He tried to make himself invisible, to melt the wastebasket with a thought and to cause sparks to arc between his fingertips. None of these things occurred.
He rose and made his way to the bathroom. As he drank glass after glass of water he studied himself in the mirror. Light hair and eyes this time, regular features; fairly good-looking, actually. He judged himself to be a little over six feet in height. Well-muscled, too. There ought to be something in the closet that would fit. He'd been about this height and build before.
It was a gray day beyond the window with patches of slushy-looking snow lining the sidewalk across the street. Water trickled in the gutter. Croyd halted on his way to the closet to withdraw a heavy steel rod from a crate beneath his writing table. Almost casually, he bent the rod in half and then twisted it. The strength had carried over yet again, he reflected, as the metal pretzel joined the radio in the wastebasket. He located a shirt and trousers that fit him well, and a tweed jacket only slightly tight in the shoulders. He turned his attention then to his large collection of shoes, and after a time he came up with a comfortable pair.
It was a little after eight o'clock according to his Rolex, and this being winter and daylight it meant morning. His stomach rumbled. Time for breakfast and orientation. He checked his cash cache and withdrew a couple of hundred dollars. Getting low, he mused. Have to visit the bank later. Or maybe rob one. The stocks were taking a beating, too, the last time around. Later…
He equipped himself with a handkerchief, a comb, his keys, and a small plastic bottle of pills. He did not like to carry identification of any sort. No need for an overcoat. Temperature extremes seldom bothered him.
He locked the door behind him, negotiated the hall and descended the stairs. He turned left when he reached the street, facing into a sharp wind, and he began walking down the Bowery. Leaving a dollar in the outstretched hand of a tall, cadaverous-looking joker with a nose like an icicle-who stood as still as a totem pole in the doorway of a closed mask shopCroyd asked the man what month it was.
" December," the figure said without moving its lips. "Merry Christmas."
"Yeah," Croyd said.
He tried a few more simple tests as he headed for his first stop, but he could not break the empty whisky bottles in the gutter with a thought, nor set fire to any of the piles of trash. He attempted to utter ultrasounds but only produced squeaks. He hiked down to the newsstand at Hester Street where short, fat Jube Benson sat reading one of his own papers. Benson had on a yellow and orange Hawaiian shirt beneath a light-blue summer suit; bristles of red hair protruded from beneath his porkpie hat. The temperature seemed to bother him no more than it did Croyd. He raised his dark, blubbery, pocked face and displayed a pair of short, curving tusks as Croyd stopped before the stand.
"Paper?" he asked.
"One of each," Croyd said, "as usual."
Jube's eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the man before him. Then, "Croyd?" he asked.
Croyd nodded.
"It's me, Walrus. How're they hanging?"
"Can't complain, fella. Got yourself a pretty one this time."
"Still test-driving it," Croyd said, gathering a stack of papers.
Jube showed more tusk.
"What's the most dangerous job in Jokertown?" he asked. "I give up."
"Riding shotgun on the garbage truck," he said. "Hear what happened to the gal who won the Miss Jokertown contest?"
"What?"
"Lost her title when they learned she'd posed nude for Poultry Breeder's Gazette."
"That's sick, Jube," said Croyd, quirking a smile.
"I know. We got hit by a hurricane while you were asleep. Know what it did?"'
"What?"
"Four million dollars' worth of civic improvement."
"All right, already!" Croyd said. "What do I owe you?" Jube put down his paper, rose, and waddled to the side of the kiosk.
"Nothin'," he said. "I want to talk to you."
"I've got to eat, Jube. When I wake up I need a lot of food in a hurry. I'll come back later, all right?"
"Is it okay if I join you?"
"Sure. But you'll lose business." Jube began closing the stand.
"That's okay," he said. "This is business."
Croyd waited for him to secure the stand, and they walked two blocks to Hairy's Kitchen.
"Let's take that booth in the back," Jube said.
"Fine. No business till after my first round of food, though, okay? I can't concentrate with low blood sugar, funny hormones and lots of transaminases. Let me get something else inside first."
"I understand. Take your time."
When the waiter came by, Jube said that he had already eaten and ordered only a cup of coffee which he never touched. Croyd started with a double order of steak and eggs and a pitcher of orange juice.
Ten minutes later when the pancakes arrived, Jube cleared his throat.
"Yeah," Croyd said. "That's better. So what's bothering you, Jube?",
"Hard to begin," said the other.
"Start anywhere. Life is brighter for me now."
"It isn't always healthy to get too curious about other people's business around here…"
"True," Croyd agreed.
"On the other hand, people love to gossip, to speculate." Croyd nodded, kept eating.
"It's no secret about the way you sleep, and that's got to keep you from holding a regular job. Now, you seem more of an ace than a joker, overall. I mean, usually you look normal but you've got some special talent."
"I haven't got a handle on it yet, this time around."
"Whatever. You dress well, you pay your bills, you like to eat at Aces High, and that ain't a Timex you're wearing. You've got to do something to stay on top-unless you inherited a bundle."
Croyd smiled.
