“Naw. Too grosh for teefee,” he said flatly, in a tone that suggested annoyance. The words came out mushy through his half-healed jaw.
“I brought you this.” She set the cactus on the rollaway tray that also held a bottle of water with a straw and a plate of mashed potatoes. Easier to eat when you only had half a mouth, she supposed. He also had a recent issue of Time, which featured a cover photo of Hartmann, his arm raised over his face, fleeing the camera.
“Huh,” he muttered. “Scheerful.”
“It reminded me of you.” He didn’t tell her to leave, so she pulled a chair from the wall over and sat, wrapping her cloak around her. He didn’t look like he’d had many visitors. No cards, no flowers. Just that lumpy cactus. She nodded at the magazine. “Catching up?”
“You know where he wentsh? Whatsh he’sh doing?”
“Who, Senator Hartmann?” He glared even harder. Obviously Senator Hartmann. “Laying low, I suppose.”
“Shaved the man’sh life. Never even shent me a card.” Now, he looked sad. Hangdog, like. She didn’t know what to say. Nobody’d heard from Hartmann after that debacle.
“I’m sorry. Sorry this happened.”
“Sh’okay. Sho what’sh wrong with you?” he asked.
“How do you know something’s wrong?” She tried to sound casual.
“You got that look. You’re not really here, you’re tshinking aboutsh sometshing elshe.”
She hadn’t intended on unloading on Ray. He really didn’t need unloading on at the moment. He was proud of his healing abilities but he still looked half-gutted. Even his rib cage looked wrong, sunken under the sheet. But then—she’d come here at all because he was the one person who might get it. She sighed. “I just got out of a meeting at SCARE.”
He chuckled, an odd, watery sound. “Sho is Shyclone in charge yet or no?”
“He’s still gunning for it, but he, ah, had an incident a little while back at a Republican fund-raiser. He’s trying to keep his head down.” A roomful of rich donors, mixed with wild-card antics and a major art theft, right from under his nose? Oh yeah, Cyclone didn’t want anyone talking about that one.
Ray chuckled again. “That oughta be good. Tshink you can get me the report?”
“He’s trying to bury it. But he might still get the head of the agency just because he knows which asses to kiss.”
“And you are all about trutsh, justish, and all that shit.”
“You know, you might think about going for management someday,” she suggested, and wasn’t even joking. Ray knew what targets to gun for. And they weren’t getting any younger. She was in her thirties now. Been at SCARE and the Justice Department for almost a decade. Ray was right there with her. Fieldwork might have been fun, but career advancement only went so far. Did Ray realize that, or was he just in this to beat people up? “I bet you’d spend less time in hospitals.”
“I like hospitalsh.” Then he frowned. “No, I don’t. Sho what’d the guy do now?”
“Let’s just say I got the short straw.”
“No wait, let me guessh, there washn’t actually any drawing of shtrawsh. You volunteered becaushe you alwaysh volunteer for the shit no one else wantsh to do.”
She raised her hands in a show of surrender. “You got me. Except Cyclone doesn’t even want me doing this job because it’s not, and I quote, ‘up to our standard of visible public service.’ Unquote.”
His grunt was smug. “Shyclone’s a dick.”
“He has an idiosyncratic set of priorities.” Like how many column inches of mentions he could get in the New York Times, how many times Aces! put him on the cover …
“So what’s the gig?”
“Trouble in New York.”
“Shome ace bank thief the FBI needs help on? A new joker gang running over the local copsh?”
“National Park Service requested help on an investigation into some stray animal deaths.”
He stared. “Joann, we shtop assassins. We foil international conshpiracies. We’re not park rangersh. We’re not dog catchersh.”
She raised a brow. “So you agree with Cyclone?”
“No, it’sh jusht—”
“We assist federal agencies in wild cards—related incidents. And this sounds weird enough, I think it warrants attention.”
“Well all right then. Have fun with that.”
“It’s gotta be done.”
“If you shay sho. At least you’re not likely to see combat. Tell Shmokey the Bear I shaid hi.”
