Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks

by George R. R. Martin

  “Are you an ace? Or a princess?”

  “I’m not an ace,” Trudy lied, “nor a princess, just a rich old lady who was there on the first Wild Card Day.”

  Jessica’s eyes went wide. “Were you scared?”

  “A little,” Trudy told her, “but not as much as most people. I was a tough young lady.” She glanced to the elephant. “What else have you shrunk?”

  “A whole farm!” Jessica recounted happily to Kant’s continued horror. “Horses, cows, pigs, chickens—everything!”

  “Even the little tractors and carriages?”

  “No.” Jessica pouted. “I can only squinch living things. Daddy bought me a dollhouse, but it’s not the same.”

  “Your daddy bought you a ticket to see the Amber Room, too,” Trudy pointed out. “That and a wonderful ace? You’re a very lucky little girl.”

  “You’re right.” Jessica spontaneously hugged her father. “I love you, Daddy!”

  “I love you, too, Jessica,” her father told her, then mouthed Thank you to Trudy, his face a mask of abject relief. Once his daughter released him, he extended his hand. “Jasper von der Stadt.”

  He had nice hands, soft and well cared for, with a perfect manicure and a businessman’s grip. He had a gold Rolex, too. “Trudy Pirandello.” She guessed Jasper was a stockbroker or something in finance, probably a widower. Trudy hoped the girl’s ace wasn’t to blame, but depending on timing and temperament, it very well could have been.

  But this speculation was set aside for the next set of early arrivals, a loud bunch who smelled like they’d just come from cocktails. Kant checked the invitation. “Latham, Strauss, party of five?”

  The leader, a distinguished man in a white tuxedo and diamond studs, had cold eyes. “Yes,” he said simply. Trudy guessed he was Latham. Flanking him were a tall, unusually handsome blond man in a matching white tux and studs who could have been as young as sixteen, and a gorgeous woman in her early twenties with a Snow White complexion, a sequined green dress patterned with a cascade of maple leaves, a strand of pearls, and teardrop pearl earrings. Trudy had played arm candy enough times over the years to peg the pair as a personal assistant and protégé and a high-class call girl or aspiring trophy wife. She overheard Latham naming them as David and Diane.

  Strauss, wearing a black tux with octagonal onyx studs edged with marcasite, classic deco and likely his father’s, introduced himself to Kant, and named himself as Kenneth and the pretty blonde in the blue silk dress as his wife, Beth. She’d accessorized with aquamarines. Trudy approved. But the way Beth touched her necklace and then her husband’s arm bespoke a recent gift, likely a birthday or anniversary, making Trudy cross the aquamarines off the list of suitable souvenirs. She was growing sentimental in her old age.

  “I believe Mr. Towers is expecting us for the early viewing?” Latham mentioned.

  Jessica stared at him, her mouth dropping open. “But I wanted to see the Amber Room first, Daddy. You promised.”

  “That’s okay, honey,” said Beth, “I think we have room for a couple more in our party. Right, St. John?” she asked Latham, pronouncing it Sinjin.

  It was a power play of etiquette, and Latham merely nodded. Kant glanced over to where a man in a midrange suit stood near the elevators. “Sergeant Martin?” he called.

  Martin was middling height and build, with dark hair, high cheekbones, and perfect teeth that he revealed with a reflexive smile. A nat. Trudy put this together with rumors she’d heard on the streets of Jokertown to conclude that this was Ernie Martin, who was either bad news or easy to work with, depending on where you stood with the law. Kant leaned close to Martin, whispering in his ear. Martin’s charming smile fell as he glanced to Jessica, still proudly holding her elephant.

  On the elevator ride up, Jessica held up the cricket cage so everyone could get a good look. “His name’s Timothy!”

  Trudy had not been invited along, but when she was young and pretty, she’d learned it was easy to add herself to a retinue, and the same trick worked when you were old and grandmotherly. But she could have been a ten-foot joker with purple spots and no one would have paid her any mind.

  Once the elevator let out, she watched as Martin buttonholed Ramshead, another of the Jokertown cops Trudy knew on sight. With his gray curling ram’s horns, this wasn’t hard. She wondered if the whole Jokertown precinct was here. As big of an affair as this was, Towers had likely supplemented his own security with cops from all over town, then decided to put the jokers on desk and elevator duty rather than someplace where the wealthy Republicans would have to look at them over dinner.

