Death Draws Five wc-17

by George R. R. Martin

  “What do you want?” Jerry looked around for something to placate the joker, and noticed a large can of Spam sitting on the floor near the cell door. He picked it up and held it in the window for Blood to see. Blood started to drool.

  “Quiet now!” Jerry ordered as the joker showed signs of growing excitement. Somehow Jerry was certain that opening the can would be beyond the joker’s capabilities, so he detached the key and cranked the lid open himself. He slid the slab of glistening meat by-product from the can and tossed it through the barred window. Blood caught the slab in his mouth and capered back to his pile of hay where he carefully arranged himself and started to bolt it down as Jerry wiped his hand on his pants, fighting the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “I’ve got to get out of this place,” he told himself.

  He went on down the corridor, glancing into every cell he passed, fighting the impulse to call out loud to John Fortune. Most of the cells were empty. A few were occupied by men who were either sleeping or gazed at Jerry with dull, lifeless eyes that seemed to be without a spark of intelligence. He moved past these rapidly, afraid that they might say something, might make a plea that he couldn’t answer.

  He arrived at the next to last cell in the row. He still had the entire other side of the corridor to check, but he was getting fearful that something had gone wrong, that they’d already taken John Fortune somewhere, that they’d done something awful to him and he’d never get the kid back. When he looked in the cell he saw in the dim light a slim, youthful body standing half hidden in the darkness and hope again flared to life.

  “John,” he whispered urgently, and the body moved, quick as a cat, running silently to grip the bars of the window set in the thick door, and he knew right away from the shape of it, from the long, flowing hair, that this was not John Fortune.

  “Who are you?” she cried. “Did Nighthawk send you?”

  “Nighthawk?” Jerry asked, confused.

  It was a young woman. She was beautiful, but with her face was screwed up so tightly that he knew she was barely clinging to this side of sanity. Her familiarity gnawed at him until he realized that she was Cameo, a somewhat well-known ace who would have been much better known if she’d actively sought out publicity.

  “What are you doing here?” Jerry asked in a low voice.

  “Nighthawk brought me here,” she said in a quick whisper, almost more to herself than Jerry. “The Cardinal made him. He said he was going to free me soon, but he hasn’t come. I can’t—I can’t take this place much longer. This place is mad, insane with death and misery. It drips from the walls, running in puddles up to my knees—”

  “All right,” Jerry said in low, soothing tones, “all right.” Her voice was rising, almost hysterically. He tried to shush her, but it was already too late.

  “Quiet out there!”

  The command came from inside what looked to be a larger room at the end of the corridor, perhaps the office, or the hangout, or whatever you wanted to call it, of the freak show’s keeper. Jerry could hear someone moving around, probably in response to Cameo’s growing frenzy.

  “Can’t sleep with you yelling like a crazy woman! You make me come out there and I’ll give you something to yell about!”

  “All right,” Jerry said. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  “My hat,” Cameo demanded. “Get my hat!”

  “All right,” he repeated again, helplessly making placating gestures. “Just be quiet for a minute.”

  “My hat,” she repeated, insistently.

  Jerry nodded vigorously, striding towards the guard room to discover the modern day equivalent of a medieval torturer manning the dungeon as he practically bumped into a large, fat, and unshaven man coming out of the room with a snarl on a face that could have only been improved if it had been wiped clean and redone. The man started and blinked dumbly for a few moments as he stared at Jerry. He was wearing a dirty undershirt, dirty jeans, scuffed shoes, and, of all things, a battered fedora.

  “Bu-Bu-Butcher Da-Da-Dagon,” he stuttered with a degree of fright that was almost comical. “Wha-wha-wha are you do-doing he-he-here?”

  Jerry kept his smile to himself. At least his disguise was working. He had no idea what Dagon’s voice was like, so he modeled his British accent on Roger Moore.

  “I’ve come for Cameo,” he said. He remembered something that she’d said, and inspiration struck him. “The Cardinal wants her.”

