Wild Cards 14 - Marked Cards

by George R. R. Martin

  Jellyhead slipped her hand into Zoe's. The hooded figure turned and Zoe saw his mask, a yellowed skull. He spoke to someone. No. Not a mask. Echoes richocheted from odd corners, sounds she couldn't recognize. She smelled burning Sterno.

  "Who is that?" Zoe bent her head and whispered to the child beside her.

  "Mr. Dutton," Jellyhead said.

  Charles Dutton, the reclusive owner of the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum, a place as macabre as she had imagined. Even unlighted and motionless, the displays compelled the eye: Tachyon, with curls the color of cherry cough syrup; Jetboy, whose bloody wounds looked dusty and drab. Bloat, miniaturized, a blob with a boy's tortured face perched atop it, filled one corner.

  "Jube, why did you bring me here?" Zoe asked.

  Jube wasn't there. It was Needles who stood beside her. The boy put his finger to his lips and looked away from her, toward the bolted front entrance.

  Blue Sterno flames flared out of what looked like a sturdy marble birdbath. A figure appeared from the shadows, scooped up some of the flames, and swallowed them. "It's time to begin," the fire swallower said.

  "Can't see you, Hotair!" someone called out.

  "Oh, sorry." The man hoisted himself up and sat cross-legged in the burning fountain. It didn't seem to bother him.

  "Can we start with the report from Hester Street?" Hotair asked.

  "Two beatings," someone said. "We didn't get there in time to film the attack."

  "No way to identify the assailants?" Hotair asked.

  "Description only. Shaveheads."

  "Bowery?"

  "We filmed a verbal assault," Needles said. "Shaveheads again. But we missed a knifing, damn it."

  "They cut my dad. Someone did," Jellyhead called out. "He's dead." Her voice didn't even quaver. A joker woman moved close to her, and Jellyhead let herself be hugged, briefly, before she twisted away from the proffered comfort.

  "Sorry, Jellyhead," Hotair said. "Any idea who did it?"

  Jellyhead looked at the floor and said nothing.

  "We'll move another team over to Bowery," Hotair said. "Johnson, can your team cover it?"

  Johnson had pointed ears the size of dinner plates. "We'll have to leave our territory uncovered. But yeah, we can do it. We haven't had more than a couple muggings since yesterday."

  "Ms. Harris?" The voice behind Zoe was well-modulated and low. "Jube said you might be of assistance to us, and asked me to speak to you."

  Zoe heard the swish of a velvet robe.

  "You're Dutton."

  "Yes."

  "But - " But I'm here to get help, not give it. A glint of reflected blue flame danced in the deep sockets of Dutton's eyes and then vanished.

  "The patrols are trying to record episodes of violence against jokers, with the hope of forcing prosecutions. But it's difficult to stay funded. Camcorders cost."

  "But - "

  "Come with me. We can talk in my office."

  Zoe followed him.

  Dutton's office was loaded with computers, faxes, and modems. He ushered Zoe to a chair and settled himself behind his desk with a practiced flourish of his cape.

  "I'm not a source of funds for joker streetfighters," Zoe said.

  "Are you not? I am disappointed." Dutton's accent was Ivy League; his hands, folded on the desk, were normal and impeccably manicured. "Then what is your interest here?"

  "My parents are jokers. They are not young. My mother is ill. I want to get her to Jerusalem."

  "That is simple, Ms. Harris. One buys a ticket."

  "She will need more than that. A place to live, introductions. Medical referrals. And some information I'm not likely to get from the Jerusalem officials, like how to buy protection for her. People get killed there, far too often."

  "You seem to think I have access to such information."

  "You seem to be providing a place where joker activists gather."

  "Yes." Dutton steepled his fingers.

  "I'll pay." How? The defense costs to keep me out of jail are going to take everything I have.

  "Payment is not requested, Ms. Harris. I will make certain inquiries for you. I assume I can leave messages with Needles?"

  Not at my company, please. Not at home, Anne will balk.

  "With Needles. Yes."

  "Give my regards to your father, Zoe." Dutton knew Bjorn? That wasn't surprising; rumor had it that the reclusive Dutton loved gossip. He got up and opened the door for her. The museum was emptying rapidly. Needles and one of the Jimmies fell into step beside Zoe and led her toward the back door. A fetid wind from the river enriched Jokertown's pervasive stench.

