Avenging Fury Page 11

  “What d’ya mean?” Mickey said. He was a little stunned. His hopes had been high.

  “Meaning this box is not authentic. There are no such phonograms in Egyptian writing. Nor is it hieratic script. Hittite? No. The box is not so old. Worn. A copy. What dynasty? Where? Hm.”

  He placed the box beneath a large magnifying glass ringed with strong full-spectrum lighting, studied the inscriptions, made copies on a pad. Mickey looked at Riley, smiling uneasily. There were more cone lights above the Egyptologist’s worktable, hot enough to bring sweat to the Mick’s shiny dome, which was crisscrossed with strands of hair that looked like dried incisions made by a crazed surgeon.

  “So can you read any of that?”

  The Egyptologist looked up.

  “There is consistency of symbology, the construction of symbol groups, and notations that are demotic rather than symbolic. But it is gibberish to me. An elaborate fraud, or else predating any known system of writing. Ha-ha, impossible. As for boss man in the chariot, I get only that he flies to the stars—between worlds, perhaps. Hm. Here is something I miss before. Look here, please, through my glass.”

  Mickey was directed by the Egyptologist’s enormous finger to a tiny stamped inscription near one soldered seam of the box. It read SOUVENIR OF THE CHICAGO WORLD’S FAIR.

  “That fair was in 1893,” the Egyptologist said. “ ‘The White City,’ it was called. Dedicated to the marvels of electricity. The dawn of a new age.” He turned off the worktable lights. “Sorry to doom your expectations.” He said it with a smile that could be described as secretly pleased.

  On the drive back to Paramus, Riley said, “Shoot. Anyway, I’m convinced there’s something inside.”

  “More souvenir bullshit,” Mickey said. But he was wondering about the meticulous soldering job.

  In his garage workshop Mickey clamped the bronze box in a vise and went to work with a grinding wheel. The metal that had been used for the soldering was surprisingly hard. Mickey and Riley took turns with the grinder but by the time they had the box open it was getting dark and Annette had appeared on the back-porch steps calling Mickey to supper.

  “Why go to all this trouble to seal the box?” Riley had said more than once. “Maybe it’s a find after all. Jewelry.”

  Neither of them had a quick comment when they discovered the eight spark plugs with minutely etched glyphs on the porcelain insulators. The center and side electrodes of each plug appeared to be silver. Mickey tried to bite into one with the blade of a jackknife but was unable to score the metal. Silver? No way.

  The plugs were neatly nested in their own woven case within the bronze box. Whatever the material was, it crumbled at a touch.

  After turning one of the plugs over and over in his hands Mickey said, “Special set, probably. But no specs. If this is a hoax, what’s the point?”

  “Eighteen ninety-three? Those were still horse-and-buggy days. Did they make spark plugs back then?”

  “No. But I guess they had flying chariots a zillion years ago.”

  Mickey put the spark plugs with a clutter of odds-and-ends jars on a shelf behind his workbench and went into the house to eat, in a surly mood as he handed over the bronze box to Annette. Not knowing the point of things made his head ache. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those spark plugs. His hands felt cramped and tingly. He washed them with Boraxo at the kitchen sink and used Corn Huskers Lotion on his calluses. The tingling persisted. When he sat down at the table and touched his fork he felt a shock. The fork glowed for a couple of seconds. His heart flivvered like a just-netted trout.

  Mickey pushed his chair back and studied his tingling spatulate fingertips. Annette was taking a standing rib roast out of the oven—a once-a-month treat, prices of meat being what they were—and didn’t notice the expression of dismay on her husband’s face. As always, because Mick had never been much of a conversationalist, she filled the inevitable long silences of their house, now that the girls, Janelle and Maureen, had departed, with as much verbal stuffing as she could dish up. Mickey seldom apprehended a tenth of what Annette had to say. One of his two remaining obligations as her husband was to grunt or nod in the right places, say, “That so?” or something equally encouraging when Annette ran short of breath.

  Annette put the roast on the lazy Susan with the scalloped potatoes and succotash and Parker House rolls, caught sight of Mickey sitting with his hands lax in his lap, staring at the fork that first had buzzed him, then had momentarily glowed like the red foil Sacred Heart in the bosom of Jesus on the wall calender behind Mickey’s head.

