Ace In The Hole wc-6

by George R. R. Martin

  Thunder rumbled overhead. "I trust you, old buddy." Spector wished he could say it was a two-way street.

  7:00 P.M.

  He woke suddenly. Filled with a sense of total well-being. Or perhaps filled was not the proper description. Empty, floating, freed at last from two years of pressure and anxiety.

  Tach kicked free of the tangled sheets. The scent of sweat and sex hung heavy in the room. Realized with a thrill of disappointment that the bed was empty. Sat up, then relaxed back against the pillows at the flush of the toilet.

  Fleur padded in, breasts swinging. She realized he was awake, and her arms crossed over her chest.

  "Don't, I like to look at you."

  "You're a heathen."

  "Yes. You're a courtesan."

  She lifted the drapes, and looked out. "That's not very nice."

  "It was meant to be a compliment. Why haven't you married?"

  "How do you know I haven't?" She leaned back against the window, one buttock cocked up on the narrow sill.

  "I don't read married off you."

  She stiffened. "Are you reading my mind?"

  "No."

  "You tried, the second time we did it."

  "I would have tried the first time, but I was too busy trying to make certain that I stayed… er… firm."

  "Don't read my mind!"

  "All right. It makes sex better for me, but all right."

  "I think it's horrible that you can violate people that way."

  "Fleur, may I remind you that I didn't read your mind. I sensed your opposition, and I withdrew. I'm a very wellmannered person, not to mention charming and handsome and witty…" There was no lightening of her somber expression, and he trailed away into embarrassed silence. He fumbled his flask off the bedside table, and took a swig. "Your mother wanted so much for you. Husband, children, home, happiness."

  "I don't want to talk about her."

  "Why not?"

  "It's old history." She slid into the bed, her hand reaching for his cock. "I want you in bed with me, not with her."

  Spector loosened his belt a notch. He'd had a salad and lamb stew. Spezzatino de Montone Tony had called it, sampling a bite to make sure it was up to par. Tony had eaten a chicken-and-almond dish with buttered rice on the side. They'd split a strudel with custard for dessert, and that had done it for Spector. He wasn't used to eating this much and could practically feel the food piling up at the back of his throat.

  Tony sighed. "Did I tell you?"

  "Just as good as advertised." Spector drained what was left of the wine in his glass.

  "We've been so busy eating that I haven't had a chance to ask you who you're lobbying for."

  Spector tensed. So far, they'd talked about the old neighborhood, girls, basketball, what had happened to people. Tony had been his only good friend during his school years. It wasn't that people hated Spector, they just didn't notice him. Tony was Mr. Charisma. They were unlikely friends, but close all the same. Tony's question reminded him that he was here to kill Hartmann. It was an unavoidable fact. "Well, let's just say my employers don't share all the same views as your senator." Spector didn't want to lie, but he sure as hell didn't want to tell the truth either. Better to compromise.

  Tony nodded and rounded up a few stray crumbs of strudel with his fork. "You don't want to talk about it, that's fine. You got any feelings about the wild card victims, I mean personally?"

  "It's a tough break." Spector knew that as well as anyone, having drawn the black queen himself. Only Tachyon had been stupid enough to bring him back. "But there's lots of tough breaks. Some people just get a few more than others."

  "Don't you think jokers are getting kicked around, though?" Tony was looking hard at Spector. He had a stake in this, somehow. Something that went beyond political attitude.

  "Sure. But what are you going to do about it." Spector picked up the bottle of Pinot Nero and poured himself another glass.

  " Make sure their rights are protected, just like any other American citizen. That's what I want. That's why I'm working for Hartmann." Tony sat silently for a moment. "Don't think that's too much to ask, do you?"

  Spector shook his head. "No. I've been around a lot of jokers. But it's different with them. Blacks, Italians, whoever else, they all still look like people. It's not their own fault, but plenty of jokers look like they should be in a zoo. Most people react with their guts, not their brains." Spector knew, he'd always gone with his instincts. If he hadn't gotten the virus himself, he'd probably hate the jokers like the rest.

  Tony tossed his napkin on the table and signalled the waiter to bring the bill. "You got time to take a little ride with me?"