  The upper foyer had white marble columns with gilded capitals, crystal candelabras before gilt mirrors, and the overall decorator sense of a budget King Croesus, marble and gilding taking the place of true chryselephantine ivory and gold. But this was nothing compared to what lay beyond the ornate, antique, white-and-gold rococo double doors at the end of the hallway that Ramshead led them to.

  The Amber Room glowed like a jewel, for a jewel it was. Amber of all colors, from pale white to deepest cherry, formed the mosaic panels bedecking the walls, true old-world eighteenth-century elegance. But mostly the room shone with the colors between—yellow, egg yolk, honey, butterscotch, and cognac—the petrified resin pieced together to form ornaments, garlands, pictures and picture frames, and even wainscoting below rondels with heraldic crests flanked by marquetry, but composed of amber instead of wood, the cracks between the pieces glittering with gold leaf.

  Trudy stepped onto the lovely antique parquet floor, the traditional wooden marquetry there inlaid with tesselations and arabesques, a quadrangle of compass roses spinning out from a central circle holding a dark rosewood diamond encircled with four rosewood horseshoes overflowing with luck or at least light maple acanthus leaves. Supposedly Catherine the Great had never lost a game of cards in the Amber Room and considered it her lucky charm, though Trudy suspected this had more to do with courtiers knowing better than to smash the empress at whist than any particular luck or skill on her part.

  The other lucky figures worked into the floor’s mandala pattern were mostly obscured by two dozen banquet tables with settings for fourteen each, the extra chairs squeezed in at the ends and damn the fire marshal. Trudy did the math. Seating for 336 guests, pushing the room beyond fire safety to the limit of sheer physical space. Towers knew how to rake it in.

  Hopefully without tragedy. Amber was highly flammable, and the walls might as well be paneled in gasoline.

  But Towers was making his own luck, too, and Trudy guessed the extra security had been hired as much for fire prevention as theft. In any case, the Great Cate’s circle of horseshoes was still clearly visible in the middle of a center aisle leading to a raised dais which bore four gilded, thronelike chairs facing the main doors with a smaller amber-studded table set before them. Atop it, placed in the middle, sat a chess set of orange and lemon-yellow amber, yellow on the left, orange on the right. Trudy hoped it was just a centerpiece. The prospect of hearing Towers interview Quayle had been bad enough without having to watch them play chess, too.

  The Latham-Strauss party she’d attached herself to had entered through double doors at the base of the room, the doorway decorated with a crown of gold amber spraying rays of orange amber in a sunrise pattern at an amber cornice, curlicues, fleurons, and frippery. Identical doors were on the walls to the right and the left, surmounted by gold-skinned, hunky, shirtless youths wearing bicorne hats, emerging from a veritable thicket of rococo gilded wood rocaille to give each other loving glances across the room.

  A gay couple? Random eye candy? Golden boys, certainly, but too early to be Jack Braun in love with himself, unless he’d discovered time travel to go with his immortality. Castor and Pollux, maybe, twin guardians of banquet halls after that incident with Simonides?

  Trudy wasn’t sure, but you couldn’t spend as much time as she had in museums without picking things up from the docents and you couldn’t hir
e an Italian designer to pimp your amber firetrap back in the day without him adding propitiation to the appropriate Greco-Roman gods. Trudy thanked them for the fact that Jack was a confirmed Democrat so there was no chance of running into him here. That might get awkward.

  In any case, on the far wall, between the golden twins, stood three tall arched windows with three small arched windows above them, together two stories high, looking out onto night and Central Park. The two columns between them, at the height of the smaller windows, were adorned with oil paintings of armorial bearings, or at least of cherubs trying to figure out what to do with two huge human-size shields. Below each painting, the bust of a gilded nymph surmounted a rococo mirror, framing the central window and the dais with the four thrones and the chess set.

