Wild Cards IV

by George R. R. Martin

  Asta looked like someone who did not usually do church either, but she put on her best smile. “That sounds divine.…”

  The Catedral de Santo Domingo had grand doors as befit a cathedral, a holy water font as was to be expected, lines and lines of identically dressed nuns saying rosaries, and a bunch of incense in the air from assorted priests and altar boys swinging censers. A different bishop than Archbishop Fitzmorris stood at the pulpit speaking more Latin than Howard could understand, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that the incense had the desired effect, and Asta’s retinue of moths and butterflies were driven back.

  The cathedral was also connected to the little Iglesia del Triunfo, which was smaller and stuffier. For some reason probably having to do with politically incorrect history, there was a statue of some saint killing an Inca in it. There was also a whole conflagration of votive candles before an icon of the Virgin Mary.

  The air was sweltering as Howard got down on his knees then sank back on his heels to be near the same head height as Asta. She went up on pointe to embrace him, whispering in his ear, “Go to the train station. Get tickets for Aguas Calientes. Tell no one. Please, I’ll explain everything later!” She kissed him on the cheek. “A girl’s life depends on it!”

  Asta then stepped aside, crossed herself, slipped some money in the poor box, and took a match to light a fresh votive.

  Howard didn’t much like churches, but he liked this one even less once he saw a few dark moths fluttering in the corners out of the range of the candles.

  He got up and wandered back through the connection to the main cathedral and stayed long enough for sake of appearances, as if he’d come to hear Archbishop Fitzmorris and Father Squid give their guest homilies, then he slipped out through the front doors, doing his best to behave like a tourist not certain as to what his next stop should be.

  A few new butterflies and moths fluttered after him but seemed nowhere near as interested as they had been when he’d had Asta on his shoulders. They became even less interested when he lit his cigar and spent a good amount of time sucking and savoring it.

  Fulgencio Batista had excellent taste in cigars. It lasted the stroll to the train station. Howard bought the two tickets then sat down on the bench, glancing through the tourist brochure for Aguas Calientes and wondering exactly what he was getting himself into. Being nine feet tall and tough as a rhino made him not worry so much about himself—and Asta had the air of a woman whom one shouldn’t worry too much about either—but the idea that some kid was in trouble? That was bad.

  The old brass station clock showed 10:25, five minutes till the 10:30 train to Aguas Calientes. Howard picked out a few lichen-mottled moths almost camouflaged against the verdigris above the dial. A shadowy robed figure moved silently beside him. Howard started, expecting the hooded apparition he’d glimpsed among the witch moths, but it was just a nun.

  The holy sister sat down beside Howard, glanced up at him, smiled pleasantly, then turned back to the platform, humbly counting the beads of her rosary, eyes downcast. Her face was freshly scrubbed, bright and clean without a trace of makeup, and her eyes were large and brown with the tiny pixels in the iris of high-quality theatrical contacts.

  Howard slipped Fantasy her ticket inside the tourist brochure, but boarded separately.

  The train was an old Pullman, all hand-rubbed wood, brass, and antique elegance. Howard found an empty compartment and waited. The whistle blew and the train lurched to a start, then rocked along, wheels clacking in a soothing rhythm that soon faded into the background. Outside the windows, scenery flashed by, rocky hills with rust-colored soil, trees and shrubs in various shades of green as the train wended its way up into the Andes.

  The nun joined him a few minutes later, smiled, and drew the window shades.

  After the conductor had taken their tickets, Asta shut the door and checked the compartment for bugs. Literal bugs. Then she sat down.

  “So what’s up with the butterflies?” Howard asked.

  “There’s an ace,” Asta explained.

  “I guessed that. Which one?”

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Hell if I know! The Mothman. The Butterfly Collector. The Lepidopterist. Pick a name!”

  “The Messenger in Black?”

  “Hortencio said that one, but it didn’t make much sense.” She looked puzzled. “Where the hell did you hear it?”

  Howard reached into his back pocket and pulled out the pamphlet from the Museo Larco.

  “Fucking folklore,” Asta pronounced as she read it over. “Did everyone have their card turn when they had their nose in a book of fairytales?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, right, Troll.” Asta rolled her eyes and handed the pamphlet back.