  "Get me to the train, kids," Zoe said.

  "Going uptown, right?" one of the Jimmies asked.

  "Right"

  At the station, one of the Jimmies ducked down the stairs. Zoe heard a whistle, and the tiny one - Jan, that was, a little girl who Zoe now realized was twelve or less, flashed her fingers at Needles, then stuck her hands back in her pocket.

  "No trouble down there," Needles said. "You can go back home, Zoe. Where it's safe."

  "Where do you ...?"

  "Sleep? When it gets cold, we used to buy a bottle of wine for Jellyhead's dad. He'd get drunk and we'd sleep on his floor. But he's dead."

  "There's nothing ..."

  "You can do."

  Needles patted her hand, smiled, and turned away.

  She walked down into the city's concrete guts. Wanting to be able to tell him, to tell someone, even to tell Dutton, it's not my problem. I got out. I can't take in every joker orphan in one block of this stinking place, much less help them all. Don't ask me, Dutton. I have to take care of my own, first. I have to take care of me.

  Dank subterranean wind, rushing up the tunnel, chilled her hands. She stuffed them in the pockets of her silk blazer and climbed on the near-empty train.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Zoe dressed in an Anna Sui for work, floaty and fragile, a perfect dress for injured innocence. She went into her office and found Nosy sitting in her chair. Act as if nothing has changed, Mendlen had told her. Fine. Nosy couldn't see her clenched fists, or the marks her nails were leaving in her palms. "I'm going over to the Flatbush plant," Zoe said. Then she turned on her heel and left.

  She spent the day arranging to put the Chelsea place on the market. Mendlen said that would be okay, if she handled the transaction discreetly. She didn't tell him she planned to use the money to send her mother to Jerusalem. Zoe packed some clothes in Chelsea and went back to Jokertown.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "It's cancer. In three of the breasts." Three of the breasts, Zoe's mom said, not three of my breasts. "I'll get to get rid of them, after all these years."

  "When is the surgery?" Zoe asked.

  "As soon as they can schedule the OR, Zoe. The Jokertown clinic is always so busy. Two or three days, Dr. Finn said. They're going to take six off then, and later another six. Too much trauma for one surgery, they said. Then I'll be on chemotherapy."

  "I'll start dinner," Zoe said.

  "Nonsense. I don't feel any different than I ever did." Anne got up from the kitchen table and began to bustle, but Bjorn padded around and set out knives and forks and plates, not typical behavior for him at all, while Zoe chopped the vegetables Anne pulled out of the fridge. "How did your meeting with your lawyer go?" Anne asked.

  "The grand jury hearing is scheduled in three weeks," Zoe said. "Nothing to worry about until then." Except you need to have your surgery in Jerusalem, momma, not in Jokertown. If the "Biological Research Units" start accepting "patients," you might be forced to go there, and that cannot happen. Zoe reached for an onion and sliced it. "Damned onion juice," she said, and Bjorn and Anne pretended to ignore her tears.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  At four in the morning, she gave up on sleep. She tiptoed into the hall and stood at her parent's doorway, as if she were a three-year-old with a nightmare. She wasn't three years old anymore. She was thirty-four, and she
couldn't climb in bed with them and say she was scared. They slept. Bjorn snored, with vigor and industry. Anne shifted and rolled over, but she sighed and didn't wake. Cancer. Biological Research Units. Rumors of a conspiracy determined to cleanse the world of the wild card. She remembered Hartmann's utter conviction, his intent, pleading gaze. She remembered old textbook photos, Jewish prisoners after the war, the ones still alive, who looked into the cameras with terrifying, terrible eyes.

  Never again.

  Not here. Not to those kids who live in the street, not to my family.

  It's time to change things. It's time to do something, even if it's wrong.

  Zoe tiptoed back to her room. She changed into jeans and scuffed high-tops and a nylon windbreaker. She pulled on a knit cap, stuffed her tawny curls underneath it, and went out into Jokertown, into the dark and the noise.

  "Lookin' chill, Zoe lady. Think you fool us?"

  Needles carried his camcorder in the front of his jacket as if it were an infant.

  "Had to try, didn't I?" Zoe asked. "I thought you guys watched everything around here. Where were you when I came in this afternoon, Escorts?"