Joann stood, the fabric of her cloak rustling around her. “You’re looking a lot better, Ray. I’m not just saying that.”
“Yesh you are. I gotta get out of here. I’m shick of thish. Take me with you.”
“You should relax while you can.”
His grunt might have been anything, agreement, frustration, or maybe just some noise in his healing gut. She waved, and he went back to flipping TV channels.
Joann’s meeting with her contact at the Park Service was for midmorning, and she arrived a few minutes early, not sure she’d be able to easily find the spot. She had an address in Midtown. She wasn’t expecting the building at that address to itself be a national monument, a colonial-era neoclassical building with a wide staircase, a row of columns, and a statue of George Washington out front. Reading the various informational signs and plaques, she learned that this had been the first capitol building for the brand-new United States, and was where Washington’s inauguration had taken place. And she ended up being late to the meeting.
Inside, she took a couple of wrong turns, enduring stares after her formidably cloaked form. She was a tall black woman, powerfully built, and one of the few aces who went around in something like a costume. She was used to the stares. Really, she was grateful—if people didn’t know what to think of her, they kept their distance.
The basement of the impressive building had been converted to more typical government offices, with standard-issue tile flooring and familiar flickering fluorescent lights. She finally came to the door with the correct plastic nameplate. It was standing open, so Joann went in. The office might have had a little more whimsy than the typical run-down government office—a cheerful Smokey Bear poster admonishing viewers to prevent forest fires, even though they were in the middle of Manhattan; a calendar picture showing a beautiful landscape of mountains; a bunch more pictures pinned to a corkboard, what looked like the previous months from the same calendar showing oceanside cliffs, a desert at sunset, and geese on a lake. Several desks were piled with folders and paperwork, ancient telephones, a not-so-ancient computer, and a tree stand with a single ranger hat on it.
Joann looked around for some kind of receptionist, a front desk where she should check in. Didn’t find one. The open space and clutter was democratic, without hierarchy.
At a desk in a corner, a dark-haired Hispanic woman was talking on the phone, mostly offering affirmatives. She looked up at Joann and smiled. “Can you hold just a minute? Thanks.” She set the handset down. “Hi, you must be Agent Jefferson from SCARE.”
“Ah. That obvious?”
A short, vibrant woman in a colorful blouse and plain slacks, she gestured, encompassing Joann’s flowing cape and enveloping hood. “A little. I’m Maria Fuentes, assistant to the park superintendent.” She strode forward, held out her hand for shaking, and, as she always did, Joann drew back, just a little.
“I’m sorry, I can’t touch anyone. But it’s very nice to meet you.” She nodded her head, shifting the hood.
Maria blanched, but recovered quickly and nodded. Professional, she didn’t even ask Joann to explain her power—or worse, demonstrate. “Would you like some coffee? That pot’s pretty fresh.” She pointed to a coffee station, a one-pot coffee maker next to a stack of Styrofoam cups and packets of sugar and powdered creamer. “I just need to finish up this phone call, it should only take a minute. I hope that’s okay.”
“Go ahead,” Joann answered, and wandered around the rest of the of
fice, looking.
Fuentes retrieved the phone. “Okay, so we’re out of park maps … I know that delivery was supposed to come in … yes, that’s fine. Go ahead and get photocopies made, I’ll authorize the reimbursement as long as you don’t go over thirty bucks.…”
Joann tried to imagine Cyclone handling that kind of call, that kind of day-to-day business. Couldn’t, at all. On the next wall, she scanned a pair of prints pinned to the bulletin board. Simplified architectural drawings, evocative watercolors showing pleasant walkways lined with perfect trees in a lovely park, surrounding an antique edifice of red brick, some hulking nineteenth-century municipal building with rows of arched windows and fanciful, self-important towers topped with rounded copper cupolas, green with age. Joann felt like she should have recognized it, but didn’t.
The phone clicked back into its cradle. “Sorry about that. Thanks for waiting.”
“What’s this?” Joann asked as Fuentes joined her by the drawings.
