"It's very complicated—too complicated to get into over the phone. Can't we just meet? It'll be so much easier to explain this in person."

Jack thought about that. He stared at the hulking mass of the Museum of Natural History a few blocks away and watched a yellow caravan of school buses pull into the parking lot. This gig sounded a little wacky. Hell, it sounded way wacky. A missing wife who calls and tells her husband don't go to the police, call Repairman Jack instead. Kidnapped, maybe? But then…

"No ransom demand?"

"No. I doubt whoever's behind Mel's disappearance is interested in money."

"Everybody's interested in money."

"Not in this case. If we could just meet…"

Wackier and wackier, but Jack had nothing doing the rest of the day…and Ehler had said no cops involved——

"Okay. Let's meet."

Ehler's relief flooded through the receiver. "Oh, thank you, thank you—"

"But I'm not going to Brooklyn."

"Anywhere you say, just as long as it's soon."

Julio's was close. Jack gave Ehler the address and told him to be there in an hour. After Ehler hung up, Jack pressed the # key and an electronic voice told him how much credit he had left on his calling card.

God, he loved these things.

He hung up and walked away from the park, thinking about what Ehler's wife had said.

Repairman Jack is the only one who will understand. …

Really.

3

Jack sat at his table near Julio's rear door. He was halfway through his second Rolling Rock when Lewis Ehler showed up. Jack tagged him as soon as he saw the gangly, brown-suited frame step through the door. Julio's crowd didn't wear suits, except for occasional adventuresome yupsters looking for something different, and yuppie suits were never wrinkled like this guy's.

Julio spotted him too, and ducked out from behind the bar. Julio had a brief conversation with the guy, acted real friendly, standing close, clapping him on the back in welcome. Finally satisfied the stranger wasn't carrying, Julio pointed Jack's way.

Jack watched Ehler stumble toward him—the darkness at the rear here took some adjusting to after stepping in from daylight—but he seemed to be having extra trouble because of a pronounced limp.

Jack waved. "Over here."

Ehler veered his way but remained standing when he reached the table. He looked fortyish, starvation lean, with a big jutting nose and a droopy lower lip. Close up, Jack saw that the brown suit was shiny and worn as well as wrinkled. He noticed how the sole of his right shoe was built up two inches. That explained the limp.

"You're him?" Ehler said in that high-pitched voice from the phone. His prominent Adam's apple bounced with each word. "Repairman Jack?"

"Just Jack'll do," Jack said, offering his hand.

"Lew." His shake was squishy and moist. "You don't look like what I expected."

Jack used to ask the next question, the obvious one, but had stopped long ago after hearing the same answer time after time: they always expected a glowering Charles Bronson type, someone bigger, meaner, tougher-looking than this ordinary Joe before them who could step up to the bar in front and virtually vanish into the regulars hanging there.

Jack took the You-don't-look-like-what-I-expected remark as a compliment.

"Want a beer?" he asked.

Lew shook his head. "I don't drink much."

"Coffee, then?"

"I'm too nervous for coffee." He rubbed his palms on the front of his jacket, then pulled out a chair and folded his Ichabod Crane body into it. "Maybe decaf."

Jack waved to Julio and mimed pouring a coffee pot.

"I thought we'd meet in a more private place," Lew said.

"This is private." Jack glanced at the empty booths and tables around them. The faint murmur of conversation drifted over from the bar area on the far side of the six-foot divider topped with dead plants. "Long as we don't shout."

Julio came strutting around the partition carrying a coffee pot and a white mug. His short, forty-year-old frame was grotesquely muscled under his tight, sleeveless shirt. He was freshly shaven, his mustache trimmed to a line, drafting-pencil thin, his wavy hair slicked back. This was the closest Jack had got to him this afternoon, and he coughed as he caught a whiff of a new cologne, more cloying than usual.

"God, Julio. What is that?"

"Like it?" he said as he filled Lew's mug. "It's brand-new. Called Midnight."

"Maybe that's the only time you're supposed to wear it."

He grinned. "Naw. Chicks love it, man."

Only if they've spent the day in a chicken coop, Jack thought but kept it to himself.

"Say," Lew said, pointing to all the dead vegetation around the room, "did you ever think of watering your plants?"

"Wha' for?" Julio said. "They're all dead."

Lew's eyes widened. "Oh. Right. Of course." He looked at the mug Julio was pouring. "Is that decaf? I only drink decaf."

"Don't serve that shit," Julio said tersely as he turned and strutted back to the bar.

"I can see why the place is half deserted," Lew said, glancing at Julio's retreating form. "That fellow is downright rude."

"It doesn't come naturally to him. He's been practicing lately."

"Yeah? Well somebody ought to see that the owner gets wise to him."

"He is the owner."

"Really?" Lew leaned over the table and spoke in a low voice. "Is there some religious significance to all these dead plants?"

"Nah. It's just that Julio isn't happy with the caliber of his clientele lately."

"Well he's not going to raise it with these dead plants."

"No. You don't understand. He wants to lower it. The yuppies have discovered this place and they've started showing up here. He's been trying to get rid of them. This has always been a working man's bar and eatery.

The Beamer crowd is scaring off the old regulars. Julio and his help are rude as hell to them but they just lap it up. They like being insulted. He let all the window plants die, and the yups think it's great. It's driving the poor guy nuts."

Lew seemed to be only half listening. He stood and stared toward the grimy front window for a few seconds, then sat again.

"Looking for someone?"

"I think I was followed here," Lew said, looking uncomfortable. "I know that sounds crazy but—"

"Who'd want to follow you?"

"I don't know. It might have something to do with Melanie."

"Your wife? Why would—?"

"I wish I knew." Lew suddenly became fidgety. "I'm not so sure about this anymore."

"It's okay. You can change your mind. No hard feelings." A certain small percentage of customers who got this far developed cold feet when the moment came to tell Jack exactly what they wanted him to fix for them. "But don't back out because you're being followed."

"I'm not even sure I am." He sighed. "The thing is, I don't know why I'm here, or what I'm supposed to do. I'm so upset I can't think straight."

"Easy, Lew," Jack said. "This is just a conversation."

"Okay, fine. But who are you? Why did my wife say to call you and only you? I don't understand any of this."

Jack had to feel sorry for the guy. Lewis Ehler was no doubt a one-hundred-percent solid, taxpaying citizen; he had a problem and felt he should be dealing with one of the institutions his sweat-procured taxes paid for, instead of this stranger in a bar. This wasn't the way his world was supposed to be.

"And why do you call yourself Repairman Jack?" Ehler added.

"I don't, really. It's a name that sort of became attached to me." Abe Grossman had started calling him that years ago. Jack had used it for awhile as a lark, but it had stuck. "Because I'm in a sort of fix-it business. But we'll get to me later. First tell me about you. What do you do for the Keystone Paper Cylinder Company?"