  Jellyhead danced a quick end-zone dance and slipped her hand into Zoe's. "Sleepin'," Needles said. "Bad night last night. Can't take you home, though. You already there."

  "I had to get loose for a while. Where's Jube?"

  "Where's our twenty?" one of the Jimmies asked.

  "Oh. I almost forgot." She handed it to him. He looked like a gangly nat adolescent, pretty much. His eyebrows were downy. So were his ears, she saw as he moved in to spirit away the twenty; faint peachfuzz feathers, still colorless, were just growing in. He was going to look very like an owl.

  "No Jube. Can't touch that dude, for a time. Maybe you stay home. Best place. Best place in Jokertown tonight, you got a door to lock."

  This Jimmy had stripes on his skin. Pale, but they looked like some sort of tropical fish. An angelfish.

  "Oh." She'd been counting on Jube, his rotund stability. She wanted a buffer to guard her from the wall of deceit and decency at home. "I really wanted to talk to him."

  "Talk to us." Jellyhead had nuzzled up close to Zoe's side.

  "Ah, shut it, Jellyhead. We got the bucks, and I'm hungry." That was the tiniest one, Jan.

  They hadn't stopped moving. They danced their circle around her, and she saw they had herded her down a street where a neon sign jittered and blinked out the word Diner.

  "So am I," Zoe said. It was another fib.

  The countertop was orange formica, the stools were covered in cracked yellow vinyl, the general effect was gloomy, and the man behind the counter looked like Humphrey Bogart.

  "The usual?" he asked.

  "Sack full," Needles said. "Extra catsup?"

  "Don't got any." Moby's eyes were on Zoe.

  "She's ours," Needles said. "She's ours."

  "Looks like a fucking social worker," the man said, but he turned to his grill and laid out burgers.

  "We don't sit down?" Zoe asked.

  "Can't watch from in here," Needles said. "We got to cover our territory, you know?"

  Zoe nodded. Needles and Jellyhead were beside her. The other three had vanished again. And Needles didn't have the camcorder; he must have passed it to one of the others on his way in. Damn, these kids were quick.

  Needles took the grease-stained bag and the man gave back some change. And then the kids were herding her down the street again, twisting and zigzagging, until they turned into an alley. Concrete blocks stacked in triangles supported a lean-to of steel roofing. The interior space was a dark maze of nests of wadded clothing and smelled of old grease and sad child. The huddle was four feet high. Zoe crawled in beside the Escorts, sat down, and pulled up her knees to give Jellyhead, who shoved at her gently, room to get out again.

  Jan sat down next to Zoe. Needles portioned out the burgers and fries. "No," Zoe said when he tried to hand her one. "No, I can't."

  Jan gulped down half a burger at a bite.

  "Hey, bitch. Too good for our food, are you? No way we shoulda brought you here. Maybe you best get out, now." Needles sliced at the air in front of her nose. "Go on! Get clear, fancy lady! We move this place, when we need to. You won't find it again, hear?"

  "Needles! Don't, please. Not you, too."

  This was too much. Even this pathetic refuge was closing to her. Zoe rested her forehead on her knees, utterly defeated.

  "Got troubles, lady?" Jan asked.

  "Not like yours," Zoe whispered.

  "Whatsa matter?" Needles asked. "You lose your rich-bitch job or something?"

  "Yeah." She snapped at him, too angry to hide the pain in her voice. She had no reason to hide pain from such as these. "An old buddy of mine decided he hated my wild card ass. And he's framed me with embezzlement."

  "Whoa!" Needles said. "You like a fugitive or something?" His claws flashed in the air, moving around his face as if to guard it.

  "The cops don't have a warrant, if that's what you mean."

  "She hurting, Needles. You let her talk." Jan patted her knee. Jan looked like a normal, though thin, little sparrow of a girl, except for her eyes. Her irises rearranged themselves, constantly, like miniature kaleidoscopes.

  "The job is nothing. My mom's got cancer. She's so good! Good people shouldn't get cancer."

  The kids didn't say anything. Good people shouldn't get the wild card, either. "There's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do about any of this shit! My God this world is going crazy."