  “Who’s Hortencio?”

  “Remember Batista’s sons back in Cuba?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t spend much time with them.”

  “Well,” she countered, “I did. At least with one.” She glared at Howard. “Don’t give me that look. It’s not like you weren’t hoping to get lucky yourself. And who knows, you just might. I like to blow off steam when I’m bored or curious or scared—and let me tell you, right now I’m fucking terrified.”

  The train chugged along, the wheels thrumming with the rhythm of the tracks. “So what happened with Hortencio Batista?”

  “Sex,” she said simply. “Nothing to brag about from my end, certainly. He probably did. He brags a lot. Bragged about his family’s connections with the Mafia, which everyone knows about. About how the Gambiones have cocaine connections to other drug cartels, including ones down here in Peru. And then he bragged about how some drug lord kidnapped another drug lord’s little girl and is holding her for ransom, and boo-hoo, the Gambiones are either going to ice the kid or kidnap her themselves to get leverage over the first guy, they’re not sure which, but in either case, they know where she is and they’re going to do it tomorrow.”

  “And he told you all this?”

  “No.” She looked incredulous, pausing as if she searching for a suitably catty reply. “He dropped lots of hints, then passed out from too little sex and too much coke. So I went and read his files.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t go to the cops—they’re all corrupt, and even the ones who aren’t tend to be ‘big picture’ types who won’t give a damn if one little girl gets hurt so long as it screws up the drug trade, so I decided, ‘Fuck it! I’m an ace! I can handle this!’ and hatched my own crazy plan. Don’t judge, but I’m not too proud to say that I took a page from Alma Spreckles’s playbook: I’d rather be an old man’s plaything than a young man’s slave. So I called this rich old guy I know and told him that I’d bang him twelve ways from Sunday when I get back to New York if he’d just arrange a private helicopter and some guards to fly me and the kid out of Peru before the Gambiones could gank her.” Asta reached under her habit and rummaged around in her dress pocket. “I mean, look at her.” She handed Howard a photograph. “She can’t be more than seven. Eight at the most.” She bit her lip, blinking back tears. “I was a little girl like that once. I mean, I was in toe shoes, and I would have killed for a dress that nice, but she’s just a little kid. No kid deserves to die.”

  Howard looked at the picture. Asta was right. The girl looked six or seven, maybe eight, with chubby cheeks, dark eyes, and native features. She was wearing a foofy white dress with too many crystals and sequins and too much lace, and her smile looked more forced than happy, but she was just a kid. The photographer had also used some tacky glitter effect around her, making it look like a creepy boudoir photo.

  Howard flipped it over. On the back was written the name Lorra and under that Cocamama. “The goddess of the coca bush?”

  “Code name for their operation.” Asta took the photograph. “Or some sick joke that the kid’s going to get ripped in two.”

  Howard shook his head. “You were going to do all this on your own?”

  “Oh fuck no!” Asta swore. “I wa
s going to get Jack to help me. Golden Boy will not shut up about how he once kicked Juan Perón’s ass. Trouble is, I was completely blanking on the fact that the man can’t keep a secret to save his life, and the drug lord who nabbed Lorra either is an ace or has aces working for him, one of them being this Emisario Negro who can spy with butterflies and moths. And what’s worse, there’s this scary-ass poison-dart frog joker-ace assassin they’ve got called Curare, and that’s more than I’d want to tangle with solo, so I’ve been dancing as fast as I can to find a replacement I can trust.”

  “And you picked me.”

  “It was either you or the Harlem Hammer.” Asta shrugged. “And while I’ve got nothing against bald black guys, so far as I know, Mordecai is a happily married man. I’m not a home wrecker.” She grimaced. “And even if I were, I know better than to get in the crosshairs of a lady from Harlem.”

  “But bald green guys?”

  “Howard,” Asta confessed, “you’ve been on my radar since I saw you in the audience when I was dancing Coppélia. And I’m scared now, and it’s a long train ride to Aguas Calientes.”

  “You realize you’re wearing a nun’s habit.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She grinned. “Neither am I.” She began to unbutton his fly. “Oh my. I see you’re not Jewish either.” She paused, then touched him with her small hand.