  "Sure," Spector said, downing his wine. "What have you got in mind?"

  "Just going to visit some friends of mine. Good friends. I'd like you to meet them." Tony smiled again. Spector couldn't say no.

  "Maybe after we're done, you can introduce me to your boss. I'd like to meet him." Spector was uncomfortable, and it wasn't entirelv due to his bloated stomach.

  "We might just be able to do that," Tony said. "But first things first."

  Right, Spector thought, first things first.

  All his old skills had returned. His aspect was truly upon him. Tachyon grinned down at his penis thrusting aggressively from the copper hairs of his brush. Laughing, he dove between her legs, nipping at her thighs, licking, teasing. Only one thing remained. To join completely with her. To join with her mind. He would do it when they climaxed, he decided. That would forever put the terror of Roulette behind him. Wriggling up her body, he sucked in one dusky nipple. Penetrated her.

  Her thoughts were sharp, as jagged as glass. "You look just like your mother, and she was a slut… slut… SLUT."

  A hateful voice. He hadn't heard it in thirty-eight years. Even filtered through the layers of Fleur's memories, Henry van Renssaeler still had the power to disgust.

  "You better prove how much you love me."

  "I love you, Daddy. I love you."

  The soft cadences of Leo Barnett.

  "Open your heart to Jesus, and all your sins will be forgiven you."

  The rest followed in swift, hurtful images. Fleur's realization of how he was using his power on the uncommitted delegates. The faked fall. The pretended passion. The disgust and dislocation as she tried to come to grips with the fact that she was in bed with her mother's lover. Even as she clutched at his sweat-slick body, she was pretending that he was Leo Barnett.

  Fury took him, and Tachyon was closer to striking a woman than he had ever been in his life. He took his revenge by finishing the act, with her, slaking his body's desires with hired meat. When it was over, he rolled out of the bed, and gathering up her clothes, tossed them on top of her. She stared at him, alarm shadowing the brown eyes.

  "Get out."

  "You read my mind-"

  "Yes. "

  "You violated me."

  "Yes."

  She was scrabbling into her clothes, wadding up her hose, and cramming them into her purse, smoothing the tangled hair. Pausing at the door, she flung at him," I accomplished what I set out to do. I kept you away from the convention."

  "And you deserve something for your trouble." Tachyon dug out a pair of twenties, and slapped them into her hand. "Jack was right. You're not your mother. You are a slut."

  She slammed the door behind her.

  The air-conditioning was icy on his bare skin. Tach poured himself a drink, and took several deep breaths trying to slow his racing heart. Then as he lifted the glass to his lips, the door hit the wall with a report like a firing pistol.

  Brandy sloshed across his chest and belly. "Oh, Ideal!"

  "Expecting someone?" remarked Polyakov dryly as he eyed Tachyon's erection.

  But there was a narrowness to the eyes, a tension to the jaw that made Tachyon think that the Russian's mind was anywhere but on Tachyon's sex life.

  "If you could return your brains from your secondary head to your primary h
ead, may we discuss a very serious problem?"

  "Very funny." Tach padded to the dresser, and poured a fresh drink. Blaise settled cross-legged on the bed, and stared down at his hands. George stood solid and lumpish in the center of the room. "So what is this great and serious problem?"

  "We were arrested."

  "WHAT!" Tach turned like a slow-coiling snake on Blaise. "What did you do?"

  "Nothing," he whined.

  "Oh, no, just played master puppeteer with a joker, a Klansman, a neo-Nazi and a policeman," snapped Polyakov. Tach shook his head like a baffled pony. George continued grimly on, "You would think when he has a subtle and invisible power he would have the brains not to advertise when he is using it."

  Something flickered between man and boy. Suspicious, Tach lanced out with his telepathy, but all he caught was the brittle edges of the passing thoughts. The flavor of conspiracy.

  "They were all standing out there waving their dicks at each other. I was just giving them the opportunity to prove how tough they were. That stupid, ugly joker was trying to wimp out-"

  "SHUT UP!" Even Tachyon jumped at the fury and command in the Russian's voice. Polyakov turned his back on the red-faced boy. "The preambulations of an adolescent, superpowered Caligula are not the problem. The problem is Henry Chaiken."