"I'm afraid to look at the Wall Street journal," he said, touching the stack of papers at his side. "I may have to do something I haven't done in a while if it says what I think it's going to say."
"May I assume then that when you work your employment is sometimes somewhat less than legal?"
Croyd raised his head, and when their eyes met Jube flinched. It was the first time Croyd realized that the man was nervous. He laughed.
"Hell, Jube," he said. "I've known you long enough to know you're no cop. You want something done, is that it? If it involves stealing something, I'm good at that. I learned from an expert. If someone's being blackmailed I'll be glad to get the evidence back and scare the living shit out of the person doing it. If you want something removed, destroyed, transported, I'm your man. On the other hand, if you want somebody killed I don't like to do that. But I could give you the names of a couple of people it wouldn't bother."
Jube shook his head.
"I don't want anybody killed, Croyd. I do want something stolen, though."
"Before you go into any details, I'd better tell you that I come high."
Jube showed his tusks,
"The-uh-interests I represent are prepared to make it worth your while."
Croyd finished the pancakes, drank coffee, and ate a Danish while he waited for the waffles.
"It's a body, Croyd," Jube said at last. "What?"
"A corpse."
"I don't understand."
"There was a guy who died over the weekend. Body was found in. a dumpster. No ID. It's a John Doe. Over at the morgue. "
"Jeez, Jube! A body? I never stole a body before. What good is it to anybody?"
Jube shrugged.
"They're willing to pay real well for it-and for whatever possessions the guy had with him. That's all they wanted said."
"I guess it's their business what they want it for. But what kind of money are they talking?"
"It's worth fifty grand to them."
"Fifty grand? For a stiff?" Croyd stopped eating and stared. "You've got to be kidding."
"Nope. I can give you ten now and forty when you deliver. "
"And if I can't pull it ofl?"
"It's in the medical examiner's office at Five-Twenty First Avenue. "
"Okay. Say I go over there and-"
Hairy came by and laid a plate of sausages and hash browns before Croyd. He refilled his coffee cup and placed several bills and some coins on the table.
"Your change, sir."
Croyd looked at the money.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I didn't pay you yet."
"You gave me a fifty."
"No, I didn't. I'm not finished."
It looked as if Hairy smiled, deep within the dark dense pelt that covered him entirely.
"I wouldn't stay in business long if I gave away money," he said. "I know when I'm making change."
Croyd shrugged and nodded. "I guess so."
Croyd furrowed his brows when Hairy had left, and he shook his head.
"I didn't pay him, Jube," he said.
"I don't remember seeing you pay him either. But he said a fifty.
… That's hard to forget."
"Peculiar, too. Because I was thinking of breaking a fifty here when I was done."
"Oh? Do you recall when the thought passed through your mind?"
"Yeah. When he brought the waffles:"
"Did you actually have a mental image of taking out a fifty and handing it to him?"
"Yes."
"Interesting…"
"What do you mean?"
"I think that may be your power this timesome kind of telepathic hypnosis. You'll just have to play with it a bit to get the hang of it, to find its limits."
Croyd nodded slowly.
"Please don't try it on me, though. I'm screwed up enough as it is today."
"Why? You got some stake in this corpse business?"
"The less you know the better, Croyd. Believe me."
"Okay, I can see that. I don't really care, anyway. Not for what they're paying," he said. "So I take this job. Say everything goes smoothly and I've got this body. What do I do with it?"
Jube withdrew a pen and a small notebook from an inside pocket. He wrote for a moment, tore off a sheet, and passed it to Croyd. Then he dug in his side pocket, produced a key, and put it next to Croyd's plate.
"That address is about five blocks from here," he said. "'Rented room' ground floor. The key fits the lock. You take it there, lock it in, and come tell me at the stand."
Croyd began eating again. After a time, he said, "Okay."
"Good."
"But they've probably got more than one John Doe in there this time of year. Winos who freeze to death-you know. How do I know which one is the right one?"
"I was getting to that. This guy's a joker, see? A little fellow. About five feet tall, maybe. Looks kind of like a big bug-legs that fold up like a grasshopper's, an exoskeleton with some fur on it, four fingers on his hands with three joints each, eyes on the sides of his head, vestigial wings on back…"
"I get the picture. Sounds hard to confuse with the standard model."
"Yes. Shouldn't weigh much either."
Croyd nodded. Someone in the front of the restaurant said, "… pterodactyl!" and Croyd turned his head in time to see the winged shape flit by the window.
"That kid again," Jube said.
"Yeah. Wonder who he's pestering this time?"
"You know him?"
"Uh-huh. He shows up every now and then. Kind of an aces fan. At least he doesn't know what I look like this time. Anyway… How soon do they need this body?"
"The sooner the better."
"Anything you can tell me about the setup at the morgue?"
Jube nodded slowly.
"Yes. It's a six-story building. Labs and offices and such, upstairs. Reception and viewing area on the ground floor. They keep the bodies in the basement. The autopsy rooms are down there, too. They have a hundred and twenty-eight storage compartments, with a walk-in refrigerator with shelves for kids' bodies. When somebody has to view a body for ID purposes, they put it on a special elevator which lifts it to a glass-enclosed chamber in a waiting room on the first floor."