  She turned around in the horseshoe circle, getting a good look at the whole chamber. The amber panels all looked about thirteen feet tall, ranging from three to five feet wide, topped by a three-foot gilded wood entablature at the same level as the smaller windows with baroque cherubs and urns alongside fire-gilded ormolu candelabras. Below that each panel had garlands and swags of cherry amber over an oval portrait composed wholly of amber mosaic, both picture and frame, above a larger upright rectangular portrait, again of amber, with the panel around it amber mosaic as well. Here and there Trudy could see that the pattern was varied, some of the oval portraits smaller to allow space for oval mirrors below, and four of the rectangular amber mosaic portraits were inset with colorful paintings.

  No, not paintings, she realized on second glance. Florentine mosaics composed of different colored gemstones. She’d need to get a closer look at those.

  Busts of more gold nymphs flanked each panel, their naked breasts spilling out of golden foliage, surmounting at least two dozen tall thin mirrors with proper silver backing set at intervals about the room, reflecting the light, illuminated by smaller but no less ornate candelabras—or, actually, candle-tinted track lighting set along the edges of the ceiling alongside discreet security cameras, the lamps trained on the mirrors for reflected light, the cameras panning stealthily. A larger secondary bank of lamps and cameras ran along the strip before the windows, several of the cameras aimed at the door she’d just come through.

  Trudy counted them while pretending to admire the elegant scrollwork of the gilded acanthus leaves on the white plaster ceiling, the inset vignette paintings at the four corners of the room of yet more cherubs celebrating the four seasons, and the surprisingly inclusive vision of Paradise on the central panel with what looked like Mary approving of the match of Jesus and Mary Magdalene on the middle cloud while Dionysus chomped a bunch of grapes on another and Cupid fluttered through the air and shot an arrow in the direction of a third cloud with a woman playing a mandolin and another shaking a tambourine for the denizens of Heaven. There was also an adoring cherub deliberately posed to show his butt crack, because who didn’t want to see that?

  Trudy looked back down, intending to take in more of the Amber Room’s treasures, only to have her vision blocked by a tall man in his forties. While the cloth of his white tuxedo looked extremely expensive, the cut was awful and unflattering. His diamond studs and cuff links were so large as to be comical if they weren’t real, which just made them unforgivably garish and ostentatious. Yet to say his hair and skin were shades not found in nature would be untrue—they matched some of the bright yellows and oranges of the amber—but they were shades not found in humanity unless touched by the wild card or, in his case, the bottle and the tanning booth. “Welcome to my Amber Room,” proclaimed Duncan Towers. “Isn’t this the greatest thing ever?”

  Trudy had never encountered the real estate mogul in person, preferring a better class of establishment with more upscale clientele, but she’d seen him in newspapers and on television. That in no way compared to the reality. He gave the impression of a community theater P. T. Barnum, only more tawdry. “This thing is huge! Big league!” Duncan Towers’s Queens accent was so thick it almost sounded like he said bigly as he waved expansively to the whole chamber. “But it wasn’t quite big enough for my penthouse, so we added a couple panels to expand it.”

  He gloated like a cartoon frog, his expression beyond smug, and gestured to a new panel nearby given pride of place to the right of the windows, several spotlights making it glow. The rondel in the wainscoting displayed the Towers crest, a stylized T made to look like a medieval German tower, which was, amusingly enough, the same one his immigrant grandfather, Fritz Turm, had used on his brothel tokens. Trudy had some in her collection. But here it was done up like the crest of a noble house, lavishly rendered in bright orange amber that matched Duncan Towers’s complexion.

  Above that the rectangular portrait was pieced together with golden amber to create an almost photorealistic image of the Golden Tower. Trudy was certain a computer had been used for color matching. Then above that, the huge oval portrait showed the face of Duncan Towers himself, with the same smug grin, the mosaic pieced together from orange and yellow amber except for some small chips of white for his teeth and bits of the rarest blue amber for his eyes. The busty nymphs beaming down at this crime against taste were even bustier than their eighteenth-century sisters and had the faces and hairstyles of Nagel girls.

  “Very nice,” said Latham in a tone which implied the exact opposite.

  Trudy thought everyone picked up on this except for Towers, but apparently not. “It is really nice, isn’t it?” agreed J. Danforth Quayle, George Bush’s vice presidential pick, his hair as yellow as blond amber, his tuxedo black. He looked like a surfer who’d got lost on the way to the beach and instead went into politics. “We were just saying that, weren’t we, Marilyn?”

