Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild

by George R. R. Martin

  “Hush, hush.” Gentle hands stroked her hair, wiped away the tears, held her close. “You’re quite safe now. It’s all over.” She laid her head on Tachyon’s shoulder, and drew a shaky breath.

  “What the devil is going on here?” Hiram exploded in aggrieved accents.

  Tachyon righted a chair, eased Roulette into it. “Hiram, my deepest thanks, yours was a timely arrival.”

  “Who are these men?”

  “Damned if I know. They wanted a book.”

  Worchester’s brown eyes goggled, and he stared suspiciously at his friend as if suspecting inebriation.

  Hiram’s companion thrust his head around the door. “Should we call the police?”

  Tachyon stepped to meet him, extended a hand. “My thanks to you as well, but what did you do to . . . ?”He made a helpless gesture at the space that a few seconds before had contained Snake-face.

  The man in the brown suit shrugged. “I’m a projecting teleport. Point my fingers, and pop, they’re gone.”

  “Where? Where has he gone?”

  “The men’s room at Freakers.”

  “The men’s room at—”

  He shrugged. “I can only send people to some place I know.”

  “Wish you had known the Tombs.”

  “Oh, I do, but . . .” He shuffled his feet, stared at the ceiling, glanced at Hiram, looked back to Tachyon. “I already sent one guy there today, and the cops are pissed. I didn’t want any more trouble.”

  “So we’ve lost him, and I’ll never know what book.”

  “I’d say that’s the least of our worries today,” Hiram said.

  “Why?”

  “If certain people would show more responsibility, and not unplug their phones, they wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “Don’t be testy.”

  “Tachyon, I’ve had a rather difficult day . . .”

  “I’ve had better myself.”

  They stared in silence at each other, then Worchester sighed, and ran a hand across his bald pate, and smoothed down his full beard. Tachyon smiled, and said in a softer tone, “Shall we try again?” He tightened the belt on his robe, seated himself on the arm of the sofa. “Now, what brought you here?”

  “Excuse me, but what about these . . . these . . . goons?” asked Roulette.

  “You needn’t worry, they will sleep for a good many hours.”

  “And him?” She pointed at the wasp.

  “He weighs about six hundred pounds,” Hiram answered. “I doubt he’ll go anywhere.”

  “Oh,” she said faintly.

  “The Astronomer’s raging through the city,” Hiram said. “I was afraid he might have gotten to you already. You know about the Howler, of course. Kid Dinosaur’s dead, too, torn to pieces at Jetboy’s Tomb, and the Turtle was attacked and reportedly crashed into the Hudson. He hasn’t been seen since.”

  Worchester caught the slight doctor as he swayed, and eased him onto the couch. “Brandy,” he snapped, and Roulette forced tension back into her weak knees, and obeyed. “I apologize for putting it so baldly, but there’s no good way to deliver news like that.”

  “I cannot believe . . . the Turtle, you say? And that child!” Tachyon covered his face with his hands.

  In a few brutal words Worchester appraised them of the events at the Tomb.

  Roulette didn’t notice when Hiram lifted the glass from her slack fingers. She was seeing a pointed-faced kid, cute despite the wash of pimples across his chin, teasing his elders. She wondered what his dreams and goals had been, and she felt anguish for his parents. A sound that was both an agonized cry and a sob tore from her, and she went down into darkness.

  Unfortunately it was not empty. Within waited the twisted body of her child, and the burning eyes of her master.

  Fortunato got as far as a middle-aged woman guarding the entrance to the NBC sound stages. He could see the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza through the huge window to his right. He couldn’t get any sense of Peregrine being in the building, but she was an ace and it was possible she could block him somehow.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we simply can’t give out that kind of information about our performers.”

  Fortunato locked eyes with her. “Page her,” he said.

  Her hand moved involuntarily to the phone, then hesitated. “She’s not in the building. Letterman’s doing her show tonight.”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  The woman shook her head. Her tightly permed red hair followed her every move. “I can’t.” She looked like she was about to cry. “She had some important dinner to go to tonight. That’s why she’s not here for the taping.”