"So you've been there?"
"No, I read Milton Helpern's memoirs."
"You've got what I'd call a real liberal education," Croyd said. "I should probably read more myself."
"You can buy a lot of books for fifty grand." Croyd smiled.
"So, we've got a deal?"
"Let me think about it a little longer-over breakfastwhile I figure out just how my talent works. I'll come by your stand when I'm done. When would I pick up the ten grand?"
"I can get it by this afternoon."
"Okay. I'll see you in a hour or so."
Jube nodded, raised his massive bulk, slid out of the booth.
"Watch your cholesterol," he said.
Blue cracks had appeared in the sky's gray shell, and sunlight found its way through to the street. The sound of trickling water came steadily now from somewhere to the rear of the newsstand. Jube would normally have thought it a pleasant background to the traffic noises and other sounds of the city, save that a small moral dilemma had drifted in on leathery wings and destroyed the morning. He did not realize he had made a decision in the matter until he looked up and saw Croyd looking at him, smiling.
"No problem," said Croyd. "It'll be a piece of cake." Jube sighed.
"There's something I've got to tell you first," he said. "Problems?"
"Nothing that bears directly on the terms of the job," Jube explained. "But you may have a problem you didn't know you had."
"Like what?" Croyd said, frowning. "That pterodactyl we saw earlier…? F "Yeah?.,
"Kid Dinosaur was headed here. I found him waiting when I got back. He was looking for you."
"I hope you didn't tell him where to find me."
"No, I wouldn't do that. But you know how he keeps tabs on aces and high-powered jokers…?"
"Yeah. Why couldn't he be into baseball players or war criminals?"
"He saw one he wanted you to know about. He said that Devil John Darlingfoot got out of the hospital a month or so ago and dropped out of sight. But he's back now. He'd seen him near the Cloisters earlier. Says he's heading for Midtown."
"Well, well. So what?"
"So he thinks he's looking for you. Wants a rematch. The Kid thinks he's still mad over what you did to him the day the two of you trashed Rockefeller Plaza."
"So let him keep looking. I'm not a short, heavyset, darkhaired guy anymore. I'll go get the stiff now-before someone buys him a short bier."
"Don't you want the money?"
"You already gave it to me."
"When?"
"What's your first memory of my coming back here?"
"I looked up about a minute ago and saw you standing there smiling. You said there was no problem. You called it 'a piece of cake.'"
"Good. Then, it's working."
"You'd better explain."
"That's the place where I wanted you to start remembering. I'd been here for about a minute before that, and I talked you into giving me the money and forgetting about it."
Croyd withdrew an envelope from an inner pocket, opened it, and displayed cash.
"Good Lord, Croyd! What else did you do during that minute?"
"Your virtue's intact, if that's what you mean."
"You didn't ask me any questions-about…?" Croyd shook his head.
"I told you I didn't care who wants the body or why. I really don't like to burden myself with other peoples concerns. I've enough problems of my own."
Jube sighed.
"Okay. Go do it, boy." Croyd winked.
"Not to worry, Walrus. Consider it done."
Croyd walked until he came to a supermarket, went in and purchased a small package of large plastic trash bags. He folded one and fitted it into his inside jacket pocket. He left the rest in a waste bin. Then
he walked to the next major intersection and hailed a cab.
He rehearsed his strategy as he rode across town. He would enter the place and use his latest power to persuade the receptionist that he was expected, that he was a pathologist from Bellevue who had been called over by a friend on the staff to consult on a forensic peculiarity. He toyed for a moment with the names Malone and Welby, settled upon Anderson. He would then cause the receptionist to summon someone with the authority to take him downstairs and find him his John Doe. He would place that person under control, get the body and its belongings, transfer it to a baggy, and walk out, causing everyone he passed to forget he had been by. Certainly a lot simpler than more strenuous tactics he had had to employ over the years. He smiled at the classic simplicity of it-no violence, no memory…
When he arrived at the aluminum-paneled building of blue and white glazed brick, he told the cab driver to go on by and drop him at the next corner. There were two police cars parked in front and a shattered door lay before the place. The presence of police at a morgue did not seem that untoward an occurrence, but the broken door aroused his sense of caution._ He handed the driver a fifty and told him to wait. He strolled past the place once and looked inside. Several of the police were visible, apparently talking with employees.
This did not seem an ideal time to proceed with his plan. On the other hand, he could not afford to go away without finding out what had happened. So he turned when he reached the corner, and headed back. He entered without hesitation, looking about quickly.
A man in civvies who was standing with the police turned suddenly in his direction and stared. Croyd did not like that stare at all. It pulled the floor out from under his stomach and made his hands tingle.
He reached out immediately with his new power, heading directly toward the man, forcing a smile as he moved.
It's okay. You want to talk to me and do exactly as I say. Wave you hand now, say, "Hi, Jim!" in a loud voice and walk over to the side there with me.
"Hi, Jim!" the man said, moving to join Croyd.
No! Judas thought. Too damned fast. Nailed me as soon as I spotted him… We can use this guy… "Plainclothes?" Croyd asked him.
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