Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

but especially not to Miss Victoria Westphalen. Jack considered Vicky his daughter. Genetically she had another father, but in every other way, in every corner of Jack's mind and heart, Vicks was his little girl. And someone who looked like Porky Pig had tried to kill her.
    Bad move, Porky.

4
    Mount Sinai Medical Center was right up the street from the museum, so Jack figured that was where the rioters and their victims would wind up. When he got there and saw all the cops and a few handcuffed guys in crested blue blazers, he knew he'd figured right.
    The emergency department was in chaos. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies hurrying back and forth, doing triage, seeing the most serious cases first. Injured men, women, and even a few children were milling around or sitting with dazed looks on their faces. Some of the blazered guys were still causing trouble, shouting curses, struggling with the police. A disaster scene.
    As Jack wandered around the waiting room, looking for Vicky's attacker, he picked up bits of the story. The wild men were all graduates of St. Barnabas Prep. Jack had heard of it: a rich kids' school located in the East Eighties. Seemed their twenty-fifth-reunion dinner party never got past the hors d'oeuvres. Arguments broke out toward the end of the cocktail hour. Over what? The quality of the canapes? Not enough horseradish in the cocktail sauce? Whatever. The arguments grew into fights that spilled out onto the street and from there escalated to a riot.
    They were calling it a "preppy riot." Swell.
    But where was the particular Porky preppy he wanted? Jack adopted a confused look and wandered into the treatment area. Peeked behind curtains and saw scalps and faces being stitched up, fingers and wrists being splinted, X-rays being studied, but no sign of the bastard he sought.
    A security guard—big, black, with a no-nonsense air about him—stopped Jack. "Can I help you, sir?"
    "I'm looking for a friend," Jack said.
    "If you're not being treated, you'll have to return to the waiting area." He pointed over Jack's shoulder. "The lady at the registration desk can tell you if he's here."
    Jack started to move back toward the waiting area. "I think he broke his leg."
    "Then he's probably in the casting room, and you can't go in there."
    "OK," Jack said, moving off. "Back to the waiting room."
    Halfway there, he stopped a young Asian woman in green scrubs.
    "Where's the casting room?"
    "Right there," she said, pointing to his left, then continued on her way.
    You're sharp tonight, Jack thought sourly, staring at the wooden door with the black-and-white casting room plaque dead center at eye level. Walked right past it.
    He glanced up the hall. The security guard was turned away with his walkie-talkie against his face, so Jack pushed open the door and stepped inside.
    And there he was. Dirty, disheveled, his hair matted with blood, he lay on a gurney with a nurse by his side and a doctor wrapping his right leg in some sort of fiberglass mesh. His looked different with his eyes glazed and jaw slackened from whatever they'd shot him up with to keep him quiet, but this was the guy. Porky. Jack felt his jaw muscles bunch. Would have loved, dearly loved, a chance to give the doctor cause to work on the other leg and both arms and maybe carve some bacon off his hide, but the cop watching from the head of the gurney would surely object.
    Jack stood statue still, scanning the room. Had only a few seconds before he was spotted. Especially didn't want Porky to see him—might accuse him of tossing him off the steps—but now that he'd found him, Jack wanted his name. Spotted a clipboard atop some X-rays on the counter to his left. Snagged it and stepped back into the hallway.
    The top sheet was an intake form, with "Butler, Robert B." printed across the top. A West Sixty-seventh Street address. Jack knew the building—a luxury high-rise maybe twenty blocks from his place. He memorized Butler's unit number, leaned the