  “All right,” Fortunato said. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” The woman smiled tentatively.

  Fortunato leaned his head against the elevator doors as he dropped back down to street level. They still hadn’t found the Turtle’s body. Peregrine’s apartment was empty. Nobody had seen Jumpin’ Jack Flash in weeks.

  The game had been going on for seventeen years, and now it was down to the last twelve hours. He’s beating the shit out of me, Fortunato thought. The only time I ever hurt him was when I broke that fucking machine and stopped TIAMAT.

  He was exhausted. Up all night with the Mirror of Hathor, chasing around uselessly ever since. You have to turn it around, he told himself. Strike back at him, hurt him.

  He wanted it so bad he could taste it.

  But how could he even find someone that he couldn’t see?

  How?

  CHAPTER 13

  6:00 p.m.

  Spector decided to go ahead and hit the Gambiones for Latham and his Shadow Fist friends. He had to operate on the assumption that he’d find a way to keep the Astronomer from killing him. If he could manage that, his new connections might mean some big jobs in the very near future.

  He didn’t like spending money on clothes, but there was no way he could go into the Haiphong Lily with blood spattered all over his suit. He’d decided on this clothing store because it didn’t look like much from the outside. It didn’t look like much from the inside, either. There were no fancy dressing rooms and too much dust on the floor. It was his kind of place. Spector slid a dark brown coat off the rack and pulled it on. He walked over to the mirror and winced. He looked like a man in a fudgsicle.

  “Can I help you, sir?” The clerk was short with tufts of curly red hair on the sides of his head and a white cloth tape measure draped around his neck.

  Spector struggled out of the coat; his arm was still bothering him. His sweat-soaked shirt clung to him. “I need a suit. Brown’s not my color. Got anything in gray?”

  The clerk walked over to the rack and started poking though the suits. He was muttering to himself and shaking his head.

  Spector made sure no one was looking, then pulled a few hundred-dollar bills out of his brown envelope.

  The little man turned around, holding an ash-gray suit. “Mm. This has possibilities, I think. Is this yours?” He pointed to Spector’s old coat, which was lying on a straight-back chair. The clerk looked close and ran his hands over the material. “What’s this all over? Bloodstains?”

  “It’s fake blood. I was down in Jokertown earlier. Pretty wild down there.” Spector took the gray jacket and put it on. It was a little large, but fit him well in the shoulders. “I’ll take it.”

  “What? Don’t you want to try on the pants?” The clerk blinked and stood up straight.

  “That’s why I’ve got a belt. How much is it?” He draped the pants over his good arm.

  “With alterations, two hundred and fifty dollars. Nice material, though. Worth every penny. You can’t get workmanship like this often anymore.”

  “I don’t need any alterations,” Spector said. The clerk opened his mouth to speak, but Spector raised a finger. “I’ve got an aunt in Jersey who loves to do this kind of stuff. So how much?”

  “Two-twenty.”

  Spector handed him the money and picked up his other coat, feeling
for the envelope to make sure it was still there. He looked in the mirror again. Not bad, he thought. You may be the best dressed killer at the Haiphong Lily tonight. He dropped his old pants and stepped into the new ones. They were big on him, but he’d manage.

  The clerk returned with Spector’s receipt and change. “Here you go, sir. Let us know if you change your mind about those alterations. I can promise you the finest fit in town.”

  Spector took the money and thrust it into his pocket. “Sure.” The bell over the doorway tinkled as he opened it to step outside. “An angel just got his wings.” He cleaned out the pockets of his old suit as he walked down the street, then dumped it into the first trash can he saw.

  The alligator had a waking dream—or at least as much of a dream as reptiles have.

  He was no longer here in the tunnel deep below the pulsating city. He was someplace else, somewhere warmer and lighter, where the water was hospitable and frequently full of live, darting food. The reptile ghosted along the bayou, most of his body concealed below the surface, with nostrils and orbital ridges protruding up out of the water and cutting small wakes.

  After a time, he entered a place where the trees seemed to grow upside down, their gnarled roots twisting in dense wooden knots above the water. Above him, the canopy of interlaced branches blocked most of the sun. Shadows increasingly dappled his back as he slid along.

