Ground Zero

The blond guy was standing at the bottom of the stairway across the street looking baffled.

Jack swiped the card for himself, and then he and Eddie climbed the stairs to the platform. Jack guided him to a spot that would put them on the middle of the train. The sun was hot so they stood back in the shadow of the partial roof.

“So you have no idea why she’d want us to burn her house?”

Eddie shook his head. “Not a clue. But I assume it has something to do with her idea that she’d turn up ‘missing.’ ”

“Well, she was missing for a while.”

“Because she ran out in front of a car—not because someone abducted her. And not because someone was following her—if you get my meaning.”

He gestured around the near-empty platform just as the blond guy emerged from the stairwell and stood thirty or so feet away. Eddie glanced at him but didn’t react.

Clueless, Jack thought as he forced a heavy sigh.

“I guess you’re right.”

The Manhattan-bound train pulled in half a minute later. Jack and Eddie boarded. Uptrack to his left, Jack saw the blond man step on as well.

“Let’s stand,” Jack said, stopping just inside the door. “It’s only one stop.”

Eddie shrugged. “Sure.”

Jack waited a few seconds, then grabbed the back of Eddie’s jacket and yanked.

“On second thought . . .”

“Hey!” he cried as he was pulled through the closing doors. “What are you doing?”

As the train began pulling out, Jack gestured at the empty platform. “Just making sure we weren’t followed.”

“Jesus, Jack! You’re crazy, you know that? You and Weezy always had this . . . this rapport, where one seemed to know what the other was thinking. And now you’ve bought into her paranoia.”

“I don’t know about that. But one thing I do know: Your sister was way smarter than I ever was. I think that counts for something.”

He remembered his continuing wonder at the breadth of her knowledge and her photographic memory.

“She’s still smart—smarter than both of us put together, I’ll bet—but that’s not going to bring the next train any faster.”

Jack couldn’t decide whether it would be easier to leave Eddie in the dark about the tail or clue him in. He decided a wake-up call was in order.

“Keep your eyes on this train,” Jack said as it gathered speed. “In one of the cars you’ll see a guy with bleached-blond hair combed forward. When he spots us out here he won’t be happy.”

Sure enough, the next-to-last car carried the blond man who stared out at them with an angry, befuddled expression.

“Wave to the nice man.” Eddie didn’t. Jack began pulling him toward the stairway. “Now walk with me.”

Eddie came along but was staring at him with an uncomfortable expression.

“You think that man was following us?”

“Just walk.”

He hoped seeing them heading toward the exit would convince the blond guy that Elmhurst had been their destination all along.

“Seriously, Jack—”

“He was peeking at us from an adjoining car all the way out from the city. When we doubled back, so did he. Draw your own conclusion.”

Eddie stopped at the entrance to the stairwell. “So it’s true? Someone was really following us?”

“Looks that way to me.”

“You’re . . . you’re not an appliance repairman, are you.”

Jack had been afraid of this.

“As you said yourself, I’m just Jack from Johnson.”

“Yeah, and I knew that Jack, and that Jack would never settle for being an appliance repairman.”

“Why not? It’s honest work. You have the satisfaction of accomplishing something. You’re your own boss, you set your own hours, and you leave the job behind at the end of the day.”

Not an untrue word there—except he wasn’t talking about himself.

“But how does a simple appliance repairman spot a tail and outsmart him like you just did?”

“Well, maybe I am a bit paranoid—after all, I was watching for a tail. And I’ve read my share of thrillers.”

“You were awfully smooth giving him the slip.”

“Learned everything I know from Jake Fixx.”

Eddie smiled. “You read those novels? Me too, I’m ashamed to say.”

“Ashamed?”

“Well, they’re just plain silly. And that character, that Jake Fixx, he’s preposterous.”

“But you keep reading them.”

“Yeah, well, there’s something about the guy . . . he may be ridiculous but—this is going to sound crazy, but I almost feel as if I know him.”

You have no idea, Jack thought.

“Yeah, me too.”

Eddie frowned. “But if we really were being followed, that changes everything.”

“Ya think?”

“No, seriously. It means—”

“—that Weezy might not be as paranoid as you thought.”

“Yeah. Which is not a comfortable thought.”

Welcome to my world.

“I agree. But first thing we do is check out her house. And we’ll cab it from here. My treat.”

15

The cabby dropped them off at the address Eddie had given him.

A narrow residential street, lined with parked cars; quiet as expected on a Tuesday afternoon in summer. The surrounding houses had small front yards sporting lawns and plantings that spa

Jack stood on the front walk and stared at the house: Two stories tall, it sat cheek by jowl with its identical neighbors, with what looked like the original postwar, asbestos-shingle siding painted Broomhilda green.

“She rents Archie Bunker’s house?”

Eddie, a few steps ahead of him, stopped and stared for a second, then laughed.

“You know, I never saw it before, but you’re right. Not a whole lot of single-family houses around here. This is one of the few blocks that’s got any.”

Jack had been through Jackson Heights countless times over the years. It sat in northwest Queens—not as far north or west as Astoria where the Kenton brothers lived, but convenient to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and with good subway service in and out of the city. Back when Jack was born, white middle-class folks like Archie and Edith peopled its ubiquitous garden apartments. But then, like Astoria, it morphed into an ethnic polyglot, home of Little India with its myriad South Asian shops and restaurants, and loads of Africans and Latinos as well. And then, as real estate prices began soaring in Manhattan, the whites had started moving back. But not too many yet.

Mostly working folks in Jackson Heights, but gangs reared their ugly heads every so often. And more and more of those gang members seemed to be wearing Kicker Man tattoos.

Jack noticed Weezy’s windows. Heavy sunshades inside the glass screened the interior from view; wrought-iron bars protected all the first-floor windows—not all that unusual. Then he spotted more on the second floor over the front-porch roof.

He did a slow turn to check out the neighborhood again: seemed quiet enough. Why was Weezy’s house the only one secured like a jewelry store?

He caught up to Eddie at the front door as he was unlocking the second of three deadbolts.

Okay, Jack had multiple locks on his door too. Nothing wrong with that.

“What’s with all the window bars?”

“When you think you might go ‘missing,’ it’s only logical to take precautions, right?”

“True that. Nothing to do with the fact that she appears to be the only Caucasian on the block?”

Eddie gave him a sharp look and his tone took on an acid edge. “You should know better than that.”

“That’s just it—I don’t. I don’t know a thing about the adult Weezy.”

“Yeah, I suppose you don’t. But trust me on this: The grown-up Weezy is very much like the Weezy you knew before they started . . . medicating her. She doesn’t notice race—or at least that’s not the way she categorizes people. She has her own unique criteria.”