Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel

by George R. R. Martin

  “Gallo,” he said, clearly not happy with Jamal’s presence. “What brings SCARE to New Jersey?”

  Jamal jerked his head back up the highway. “We’ve got a crime scene. Ah, Federal issues. Controlled substances.” He quickly described the crash and the cargo. “And this might explain one problem we’ve found.”

  “You think they’re related?” Gallo’s whole manner suggested skepticism, but, then, he could barely see over the hill to the next site.

  As patiently as possible, Jamal explained the mystery of the crash-spill sequence. Perhaps because he began to concentrate on crime scene matters, or possibly because he had already made it clear he didn’t like a) Feds or b) aces or c) both, Gallo began to unbend. “We’ve got a DB here, male, joker approximately thirty years of age. Found here early this morning.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Now, that’s an interesting question. First cut is, hit by a vehicle.” Gallo nodded toward the coroner’s unit. “But they say, not so fast. Indications are he was dead before that. Autopsy will tell us, I imagine.”

  “And the time?”

  “That we’ve got: twenty hours ago, give or take a couple.”

  “But last night.”

  “No question.”

  “We don’t have two crime scenes here. We have one in two parts.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  Jamal thought about it. Have SCARE take it over? Their team numbered two and not only had to beg for any resources beyond an extra cell phone, but was at the mercy of DHS for its schedule: they would surely be detailed to a political event tomorrow. “Leave it where it is,” he said. “We’ll take custody of the ammonium nitrate. You figure out what happened with our dead joker.” He reached for a business card and found one in the clip where he carried his driver’s license and a single credit card.

  Gallo took it, but didn’t offer one of his own. Which was fine with Jamal. Then, possibly realizing that he had been less than helpful, he said, “Agent Norwood, you got any ideas what this might be?”

  At that moment, rain began to fall.

  “We get reports of wiretaps or signal intercepts about vital ‘deliveries’ about five times a week,” Jamal said, wondering how long it would be before the gentle drops turned to a downpour. He could hardly expect Gallo to offer him a ride up the road. “They never amount to much.”

  “Until the day they do.”

  That sounded serious. “You heard anything?”

  Gallo was shaking his head. “It is a little strange, though. Dead joker in the road, nasty shit spilled.”

  “Well, let us know if the autopsy turns up anything we need to know.”

  Gallo never turned back. Maybe he was eager to get in out of the rain, too.

  Jamal retreated up the hill, back to the SCARE team. As he walked, he called Sheeba to report what he’d seen, trying to leave out Gallo’s bored unhelpfulness. What else did he expect from the New Jersey State Police, anyway?

  Naturally, Sheeba told him they were about to leave, could he hurry? Apparently coming to pick him up wasn’t part of the plan. The instant he hung up and prepared to pick up his pace … with the Explorer and the Warren County team in sight … he suddenly felt weak, as if hit by a blindsided tackle.

  He actually had to stop and bend over, trying to catch his breath. What the hell was happening to him? Blood loss, that was it. He had had blood taken—you were supposed to eat when that happened, or just take it easy.

  The weak moment passed. It was only when he was feeling better and walking that he allowed himself to remember that the warning about weakness after blood work was for people who had been transfused … who had given a pint of their blood.

  Not a few ccs.

  Cry Wolf

  by David D. Levine

  GARY GLITCH SCURRIED ACROSS rooftops, the evening air cool on his face as he bounded from one roof to the next across alleys and streets, unnoticed by the people below.

  If anyone had seen Gary, they might think he was strange-looking even for a joker. Four feet tall, with skinny arms and legs and huge ears, he resembled an animated sock monkey more than a human being. And if they should happen to see him leap twenty or thirty feet, landing with a muted clang on a fire escape or access ladder and continuing without pause, they might really start to wonder just what sort of creature he was.

  Gary tried hard to keep that from happening.

  Tar paper, concrete, and shingles flew past beneath his boots as he made his way quickly uptown, heading for the ritzy residential neighborhood north of Houston Street. The pickings were usually pretty good there on a weekday night.