  Sounds came to him, amplified by the water. He recognized the patterns—food, though food that sometimes could injure him if he were incautious. He homed in on the vibrations.

  Around the curve of a deeper channel, beyond an almost-impenetrable copse of cypress, he saw the pirogue. The two men in it did not see him, busy as they were, poking long poles into the plaited jumble of wood at water-level.

  More sounds came. The man wearing a cap said, “She got’ be in dere someplace, Jake.”

  The other man shouted so loud, the alligator had to contract its hearing openings. “Bitch, you come outta dere! This your grand-uncle speakin’, Delia.”

  “You tell her, Snake Jake,” said the first man.

  “I tell you, girl—I don’ wan’ hurt you.” He chuckled. “Leastways, nothin’ you won’ like.”

  The alligator swept remorselessly toward the pirogue. There was no debate, nothing but intent. He did what he did because of what he was and who they were.

  He slid deeper and came up beneath the boat, lifting the prow high into the bayou shadows. The two men yelled and plunged into the water. The alligator did not care who was first. He would have them both.

  His jaws stretched wide, teeth ready to rend—

  —and he was back in the dark tunnel below the city.

  The alligator mindlessly placed one foot in front of the other, continuing his imponderable, slow-motion odyssey. The dream stayed as vivid as reality in his mind. So much as he could consider the issue, he didn’t know whether the dream was something that had happened once, or was something that would happen.

  Either way was fine. It didn’t matter.

  Using the set of keys Jack had given her years before, Bagabond opened yet another gray metal door, revealing a set of steps descending into darkness. She reached down to pick up the soft bundle she had laid at her feet.

  “How much farther?” Those were the only words Rosemary had spoken since they had entered the subway system at Chambers Street.

  “Down these stairs and a few hundred yards along a tunnel—I think.” Bagabond closed and locked the door behind them. The metal clinked dully. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that,” said Bagabond. “It must be pretty heavy to keep you from talking.”

  Rosemary took an audible breath. “Ever since my father . . . died, and C. C.—I hate subways, tunnels, all of this. It’s fifteen years ago, but that night is still a blur and I . . . don’t want . . . to remember.” The words ran down like clockwork exhausting a mainspring.

  “But you want the books,” Bagabond said practically, grasping Rosemary by the shoulder and pulling her around to face her. In the dim yellow light, the attorney’s eyes were black shadows. Bagabond probed Rosemary for weakness.

  The attorney took another deep breath. “I’m here. I’m going on. But you can’t stop me from thinking what this place did to C. C.” Rosemary shrugged away from Bagabond. “Don’t worry about it, all right?”

  “I don’t think I’m the one who’s worried.”

  Rosemary’s foot was on the first step when the two women heard the muffled chuffing sounds of the alligator, followed by a growl. Rosemary’s lips paled as she set her mouth tightly. Bagabond nodded to herself with satisfaction. “That’s Jack.”

  Rosemary lagged Bagabond perceptibly as they approached the alligator. At their approach, the reptile stopped and swung his heavy head toward them, eyes glittering in the cold light of the tunnel. He roared a challenge that made both women wince as the sound crashed and reverberated against the stone walls.

  “Stay here. I’ll call you when it’s finished.” Bagabond sloshed toward Sewer Jack, gently moving inside his head now. Heedless of her clothing, she knelt in the tunnel muck and stroked the alligator’s lower jaw as she mentally reached further inside for the key to Jack Robicheaux. Finding the spark of humanity deep within the reptile brain, she cradled it, fanning it, drawing it out, calming both the proto-human synapses and the distinctly reptile brain. As the alligator mind receded, Bagabond withdrew and watched as the long armored tail grew smaller and the snout diminished. The short legs of the animal elongated into the arms and legs of a man.

  The naked man now lying on the tunnel floor gasped and cried out in pain as he wrapped his arms around his stomach. His face and hands grew gray-green, again lapped with scales, as the process began to reverse itself.