“Plans,” Maria said wistfully. “Once-upon-a-time plans. Ellis Island belonged to the Park Service until last year. We’d been making plans for years for turning it into a National Monument, converting the main building into an immigration museum. We were just a couple of years out from implementation. But nothing like that’s ever going to happen now. Not with everything that’s happening over there. Now, no one wants the place.”
“I’ve heard a lot of rumors, that squatters and drug dealers have taken it over?”
“It’s all coming out in bits and pieces, that’s part of the problem. Local law enforcement won’t claim jurisdiction. The DEA, ATF, the NSA, and they all refer us to the FBI, who won’t get involved without concrete evidence that federal laws have been broken—”
“And since the only people affected are jokers and drug dealers, they’re all saying it’s not their problem.”
Maria shrugged. “Classic bureaucratic wall.”
Thinking of Cyclone and his framed Aces! covers, Joann smiled. “No one wants to do the scut work.”
“I see you understand. Which I’m guessing is why you’re here and not someone else?”
“Got it in one. Really, I’m happy to help where I can. Is your problem connected with what’s happening out at Ellis Island?”
“No, at least I don’t think so. Frankly, I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody does.”
“Can you tell me exactly what’s wrong? Something about stray animals? Did I get that right?”
She pursed her lips. “It’ll be easier if I show you. We’ll have to take a ride to animal control; I hope you don’t mind.”
Joann arched her brow, her interest piqued.
Fuentes drove them in a Park Service car to a nearby animal control office.
She pulled into an alley between two tall brick buildings and park by a loading dock, right next to a sign that declared NO PARKING.
“It’s okay,” the official explained cheerfully. “Government business.”
Joann reflected a moment on the perks of driving a government car in Manhattan.
Fuentes had been through here enough that the uniformed officer at the front desk waved her through to a back room. The man stared at Joann as she walked by, as if he didn’t live in Manhattan and had never seen a costumed ace before. She did make a striking figure in her cloak, dark skin, and her unwavering demeanor.
This wasn’t a pound, with lots of cages holding forlorn dogs and cats waiting for adoption. Or that was in a different part of the building. Not that Joann could ever cuddle with a puppy or take home a kitten. Rather, this was a base of operations for the officers who answered calls and did the grunt work. Somewhere, a handful of dogs were barking. The sound echoed down the tiled hallway, from behind one of the many closed doors.
Fuentes opened one of the doors and led her inside. The temperature dropped, and the barking faded. This looked like a morgue. A couple of steel exam tables occupied the middle of the room, but they were half sized, able to hold a large dog but nothing much bigger. Tables and cupboards lined the walls, storing medical equipment, test tubes, microscopes, jars of cotton swabs. A row of steel freezer doors, about the right size to slide a body bag into them. The unpleasant odor of old disinfectant lingered. In the middle of the tile floor was a drain.
“They mostly do rabies testing and other exams here,” Fuentes explained. “But this … this is different. Here, you might want these.” Fuentes offered latex gloves and a surgical mask from a drawer by the freezer. Because she didn’t want to expose her own leather gloves to whatever was about to happen, Joann traded them out for the latex and tied on the mask.
The ranger opened the locker, slid out a tray, and stood back.
Lying on the tray was the body of a dog. At least Joann thought it was a dog, some kind of black lab mix. Really, though, it was only the skin of the dog, deflated, as if its skeleton and innards had been sucked out, its eye sockets exploded. If she’d seen a picture of it she might have thought it was rubber, some kind of prop or joke, which was likely why Fuentes brought her here to see it in person. She never would have believed it otherwise.
Wincing, Joann dared to touch it, to prod at a limp paw and lift a fold of structureless skin. A dead dog, she could touch all she wanted and not worry about draining its energy.
“We’ve found bodies like this in Battery Park as well as a number of other locations along the shore, dozens of them,” Fuentes explained. “Almost every day for six weeks now, we’ve found these … these skins. And nobody can tell me if it’s dangerous. Parks and rec doesn’t want to investigate—but somebody has to, right? Animal control’s never seen anything like it.”