  Howard ached. This was the awful moment. His penis, while green, was proportional. But that meant it was over a foot long, warts and all. It looked more like an English cucumber than something that belonged on a human being. The mere sight had turned nights with women he had liked into “It’s not you, it’s me” and another night alone.

  “You know,” Asta said the dreaded words, “I doubt I can take all of this.” She stroked the shaft. “But I’m certainly willing to try.” She grinned wider. “Have you ever seen the Dance of the Wilis?”

  “No.”

  “Philistine,” she chided, “that needs to be corrected.”

  Asta went up on pointe. Howard already was.

  DECEMBER 19, 1986, AGUAS CALIENTES:

  Asta had shed the nun’s habit and the alpaca cloak. Her dress underneath was cerulean blue, as was her hair, clipped short like Annie Lennox’s. Her eyes were the same ultramarine, bright as a Byzantine icon’s. While Howard hadn’t checked to see if they were contacts, they matched, making her look like a water nymph. This was only appropriate since she had said she was going to be dancing the part of Ondine from the ballet of the same name.

  The tape deck of the Jeep began blaring classical music, which was Howard’s cue to not look back. Instead, he made some more noise. While Golden Boy could lift a tank over his head and was celebrated for this fact, Troll wasn’t quite as strong. But Howard could flip a Chevy on its roof, and that still made a hell of a ruckus.

  Men ran out of the house holding guns. Then they stopped, gazing in awe and wonder as if beholding a vision of transcendent loveliness—whom, incidentally, they would also like to bang.

  Howard knew how they felt.

  Since they were also jamming the main doors and windows, he went around the corner and kicked in a side door. It flew off its hinges with a satisfying screech.

  The building was two stories, and the only snap generalization Howard could make was that it had an ungodly number of butterfly collections displayed on the walls. He clenched the stub of his cigar between his teeth, sucking it just in case any of them spontaneously came to life, but they stayed still: trophies, mummified pets, former associates, or however the Messenger in Black felt about his minions.

  Howard loped up the stairs, ducking to avoid the low ceiling at the top and smashing open doors until he was rewarded with one cluttered with a number of dolls and toys, a child’s four-poster bed, and a little girl sitting on it behind a woman pointing a gun at him. She pulled the hammer back, and he flung the broken door at her, slamming the gun and the woman into the wall. A doll’s head exploded, and a bullet buried itself with a shower of plaster dust as the woman slumped to the floor.

  The girl screamed then continued screaming, saying something in some language that Howard didn’t understand. All he knew was that it wasn’t Spanish. “It’s okay,” he promised. “It’s going to be okay, Lorra. We’re getting you out of here.”

  When she wouldn’t stop screaming, he just grabbed the bedspread and bundled her in it, pillows and dolls and all. He held the bundle of bed things and squirming kid to his chest and barreled down the stairs and out the side door, then squeezed his eyes tight shut and stumbled toward the strains of Hans Werner Henze’s orchestral score, a task made more difficult by the high-pitched screams reverberating against his rib cage.

  Then his forehead encountered the upper edge of the covered porch. This was not the first time for that sort of thing by a long shot. Howard smashed through then bellowed, “Asta! Where are you?”

  “Over here!” Then, “Oh fuck, it’s the frog!”

  “Lorra!” croaked a voice. “LORRA!”

  Howard felt like he was playing some warped game of Marco Polo. He felt a hand on his leg, guiding him but still dancing. “Put her down here!” Howard heard the slamming of the Jeep’s hatch. “You drive! I still have to dance!”

  “How am I going to drive if I can’t see?”

  “You’ll be able to see fine! Just give me a lift and don’t look in the rearview mirror!”

  Howard did as he was told. He lifted Asta to his shoulders. She locked her legs around his neck like the Old Man of the Sea from Sinbad, but no doubt his hotter and kinkier Old Lady since she did it in reverse, her ankles locked under Howard’s chin, her thighs squeezing his temples, her ass on top of his head, and the back of her skirt falling down over his eyes like a veil.