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve got a pain, Mickey.”

  He raised his head. “Huh?”

  “I said you look like you got a pain.” Her voice rose in anticipation of ominous news. “Are you hiding something from me, Mickey? Was it bad news your last checkup you don’t want me to know?”

  “For chrissake, Annette. I’m sound as a silver dollar. Told you that already.” He looked at the platter with the roast and carving tools on it. Reached out gingerly and touched the sterling knife handle. No unpleasant jolt. Mickey swallowed. “Why don’t I go ahead and—”

  “Thanks and praise come first,” Annette reminded him, settling her bulk into a chair opposite the Mick.

  Mickey hitched his captain’s chair closer to the table. Flexed his hands before joining them prayerfully. The tingling was barely perceptible now. Elbows on the table, Mickey bowed his head.

  “A’ sha’fh nas altuk dif g’la sum ba-Reis s’ha’k baas . . .”

  Annette’s head shot up, her ginger eyes like jumbo aggies.

  “Whaaaat?”

  Distracted from his prayer, Mickey frowned at her.

  “Whaddya mean, what?”

  “What was that you were saying?”

  “Whaddya—I said, ‘Lord, we humbly thank you for this wonderful—’ Like I always say at the table, for chrissake. The goddamn blessing.”

  Annette raised a hand in an abrupt chopping motion, folded three fingers, shook the remaining finger at him. “I’m not in the mood tonight for hijinks, Mickey! Not with little Danny in a hospital suffering from nasal diptheria, and God knows I should be there right now helping Janelle with the other children—”

  “He’s only in the hospital for two–three days. Resting comfortable, didn’t Janny say, no need for you to fly all the way out to Phoenix, not to mention the expense—what in hell’d I do, get you going off on me like that?”

  “Please. Talking nonsense when you should be thanking God. Just asking for trouble we don’t need. God has his likes and dislikes. Talking in tongues! Maybe in some churches that’s common practice, but I happen to believe our Lord finds it offensive. Those charismatics, now don’t get me started. If you weren’t in the mood to ask the blessing—”

  “I said it already, most of it! In plain English.”

  He looked too amazed and indignant to be keeping up a pretense. Annette dropped her hatchet hand, although her lips remained tight.

  “Did you not hear yourself?”

  “Hear myself what? This is nuts. Supper’s cooling, and all you can think about is I didn’t ask the blessing right?”

  Annette stared at Mickey for several more seconds. The Mick staring right back at her, righteous in his hurt; Annette’s displeasure lost impetus. She shook her head, then her eyes wandered in a puzzled way. She hunched her shoulders.

  “Well, but I . . . I . . . I thought I heard . . .”

  “Can I carve now?” Mickey asked, with an edge of sarcasm.

  “I guess . . . just upset, Janelle and the kids on my mind, didn’t hear you correctly. Or, or . . .”

  “Aw, forget about it, Nettie. ’S okay. Let’s eat. What’s for dessert, by the way?”

  “Oh, Mickey, your weight; not that I’m criticizing. You know Dr. Chopra said—”

  Mickey gave her a wink. Forgive and forget, even if she did get a little peculiar from time to time. Not like when she was wearing those ho
rmone patches, of course. That had been a rough couple of years. “Bet you made something anyhow. Let me give it a guess. Those Macintoshes were in the window greenhouse yesterday? Apple cobbler?”

  “But no whipped cream. And I mean that.” A playful finger waggle this time.

  “Sure. I can get along without whipped,” the Mick said.

  After he’d finished eating his supper, what was still eating Mickey was speculation about those spark plugs. In spite of having spontaneously spoken a seriously dead language at the table, about which he hadn’t a tittle of recollection, Mickey had no insights into the origin of the curious plugs—although he was no longer thinking hoax, and to hell with the so-called expert at Rutgers.