“Are there any puncture wounds? Any kind of mark from a weapon?” Joann searched, lifting up limbs, cringing at the unnatural way the skin drooped and folded.
“Nothing. It’s like their insides just vanished.” Fuentes opened other drawers, drew out other trays. All of them held deflated bodies of common city creatures. Dogs, cats, a couple of squirrels.
“Is that a raccoon?” Joann asked of a round, whiskered lump of fur. The distinctive striped tail was the only part she recognized.
“Yes,” Fuentes said. “Just about everything that walks on four legs in the city has been killed like this.”
“And you think it’s wild-card related,” Joann said, unable to mask her skepticism.
“What else could it be? It’s just so … weird.”
That was the problem. With the wild card on hand to explain anything remotely weird, anything the least bit out of the ordinary was instantly some crazy ace or joker on the loose. Joann wasn’t convinced.
“You’ve checked for diseases? Maybe some kind of predator?”
Clearly frustrated, Fuentes sighed, planting a hand on her hip. “We’ve been over everything. The pathologist has done tests on all the bodies. None of them has wounds. And because it’s just a bunch of animals, nobody higher up the chain will do anything about it. The police have their hands full with a million other problems. I can’t even get the CDC to look at the case. You—you’re the first person who’s taken this even a little seriously. Something’s happening on the south end of Manhattan, and I—I don’t know what else to do.”
And Lady Black, Joann Jefferson, was the savior of last resort. Assuming she could actually save anything. That there was even anyone to save. She frowned at the sad collection of evidence Fuentes had presented her, a dozen desiccated, barely recognizable lumps of fur. Individually, they didn’t even rate as tragedies. Just one of millions of small victims in the city. All of them together? Yes, there was a mystery. Joann just wasn’t sure she was qualified to figure it out.
“Right. Where was the most recent one of these found?”
After even just half an hour in the freezer at the animal control office, Joann wanted a shower, and something to get that musty, rotten-fur smell out of her nose. Instead, she was back in the car with Fuentes, navigating noon traffic.
“All the bodies were found i
n the morning?” she asked. “This is happening at night?”
“Yes,” Fuentes said. “From the very southern end of Battery Park all the way up to Jokertown. All on the shore. It’s a pattern, but I can’t figure out what it means.”
“And there haven’t been any human corpses?”
“No.”
Obviously not. If boneless human corpses started turning up this would get kicked way above her pay grade. Examiners hadn’t found any pathogen. The bodies turned up at random. Joann would say they’d been hunted. That something along this stretch was hunting, at night. Some kind of predator. But what predator killed and left unmarred skin behind?
They stopped at a stretch of riverside warehouses and piers, at the edge of a greenway bounded by trees. Moving north was parkland, with baseball fields and jogging paths. Fuentes was right to be worried about the people who frequented the area. They were near residential neighborhoods. A lot of kids around here. This was the southern edge of Jokertown.
Joann scanned the area, formulating a plan. This was okay. She could handle this. If something—whatever it was—was out here hunting, she could find it.
“I’ll look around and get back to you with what I find.”
“Just like that?” Fuentes asked. “By yourself?”
Joann lifted her chin and smiled. “I told you I’d help and I will. Trust me.”
Joann returned to the spot after midnight. Most of the city showed no sign of resting, but here, a bubble of calm created its own reality, separate from one of the largest cities on earth. Along the park, the trees seemed sparse, but they absorbed sound, blocked the usual city racket. The lawn muffled her steps. Even this small pocket of nature felt self-contained. The quiet extended to the warehouse area, the pavement and handful of piers along the river. She could hear the sound of water lapping, a gentle splashing against wood and concrete that was almost soothing. Distant orange streetlight cast it all in a dull glow.
Her cloak disguised her. She pulled it close, edging back her hood to increase her field of vision. Listened. A muttering voice drifted from under a tree. A figure bundled in a coat pulled a child’s wagon, piled high with belongings, down a sidewalk. A collection of homeless people, settling in for the night. Joann wondered if any of them had seen anything, if they’d even been interviewed about what was happening. Maybe one of them would talk to her.
Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks Page 26