Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [16]
Jack ducked and crouched with his feet on the toilet seat. He hadn’t bothered to latch the stall door, so it stood half open. If whoever it was wandered this far down …
He heard a couple of voices and recognized one of them.
Oh, crap—Toliver!
If he found Jack here and spotted the open window, it would be more than embarrassing. Jack’s whole plan would be shot.
Heart pounding, he listened to Toliver talk to whoever was with him, their voices low, casual … something about football and North Burlington Regional.
Right. Friday’s game was the big rivalry—the South Badgers against the North Greyhounds.
Their voices were drowned out by flushes and then the room went silent. Jack stayed put until he was sure he was alone, then he rose and pulled the window closed. But left the latches undone.
Seconds later he was in the hall, hurrying for his next class, not knowing if he’d been wasting his time back there or not. Because he didn’t know if the window opened wide enough to allow him to slip through. If it didn’t, he’d have to go to plan B.
Trouble was, he didn’t have a plan B.
5
USED started out slow, even for a Tuesday.
Jack had worked in the store over the summer and into the fall. It sold a mishmash of antiques and junk, with a blurred and wavering line between the two: One person’s precious antique was another’s junk, which some people spelled junque. Whichever way it was spelled, USED had tons of it, all stashed here and there in a seemingly willy-nilly pattern. Jack knew the place held loads of goodies he hadn’t yet seen, and might never see, but Mr. Rosen, the owner, knew where everything was. Or pretended to.
Jack had been surprised when the old man asked him to stay on into the fall. He’d wondered why at first. Customer traffic had been pretty good during the summer, but dropped off steeply after Labor Day. Weekends still saw people coming through, but during the week, almost nothing. After a while he realized that Mr. Rosen, a pretty frail-looking guy, got tired in the afternoon and liked to hit the cot in the back room for forty winks. Well, more like eighty.
Turned out to be a good deal for Jack. After he’d done his dusting and polishing and straightening up, he’d man the counter near the front and do his homework, something Mr. Rosen encouraged. Through it all he collected $3.50 an hour—just above the minimum wage
Today was different, though. After finishing his busywork, he went to the cabinet at the rear of the store and pulled the lock-picking kit from the top drawer. Mr. Rosen had taught him how to use it so he could open cabinets and such that came with locked doors and drawers but no keys. Along with the tension bars and rakes, the kit included an assortment of padlock shims. These were little half cylinders of thin metal with a point on one end and two flanges on the other. He pocketed the kit. He’d return it when he was finished with Toliver.
He’d just settled himself at the counter, readying to practice on an old combination lock Mr. Rosen had for sale, when the door chimed. He looked up and saw Walt Erskine stepping in. He shoved the shims and the padlock under the counter.
Weird Walt, as he was known, had a gray-streaked beard and long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. His eyes were semi-glazed from the applejack he sipped all day. He wore his uniform of jeans, T-shirt, olive-drab fatigue jacket, and black leather gloves. Word was he even ate dinner with those gloves. Jack had seen him without them only once—just last month on the weirdest night of his life.
Walt looked around. “Got anything new?”
Jack deadpanned him. “No.”
“Oh,” Walt said with a grin and a wink as he wandered toward the rear of the store. “I get it. Right on.”
As Walt disappeared down an aisle, the door chimed again and Mr. Drexler walked in. Like Walt, he had his own uniform: a white three-piece suit with a white tie and white shirt. He carried a black hide-covered cane.
“Hey, Mister Drexler,” Jack said.
He had black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak.