Ace in the Hole

by George R. R. Martin

  “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” died away.

  “Play that song again,” Jack said, “and I’ll kill you.”

  Walking away, Jack felt he ought to be ashamed of this brand of cheap satisfaction.

  Somehow he wasn’t.

  12:00 NOON

  Troll was Chrysalis’s only pallbearer. The massive security chief from the Jokertown clinic cradled the coffin in his arms as if it were a sleeping child, and led the procession into the churchyard. More prayers were said, and Father Squid blessed the grave with incense and holy water. Tachyon scooped up a handful of dirt, and dribbled it slowly onto the coffin. It gave back a hollow, scrabbling sound like claws on glass, and Tachyon shuddered.

  The sun looked bloated and somehow diseased as it floated in the pall of a smoggy New York summer day. Tach longed for the end. The dead had been buried. Now Atlanta was beckoning. But there was still the receiving line to be endured, and thirty minutes of human handshakes. Tach decided to spare himself some of the grossities. He pulled out a pair of red kid gloves, and worked them over his slim, white hands.

  “Hello, Father,” said a familiar voice to his left.

  “Good to see you again, Daniel.”

  Tachyon couldn’t restrain himself. He flung himself into Brennan’s arms, hugging the human with a fierce grip, and a show of naked emotion that he knew the man was only tolerating. With a sharply indrawn breath, Tach held Brennan at arm’s length and eyed him critically.

  “We must talk. Come.”

  They walked deeper into the graveyard until they were partly shielded by several intricate tombstones. Tachyon peered around a weeping angel at the woman who stared curiously after them.

  “The beautiful blonde must be Jennifer.”

  “Yes,” said Brennan.

  “I’d say you’re a lucky man, but that would seem less than apt when you’re being framed for murder. Is that what brought you back?”

  “Partly. Mostly I’m here to find who killed her.”

  “And how are you progressing?”

  “Not too well.”

  “Any theories?”

  “I thought Kien might have done it.”

  Tachyon shook his head. “That makes no sense. We had a deal that took you out of the city and ended the war. Why would he risk restarting the whole killing cycle?”

  “Who knows? I’m just going to keep poking until something jumps.”

  Dryly Tach said, “Just make sure it doesn’t jump on you. I wish I could aid you, but I must return to Atlanta. You will keep in touch?”

  “No. Once I finish this, Jennifer and I are leaving New York, and this time it will be for good.”

  “If you won’t keep in touch, at least be careful.”

  “That I can agree to.”

  1:00 P.M.

  Piedmont Park was packed. Spector shouldered his way through the crowd toward the podium. He felt like an idiot in the tight black-and-white outfit. His skin was suffocating under the greasepaint. He’d barely made it to the park on time. The costume shop had been wall-to-wall bodies, mostly jokers. Luckily, the gathering in the park had emptied the streets. He’d left his clothes and other belongings in a locker. The key was tucked under the wrist of his leotard.

  He was still a good hundred yards from the podium. They’d done a mike test, but so far, no Hartmann. A shadow moved slowly over the crowd. Spector looked up, shading his eyes from the glare, and saw the Turtle gliding noiselessly over them toward the stage, which was being prepared for the senator’s speech. There was applause and a small cheer. The crowd was mostly jokers, although there were a few groups of nats clustered at the edges.

  “Look, Mommy, a funny man.” A young joker girl pointed at Spector. She was sitting in a beat-up stroller, holding a flower. Her arms and legs were rail-thin and knobbed up and down. They looked like they’d been broken twenty times each.

  Spector gave a weak smile, hoping the greasepaint around his lips made it seem bigger than it was.

  The girl’s mother smiled back. Patterns of blotchy red pigment crept across her skin. As Spector watched, one of the circles closed into a small dot and erupted blood. The woman wiped it away in a quick, embarrassed motion. She took the flower from her daughter’s hand and held it out to Spector.

  Spector reached out and took it, being careful not to touch her flesh. Being a nat in a crowd of jokers, even dressed as a mime, gave him the creeps. He turned away.

  “Do something funny,” the little girl said. “Mommy, make him do something funny.”

  There was a murmur of approval from the crowd. Spector turned slowly and tried to think. Funny was something he’d never been accused of being. He tried balancing the flower on the tip of a finger. Amazingly, he was able to. There was dead silence. Sweat dripped over his painted brows and into his eyes. He was breathing hard. It was still very quiet.

  A gloved hand flashed before Spector’s face, snatching the flower. It placed the stem between painted lips and struck an affected pose. Laughter from the crowd. The other mime bowed low and raised up slowly.

  Spector took a step back. The other mime quickly grabbed him by the elbow and shook his head. More giggles from the crowd. This was the last thing Spector needed. Not only was he the center of attention, but he was still a long way from where he needed to be. Hartmann might start up any second and Spector wouldn’t be able to get through in time.

  The other mime looked down, made a face, and pointed at Spector’s feet. Spector glanced down instinctively and saw nothing there, just as the mime’s hand came up under his chin and popped his head back. This got the biggest laugh of all. The mime clutched at his sides and laughed noiselessly.

  Spector rubbed his mouth; he’d bitten his tongue. He gritted his teeth under the painted-on smile.

  The other mime placed a finger on the top of Spector’s head and danced around him like a maypole. He stopped in front of Spector, tugged at his cheeks.

  Spector had put up with enough. It was time to get this fucker out of his hair. He stepped in close and made eye contact. He locked in and set the pain free, grabbing the mime’s shoulders as he began to fall over. Spector lowered him slowly, pulling the mime’s hands together over his chest. The shithead’s eyes were glazed over with death and surprise by the time he came to rest on the trampled grass. Spector stuck the flower in the corpse’s hands and applauded melodramatically. The crowd laughed and cheered. Some patted him on the back; others looked at the mime, waiting for him to get up.

  “My friends.” The amplified voice came from the podium. The crowd turned. Spector angled his shoulders and began pushing through. “Today, we will have the privilege to hear from the only man who can lead us through these next difficult years. A man who preaches tolerance, not hatred. A man who unites, instead of being divisive. A man who will lead his people, not herd them. I give you the next president of the United States of America, Senator Gregg Hartmann.”

  The applause was deafening. There were weird screams and whistles, joker noises. Spector caught an elbow in the ear from a freak with arms that hung to his knees. He shook it off and kept moving in.

  “Thank you.” Hartmann paused while the applause and cheers played out. “Thank all of you very much.”

  Spector could see him now, but there was no way to lock eyes at this distance, even if Hartmann was looking right at him. The crowd was pressing in toward the podium. Spector rode the flood of human mistakes; used his narrow shoulders to cut through. Another minute or two and he’d be in position.

  “It has been said that I am a pro-joker candidate.” Hartmann raised his hands to still the applause before it could start. “That is not strictly true. I have always placed one idea above all others. That this country should exist as our founding fathers planned it. Equal rights for all, guaranteed, under the law of the land. No individual greater than the next. No one, however powerful, exempt from the law.” Hartmann paused. The crowd applauded again.

  Spector was about a hundred feet awa
y in the center of the crowd. Hartmann was wearing a beige suit. A slight breeze stirred at his styled hair. Secret Service agents flanked the podium, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses. The senator’s gaze swept the crowd but missed Spector. It would take total concentration to lock on for the instant they had eye contact. If that even happened.

  “I need your help to win our party’s nomination and become your next president.” Hartmann extended his hands to the crowd. “Your presence here in Atlanta can help me only if you demonstrate in an orderly manner. Any acts of violence, whether provoked or not, will certainly be used against us. You have the opportunity to make a simple, but eloquent statement. A statement made by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. That violence is an abhorrent act. That it will not be tolerated, by you, under any circumstance.”