  Reaching a fancy apartment building where he’d often had good luck, Gary scrambled up the fire escape to the roof, then quivered on the parapet, peering down into an air shaft. There was a lesbian couple here who could be counted on for a good show. Alas, tonight their window was dark and silent.

  Three more of Gary’s usual perches yielded nothing, even after many long minutes of watching and listening. Finally, frustrated, he decided to take a bit of a risk. Dashing four long blocks to an apartment building on St. Marks Place, Gary crept quietly down the downspout to a ledge near an open rear window.

  Gary didn’t really like this spot. There was only one place where he could perch and see into the room, and it was illuminated by a streetlight and in full view of a dozen nearby apartments. But the view was worth the risk: the Trio were in full flagrante delicto.

  The man—black and lanky—rocked enthusiastically behind the raised ass of the skinny brown woman, whose face was buried between the thighs of the other woman. The one whose entire torso was covered with writhing pink nipples. All around the three of them whirled a nimbus of light, gold and orange and red. It pulsed in time with their gasps and moans. Gary’s throat went dry and his own breathing quickened, matching the rhythm of the three on the bed.

  Then a slithering crunch came from above. So unusual was the sound that Gary pulled his attention away from the Trio.

  Gary’s eyes literally popped out of his head, extending a good three inches, as he saw just what had interrupted him.

  A huge black snake-man was racing down the fire escape toward him, well-muscled arms reaching out to snatch him from his ledge. Twenty or thirty feet of black-and-yellow-striped snake tail extended behind his human upper body.

  Gary shrieked and scrabbled away, barely avoiding the snake-man’s grasp. Fingers clinging to the gaps between bricks, he scampered right up the wall.

  But the snake was nearly as fast. “You’ve peeped your last, peeper!” he called as he climbed, his colorful snake body doubling back on itself.

  Just before the snake could snatch him from the wall, Gary reached the parapet of the roof and clambered over it. But a loose bit of metal on the parapet’s flashing caught his foot and he went down, falling face-first onto the tar paper. He lay stunned, expecting the snake to catch up with him at any moment.

  “Freeze!” came a new voice, echoing up from the alley. “IBT, what the fuck?”

  And the snake did not arrive.

  Hauling himself to his feet, Gary risked a glance down into the alley. The black man from the Trio, still naked and glistening with sweat, was leaning out of the window Gary had just vacated, training a handgun nearly as impressive as his God-given equipment on the snake-man.

  The snake put his hands up as ordered. “I’m on your side, man! I was on patrol, and I saw that little fucker peeping in your window!” He pointed right at Gary.

  The man turned his attention to Gary, followed by his gun. Their eyes met over the gunsight. But then both of them were distracted by a lightning-fast motion.

  Taking advantage of Mr. Trio’s momentary diversion, the snake-man launched himself into the air. A moment later his whole coiled body landed with a meaty thud on the roof.

  “Gotcha!” he cried, lunging inescapably at Gary.

  Gary shrieked and vanished.

  Back in his apartment,
cartoonist Eddie Carmichael clutched his misshapen head and moaned. He preferred to bring his creations back to the apartment before erasing them; making them disappear where they were gave him a horrendous pain behind his eyes. But it was better than the alternative. If Gary had been killed—and the descending snake-man would certainly have smashed him to bits—Eddie would never be able to manifest him again.

  Shivering with pain and adrenaline, Eddie took a Percocet and a sleeping pill and dragged himself into bed with his clothes on. But, despite the drugs, he lay awake for a long time.

  He’d tried to quit peeping so many times. It was wrong and sick and twisted and disgusting, and someday it might get him into real trouble, but no matter how hard he tried he always started doing it again.

  It was the only good thing the wild card virus had ever done for him.

  The next morning Eddie was awakened by the bell of his cheap-ass landline telephone. “Hello?” he bleated, once he managed to get the receiver to his ear the right way around. The headache was still there.