  Having solved the mystery of why the Chevy Nomad’s torque converter bolts had been too short and reversed the flexplate to fix the problem, Mickey loaded the heavy Powerglide transmission onto the trans jack in his well-equipped home shop and reassembled the unit. His nephew Pat, who lived a couple of blocks over, had fled his house again. Patrick didn’t have much to do with his father, a much younger half-brother of Mick’s who was raising his three sons with a cruel tongue, the back of his hand, and total contempt for their existence. Pat was fifteen, undersized for his age, a pepperpot kid with scrambled hair and bowed legs and a squashed nose that gave him a goblin look. So ugly he was cute, Annette often said of Patrick, when she was sure it wouldn’t get back to him. Mick didn’t mind having the kid around, although he had too many opinions about everything. Patrick was taking automotive courses at the trade high school he attended, with the notion of making his way in life like his uncle Mickey, as a shop foreman for a new-car dealer.

  Patrick sat on a metal stool eating apple cobbler (with plenty of whipped cream) while Mickey put the finishing touches on the Nomad’s power train and lowered the car on its jacks. He still had a lot of work to do on the resto: replace corroded trim and the windshield, install new seats, apply several coats of deep-gloss lacquer to the body.

  “Does it RUN yet?” Pat asked him. Slow to mature physically, his voice was just now changing, hitting hoarse high notes, giving a few adult grumbles.

  “Yeah, ought to.”

  “How about we take it for a spin?”

  Why not? Mickey thought. A new battery and ignition were in place. All that was lacking were spark plugs.

  Spark plugs. Mickey took a lot of time wiping his hands, a curious smile on his face that had Patrick looking at him with his head cocked.

  “What’s wrong, Uncle Mick?”

  “Wrong? Oh, she’ll run, all right, with that 265 block. I was just wondering where’d be the best place to let her out.”

  But Patrick had made up his mind for him. The Mick had a drawerful of factory sparks. He went through the boxes already half certain he didn’t have a set with the Nomad’s specs. Already it was too late to drop by the parts house on route 17. He shook his head.

  “I forgot to buy plugs,” he told Patrick. “So maybe tomorrow, huh?”

  Patrick was down from the stool, setting the meticulously cleaned-out cobbler dish on a corner of the workbench. He noticed the spark plugs from the 1893 World’s Fair box Mickey had left there.

  “What about these? They any good?”

  “Oh, those. They’re, whaddya call, prototypes. Never made it into production, far as I know.”

  “They look okay. Why don’t you SEE—” Patrick cleared his throat, “if one of ’em fits the Nomad?”

  “Patrick, don’t touch!”

  The boy jerked his fingers away from the crumbling nest of spark plugs. He looked back at Mickey. “Jeez.”

  “You could get a shock is what I mean.”

  Patrick looked as if he thought he was being ribbed.

  “They’re not wired up to anything.”

  “Well, they’re, uh, like I said, not ordinary plugs. So let’s just forget taking the Nomad out tonight.”

  “C’mon. Try one. I mean, it could fit. Wouldn’t take us long to gap the rest of ’em, wire ’em up.” He sensed indecision on Mickey’s part. “How long’ve you been working on that heap, ALMOST three months? Don’t you want to find out what she’ll do, that straight stretch down by the old Lackawanna switchyard?”

  Mickey eyed the neat rows of spark plugs, the odd gift in the Crackerjack box. His own heart sparked. Couldn’t do any harm. Plugs fit or they don’t. No trouble to find out.

  “Hand me my plug wrench, Pat.”

  While Patrick was retrieving the wrench from the tool caddy, Mick selected one of the plugs at random from its nest. The number-one cylinder was up front of the engine, on the passenger side. He already had pulled the old plugs and cleaned out the sockets. He checked the “prototype” for signs of trouble: a hairline insulator crack, worn electrodes. The plug looked perfect, never used.

  “What’s all that writing on the insulator?” Patrick asked. “Looks Arabic or something. Russian?”

  “Dunno. Hand me my feeler gauge too. There’s no gap specs. Might as well make sure the plug’s gapped right before I try to seat it.”

  “You want some antiseize compound?”

  Mick gave his nephew a look. “I sure don’t want a stuck plug ruining the engine threads. Told you a dozen times how easy it is to do that.”

  “I know, I know. You feeling all right, Uncle Mickey?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I look sick to you?”