  Hartmann’s eyes were drifting across the crowd again, headed straight for him. Spector held his breath and concentrated, the pain howling in his head. Just a little more. Spector stood on his toes. Their eyes locked …

  … there was a sound. A Secret Service man knocked Hartmann down. Gunfire. There were screams and people tried to move, but were packed too closely together. Spector looked at a hilltop. There were maybe a hundred men in Confederate uniforms. Puffs of smoke came from their guns, then the echo of the shots across the park.

  Hartmann was gone. There wouldn’t be another chance. Not here, anyway. Spector jumped in behind a joker who was as broad as three normal men. It didn’t matter where he was going. It would be safer than here. The Turtle whooshed by overhead. There were a few more rounds and then the gunfire stopped. Spector stepped on something that cracked. There was a groan. He held onto the joker’s leather belt, which had WIDE LOAD painted on in gold.

  No shit, Spector thought. But this was one time he was glad to have a fat freak as company.

  6:00 P.M.

  From the end of the corridor, Mackie watched the tall, thin man with coffee-and-cream skin close and lock the room door. 1531, just as der Mann said. It came to him that Amerika was decadent, even as his departed comrades of the Red Army Fraction used to say. Where else in the world might a man see a nigger wrap himself in a suit that cost more money than Mackie Messer had ever owned at one time in his life, and stroll out upon the town with a white woman on his arm?

  To himself he laughed at his target’s apparent attempt at disguise. She looked just like one of the Reeperbahnstraβe girls, armored against unaccustomed daylight. It was appropriate. Just a whore; just another fucking whore. Who had lured the Man and would pay.

  They turned away from him, toward the elevators. He pushed off from the wall next to the fire extinguisher under glass. He couldn’t do them here—he was already thinking them; it was only logical, he mustn’t leave a witness—because this crazy bourgeois palace was hollow at the core, like the culture that built it, and anyone on one of a dozen levels could see everything that went on out on the catwalks surrounding the atrium. His move had to come on the quiet; der Mann had been very explicit.

  But that was no problem. Mack the Knife was subtle, like. Like his song. He would follow, and know the time.

  Maybe he’d ride the elevator with them. He licked his lips at the joke. That would be really kriminell. They’d never suspect him. They might not notice him even. Perhaps they were in love. Perhaps the black man had a hard-on.

  He moved. A voice grabbed at him. “Hey, you. Not so fast.”

  He turned. A squat white man in a brown suit stood there with a wire hanging out of his ear. Hotel dick; Mackie had the gradations of cop burned into his autonomic nervous system by the time he was toddling the Sankt Pauli cobblestones. He had been as discrete as possible, staying back in the entry to the room where the ice machine lurked and clattered to itself, fading through the wall into a utility closet when people got too near. But there was a limit to how covert even Macheath could be, hanging out here over sixty meters of emptiness in this unsettling outside-in place.

  The suit laid a hand on his arm. You couldn’t do that, not to Mackie Messer.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. He touched the man on the point of his cheekbone, buzzed a fingertip.

  Blood started. The man cried out and doubled over, slapping a hand to his face. Mackie phased through the steel fire door and started running down the stairs. He didn’t dare lose his quarry now. Women were always changing their minds; no knowing if she would be returning to this place.

  Spector sat on the edge of the bed, feet tucked underneath him. He was almost surprised to find his room clean when he returned. It had been that long since he stayed in a hotel. He was alternately planning his next move and watching TV. Right now, the television had his attention. A local reporter, trying not to look out of his depth, was interviewing Hartmann in the lobby.

  “Senator, do you feel Reverend Barnett had anything to do with this afternoon’s disturbance?” The reporter held the microphone up to the senator, who paused before replying.

  “No. I think that, whatever our differences, Leo Barnett would not stoop to such tactics. The reverend is an honorable man.” Hartmann coughed. “But I do feel that those individuals who disrupted the meeting likely share many of his dangerously narrow views. It is precisely this kind of unreasoning bigotry that we must all struggle to eliminate. Leo Barnett wants to solve the problem by removing wild card victims from society. I want to overcome the hatred itself.” Hartmann sat back in his seat, folded his hands, and stared hard into the camera.

