Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack by F. Paul Wilson

today.”
    “ Shit,” said a skinny one with glasses. “You’re not one of those animal rights creeps are you?”
    The air suddenly bristled with hostility.
    “ I’m not any kind of creep, pal ,” Jack said through his teeth and took faint satisfaction in seeing the skinny guy step back and tighten his grip on his shotgun. “I’m just telling you that there’s something real mean in there.”
    “ Like what?” said the goatee, grinning. “The Jersey Devil?”
    “ No. But it’s not some defenseless herbivore that’s going to lay down and die when you empty a couple of shells at it. You’re not the top of the food chain in there, guys.”
    “ We can handle it,” said the skinny one.
    “ Really?” Jack said. “When did you ever hunt something that posed the slightest threat to you? I’m warning you, there’s something in there that fights back and I doubt any of your type can handle that.”
    “ What’s this?” said the third hunter. “A new tactic? Scare us off with spook stories? It won’t work.”
    The fourth hunter hefted a shiny new Remington over under.
    “ The Jersey Devil! I want one! Wouldn’t that be some head to hang over the fireplace?”
    As they laughed and slapped each other high fives, Jack shrugged and walked away. He’d tried.
    Hunting season. He had to smile. Scar lip’s presence in the Pine Barrens gave the term a new twist. He wondered how these mighty hunters would react when they learned that the season was open on them .
    And he wondered if there was any truth to those old tales of the Jersey Devil. Probably hadn’t been a real Jersey Devil before. But there was now.
    
     
     
    introduction to “Home Repairs”
     
    Richard Chizmar had asked me for a crime story for an anthology he was editing called Cold Blood . So in May of 1990, a few weeks after finishing “The Last Rakosh,” I began work on a Jack story with the working title of "Domestic Problem." I ended up calling it…
     
    Home Repairs
     
    The developer didn’t look like Donald Trump.
    He was older, for one thing – mid fifties, at least – and fat and balding to boot. And nowhere near as rich. One of the biggest land developers on Long Island, as he was overly fond of saying. Rich, but not Trump rich.
    And he was sweating. Jack wondered if Donald Trump sweated. The Donald might perspire, but Jack couldn’t imagine him sweating.
    This guy’s name was Oscar Schaffer and he was upset about the meeting place.
    “ I expected we’d hold this conversation in a more private venue,” he said
    Jack watched him pull a white handkerchief from his pocket and blot the moisture from a forehead that went on almost forever. Supposedly Schaffer had started out as a construction worker who’d got into contracting and then had gone on to make a mint in custom homes. Despite occasional words like venue, his speech still carried echoes of the streets. He carried a handkerchief too. Jack couldn’t think of anyone he knew who carried a handkerchief – who owned a handkerchief.
    “ This is private,” Jack said, glancing at the empty booths and tables around them. “Julio’s isn’t a breakfast place.” Voices drifted over from the bar area on the far side of the six foot divider topped with dead plants. “Unless you drink your breakfast.”
    Julio came strutting around the partition carrying a coffee pot. 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 was slicked back. He reeked of some new brand of cologne, more cloying than usual.
    Jack coughed as the little man refilled his cup and poured one for Schaffer without asking.
    “ God, Julio. What is that?”
    “ The smell? It’s brand new. Called Midnight .”
    “ Maybe that’s when you’re supposed to wear it.”
    He grinned. “Naw. Chicks love it, man.”
    Only if