  The dungeon-keeper bobbed his head in mute and complete agreement. He turned and led the way back into his office. There wasn’t much too it. A wooden table with a scarred surface that looked like someone had been playing mumblety-peg on it. A few wooden chairs that looked scarcely capable of supporting the guard’s bulk. A large handbag teetered on one corner of the table with a pile of junk spread out before it.

  “This her stuff?” Jerry asked.

  “Uh-huh,” the jail keeper replied.

  Clearly someone had dumped her over-sized purse and searched through the accumulated mass of feminine paraphernalia. There was a lot of stuff, most of which Jerry didn’t care to examine too closely. For a moment he was worried, because the all-important hat she’d demanded wasn’t present. Jerry turned and looked at the turnkey, frowning.

  “Where’s the hat?” he asked as flatly as he could, discovering that it was hard to be menacing and yet sound like Roger Moore.

  “Uhhh.” It seemed to be the guard’s favorite word. Sheepishly, he removed the battered fedora that was perched jauntily on his head, exposing a forehead that couldn’t have contained a teaspoon full of brains. He held it out apologetically to Jerry.

  Jerry had expected some kind of female-type hat, but if this was the one in the bag, this was the one she must have been talking about. He swept all of Cameo’s other paraphernalia into the purse, figuring there might be some other vital bit of equipment she needed. He took the hat from the guard as he swept out of the room, paused in the doorway and took a key ring that was hanging from a spike hammered into the wall. The keys were iron, appropriately massive for the old cells. Jerry had thought he’d be able to do his skeleton key trick to open up the cell doors, but judging by the size of the keys in his hand, he’d have to stick two or three fingers into the massive lockplate to be able to duplicate the key, and he didn’t think that would have worked too well.

  He paused and turned to the guard. “Stay here. I don’t want to disturb your rest any further.”

  He hoped that he’d managed an appropriately sinister turn of voice and the jailer would obey. He didn’t want the man peering over his shoulder while he went through the cells freeing not only John Fortune and Cameo, but all the prisoners.

  He went back out into the corridor, and his heart suddenly seemed to catch in his throat as he saw a dark figure. For a moment he panicked, and then he realized that the man seemed to have more of a waiting than lurking attitude, and he didn’t seem very menacing at all. He was a small, older-looking, very dark-skinned black man neatly dressed in a dark suit with a faint pinstripe, white shirt, and polished black shoes that would have been very stylish fifty, sixty years ago. It looked, in fact, like something Bogart would have worn in Casablanca. The old man carried it off very well. He looked sharp, in the parlance of an earlier generation. Except for the black glove that he wore on his left hand. What’s up with that? Jerry wondered.

  “You shouldn’t be prowling around the oubliette alone, Dagon,” the old man said in a sweet, soft voice that revealed his deep south roots. There was, however, a peculiar emphasis on the word “Dagon” that Jerry didn’t like.

  “Just checking things out,” Jerry said, trying to sound like Dagon but suspecting already that he was wasting his effort.

  The old man nodded. “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves,” he said formally. “My name is John Nighthawk. I am in the employ of Cardinal Romulus Contarini, whose hospitality you are currently enjoying at Saint Dympna’s Home For The Mentally Deficient And Criminally Incli
ned. And you are?”

  “Butcher Dagon?” Jerry asked, trying but failing to keep an interrogatory tone out of his voice. He knew now that his cover was blown, but at least he wasn’t being confronted by a pumped-up muscle head like Witness or a stone killer like Dagon. He figured that he should be able to handle this old man, though he realized that appearances in the wild card world could be utterly deceiving.

  John Nighthawk shook his head. “Time to put all the bullshit aside, son. I’m afraid that Butcher Dagon is currently a guest of state of Nevada, city of Las Vegas. I’m afraid also that if we want to get out of here, we don’t have much time. A team of heavily armed mercenaries backed by aces is going to show up in a very few minutes. It’d be better if none of us were here to answer their questions.”

  Jerry sighed. Once again, it seemed as if nothing were really as it seemed. He was getting tired of playing this game. “What do you want?” Jerry asked.

