hand down the pants of a little black girl, no more than four years old—Kanessa Jackson.

And then the light exploded around her, as if her world suddenly became an overexposed video in which she heard her voice shouting, screaming, with glaring light everywhere as she spun into a wild 180-degree pan, stopping at a fire hose and chemical extinguisher recessed in the wall. Her hands pulling open the glass door, grabbing the canister and turning, swinging it at the man, watching him duck but not soon enough, catching him on the side of his head, watching him try to stumble in one direction as Kanessa ran in the other, following him, beating him on his head, his back, beating him down, and then bludgeoning him until—