  He suspected this was not the usual choreography of Ondine, but Asta was a skilled enough dancer to improvise. Howard opened his eyes. He wasn’t transfixed by Fantasy’s ace, though he could feel her shifting weight atop his head as she writhed back and forth in interpretive dance, mimicking the motions of a waterfall, the nymph of an Olympia Beer sign.

  Howard adjusted the seat by tearing it out. The backseat fit him just fine, his foot reached the gas easily, and for the first time since high school, Mr. Toad’s wild ride began in earnest. He tore down the road through the Andean jungle, the ballet score still blaring from the speakers, Asta perched atop his head.

  “We’re out of sight.” She dismounted by means of the roll bar into the backseat beside him. “Drive as fast as you can!”

  Then something landed on the hood of the Jeep. “¡Puta fea!” croaked the giant frog, using Howard’s limited Spanish vocabulary to call Fantasy some variety of whore. “¡Monstruo verde! ¡Deja a Lorra!”

  The frog had large gold eyes and black skin with electric blue markings, and he was the size of a boy of about nine or so, though there were plenty of undersized adult jokers just like there were oversized ones. He was also wearing an electric blue Speedo. He crawled onto the windshield using elongated fingers with enlarged sticky pads, sweating milky slime from his back.

  Curare, the poison-frog joker assassin.

  The joker boy slicked his fingers with frog slime and lunged, grabbing Howard’s face, holding onto the windshield with his toes. The poison numbed slightly, but Howard’s skin was thick and rough. His only really vulnerable point was his eyes, Howard’s analogue to Achilles’ heel or Siegfried’s shoulder.

  The frog must have guessed this, since a sticky tongue shot out and plastered against the right lens of his oversized sunglasses. The tongue retracted. Howard’s Croakies fought back, the neoprene strap he’d had custom fitted at a New Jersey surf shop to keep mental patients from trying the same trick. Howard considered it a wise investment.

  Then the lens popped out. Curare reached for Howard with his poison-slicked fingers.

  Howard jammed his knees against the steering wheel and grabbed the sides of the windshield, tearing it off. He t
hrew it beside the road, the frog still on it as they sped away.

  “¡Juan!” cried a girl’s voice behind Howard, followed by the sound of sobbing.

  “¡Cállate, pinche putita tonta!” Asta snarled. “Tu amigo, la rana, se fue. Te estamos tomando a América, y tendras todas las muñecas y cosas que quieres, y todo lo que tienes que hacer es fabricar cocaína para el Sr. Phuc, ¿de acuerdo?”

  “¡No entiendo!” the girl cried plaintively. “¡No entiendo!” Then she said something else in some language that was clearly not Spanish.

  “Fuck!” Asta swore. “She doesn’t even speak Spanish!”

  “What did she say?” Howard asked, still driving. “What did you say?”

  “She said she doesn’t speak Spanish!” Asta viciously popped the tape from the tape deck, abruptly silencing the Ondine concerto. “I told her we’d take her to America, she wouldn’t have to worry about being kidnapped, and a nice old man would give her a place to live.”

  “Is that all?” Howard was pretty sure he’d heard Asta call the kid a “little whore.”

  “Yeah!” Asta snapped. “I skipped the bit about promising Kien blowjobs if he paid for boarding school, but—Oh no you don’t!” Asta cried. Asta delivered a stinging slap, and then there was more crying. Then Asta produced a pair of handcuffs and cuffed the kid to the roll bar.

  Howard was not surprised that Asta had handcuffs. But the rest … “Is that really necessary? She’s a kid!”

  “Would you rather have her jump out of a moving car?”

  Howard wasn’t certain right now what he would rather have happen. He gunned the engine and raced up the road through the jungle that Asta had pointed out earlier. “Why didn’t your ace work on frog boy?”

  “Doesn’t work on boys,” Asta replied automatically. “Only men. Probably hasn’t gone through puberty yet.”

  Howard gasped. “That was another kid?”

  “Or he’s gay. Or that was a girl frog. I mean, Curare could be a girl’s name too.”

  “Yeah, but Juan?”

  “Maybe it’s like ‘A Girl Called Johnny’?” Asta speculated plaintively. “The Waterboys? I’ve danced to that.”