  “I want Cameo,” Nighthawk said. “I want to get her out of here. Since you came here with John Fortune, I assume you want him, and you also want out. I have no objection to that.”

  “Just what do you people want with him?” Jerry asked. “Who the Hell are you, anyway?”

  Nighthawk shook his head. “There’s no time for long explanations. Let me just say that Contarini is the head of an order known as the Allumbrados, which means ‘The Enlightened Ones.”’ They believe that John Fortune is the Anti-Christ—”

  “What?” Jerry couldn’t believe his ears.

  Nighthawk held up a forestalling hand, the gloved one. “We can talk about this or we can get the Hell out of here.”

  Jerry nodded. “All right. Let’s get the Hell out.” He and John Fortune could ditch this crazy old coot as soon as they hit the fresh air. “Cameo’s this way.”

  He led the way to her cell where she was still clinging to the bars, her eyes just this side of crazy.

  “Nighthawk!” she hissed. “You promised—”

  “I know,” the old man said placatingly. “I’m here now. Let’s just get out of here, and you can chew me out as much as you want.”

  That seemed to mollify her a little, but when she saw that Jerry had her bag, she thrust her thin arm through the barred window. “Gimme!” she demanded.

  Jerry could see that the bag wouldn’t fit through the bars, so he just handed her the hat. She snatched it from him and pulled it through the narrow opening, further squeezing it out of shape. She clapped it on her head without bothering to smooth it back into form.

  “Open the door,” she said.

  “Working on it,” Jerry said. Fortunately there were only half a dozen or so over-sized keys on the ring. He dropped her bag with the rest of her stuff by the door and started trying keys. The third one worked on Cameo’s door. As soon as he heard the lock click he pushed against the massive door, opening it slightly. He turned, looking down the corridor, and he moved on to a cell just a few doors down and across the way where he saw hands glowing a faint, pleasant yellow-orange gripping the bars.

  “Jerry!” John Fortune called out in his excitement, perhaps too loudly.

  “John, I’m here.” He went to the window and looked in at the kid clinging to the bars, a lost, scared look on his face.

  “Jeez, I’m glad to see you,” John Fortune said. He fell silent, looking worried. “Voices in the corridor just woke me up. It really is you, isn’t it, Jerry?”

  “It’s me all right. We’ll get you out of there in a second.”

  He tried one key. It didn’t work. He put a second in the lock and failed to turn the tumblers. He rattled a third key as a voice said, “Step away from that door. We’ve got you covered.”

  Jerry looked over his shoulder to see two men standing in the mouth of the corridor. Damn it, he thought. Nighthawk!

  They both had guns. Rifles. In the darkness Jerry couldn’t be sure what kind. They did have him covered. “I said,” the one on the right reiterated, “step away from the door.”

  Jerry complied, swearing to himself under his breath. He’d been so damn close!

  The two men were so focused on Jerry that they didn’t see the door to Cameo’s cell swing open silently. They didn’t see Cameo herself, witchfire dancing like fireflies around and between her hands as she held them up. They didn’t see her, until it was too late.

  Sparks crackled between her hands like a Jacob’s ladder in the lab set in the old Frankenstein movies and then balls of electricity shot from her pointing fingers, striking the barrels of the men’s rifles, running up the metal and dancing over their bodies like sparkling aurora borealis. The men themselves danced a brief jitterbug, and when the sparks faded they fell silently to the floor. The air suddenly smelled of hot metal and burned flesh. In his kennel, Blood howled hopefully.

  “Jesus,” John Fortune said in his cell.

  Jerry agreed. He turned back to the door and fumbled through the rest of the keys before he was able to open it. It finally swung wide and John Fortune came out. “Am I glad to see you,” he said, hugging Jerry.

  “Me too,” Jerry said, holding him tight for a brief second. “We’ve got to move.”

  “That’s right,” a voice said from a pool of blackness where no light touched an area of the corridor. John Nighthawk stepped out into visibility, putting his glove back on his left hand.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jerry said, “are you goddamned invisible?”

  Nighthawk shook his head. “That’s not one of my powers.”