  "Fascinating. And who by the Ideal is Henry Chaiken?"

  "An AP reporter who used to be stationed overseas. He recognized me as Victor Demyenov, reporter for Tass."

  "Blood and Ancestors." Tach's knees felt weak, and he felt for the edge of the bed, sat down hard.

  "Naturally the police-"

  Frustrated with the slow unraveling of the story, Tachyon snatched the memory from his grandson's mind.

  The street flanking Piedmont Park. Glancing down to see the dusty footprints left by his tennis shoes on the hood of the car. The circle of sweating faces surrounding the little tableau. Mouths stretched with excitement, eyes glistening. Shrugging off George's clutching hands.

  "Come on. Come on! Put your money down. Not on an ugly joker he's going to get creamed."

  The cop giving a convulsive jerk as Blaise twitched the cord binding the human to the quarter-Takisian child.

  "He's not going to help the joker. He hates them too. I know. I'm in his head."

  "Soon after an army of police arrived, and Blaise discovered the limit to his power," continued Polyakov, not realizing that Tachyon had read it all.

  A chill, like an icy finger, traced down his back as Tach considered that at the end Blaise had been controlling nine people. Tachyon's limit was three for full control, and that took a tremendous toll on mind and body. Nine. And he was only thirteen. And I've been training him. His eyes met the flat implacable gaze of the sullen boy.

  "Chaiken was an interested spectator to all of this, and he found it interesting that my current identification did not match his memory of me. I gave them a story about changing my name as I changed my life, but if they are not complete fools they will check."

  "Your papers?"

  "Are very good, but a question to the wrong place. A photo shown to the wrong man…" Polyakov shrugged expressively.

  "You have to get out of here. Out of the country. If you need money I'll give it to you-"

  "No. I came here to do a thing. I will not leave."

  "What about me!"

  "You don't matter any more than I do. What I do I do out of a perhaps pathetic belief in an ideal. A familiar concept to you, Tachyon. You curse with it, believe in it. We're not so very different. We both have our honor. Unfortunately, it is always purchased with blood."

  There was again that fleeting glance between the Russian and Blaise. Tachyon slipped beneath the teenager's imperfect shields.

  "You may not use Blaise. I forbid it!"

  An infinitesimal arch of the eyebrows. Polyakov's mouth twisted in a slight, bitter smile.

  "I'll do whatever Uncle George wants," shrilled Blaise. "I will kill you first," said Tachyon, eyes locking with the Russian's.

  "I'm not your enemy, Dancer. He is." A pudgy forefinger thrust at the ceiling, and the Hartmann suite seven floors above.

  8:00 P.M.

  Standing with the fronds of a fern falling across his face like bangs, Mackie Messer watched Sara and the big fuck leave the restaurant.

  She'd been keeping him at bay all day, keeping to the crowds, never letting him have a shot at her alone. He'd thought surely she'd go to the room she shared with the nigger to take a shower; women were crazy about keeping clean. He'd never seen Psycho, so he didn't realize that was the last thing a woman of Sara's generation would do in circumstances like these.

  The memory of offing the natty nigger made his lips smile. It had felt good, his hand on bone. But the rush had faded. He was hungry. He hadn't spotted Sara till midmorning, over in the joker park. He hadn't even had a chance to phase into some restaurant's kitchen and rip off a bite to eat. Hunger was feeding the frustrated anger that had been building in him all day.

  The bitch. I have to kill her. I can't let the Man down. He was going to have to do something soon, something violent, to let out all that feeling.

  And now she and her new boyfriend headed for the elevators, arm in arm. Going upstairs to fuck; women were all alike.

  He followed, weaving among delegates who didn't deign to notice a twisted boy, got to the elevator stand in time to see them go into one and the doors close. He laughed out loud: "Yeah. Baby, baby."

  All he had to do now was see what floor they got off on. Then he'd find them.

  He licked his lips. I hope they're doing it when I catch them. He thought of the man's big cock going into Sara, and his hard hand going into him, and almost creamed his jeans.