  “Eddie Carmichael?” A male voice, young and hesitant. “The artist?”

  “Yeah…”

  “This is Detective Black at the Fifth Precinct. We need a sketch artist right away. Are you available?”

  “Uh, yeah.” The response was automatic. As a freelance artist, he couldn’t afford to turn down work, and forensic art paid well as contract assignments went. He hauled himself upright. It was ten minutes after eight in the morning. “I can be there by nine.”

  “Could you make it eight-thirty?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Eddie hung up the phone, then cursed with great sincerity as he hauled himself from the bed into his rolling desk chair, which he used to scoot himself to the bathroom.

  Eddie’s chair was the single most expensive thing in the whole apartment. It had seventeen different points of adjustment, and over the years he’d tweaked them all until the chair fit his twisted, asymmetrical body perfectly. It was the only place on Earth he could be truly comfortable.

  The rest of the apartment, all three hundred and twenty square feet of it, was little more than an extension of the chair. He could roll from one side of it to the other with a good hard kick, all of the work surfaces and most of the storage were reachable from a seated position, and even his child-sized bed was higher than normal so he could lever himself in and out of the chair with a minimum of effort.

  And then, of course, there were the drawings.

  Every single square inch of vertical surface—walls, doors, cabinets, even some of the windows—was covered with Eddie’s drawings in pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, and Sharpie. He added, subtracted, and rearranged them nearly every day, to reflect his latest work and current mood.

  Not one of them had anything to do with the endless round of single-panel gags, greeting cards, advertisements, and other illustrations he did to pay the bills. Those lived only on the drawing board, and only long enough to satisfy the client. Once they’d been mailed off, he forgot them as quickly as possible.

  The drawings on Eddie’s walls were all of his own cast of characters. Twitchy little Gary Glitch; slick and sleazy Mister Nice Guy; The Gulloon, a bowling-pin-shaped gentle giant; voluptuous LaVerne VaVoom; hyperactive Zip the Hamster; and many more cavorted across every surface. They were crude in every sense of the word, executed quickly with Eddie’s trademark shaky line and generally engaged in activities that would shock most people’s sensibilities.

  Sometimes he told himself that the sick, exploitative, sexist situations his characters got into were okay because they were only ink on paper. Just drawings, not hurting anyone. Sometimes he even believed it, a little.

  None of Eddie’s cast of characters had ever been or would ever be published. But in some ways they were all the family he had.

  Eddie’s mother had been killed by the same wild card virus outbreak that left him a joker. His father had died of a stroke—or the strain of caring for a hideous, deformed child as a single parent—just a few years later. But thanks to his cast of characters, one of the teachers in the group home had spotted and nurtured his artistic talent. Eventually his work brought him enough money to move out of the group home and live independently.

  But independence for a freelance artist was always a precarious thing, and he really needed this paycheck if he was going to keep the wolf from the door. So once he had taken care of business in the bathroom and swallowed another Percocet, he gathered his tools and materials, threw on some clothing—keenly aware of the stink of his unwashed body—and hauled himself down the two flights to the street.

  With his hunched, diminutive stature, Eddie’s view of the heavy Canal Street pedestrian traffic was mostly butts and thighs. But he could still feel the pressure of eyes on the back of his neck, see the small children who pointed and gaped, hear the disparaging comments … he couldn’t fail to know just what his fellow New Yorkers thought of him. Even his fellow jokers. Did they think the virus had left him deaf as well as ugly, malformed, and in constant pain?

  Yes, ugly, even by Jokertown standards. Though he’d been hearing that Joker Pride crap for his whole life, he couldn’t buy into the idea that “everyone is beautiful in their own way” applied to him. His head, one arm, more than half his torso, and both legs were hideous masses of deformed flesh, with lumpy pink skin like an old burn scar and tufts of black hair sprouting here and there. Even his bones had been warped and twisted by the virus into a parody of the normal human form.

  And yes, despite his best efforts, he did have an odor. Thank you very much for noticing, ma’am. Was it his fault his warty, craggy, twisted body was so hard to keep clean? Bitch.

