jump ahead five years. And let's just say that you leave your situation the way it is. We don't get married but we're living together here-you, me, Vicky, and the baby. One big happy family.'
'Sounds nice.'
'But what if I get breast cancer, or fall off a subway platform in front of a train, or-?'
'Gia, come on.' What a thought.
'Don't say it couldn't happen, because we both know it could. And right now, if something happens to me, Vicky goes to my parents.'
Jack nodded. 'I know.'
It was logical, and probably the right thing. Her grandparents would be Vicky's only living blood relatives. But it would burn a hole in his life to watch that little girl be taken off to Iowa.
'But what if my folks aren't around when something happens to me? If they're dead, then it's not just Vicky who's at risk, but our baby as well. What happens to those two children?'
'I take them.'
'No. You won't be able to. They'll be orphans and they'll become wards of the court.'
'Like hell.'
'What are you going to do? Abduct them? Take off with them and hide out? Change their names and have them live like fugitives? Is that the kind of life you want for them?'
Jack leaned back and sipped from his beer. It tasted sour on his tongue. Because he was seeing it now, all of it, the knotty immensity of the problem. How could he have missed it? Maybe because the quotidian rituals of having no official existence, of pursuing an under-the-radar lifestyle had become to him as natural and reflexive as breathing.
Was he going to have to change the way he breathed?
He stared at Gia. 'You've obviously given this a lot of thought.'
She nodded. 'It has consumed me for three days.' Tears welled in her eyes. 'I'm not pushing you, Jack. It's just that if anything happens to me I want to know my babies are safe.'
Jack rose and moved around the table. He lifted Gia from her seat, slid beneath, then settled her onto his lap. She clung to him.
He put his arms around her and said, 'Our babies. I couldn't love Vicky more if she were my own. And I don't feel pushed, okay? Fatherhood wasn't in my immediate plans, but that's okay. I'm flexible. I've learned to adjust quickly to unexpected situations in my work, and I can do it here. It's a responsibility and I'm not about to walk away from it.'
'How will you do it?'
'Become a citizen? I don't know. I'm sure my father has my birth certificate squirreled away somewhere, so I'm pretty sure I can show I'm native-born. But I can't exactly show up at the local Social Security office and ask for a number. Folks down there will want to know where I've been these last thirty-six years. And why I've never filed a 1040. I can't just say I've been living abroad. Where's my passport? Records will show I was never issued one. At worst they'll think I'm some sort of terrorist. At best, a wide array of city, state, and federal agencies will be lining up to file tax evasion charges and investigate me for drug or arms trafficking. I don't know how well my past will hold up under that sort of scrutiny. Some law firm will get rich defending me. And in the end I could wind up either broke or in jail or both. Most likely both.'
'I won't let you do that. I'd rather take my chances with you as you are than see you risk your freedom. You can't be a parent from behind bars. There's got to be another way. How about false documents?'
'They'll have to be awfully damn good if I'm going to rest my whole future on them. But I'll start looking into it.'
Gia tightened her arms around him. 'What a spot I've put you in.'
'You? You haven't put me anywhere I haven't chosen to be. This is a situation I was going to have to face sooner or later. When I opted out I was, what, twenty-one? I wasn't looking ahead then. I never thought about how I'd get myself back in because I didn't care. Tell the truth, I didn't think I'd be around long enough to have to worry about it.'
'Were you trying to get yourself killed?'
'No, but to someone watching me it might have seemed that way. I was reckless. No, that doesn't even touch it. I was nuts. I look back at some of the risks I took and wonder how I ever survived. I had this feeling of immortality then that gave me the confidence to try anything. Anything. A few nasty close calls eventually woke me up, but for a while there...' He shook his head at the memory. 'Anyway, I'm still kicking, and now that it looks like I might actually survive this lifestyle, I can't see myself wanting to go on living in the cracks when I'm seventy.'
Gia let go a little laugh. 'A semi-senile Repairman Jack. Not a pretty picture.'
'Can you see me stopping in at Julio's for my afternoon warm milk, then hustling around, dodging the IRS and AARP in my walker? What a sight.'
They laughed, but not for long.
'Is there a way out of this?' Gia said.
'Has to be. It needs a fix. I earn my living fixing things. I'll figure something out.'
Jack hoped he sounded a lot more confident than he felt. This could be his biggest fix-it job-his own life.
He stared out the back door at the fading light in the reddening sky, then glanced at the old oak clock on the wall above the sink.
'Oops. Speaking of fix-its, gotta go.'
He felt Gia stiffen. 'That bodyguard job you told me about?'
'More like baby-sitting than bodyguarding.'
She leaned back and looked at him. 'You be careful.'
He kissed her. 'I will.'
'Remember, you're Daddy-To-Be Jack, not Wildman Jack.'
At the moment, Jack wasn't quite sure who he was.
7
Ensconced in his sidewalk seat at the bistro down the block from Eli Bellitto's Shurio Coppe, Jack was nearing the bottom of his first Corona-no lime, please-with his eye on Bellitto's door. He'd ditched the mullet wig and odd clothes he'd worn in the store last night. He wore a baseball cap to hide his hair and keep his eyes in shadow, but otherwise he was pretty much himself tonight.
He'd watched the older woman and new clerk leave, seen Bellitto lock up and make the around-the-corner trip home. Twilight had faded into night, clouds had curdled in the formerly clear sky and then fused into a lumpy, low-hanging lid. Bellitto's door floated in a deeper pool of darkness due to the broken street lamp at that end of the block.
More traffic tonight than last. A battle-scarred delivery truck rolled by, retching a tubular cloud that lingered in the air behind it, slowly drifting Jack's way, obliterating the delicious odor of sautLed garlic that had been wafting from the kitchen. Jack coughed. The joys of dining al fresco.
More people too, so he engaged in his favorite pastime: watching them. He saw a couple of pale-faced, black-lipped goth chicks swish by in ankle-length black dresses. Then an odd interracial couple wheeling a baby carriage: he very dark in a button-down shirt, tie, and khakis with his hair processed as straight as Fifth Avenue, she porcelain white in bib overalls and long, puffy, light brown dreadlocks trailing down her back. A trio of teenage girls bounced by in off-the-shoulder blouses, bellbottoms, and cork platform soles-the seventies were back.
Jack checked the placement of the slapper resting inside his loose plaid shirt. The eight-ounce lead weight in its head pulled the fabric out and down, giving him a bit of a gut. He'd worn his black twelve-inch Fryes with the classic harness and ring tonight, and his .38 AMT Backup sat strapped inside the right one. He hoped he wouldn't have to use either. All quiet on the block. Everything pointed toward another nothing night, which was not, except for the boredom, such a bad thing.
His mind turned to his conversation with Gia, and the spot he was in: How did he legitimize his existence without risking his freedom? The obvious way was to become somebody else-take over the identity of a legitimate, law-abiding, Social Security numbered, tax-withholding, 401(k)-contributing, 1040-filing citizen. Obvious, but not very feasible. Impossible if said citizen were still alive.
But what if he were dead?
That might work. But how? As soon as this good citizen's death certificate was registered, his Social Security
