Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

previously broadcast description of a brown-haired white male between twenty-five and fifty years old.
    Relieved, Jack let his head fall back and closed his eyes. So far so good. But he wasn't in the clear yet. Not even close. Someone had to have got a good look at him; that kid trying to pick up the film student, for instance; he'd been sitting only a couple of feet away. Probably pouring his guts out to a police sketch artist right now.
    Finally the newscasters moved on to other stories and Jack found himself up and moving about the apartment, wandering through the rooms. Had a stack of videotapes set up for his Terence Fisher festival. He'd planned to start tonight, opening with Curse of Frankenstein , but knew he wouldn't be able to sit still through it. His two-bedroom place usually was plenty of room for him, but tonight it felt like a noose around his neck. Slowly tightening.
    Got to get out of here.
    And go where? He ached for Gia but she was out of town. As soon as school let out she'd packed up Vicky and flown to Ottumwa, Iowa, for a week-long visit with her folks, part of her ongoing effort to keep Vicky in contact with her extended family. Hated that the two women in his life were so far away, resented sharing them with other people even if they were blood relations, but he never mentioned that to Gia. Who knew how many more years Vicky's grandmother would be around?
    Maybe just wander over to Julio's, stand at the bar, have a beer, and pretend it was just another night. But the TV would be on and instead of the Yanks or the Mets everyone would be watching the special reports about the subway murders and that was all they'd be talking about.
    How about simply going for a walk?
    But what if—he knew this was ridiculous, but the thought stuck with him—what if he passed somebody from the train on the street and they recognized him?
    Possible, yes. The least bit likely, no.
    And let's face it, he thought. Tonight I'm safe. No sketch yet. Tomorrow might be a whole different story.
    Tonight could be his last chance to wander the city at will. Might as well get out there now and take advantage of it.
    He showered and dressed in a completely different look: khakis, a light blue shirt with a button-down collar under a cranberry V-neck sweater to hide the Glock 19 in his nylon small-of-the-back holster.
    On the way to the door he stopped and looked around the cluttered front room where he kept all his stuff. Old stuff. Neat stuff. Most people would call it junk—premiums, giveaways, and kitschy tie-ins from the pulp magazines, comic strips, and radio shows of the 1930s and '40s displayed on century-old furniture. Another generation's nostalgia.
    What about his own childhood growing up through the seventies?
    He remembered little and cared less. Why keep a Brady Bunch lunch box when you could have one with The Shadow staring at you from under his black slouch hat? A Radio Orphan Annie decoder, an official Doc Savage Club certificate… nothing from his own past was anywhere near as neat as those.
    Gia, perpetually baffled at his attraction to this stuff, had often asked him why—why a lunch box or magic ring or cheap plastic doodad from any era?—and he'd never been able to come up with an answer. Didn't care to try. Some shrink-type could probably fabricate a deep-seated reason for his compulsion to accumulate ephemera with no connection to his own past, but who cared why? He liked it. Enough said.
    But if forced to cut and run he'd have to leave all this behind. Strangely it didn't matter. It was stuff. Neat stuff, but still just stuff. He could walk away with barely an instant's regret. Gia and Vicky, though… being separated from them would be a killer.
    Not going to happen, he told himself as he headed down the stairs for the street.
    He'd do whatever it took to keep this one lousy incident from disrupting his life and his business.
    His business… he hadn't checked his voice mail in a while.
    Walked over to