  “The guy’s fucking good,” said Spector. “But it won’t make any difference.”

  The camera cut back to the studio. A black woman reporter turned to her co-anchor. “Thanks to Howard for that interesting interview. Dan, what have the police discovered so far about the perpetrators of the disturbance?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. Several of them are in custody, captured by the Turtle, but the police are getting very little cooperation.” The reporter tapped his thumbs together. “There are rumors that most of them are members of the Ku Klux Klan, but that’s been unsubstantiated. Although the disturbance was obviously well-planned, none of the individuals involved claims to be the leader of the group. And so far, no clue as to where the authentic Confederate uniforms and muskets came from.” The reporter frowned and turned back to the black woman.

  “Well, I’m sure the authorities will keep us posted if any new information comes to light in this bizarre incident.” The black woman shook her head. “Although dummy ammunition was used, several individuals were hurt in the panic that ensued.” The video cut to earlier footage of the panic in the park, the cameraman was running with the rest during the panic, bouncing the picture all over. “At least one person, a street performer, was allegedly trampled to death. Ironically, he was believed to be playing dead at the time. His name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.”

  “Fucking A,” said Spector, punching the TV off. He was off the hook for that one, anyway. But that didn’t get him any closer to Hartmann. He’d almost felt something holding him off for the instant that they locked eyes. No. Just imagination. To do that he’d have to have powers like the Astronomer or Tachyon. “Astronomer for president,” he giggled. “That’d make even Reagan look good by comparison.”

  He popped up off the bed and walked slowly around the carpeted floor, considering his options. Killing Hartmann might be more than he was up to. He could take the money and go someplace else, another country maybe. Maybe work for a casino in Cuba. Nope. He’d always done what he was paid to do. Fucking middle-class ethics again. Didn’t stop him from killing people, but made him live up to a contract.

  He sighed and walked to the phone. Tony was his only shot, he’d known that ever since they met in the lobby. It was kismet, or something. Didn’t stop him from feeling like shit, though. He punched in the number and waited. An unfamiliar female voice answered the phone.

  “Could I speak to Tony Calderone, please?”

  “He’s not available right now. Could I take a message?
” The woman sounded tired.

  “Yes, tell him James called. He’ll know who you mean. Tell him I’d like to firm up that dinner invitation he extended.” Spector was almost surprised at how cool and polite he sounded.

  “Yes, James, uh, what was your last name?”

  “Just James. He’ll know who you mean.”

  “I’ll give him the message.”

  “Thanks.” Spector hung up the phone and sighed. Maybe he’d order a steak from room service and hope the Peaches were on TV again tonight. If they’re America’s team, he thought, we’re all in a shitload of trouble.

  8:00 P.M.

  Spotlights dazzled Jack’s eyes. The long lenses of television cameras were trained on him like shotguns. An eddy of stage fright turned his knees to liquid. He hadn’t done this sort of thing in years.

  He looked up into the lights, gave the world a crooked grin—reflexes coming back, good—and said his line:

  “The thirty-first state, the Golden State, is proud to cast its three hundred fourteen votes for the cause of Joker’s Rights and the next president, Senator Gregg Hartmann!”

  A roar. Applause. Silly hats and flying ace gliders took to the air. Jack tried to look noble, cheerful, and triumphant till the spotlights moved off to the state chairman of Colorado.

  Take that, Ronald Reagan, he thought. I’ll show you how to work a camera.

  He climbed down from the little red-white-and-blue podium that had been brought in for just this purpose. The guy from Colorado, not sure of his totals, was fumbling his line. Fortunately Colorado had gone for Dukakis and Jackson.

  The first ballot gave Hartmann 1,622 votes, Barnett 998, with Jackson, Dukakis, and Gore splitting the rest. Nobody was close to winning.

  Chaos descended on the floor while media commentators made wise judgments and hedged predictions about what would happen next. Rule 9(c) went out the window once the first ballot was cast and floor managers were promising uncommitted delegates the moon.