Lowball

by George R. R. Martin

  Both John and DB responded, earnestly, “I’m not an ace.” Kate punched John in the shoulder, and he glared at her.

  The four of them stood shoulder to shoulder, regarding the two officers. They looked like kids caught fighting on the playground: gazes on their shoes, scuffing at the concrete. Kate had her arms tightly crossed, maybe to keep her from wanting to throw something.

  “Is it one of you who called in a kidnapping?” the nat cop said.

  Ana stepped forward. “Yeah. John called it in, but I’m the one who saw it. In an alley off Suffolk. There were two of them, the guy they pulled into the back of the van was unconscious—”

  “Can you describe the driver of the van?” she asked.

  “Gray, pale, bald. Big black eyes. Fishy, almost.”

  “And he’s got some kind of badass electric shock,” DB added. “Beat the shit out of me.”

  The joker cop—Michaelson, the name badge on her uniform read—scowled. “That would be the Eel. We’ve been on his tail for a while.” She exchanged a look with her partner; neither seemed happy.

  “So that really was a kidnapping?” Ana said. “I wasn’t just imagining it.”

  “Don’t give yourself a medal just yet,” said the first cop—Bronkowski. “Which way did he go?”

  Kate hitched a thumb over her shoulder, to the corner and the next street. “Saw him running that way. I almost had him until I got distracted.” Again, she glared at John, who glared back.

  Michaelson spoke into the radio at her shoulder, and a garbled answer came back. It must have made sense, because she nodded. “Right. I’m going to need you all to come down the station—”

  “But we didn’t do anything wrong!” DB grumbled.

  “—just to make a statement. You think you can do that?”

  Yes, they finally agreed. They could do that.

  Michaelson’s radio crackled again, and she replied. “Right, on our way.” Turning back to them, she admonished, “Let us catch the bad guys, and you guys get yourselves to the precinct. Don’t make me come after you.”

  With that, she and Bronkowski climbed back into the car. The spinning red and blue lights splashed across them as the car pulled away. Ana squinted and ducked away at their glare. Kate groaned. “So we’re going to spend the rest of the night at a police station? Some party.”

  “All the best parties end that way,” DB said, chuckling.

  Ana sighed. “At least we did some good. I think.” Some tiny amount of good. Assuming the kidnapping victims in the back of the van were okay.

  “Kate,” John said, his tone earnest, and Ana wanted to smack him before he said another word. Couldn’t he just let it go? “I really do worry about you—”

  “John—” Kate stopped herself, closed her eyes. Maybe counting to ten. “I know. But I’m fine. Really. Can we just go talk to the police now?” She started walking.

  “I could really use another margarita,” DB said, following her.

  “Yeah,” Ana said. That second pitcher still sat in the fridge. If only they could get to it before morning.

  John stared after Kate. “It’s not like I’m trying to annoy her. It just comes out that way.”

  “Maybe you should stop treating her like she’s different. Like she’s some sparkly fairy ice queen. You know?”

  He pursed his lips, confused, which she took to mean that he didn’t. “I just—”

  “John, let it go.” He only slouched a little before squaring his shoulders, settling his expression into something resembling calm as he walked off after the others. Ana needed her own moment to gather herself.

  The sharp crack of a gunshot rang. Instantly, instinctively, Ana dropped to the concrete even as she looked for the source. The others had done likewise—they all had experience with getting shot at. Another shot fired—and DB roared, falling back, a spot of red bursting from the sleeve of his coat. Shit.

  Ana saw the flash of shining gray skin in the streetlight at the opposite corner. The Eel, crouching in hiding, leveling his gun for another shot at the trio walking half a block ahead of Ana.

  He’d targeted them because they were the dangerous ones; at least the ones who looked dangerous. People tended to glance right past Ana. Just as well.

  She shouted a wordless warning, and one hand went to her St. Barbara medallion, which she clutched through her shirt. The other she spread flat on the pavement.

