The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

stepped in and swung the sap at Patch's skull. Not a hard swing—a flick of the wrist, really—but it connected with a satisfying thunk. Patch's body went slack but not before his reflexes had jerked him away from Jack. His momentum carried him head first into the far wall. He settled to the floor of the alley with a sigh.

Jack shucked off the wig and dress and got back into his sneakers, then he went over and nudged Patch with his foot. The creep groaned and rolled over. He appeared dazed, so Jack reached out with his free hand and shook him by the shoulder.

Without warning, Patch's right arm whipped around, slashing at Jack with the four-inch blade protruding from his fist. Jack grabbed the wrist with one hand and poked at a spot behind Patch's left ear, just below the mastoid. Patch grunted with pain. As Jack applied more and more pressure, he began flopping around like a fish on a hook. Finally he dropped the knife.

As Jack relaxed his hold, Patch made a leap to retrieve the knife. Jack had half expected this. The sap still hung from his wrist by its thong. He grabbed it and smashed it across the back of Patch's hand, putting all of his wrist and a good deal of his forearm behind the blow. The crunch of bone was followed by a scream of pain.

'You broke it!' He rolled onto his belly and then back onto his side. 'I'll have your ass for this, pig!' He moaned and whined and swore incoherently, all the while cradling his injured hand.

'Pig?' Jack said in his softest voice. 'No such luck, friend. This is personal.'

The moaning stopped. Patch peered through the darkness with his good eye, a worried look on his face. As he placed his good hand against the wall to prop himself up, Jack raised the sap for another blow.

'No fair, man!' He quickly withdrew the hand and lay down again. 'No fair!'

'Fair?' Jack laughed as nastily as he could. 'Were you going to be fair to the old lady you thought you’d trapped here? No rules in this alley, friend. Just you and me. And I'm here to get you.'

He saw Patch's eye widen; his tone echoed the fear in his face.

'Look, man. I don't know what's goin' down here, but you got the wrong guy. I only came in from Michigan last week. '

'Not interested in last week, friend. Just last night...the old lady you rolled.'

'Hey, I didn't roll no old lady! No way!' Patch flinched and whimpered as Jack raised the sap menacingly. 'I swear to God, man! I swear!'

Jack had to admit the guy was good. Very convincing.

'I'll help your memory a little: her car broke down; she wore a heavy necklace that looked like silver and had two yellow stones in the middle; and she used her fingernails on your eye.' As he saw comprehension begin to dawn in Patch's eye, he felt his anger climbing towards the danger point. 'She wasn't in the hospital yesterday, but she is today. And you put her there. She may kick off any time. And if she does, it's your fault.'

'No, wait, man! Listen—'

He grabbed Patch by the hair at the top of his head and rapped his skull against the brick wall. 'You listen! I want the necklace. Where'd you fence it?'

'Fence it? That piece of shit? I threw it away!'

'Where?'

'I don't know!'

'Remember!' Jack rapped Patch's head against the wall again for emphasis.

He kept seeing that frail old lady fading into the hospital bed, barely able to speak because of the beating she’d received at this creep's hands. A dark place was opening up inside him.

Careful!

He needed Patch conscious.

'Awright! Lemme think!'

Jack managed a slow, deep breath. Then another.

'Think. You've got thirty seconds.'

It didn't take that long.

'I thought it was silver. But when I got it under a light I saw it wasn't.'

'You want me to believe you didn't even try to get a few bucks for it?'

'I...I didn't like it.'

Jack hesitated, not sure of how to take that.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'I didn't like it, man. Something about it didn't feel right. I just threw it in some bushes.'

'No bushes around here.'

Patch flinched. 'Are too! Two blocks down!'

Jack yanked him to his feet. 'Show me.'

Patch was right. Between West End and Twelfth Avenues, where Fifty-eighth Street slopes down toward the Hudson River, sat a small clump of privet hedge, the kind Jack had spent many a Saturday morning as a kid trimming in front of his parents' home in Jersey.

With Patch lying face down on the pavement by his feet, Jack reached into the bushes. A little rummaging