  “Yes,” agreed the horse-faced—in the nat sense—brunette beside him, using the same tone as Latham. She was wearing an amethyst gown with a lace brocade bodice with amethyst jewelry. Trudy approved, but would have no qualms about taking it.

  Towers had mentioned two new panels. The Quayles were standing in front of one, an extension to the original room, an extra strip of marquetry added to the parquet floor patterned with stars and stripes. The eagle in the rondel in the wainscoting was not the Imperial Eagle of Russia but the bald eagle of the Presidential Seal of the United States. The rectangular portrait above was a picture of The White House. The two oval portraits above that were of George Herbert Walker Bush and Dan Quayle, both smiling, the exact same oval portraits used for their campaign buttons, only now huge and composed of amber.

  Dan Quayle stood below his portrait, smiling the same stupid smile. Marilyn Quayle stood below Bush’s smile, but she was not smiling at all and seemed to have the good grace to be slightly embarrassed.

  “St. John Latham,” Latham introduced himself, “of Latham, Strauss. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” His eyes flicked to Marilyn Quayle, and Trudy noted the almost imperceptible nod back. Dan Quayle might be the candidate, but Latham and Marilyn Quayle would be doing most of the talking.

  Trudy glanced around the room, noting various cops from other precincts, some of whom she recognized, mixed with members of Towers’s building security. Ernie Martin was whispering with some in one corner, subtly pointing to Jessica. Near the entrance, Ramshead was nodding his horns in response to something just said by a moderately tall slightly balding brown-haired man in a distinctive blue-and-white unitard, complete with cape. The cape was anchored at his ankles and billowing slightly, despite it being indoors without any fans. Cyclone, the ace defender of San Francisco, was presently the leading candidate to succeed as director of SCARE, if Aces! magazine were to be believed. He was also the perfect ace to blow out any fires.

  Ramshead shut the door and Cyclone floated over to them, his cape billowing. It looked impressive, and was doubtless meant to be intimidating, but Jessica only exclaimed delightedly, “You’re an ace like me!” Cyclone’s cape deflated and so did his expression. Jessica held up her elephant. “This is Timothy!”

  “He’s … cute,
” said Cyclone. “You’re here to see the Amber Room?”

  Jessica nodded excitedly.

  “And so she should,” agreed Duncan Towers, not even glancing into the cricket cage. “Let me give you the grand tour, sweetie. Do you know who built the Amber Room? Frederick, the King of Prussia. Like my grandpa Frederick…”

  Towers droned on, loving the sound of his own voice, but it worked well enough for a lecture, and Trudy watched the groups separate. Latham and Strauss remained with the Quayles, Cyclone hovering around behind them literally, David figuratively, while Beth kissed her husband on the cheek and joined Towers’s Amber Room tour. Diane, after a moment’s hesitation, decided to do the same.

  Trudy followed, collecting a glass of sparkling mineral water along the way from a waiter who’d first offered her champagne, noting as she did so who else was forgoing alcohol: the cops, of course, and Cyclone, obviously guarding the Quayles, but also, interestingly enough, Towers.

  She caught up with their host in time to hear him say, “So Frederick’s son gave the Amber Room to Peter the Great. Who was pretty great. Big man. Huge. Made Russia great again. Couple years later, Peter sent Frederick an ivory goblet and fifty-five giants for his collection.”

  “Giants?” asked Jessica. “Was he an ace?”

  “Nah, they didn’t have aces back then. Pete was just freaky tall and Fred was a weirdo who collected giant soldiers. Bred them like the Takisians. Had them march through his bedroom like sheep when he was trying to fall asleep.”

  Jessica giggled. “I count my sheep at bedtime too. It’s fun.”

  “Everyone needs a hobby, but Fred was nuts. Pete the Great was fine. His grandson Peter? Not so much. Geeky kid, played with toy soldiers. As an adult. Hung a rat for treason for eating the paste off one. Can you believe it? But Pete’s wife, Catherine, she was German, and she was great, too. Catherine the Great. She decided Pete had to go, so he did, and then she threw a big party in the Amber Room. And she loved horses.”