  Patrick handed the antiseize compound to Mickey. “You’re sweating a lot, that’s all.”

  “N’da ’sha el muq L’lash,” Mickey said, the alien spark plug tight in his right fist.

  “Huh?”

  “Prime rib for dinner. I could use a Alka-Seltzer. Run in the house, get me one, okay? Tell Annette we’re probably going down to the Lackawanna yard, run up the mill a time or two.”

  “Sure,” Patrick said, still wondering if the strange sounds his uncle had uttered were partly due to heartburn. He took off for the house, untied sneaker laces flapping.

  Mickey coated the plug threads with the aerosol spray. His pulses were noticeably fast, particularly in his temples. He gave the number-one cylinder socket a blast from the air hose, failed to raise a speck of grit. Then he gently inserted the plug, even more gently gave it a twist. Snug. The plug turned easily. Mickey straightened and wiped his forehead.

  “Sak m’aa ce’ef’taq,” he said with a worshipful smile. “Vl’tuur, Reis.”

  Annette was on the back-porch steps sweeping leaves away when Mickey drove the Nomad out of the garage, Patrick proud beside him on the worn-out front seat. The engine rumbled low and throaty.

  “I’ll drop Pat off at his house on the way home,” he said to his wife.

  “How long will you be?”

  “Ten, ten thirty,” Mickey said. “Want I should pick up something at the Quik-Shop?”

  “If you want a beer while you watch the wrestling.”

  “Right,” Mickey said. He pulled out of the short driveway beside their brick and shingle Cape Cod, turned right on Edgefield, headed south. Annette went back into the house, took an orange from the fridge, peeled and ate it slowly, having usurped Mickey’s Barcalounger in the den to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

  It was ten minutes past five Sunday morning when Annette, alone all night and wrung out from nerves, decided she had better call the state police.

  11:10 P.M.

  Eden and Cody Olds, having canceled their early-morning wager, amicably agreed to split the considerable tab for dinner at Picasso. For Eden, two hours had slipped by quickly, an indication that she was having a relaxed time with a guy whom she was on good terms with, but not stuck on himself; who told entertaining stories about his upbringing on an Arizona ranch. He was okay with the fact that she didn’t want to say a lot about herself. Maybe he was wondering how a young woman raised by foster parents in Northern California, middle class all the way, happened to be staying in luxury accommodations at a Vegas megaresort, with private detectives enhancing the already-consi
derable security. He didn’t ask. He wasn’t inhibited by Eden’s spells of reserve that bordered on wariness, secrecy. Also, Cody was in no hurry to come on to her, if he intended to do so. Eden couldn’t read his intentions but she had the impression that he was not the kind to jump into a relationship. So he had the experience to sense a wounded spirit and an instinct for knowing how to josh her out of a complex mood when one rose from the depths of her heart to her eyes.

  He was partners, Cody said, with a couple of other investors, in art galleries: Vegas, Santa Fe, Newport Beach, California. They were mounting a show and he would be in town for a few more days. Eden smiled and said nothing about her plans.

  As for her night out, basketball and a great dinner, Eden knew she’d needed it and felt less guilty about not spending the time with Bertie. Before they left Bellagio she made another call from the ladies’ lounge at Picasso and talked to Bertie’s brother Kieti, who was staying the night with her in the hospital suite to which she’d been moved, ensuring stricter privacy. More Blackwelder operatives protected Bertie there. She was still only semiconscious but she had recognized Kieti and her father and had communicated with them through hand squeezes. Vital signs were strong. Eden decided to skip a late visit and see Bertie first thing in the morning.

  There were no messages from Tom Sherard, either on her cell phone or on the machine at the hotel bungalow.

  Eden and Cody took the escalator to the first floor. Outside, the Dancing Waters show was on; they’d seen it several times from their table in the restaurant. But they watched again, not talking or needing to, comfortable in silence, neither wanting to break off the evening just yet.

  “So where’s your gallery?” Eden asked.

  “At the Venetian.”

  “I’d like to see it. If it’s not too late.”

  “There’s no ‘too late’ in Vegas. Our crew is probably still there settin’ up. The show is Wednesday night. Celebrities. Champagne. News coverage. You’re invited.”