  As if he needed a reminder of why he got all his groceries and other purchases delivered.

  Grimly Eddie stumped onward. His right hand, the good one, gripped his four-footed cane, bearing more than half his weight on every other step. Every few minutes he paused to rest.

  Finally he reached the station house, Fort Freak itself. Three labored steps up to the door, which opened even before he’d begun to fumble with his portfolio and cane. A massive pair of legs stepped aside, and a deep voice rumbled, “Morning, Eddie.”

  Eddie tipped back his hat and looked up at a furry face, the smile inviting despite its fearsome fangs. “Morning, Beastie.” Beastie Bester was one of the few people in the precinct who didn’t seem to mind Eddie’s appearance.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while. What brings you in today?”

  “Dunno. I got a call from a Detective Black.” He shrugged. “It’s work.”

  After signing in with the winged desk sergeant—and enduring the indignity of standing on a box to reach the desk—Eddie clipped a temporary badge to his lapel and waited. Officers in blue polyester bustled in and out, their belts crowded with guns and handcuffs and other cop equipment.

  Daniel in the lions’ den, Eddie thought, and loosened his tie.

  The first time he’d come to the police station he hadn’t slept a wink the night before. But he’d come anyway—no one knew what his characters got up to at night, and his fellow freelance artist Swash had insisted that the job was easy and the money good. And, indeed, he’d gotten nothing from his occasional forays into cop territory but a few modest paychecks and a paradoxical sense of civic pride. He could even boast that his work had helped to put away some very nasty characters.

  If, that is, he had anyone to boast to.

  “’Scuse me,” said one of the cops, a shapely redheaded nat with a detective’s badge clipped to the waistband of her skirt, and Eddie shuffled out of her way. But despite her surface politeness, as she pushed past he saw that her nose wrinkled in distaste. Eddie thought about what Mister Nice Guy might do with a redhead like her and a leather strap.

  “Eddie Carmichael?” Eddie jerked his eyes up to see a pale nat in a cheap suit. “I’m Detective Black.” He was young, even younger than Eddie, and had a soft voice that Eddie recognized from the earlier phone
call. “You can call me Franny. This is my partner, Detective Stevens.” Stevens was a tall, black nat in a dark suit. He was slim, with prominent ears …

  Jesus Christ. It was Mr. Trio.

  “Whoa,” Franny said, catching Eddie’s shoulder with one slim hand. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I…” He swallowed hard. “I just had a tough time getting here this morning.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I don’t deal well with crowds.”

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Franny helped Eddie to a seat, then fetched him a paper cup of water. He took it with shaking hands, trying not to look at Stevens. “I’ll be all right.”

  If the situation weren’t so terrifying it would almost be laughable. Called in to sketch his own creation! But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect him to Gary Glitch. As long as he kept calm and did his job—maybe not too good of a job, but not so bad as to attract attention—he could just collect his paycheck and that would be the end of it. The hardest part would be pretending that he’d never seen Stevens before.

  No, the hardest part would be not drawing Gary Glitch as though he’d drawn the character ten thousand times before.

  “What’s the case?” Eddie asked, struggling to keep his voice level.

  Franny shrugged. “Missing persons. Sort of.”

  “I, uh—oh?” Eddie fumbled with his portfolio and cane to cover his confusion and relief. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  “It’s not much of a case,” Franny admitted.

  “It’s the best you deserve,” Stevens muttered under his breath, so low that Franny couldn’t have heard it. Oh, really?

  “We aren’t even really sure anyone has actually gone missing,” Franny explained as he led Eddie through swinging doors and across the crowded, noisy wardroom, where too many desks were crammed together under harsh fluorescent lighting and a miasma of stale vending machine coffee. “Very few of the supposed missing persons are, you know, anyone that anyone would miss. But now we’ve got a witness—someone who claims he saw some of the missing jokers getting snatched off the street.” They paused outside an interrogation room and looked through the one-way glass. “For all the good he does us.”