The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

for his work as a security consultant, but deep inside she knew that much of what lay before her was illegal. Even if he had permits for all the guns, there was no way the licenses could be legal.

Gia was still sitting there when he came back in from one of his mysterious errands. A shocked, guilty look ran over his face when he saw what she had found.

'Who are you?' she said, leaning away as he knelt beside her.

'I'm Jack. You know me.'

'Do I? I'm not even sure your name's Jack any more.” She could feel the terror growing within her. Her voice rose an octave. 'Who are you and what do you do with all this?'

He gave her some garbled story about being a repairman of sorts who 'fixes things.' For a fee he finds stolen property or evens scores for people when the police and the courts and all the various proper channels for redress have failed them.

'But all these guns and knives and things...they're for hurting people!'

He nodded. 'Sometimes it comes down to that.'

She had visions of him shooting someone, stabbing him, clubbing him to death. If someone else had told her this about the man she loved, she would have laughed and walked away. But the weapons lay in front of her. And Jack was telling her himself!

'Then you're nothing but a hired thug!'

He reddened. 'I work on my own terms—exclusively. And I don't do anything to anybody that they haven't already done to someone else. I was going to tell you when I thought—'

'But you hurt people!'

'Sometimes.”

This was becoming a nightmare! 'What kind of thing is that to spend your life doing?'

'It's my job.'

'Do you enjoy it when you hurt people?'

He looked away. And that was answer enough. She felt as if he’d shoved one of his knives into her heart.

'Are the police after you?'

'No,' he said with a certain amount of pride. 'They don't even know I exist. Neither does the state of New York nor the IRS nor the rest of the US government.'

Gia rose to her feet and hugged herself. She suddenly felt cold. She didn't want to ask this question, but she had to.

'What about killing? Have you ever killed someone?'

'Gia...' He rose and stepped toward her but she backed away.

'Answer me, Jack! Have you ever killed someone?'

'It's happened. But that doesn't mean I make my living at it.'

She thought she was going to be sick. The man she loved was a murderer!

'But you've killed!'

'Only when there was no other way. Only when I had to.'

'You mean, only when they were going to kill you? Kill or be killed?'

Please say yes. Please!

He looked away again. 'Sort of.'

The world seemed to come apart at the seams. With hysteria clutching at her, Gia began running. She ran for the door, ran down the stairs, ran for a cab that took her home where she huddled in a corner of her apartment listening to the phone ring and ring and ring. She took it off the hook when Vicky came home from school and had barely spoken to Jack since.

'Come away from the window now. I'll tell you when he arrives.'

'No, Mommy! I want to see him!'

'All right, but when he gets here, I don't want you running around and making a fuss. Just say hello to him nice and politely, then go out back to the playhouse. Understand?'

'Is that him?' Vicky started bouncing on her toes. 'Is that him?'

Gia looked, then laughed and pulled on her daughter's pigtails. 'Not even close.”

Gia walked away from the window, then came back, resigned to standing and watching behind Vicky. Jack appeared to occupy a blind spot in Vicky's unusually incisive assessment of people. But then, Jack had fooled Gia, too.

Jack fooled everyone, it seemed.

9

If Jack had his choice of any locale in Manhattan to live, he'd choose Sutton Square, the half block of ultra- high-priced real estate standing at the eastern tip of Fifty-eighth Street off Sutton Place, dead-ending at a low stone wall overlooking a sunken brick terrace with an unobstructed view of the East River. No high-rises, condos, or office buildings there, just neat four-story townhouses standing flush to the sidewalk, all brick-fronted, some with the brick bare, others painted pastel colors. Wooden shutters flanked the windows and the recessed front doors. Some of them even had back yards. A neighborhood of Bentleys and Rolls Royces, liveried chauffeurs and white-uniformed nannies. And one block to the north, looming over it all like some towering guardian, stood the graceful, surprisingly delicate-looking span of the Queensboro Bridge.