  This wasn’t like digging into bare soil, tilling a garden or drilling a well, actions that came as easily to her as touching air. The city was full of dirt, rock, soil, but it had a crust over it, concrete and steel, and she had to get past that to get to her power. She almost had to trick herself—technically, asphalt was earth, containing bits and fragments, if she could work past the tar and additives. Concrete did have a trace of soil in it.

  She pushed, found the layer between the streets and sidewalks and tunnels underneath, found the substrate through which the city had insinuated its limbs and tendrils. Then, she shoved.

  The street trembled with the sound of an earthquake. Pavement cracked, crumbled. A section of sidewalk rose on a pillar of earth, pressing upward from under the city itself—trapping the kidnapper on its peak. Debris rained down the sides, bits of concrete broke off and fell. The pillar climbed a full story high. The joker was trapped in the open, unable to flee, unable to move. He’d flattened himself to the broken sidewalk, gripping the edges, staring down with fearful eyes.

  She could feel the city’s infrastructure—pipes and conduits, straight concrete and steel running like veins through the earth—and avoid the obstacles, for the most part. Curl the earth around it, nudge it aside. As careful as she tried to be, a water main broke, and a geyser spewed from a crack in the street, spilling a river into the gutter.

  Well, so much for minimizing damage. At least the joker was caught.

  Except that he looked down to the crevice and the flood pouring out of it, gave a determined nod, and jumped.

  It should have been a suicide move, except halfway down he changed, his body morphing. His clothing ripped and fell away as he elongated, his limbs shrinking, his head bulging. Now, he didn’t just seem like some slimy sea creature, he was one, and he disappeared into the flooded crack in the pavement and into the sewer pipes. Gone.

  “Damn, didn’t see that coming,” DB said.

  The others had doubled back and now huddled in a crouch behind her, holding onto ground that had turned unstable. DB clamped a hand over a bloody wound on an upper shoulder. Seemed okay, otherwise. Ana sighed with relief.

  “What did he think he was doing?” John said.

  “Thought he could get the jump on us,” Kate said. “Idiot.”

  “Doesn’t matter, he still got away.” Ana sighed.

  DB looked at her. “You okay?”

  Using her ace had burned the last of the tequila out of her system. Now, she was just tired. She brushed grit off her hands and sat back against the nearby wall.

  Over the sound of gushing water, the wail of police sirens returned. This was going to take a little more explanation than last time. Perfect end to the night, really.

  The patrol car arrived, splashing through the river of water now pouring down the street. It stopped, and the whippet-shaped Officer Michaelson stepped out, followed by her partner, Bronkowski. She regarded them, arms crossed. “Can’t leave you clowns alone for a second, can I?” None of them had an answer to that, and she continued, “I’m going to need you all to come with me.”

  Ana looked to her friends, but they were all staring back at her like they expected her to do something. She sighed. “Officer, please, Michael’s hurt—”

  “Not that hurt…” he muttered.

  “You want to argue with me, go right ahead, that’ll give me an excuse to put cuffs on the whole lot of you.”

  “Bugsy would love that for Aces!,” Kate muttered.

  “At least someone would get something out of the night,” Ana replied.

 
They could make a break for it. A couple of cops against the Committee. Well, the scattered remnants of the original Committee, at least. And Team Hearts of American Hero. The more Ana thought about it, the lamer it sounded.

  Two more squad cars pulled up, more cops spilling out—some with guns drawn. Who were the bad guys again?

  A big—monstrously big—joker, with fur and horns to boot, trotted toward them. “Rikki, Bugeye, you guys got a problem here?”

  Michaelson smirked at the aces. “I don’t know, do we?”

  They didn’t.

  Ana at least talked Michaelson and Bronkowski into taking them to the Jokertown Clinic first, to get DB’s arm looked at.

  “Just another scar to add to the collection,” he said. He had a gauze bandage taped over the wound. The bullet had just grazed him, and a nurse had cleaned it out and stopped the bleeding. He probably wouldn’t even need stitches.

