Ground Zero

5

Jack arrived at the northeast corner of Columbus Avenue and 80th Street a little after noon. He checked himself in a store window. With his beard and a Mets cap worn low over wraparound sunglasses, he was virtually unrecognizable. So even if this was a setup—he’d royally pissed off more than his share of people over the years—no one would spot him until he wanted to be spotted.

He searched the far side of the intersection as he pretended to wait for the walking green and found a trim, athletic-looking guy with longish sandy hair; he looked about Jack’s height and age. He wore a tan suit and stood with his hands in his pockets as he peered about. Could be him. Or just a guy out to grab some lunch.

The light changed and Jack crossed Columbus with the crowd, but the suit stayed where he was, glancing at his watch and still looking around. The odds increased that this was the guy. Jack studied him some more as he waited for the signal to cross 80th to his corner, trying to guess what he did for a living. Good quality suit but not designer. Office job, obviously. Advertising? Wall Street? Lawyer? Whatever, his expression was concerned, maybe even worried.

Afraid “our Jack” wouldn’t show?

Another green light. Jack hesitated, then figured what the hell. The guy looked okay—in fact Jack had an inexplicable good feeling about him, and that was unusual. Maybe together they could figure out the “our Jack” thing.

So he crossed and passed him, then turned and stopped just sunward.

“Looking for someone?”

He gave a little jump, then turned and raised a hand to shade his eyes.

“You’re Jack?”

“ ‘Our Jack,’ in the flesh. EPC, I presume.”

He looked puzzled for an instant, then gave a crooked smile Jack found oddly familiar. “Oh, yeah. The initials. I felt a little queasy about leaving my name.”

Queasy . . . that seemed to set off something in Jack’s head. Why?

“Smart,” Jack said. He pointed east along 80th toward Central Park. “I assume your presence here means you’ve had no word from your sister, so let’s walk.”

But the guy stayed where he was. “This is a little too weird. I don’t know a thing about you, yet I’m meeting you here on a corner because my missing sister asked me to call you and I don’t even know if you’re really the guy I was supposed to call.”

“Point taken. And the thing is, I probably won’t be able to help you, but—”

“What are you? A cop? A detective? What?”

“Just a guy who’s curious about how your sister knows me. What’s her name?”

“Louise Myers.”

Louise Myers . . . didn’t ring a bell, even faintly.

“Never heard of her.” Jack pointed toward the park again. He didn’t like standing on the corner. “Walk a ways and tell me what makes you think she isn’t simply on a trip to Maine or somewhere?”

As they started to move, EPC reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to Jack.

If I’m missing

Don’t call the police

They can’t help

Get in touch with Jack

Please honor me on this

Our Jack can find me

If I’m missing . . . That didn’t sound good.

“Sounds as if she expected some foul play to go down.”

He sighed. “Well, yeah. She did. She always did.”

“Did she have enemies?”

He tapped his temple. “Only up here.”

“Paranoid?”

He shrugged. “A little, maybe. At first they said she was bipolar, then she was this, then she was that. I’ve come to the conclusion that Weezy is just . . . different.”

Jack’s stomach dropped and he stopped so abruptly a woman bumped him from behind.

“Idiot!” she said as she slipped past him.

Jack ignored her and stared at the guy. “Did you just say ‘Weezy’?”

“Yeah. That’s what we called her growing up and—”

“Weezy Co

His eyes widened. “Yeah. How do you—?” He leaned closer. “Jack? Oh, Christ, it’s you! I don’t believe it!”

“Eddie!”

They embraced, back slapping, then stepped back and looked at each other.

Now that he knew who he was looking at, Jack could see his boyhood friend, but it wasn’t easy. Chubby Eddie Co

“You know, Eddie, I was looking at you and there was something about you, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I mean, how could I? You’ve got cheekbones!”

He laughed. “Hey, it’s Ed now. And look at you with the beard. Who’d’ve thought? ‘Our Jack.’ It all makes sense now.”

They both sobered at once.

“Weez . . .” Jack said. “You really think something’s happened to her?”

The idea was hard to take. He hadn’t seen her since high school, but they’d been soul mates as kids.

“What else can I think?”

“But you said her enemies were all in her head.”

Weezy had been eccentric as a kid, for a while very much into what she called the Secret History of the World. Come to think of it, Veilleur had said there truly was a Secret History, so maybe she had been on to something. She’d spent time on and off medications for mood swings. Definitely “different,” as Eddie-now-Ed had said, but hardly a threat to anyone.

“She’s become something of a recluse, rarely leaving her house except to go food shopping and to Internet places.”

“No access at home?”

“Yeah, but . . .” He frowned. “Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t, but she told me she needs to keep changing her IP address for certain of her online activities.”

“Such as?”

“Wouldn’t say. Said I was better off—safer—not knowing.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Could she be involved in anything shady?”

He made a face. “Weezy? You know her. Straight arrow.”

“I knew her. Been a lot of years. You never know.”

“She hasn’t changed all that much.”

Jack remembered something. “You called her Louise Myers. I gather she’s married.”

“Was. Married a guy named Steve Myers right after she graduated John Jay and—”

“John Jay? The criminal justice place?”

He nodded. “She has a BS in forensic science.”

“Like I said: You never know. The marriage didn’t work out, I take it?”

Ed shook his head. “Steve blew his brains out.”

6

“It is alive,” Drexler said.

Darryl watched him run his hands over the surface of the Orsa’s flank like he was feeling up a woman. He hadn’t liked the feel of the thing, like football hide, but with a little more give. And he especially hadn’t liked that little ripple effect when he’d touched it.

“How can it be?” Hank said, looking a little scared.

“It simply is. And over the years it has been most entertaining to watch the transformation.”

Entertaining? Darryl thought. Drexler found the weirdest things “entertaining.”

Drexler’s voice dropped in volume. “But then, in the early hours of yesterday morning, it woke up.”

“How could you tell?” Darryl said.

Drexler didn’t look at him. “We knew.”

“Well, like how?”

Not like it had eyes that opened, or a mouth that could say good morning.

He still wouldn’t look at Darryl. Like he thought if he didn’t look, Darryl would disappear. But Darryl wasn’t going anywhere.

“When it awoke, the Orsa changed from an opaque gray to clear, as you see it now.”

Darryl’s arm started to itch again. Damn.

“Okay,” Hank said, “let’s just say I buy that this thing is alive and awake. What does it do?”

Drexler looked at Hank—oh, sure, look at Hank but not Darryl.

“As I said, it will help change the world.”

Change the world . . . the Kicker Evolution was supposed to change the world, but Darryl got a real strong impression that they were talking about a different kind of change, and speaking in some sort of code.