  Not to mention that she was pouring out her troubles to joker kids who lived in an alley. "And I don't want to cry on my parents' shoulders and let them know I'm scared. My folks think I'm strong, and rich. They think I got out of Jokertown forever. But I didn't. I'm here. God damn it, I'm here!"

  Needles bit through a french fry with his baleen teeth. "You got that note, Jan?" he asked.

  "Got it." The child pulled a sheet of shiny fax out of her pocket.

  "Dutton said give you this." Needles settled back with the rest of his french fries.

  "It's dark in here," Zoe said.

  "Oh." Jan reached for the sheet of fax and looked down at it. Her eyes sent out beams. Her eyes were bioluminescent flashlights; the light they produced had a chartreuse tint like that of a firefly.

  The information you seek is available. Please contact me.

  Charles Dutton.

  Zoe folded the note and stuck it into the kangaroo pocket on her windbreaker.

  See the man. See him. Get Anne out of here, and Bjorn too, if it were possible, and tell Mendlen you're going to do it. If he says Anne's leaving will break a law or several? Find out how to do it discreetly, then.

  "You thinking," Needles said.

  "I'm thinking." She felt the kids' sympathy, their support. Thinking about how to find the cracks in the walls of the world, how to step through them into safety. Thinking about how to be good in a time of evil.

  "We like you," Jellyhead said.

  "Thank you," Zoe said. What about these kids? She wouldn't be able to walk away and forget them, their survival, their odd sense of charity. They had offered bread and salt, in their own way.

  Okay. Question. What could a female ex-CEO facing embezzlement charges do to change the opinions of a terrified, well-meaning population that was bent on quarantining a fearsome disease? A disease that killed nine out of ten and changed the tenth into an inhuman monster? She couldn't think of much, at the moment.

  Angelfish Jimmy had replaced Needles near the door hole. "Up, Jan. We gotta go talk to Hotair. Time to make morning report."

  "I should see Dutton. Will he be awake?" Zoe asked.

  "Yeah," Angelfish Jimmy said.

  Zoe crawled out of the lean-to and followed the Escorts toward the Dime Museum.

  "Ms. Harris." Dutton did not seem suiprised to see her. "I'm glad you're here."

  He led her to his office, away from the crowd of tired-looking jokers. He offered coffee. Hot a
nd fresh.

  "Kona," Zoe said.

  "Why, yes."

  "You have information for me, or so the kids say."

  Dutton tapped at a manila folder on his desk. "I have names for you. In Jerusalem. A flat that is ready for occupancy, if a deposit can be made in the next twenty-four hours. Several names of oncologists in Israel, but none in the city itself. However, the distances to the clinics are not large, and your mother should have no difficulty obtaining care."

  "Oncology. How did you know Anne would need an oncologist?"

  "Please, Ms. Harris." Dutton's protest was a mix of amusement and offended pride.

  "Sorry," Zoe said.

  "The Jerusalem information came from an organization you may not find - palatable. They are called the Twisted Fists."

  "Terrorists."

  "Dependable terrorists. Their organization has shown signs of maturity of late. It would be advisable, of course, for you to purchase round-trip tickets for your parents, ones that would indicate a relatively short stay in the Mideast. In light of your current - difficulties."

  "You know about those, too?"

  Dutton pushed the folder, gently, toward Zoe's side of the desk. "I grew up in Rhode Island. I went to Princeton. I was a successful stockbroker once, Zoe Harris. In spite of this face, this fate, I am 'successful' again. There is life after one's card is on the table. There is life. More coffee?"

  Zoe shook her head, no.

  "Please. Hotair is not going to be finished for a while. I enjoy your company, I must admit. It is not often that I have the honor of being of assistance to beautiful young women."

  Zoe smiled and pushed her cup across the desk. "Thank you. And yes, another cup, please." She picked up the folder and held it tight to her chest.

  "I am known to be a gossip, Zoe. But I am also a good listener, and my gossip is tempered with discretion."

  She believed him. Stories of his charities, of his generosity, were part of the Jokertown mythos.

  "I want to ask you something," Zoe said.

  "Yes?"

  "Do the Card Sharks exist?"

  Dutton leaned back in his chair. "Conspiracy theories are usually the product of the imaginations of the prosecuted. There are many internal consistencies in the stories I have heard. Too many. I fear that they exist. I cannot prove it."