  “You could have been killed,” Ana muttered. Now that the adrenaline—and margaritas—had worn off, the danger was only now becoming apparent. They should have called the cops, and waited.

  But no, then the two kidnapped jokers would be gone. Instead, they were lying on gurneys in the Jokertown Clinic emergency room, and they were going to be okay.

  Daylight had started to press through the room’s glass doors. The four of them sat in a row of worn plastic chairs in the emergency room waiting area, right where Michaelson told them to sit. The place smelled tired and antiseptic. Way too many sick and hurt people had moved through this room.

  Michaelson and her partner had taken up position by the door. The muffled voice in her radio said something, and Michaelson relayed the information that the passenger in the van, the other joker, had been arrested. In the meantime, dawn had broken, and Ana really wanted to go home. When Kate smashed a hand against a wall, they all jumped.”Sorry,” she muttered, studying the crushed insect on her hand. “I thought it was Bugsy. It’s just a fly.”

  Now Ana was convinced she heard a buzzing in her ear and looked around expecting to see one of the reporter’s green wasps reconnoitering.

  After what seemed like half the night, the whippet-looking cop—Officer Michaelson—came over, along with a plainclothes detective. Young guy, but grim-looking, with a set to his jaw that might have been there awhile.

  “I’m Detective Francis Xavier Black,” he said.

  Ana stood, brushed off her clothes, offered her hand for him to shake. “Ana Cortez,” she said. “These are—”

  “Um, yeah, I know who you all are,” he said, in a tone that indicated he was chagrined about the whole thing. “Rikki tells me you tore up half the Lower East Side playing vigilante.”

  And what was she supposed to say to that? Should she call a lawyer? And wouldn’t Lohengrin love that.… The others looked at Ana, like they expected her to play diplomat. They expected her to throw herself on that grenade, and after she’d fed them all burritos and margaritas.

  “Why do I have to do all the talking and herding cats and crap?” she said to them, pouting.

  “Because you’re good at it?” Kate said.

  Ana blinked at her. Really? Well. Okay then. She straightened and matched Black’s gaze squarely. She’d met the president for crying out loud, she could face him. “We called the police as soon as we realized something was wrong. You’ll have to tell me where the line between concerned citizen and vigilante is.”

  “Or I could have a judge do it,” Detective Black said, shrugging.

  “Give me a break,” Kate muttered, slumping back in her chair.

  DB, easily the biggest guy in the room, drew himself up and thudded his chest. The sound reverberated through the floor. “We were only trying to help.”

  Ana said, “I saw someone get hauled into the back of the van—it looked like a kidnapping. I wasn’t just going to sit by and watch. I wasn’t wrong, was I? That really was a kidnapping.”

  “And what were you doing wandering around Jokertown at midnight?” he asked.

  Like he couldn’t believe she would do something like that. “It’s a free country.”

  Black sighed, and Ana got the feeling he’d been awake and working for a very long time. He said, “You weren’t imagining it. There’ve been a spate of kidnappings over the last few weeks. We haven’t had a lot of luck tracking down the victims or perpetrators. Catching Rance is a big break.” Rance must have been the other kidnapper, with the extra limbs.

  “So we actually helped,” John said, brightening.

  “Yeah, well, don’t think you need to keep helping.”

  “Look,” Ana said. “I can help put the street back together. Free excavation services. Just let me know.”

  Black nodded, and Ana expected she’d be getting a phone call from the city before too long. Then he turned to DB. “You picked up some DVDs from a stall on the Bowery, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to need to take those into evidence, if you don’t mind.” He winced. Maybe afraid he was going to have to argue with DB, which would make anyone wince.

  “Why?” DB said.

  “Part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “Having to do with the kidnapping? What the hell is going on, really?”

  He hesitated, as if debating how much he could share. “It’s early yet, I’m afraid I can’t discuss details. But getting those disks would really help.” Ana nudged DB’s shoulder, and the joker pulled DVDs out of his copious coat pockets without further prodding. He’d managed to stash a dozen or so.