  “Why were you hiding there?” Jerry asked, as Cameo joined them in the corridor. She still wore the hat. Jerry didn’t care to look into her eyes.

  “I had a vision while you opening the door to the boy’s cell.”

  “A vision,” Jerry asked.

  “That is one of my powers.” He turned to look at John Fortune, and frowned. “He is very powerful. Much more powerful than even you know. But he is not the Anti-Christ.”

  “What?” John Fortune asked.

  “You will take him out of the city,” Nighthawk said to Jerry. “I saw that. Others will follow. Some will be your enemies. Some will be friends. Some will be strangers. Some will help you.”

  “Could you be any more specific?” Jerry asked.

  Nighthawk shrugged. “That is the nature of visions,” he said. “They’re always open to interpretation. All I know is that you will go north, out of the city, to a place of forests and fields and happy children—”

  “Hey!” Jerry said suddenly.

  “You know this place?” Nighthawk asked.

  Jerry nodded. “I think I do.” He paused, and looked from Nighthawk to Cameo, who still looked a lot scarier than a beautiful, ethereal blonde had any right to look. “What about you two?”

  “Our paths have crossed yours only briefly. We have other things to settle. But—” Nighthawk paused, frowning. “I don’t think I’m done with you all yet. I don’t...”

  “We’ve got to go,” Cameo prompted as his voice ran down.

  Nighthawk shook himself, as if trying to escape unpleasant memories of future events.

  “Yes, we do. But first—the other cells—”

  Jerry nodded. Anything to cover their tracks, anything to spread confusion, would be a good thing. It took only moments to free the other prisoners. There were five of them. A couple of them weren’t in very good shape, but their fellow escapees helped them up and out of their cells. Jerry was expecting trouble from the jailer in his little guardroom, but he’d heard the commotion in the corridor. He probably smelled the stench of burned flesh. For once his pea-sized brain processed the information correctly, and he decided to stay safe and snug in his little room.

  The escapees went by the bodies of the two men at the foot of the stairs. John Fortune paused for a moment, looking at them, at their burned skin and smoke still rising off their cooling corpses. Jerry was glad that the light was dim.

  “Should—should I try to help them?” the kid asked Jerry.

  Jerry shook his h
ead. “Remember what your mother said. You can’t help everybody. Some people are beyond your help. Some people don’t deserve it.” He glanced down at the bodies. “I’d say these guys fit into both those categories.”

  John Fortune nodded and they went swiftly up the stairs hearing lonesome, hopeful keening coming from Blood’s cell.

  Jerry and John Fortune crossed the Hudson at Tarrytown just as dawn was breaking in a car they’d taken from the parking lot at St. Dympna’s. It was a dark, late-model Mercedes. Not flashy, but nicely appointed with a comfortable, smooth ride and a powerful engine. Once they’d gotten safely away from the asylum, Jerry took the precaution of stopping to switch plates with a car parked on a dark, quiet street.

  Cameo, of all people, had proved surprisingly adept at hot-wiring cars, utilizing some innocuous-looking tool she’d taken out of her capacious handbag. Even Nighthawk had looked surprised as she quickly started two cars, one for her and Nighthawk, the other for Jerry and John Fortune.

  They had to leave the other freed prisoners to fend for themselves. Some had gone into the parking lot with them and scattered into the night. Some had opted to stay in the asylum walls, committing mischief that Jerry was afraid to contemplate.

  Jerry last saw Nighthawk and Cameo get into a Cadillac Seville as he and John Fortune had roared out of the parking lot. He still had no idea who the Hell Nighthawk really was and what the Hell he was really up to. At that point, Jerry didn’t care. He’d rescued the kid, and they were heading off to safety. Jerry didn’t know if he could trust the old man, but he could conceive of no possible scenario in which Nighthawk would help them flee, only to connive at their recapture. That just made no sense. And using the camp as a sanctuary was a great idea. Once there they could take the time for a deep breath, and a long, refreshing sleep. Jerry could call the office for reinforcements. And they’d be safe. No one would ever find them because although it was located only sixty miles or so north of the city, that part of New York was essentially one big empty space.