  “Jack! It’s Bagabond. Control it!” She spoke sharply, taking the man’s hand tightly between her own. She moved with him as Jack rolled onto his back, panting hoarsely. Bagabond tried to penetrate back into his head, but now was blocked by the human intelligence there. Jack opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. He convulsed once, but took a deep breath and lay back. Although livid, the texture of his skin was normal again. His breathing slowed to a normal rate.

  Running a hand across his face, Jack grimaced. “I know I always ask this, but it’s important—where am I?” He glanced down at Bagabond’s hand and released it, looking away self-consciously.

  “Try Stuyvesant Square,” said Bagabond. “Maybe a hundred feet below it. It’s about six at night.” She reached across him in one unconscious motion and pushed the damp black hair back off his face. “Here are some clothes. I got them out of your cache at Union Square.” Bagabond handed him the bundle she had been carrying. “Rosemary’s here, a little ways up the tunnel.”

  “I assume there’s a reason you’re both here.” Jack stiffly got up, one hand to his belly, the other holding his forehead. “I feel like shit.” He painfully pulled on the chinos and work shirt.

  “It’s something you ate,” Bagabond said laconically. “That pain in your gut—it’s no tin can. It’s books. Very important books.”

  “So I ate a librarian? Wonderful.” Jack ran his fingers through his matted hair and looked up at the ceiling of the passage. “My card’s expired anyway.”

  Bagabond shook her head. “From what I saw, you ate a thief. The thief just happened to be carrying notebooks that every criminal in the city would kill any twenty grandmothers for.”

  “And I want those notebooks so I can find out why.” Rosemary walked up to them, her usual poise regained. “There’s a meeting of the Gambione Family in a couple hours. If I have those books, I think I can stop a bloodbath.”

  “So ask me if I care,” said Jack. He grimaced. “My niece has been wandering around New York City for almost twelve hours. By now she could be dog food. That’s my problem. I’m going to find her. Then we’ll discuss your precious books.” Jack winced, doubling over, as he started to
walk back toward the steps.

  “Robicheaux, I can make your life miserable!” Rosemary started to follow him.

  “Shut up, Rosemary,” Bagabond said. “Jack, there’s one more thing you should know.” Her voice was flat and it stopped him. “It’s not just the Mafia looking for these things. They’re the sweethearts. The others are using jokers, maybe aces too. If you hit the street knowing what’s inside you, you’re a dead man before you can whistle up a cab. Some telepath’ll pick it up and they’ll gut you like a pig. Then what about Cordelia?” She let several moments go by. “I can’t protect you out there, but I can look for Cordelia while you’re out of sight. And mind.”

  “So how long?” Jack tried to straighten, but gasped again in pain.

  “Rosemary?” Bagabond took Jack’s arm and supported him.

  “Two hours, outside. That will get the books to the meeting. That’s all I want.” Rosemary stared at Sewer Jack and waited.

  He met her eyes. “You got two hours, lady. That’s all. And if Bagabond can’t find Cordelia, I want your people on it. Every cop in the borough. Deal?” Jack swayed against Bagabond, putting one hand out to the wall.

  Rosemary smiled. “Deal.”

  Time seemed to flow differently within the confines of the small church. Perhaps it was the quiet darkness lit only by flickering votive candles and a few fluorescent lamps, perhaps it was the reverent silence of the parishioners praying in the pews. Whatever the cause, the peace and tranquility she’d found within the small church had gone a long way toward calming her distraught nerves. Jennifer began to take her safety for granted, and her mind wandered. She studied the bizarre symbolism in the stained glass windows above the equally strange dioramas depicting Jesus Christ Joker’s twelve stations of the cross, but soon wearied of their obtuse theology. Her stomach growled with discontent and she looked toward the altar, wondering what was keeping Father Squid.

  The parishioners praying silently around her were all jokers, though the deformities of some were more obvious than others. There was a bearded triclops, a pretty, shapely woman with a glossy pelt covering every visible inch of exposed skin, and a sweet-faced altar boy who moved jerkily, but carefully, about the altar, rearranging things and replenishing the stock of wine and wafers.