  Drinks, exhaustion, and a heavy meal had done their work on Sara. Her knees had gone rubbery, and she leaned on Jack as they shot upward in the glass elevator. Jack closed his eyes against a surge of vertigo. Then he thought of the bottle of Valiums in his luggage and gave an inward smile.

  Sara was clearly on her last legs. She'd be out like a light within hours, and some time toward morning Jack was going to creep out of bed, find the Valiums, crumble a couple of them in a glass of room-service orange juice, and feed them to her with breakfast.

  That, he thought, should keep the loose cannon from rolling around for most, if not all, of Friday.

  Jack led Sara along the curving atrium balcony, then down a short hallway to his suite. "Piano Man" echoed up from the floor of the atrium. Sara stepped through the door and stood there, her heavy shoulder bag pulling her off balance. Jack put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, closed and locked it, and put his arms around Sara from behind. Despite the alcohol her body was taut as a watchspring. He brushed the disordered hair from her neck and began to kiss her nape. For a while Sara didn't react, then she gave a sigh and turned toward him. He kissed her on the lips. She took her time about responding, finally put her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, let his tongue flicker against hers.

  "There," Jack said, grinning. "It's better when you help." Which was the line that Bacall gave Bogart in To Have and Have Not.

  Sara didn't smile. "I've got to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back, okay?"

  Jack watched her walk unsteadily toward the toilet. A sinking feeling was beginning to envelope him. This was playing too much like his second marriage.

  He took off his jacket and poured himself a whiskey. He could hear water running in the bathroom, then silence. Maybe she was fixing her hair or makeup. Maybe she was sitting on the commode, reliving the death of her friend.

  Jack lit a cigarette and thought about the first time he'd seen violent death, when his company was caught in a German counterattack down Highway 90 between Avellino and Benevento, and he remembered that the experience hadn't made him feel very sexy, either.

  Damn, he thought. This had the potential to be a very depressing night.

  The bathroom door opened and Sara gave him a brave smile as she came into the
room. She'd fixed her hair and makeup and looked quite different from the scarecrow who'd sat opposite him at dinner.

  Jack stubbed out the cigarette and walked toward her. He was about to take her in his arms when a young hunchback in a leather jacket walked right through the wall behind her, grinned, and lunged forward with a hand thrust out like a spear.

  Without thought, Jack picked Sara up, made a half turn, and tossed her gently onto the sofa behind him. The air burned with Jack's golden light. There was the shrieking sound of a buzz saw hitting a spike buried in a tree, a sound that brought Jack's hackles erect and sent a surge of adrenaline pouring through his body. Jack turned back to the intruder and saw a look of shock on his young, pale face. Jack flipped a fist at the little man, a gentle backhand strike, and in a flare of yellow light the leather boy was flung against the bathroom wall with a bone-breaking crash. The boy dropped to the floor like a rag doll.

  Sara screamed as she turned and saw the assassin. Jack jumped involuntarily.

  "I got him, Sara," Jack said. She'kept on screaming. He heard the sounds of her struggling to her feet.

  Jack stepped forward toward the leather boy and leaned over him. The boy's eyes snapped open and his hands sliced out, flashing as if they were knives, and when they connected with Jack there was a flare of golden light, the screaming buzz saw noise, and bits of Jack's clothing flying like the fur of a fighting cat.

  Jack didn't even feel the blows.

  He picked up the boy by his leather jacket and held him at arm's length. The hunchback, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, kept hacking at Jack's arm, cutting the paleblue Givenchy shirt to ribbons.

  Apparently, the little guy hadn't ever come up against an invincible opponent before.

  "Kill him!" Sara's voice. "Jack, kill him now!"

  Jack thought not. He wanted to knock this character out and find out who he was working for. He aimed a slow open-hand slap at the boy's head, one that would maybe put him out for a few hours.

  The slap went through the hunchback's head without connecting. His other hand, holding the boy's jacket bunched up under his chin, was suddenly holding nothing at all. A dazed, triumphant grin passed across the boy's face as he drifted-drifted slowly, not dropped-toward the floor.