  “Thank you, Mr. Vogali, I really appreciate this,” Black said. The detective sorted through them, looking at titles, and nodded in satisfaction. “You’ll be free to go just as soon as you give statements to Officer Michaelson. Thanks again, and please—try to stay out of trouble. We really don’t need any more paperwork.” Offering a weary smile, he turned away.

  Michaelson appeared with a stack of clipboards and forms. “You need to fill out reports and contact info. Are you willing to testify if this goes to court?”

  Testifying in court seemed like the easy part at this point. At least Michaelson had stopped threatening to arrest them.

  In the middle of filling out her statement, Ana’s phone rang, and she fumbled in her pocket for it. Caller ID said Lohengrin. Great. She couldn’t avoid this, only delay it, so she went ahead and answered. “Yeah?”

  “Earth Witch,” he said, his accent making the name sound lilting and exotic. “You’re in the news this morning. What happened?”

  Already? She groaned. “It’s a very long story. Can I tell you later?”

  Then DB’s phone rang. Then John’s. Then Kate’s. The story must have hit the papers, the Internet, the morning talk shows, and everything in between, all at the same time. Ana caught sound bites of conversation.

  From DB: “No, Marty, I’m fine. Everything’s fine … what do you mean, doing something stupid? I didn’t do anything stupid!”

  From John: “Mom, I wasn’t trying to cause trouble … can we talk about this later?”

  And Kate: “I’m fine, Tyler, really. No … yes … yes, it was kind of stupid, but I’m not going to apologize. See you tonight?”

  Lohengrin was still talking, and Ana didn’t really care that she’d missed half of what he was saying. “… return to the office, right now.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? It’s really loud in here.”

  “I’ve arranged a press conference in two hours. You need to state on the record that your actions last night were in no way associated with the UN, and the Committee is not operating on American soil. I need you here for a briefing. After the press conference, I’m sending you to Mexico while this clears up.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. She really wanted to feel like she was doing good—but did there have to be quite so many hoops for her to jump through? She pressed her St. Barbara medallion through her shirt and concentrated on being polite.

  “I’m at the Jokertown Clinic
right now—”

  “Are you hurt?” To his credit, he actually sounded concerned.

  “No, I’m just tying up a few loose ends. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but it might take a while.”

  “Two hours, Earth Witch.”

  She hung up.

  DB finished his conversation next, clicked off his phone, and regarded Ana. “How much trouble are you in?”

  “Don’t ask,” Ana said, frowning. “You?”

  “That was my manager,” DB said. “The record label’s threatening legal action if I don’t get back in the studio. I need to go to LA and sort it out.”

  “I guess getting sued makes recording another album not sound so bad?” Ana asked.

  “For now. But I’m thinking it may be time to go indy. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  “Just keep an eye out for Bugsy, yeah?” They both looked over their shoulders at that one.

  The others had finished their calls and caught the last bit of the conversation. “LA, huh?” John said. “I’m heading that way, too, looks like. I have a job interview.”

  Kate’s eyes grew wide. “Not for American Hero—”

  “No. Mom’s charitable foundation needs a new manager. I told her I’d only consider the job if I applied for it just like everyone else.”

  “Great,” Kate said. “I think.”

  “Hey Ana, can I put you down as a reference?”

  “Sure, but a letter from Lohengrin might sound more impressive,” she said.

  “I think I’d rather have one from a friend.”

  They looked at Kate next, with expectation. She blushed. “That was Tyler. Just, you know. Checking in.”

  Ana tensed, expecting a jab from one or the other of the guys, and Kate’s defensive reaction. But it didn’t happen.

  “Cool,” DB said thoughtfully, and that was that.

  John looked down the row of them, and wonder of wonders, he was smiling. It had been a while, Ana realized.

  “You guys have an hour before we all go flying off?” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  An hour after returning to Ana’s flat to wash up and retrieve some cash, they ended up standing in a row, staring at the newest waxworks diorama at the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum.