Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks

by George R. R. Martin

  “Too many women,” he said, “are afraid of themselves. They buy the old Judeo-Christian rap that they’re innately wicked, tainted. So they look for a man to abuse them. Give them the punishment they deserve. Like that jock who busted Mark’s beak and then yours. Is that your gig, Ms. Kimberly Perfect?”

  She gasped. Smoke wisped up around the curve of one nostril, and suddenly her gown flashed into flame.

  Kimberly shrieked, tried to run. Flash held her. His free hand tangled the burning synthetic, pulling with surprising strength. Robe and gown tore away.

  She slumped to the floor, sobbing in terror. Flash methodically wadded the burning garment, almost seeming to wash his hands with it. The fire diminished, went out. He tossed the half-molten mass in the corner and knelt beside her.

  She clung to him. For a moment he held her, absently stroking her hair. Then he pushed her away.

  “Let’s see what kind of shape you’re in, while I can still do you some good.”

  Ignoring her attempts to marshal belated modesty and indignation, he looked her over. She seemed unharmed, except for a reddening glare of burn stretching from her left shoulder to breast. He laid a hand over the angry patch, began to run it down.

  She tried to jerk back. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Drawing the energy out,” he said, preoccupied. “It’s like hitting a minor burn with a piece of ice. If I get to it quickly enough, there’s no harm done.”

  She looked at him. “I thought fire was your element,” she said from somewhere down in her throat.

  “It is.” He cupped her breast. Where his hand had passed, the skin was white, unmarked. “Just a little parlor trick.”

  “You’re a dangerous man to be around, Mr. Flash.”

  His thumb stroked her nipple. She gasped, stiffened. The nipple rose. Her eyes held his. Her lips were moist.

  “I’m not an eighties kind of guy,” he said huskily, “any more than Mark is. He’s a gentle flake from the sixties.

  “And I’m a bastard for the nineties.”

  She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his head down.

  In an alley behind an elegant Park Avenue high rise Mark Meadows sat with his knees up around his prominent ears.

  How long has it been, that I’ve dreamed of that? Of holding her, feeling her, tasting her, seeing the way her eyes go dark and then pale, the way she tosses her hair and clutches and moans.…

  He felt two-timed. He felt like a voyeur. He felt like a fool.

  He put his face in his spider hands and cried.

  That night Mark sat up and killed a bottle of wine. Sprout played with her Tinkertoy set. Kimberly never came.

  Eventually Mark got down on the new white linoleum he and Durg had laid and helped Sprout build an airplane with a propeller that really spun. It never got off the ground.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  He looked at her the way a cobra looks at you through the glass in the zoo. Without interest, without sign of even seeing.

  “Do what, Mrs. Gooding?”

  “What—whatever you ask me to. To make sure I keep her.”

  She stood there, her whole body clenched, holding a breath inside until it threatened to burst her rib cage. Just daring him to ask what caused her change of heart.

  He didn’t give her the satisfaction. He just nodded. And she found herself hating his certainty as desperately as she needed it.

  Sunday the front doorbell rang just as the sun was checking out. Mark came and stared through the replacement glass for a long moment before unlocking the door.

  She had a flushed, bright-eyed, breathless quality, as though there was frost in the air. She wore a loose dark smock over blue jeans tonight.

  “Feel like a walk?” she asked.

  “You mean, after what happened the other day? You can still, like, talk to me?”

  She recoiled a fraction of an inch. Then she went to the toes of her fashionable low-top boots and kissed his cheek, “Of course I can, Mark. What happens in court ought to stay there. Let’s go.”

  Afterward he never could remember what they talked about. All he could remember was feeling that, despite it all, she might really be coming back this time.

  Then they turned a corner and stopped. A pair of NYPD motorcycles were drawn across the street. Down the block a building waved flags of flame against the night. Fire trucks were drawn up in front, arcing jets of water into the blaze. As he watched, one pulsed once spastically and died.

  He drifted forward, pulling away from Kimberly’s hand that clutched his sleeve. He felt the flames on his face. At the far end of the block a knot of skinheads cheered and jeered. One was just darting back into their midst, pursued by a fireman clumsy in his big boots. In horror Mark realized the skin had just slashed a hose.

  “What’s happening, man?” he asked a bystander.

  “Somebody torched an old apartment. Chink family on the third floor was trying to start some kind of tailor shop.” He spat on the sidewalk. “Slopes got it coming, you ask me. Tryin’ to mess with our rent control, sneak the place into bein’ commercial property. They in it with the landlord, that’s for sure.”

  A line of cops crowded the skins, pushing them back. Mark ran forward. Sprout screamed, “Daddy!”, broke Kimberly’s grip, and lunged after him. Kimberly followed, trying to grab her arm.

  An ambulance was parked this side of the blaze. Beside it cops were trying to keep back an Asian family. A man and woman were wrestling with the officers and firemen who hemmed them in, howling and windmilling painfully thin arms. A man in an asbestos suit was hanging on the end of a ladder; a truck was trying to bring him into position to get inside a window, but huge bellows of flames kept lashing out at him, driving him back despite his protective clothing.

  Several other men in inferno suits stood in a puddle on the street with helmets off. “You gotta get in there,” a florid-faced man with a chief’s badge on his helmet yelled. “There’s still a little girl inside.”

  “It’s suicide. Fucking roof’s going.”

  Mark was fumbling in his Dead patch pocket. Kimberly caught up with Sprout a few feet away.

  “Mark! What’s happening?”

  He shook his head, unheeding. Black and silver—no. Yellow: useless. Gray, worse than. In his haste he discarded them. His lives fell in glittering arcs to shatter on the asphalt.

  “Mark, what—what in God’s name are you doing?”

  The last two. One blue—and, thank God, an orange. He stuck the blue vial back in his pocket. Then he tossed the orange one’s contents down his throat.

  Kimberly saw him stagger back. And then he changed. The familiar gawky outlines blurred, shifted, condensed.

  A different man stood there, with film-star looks, a Jewish nose, a devil’s grin. And a red sweatsuit, worn over an orange T-shirt.

  JJ Flash tipped a one-finger salute to Kimberly. “Later, toots. Take care of the kid.”

  He launched himself into the sky.

  The man on the ladder said a couple of Hail Marys and prepared to jump through the window. He was going to his death. But that was better than hearing the little girl in there crying every time he closed his eyes for the rest of his life.

  He jumped. Something grabbed the back of his protective hood, bought him up short, and hung him on the end of the ladder.

  “Just trying to save you from yourself, pal,” said the man hovering next to him in midair. “Better leave this one to the professionals.”

  “Jumpin’ Jack Flash!” the fireman gasped.

  The ace put a finger beside his nose. “It’s a gas-gas-gas,” he said, and darted into the heart of the fire.

  JJ Flash was on fire.

  But his flesh didn’t blacken and crackle, his eyeballs didn’t melt. His blow-dried hair wasn’t even mussed. In the midst of hell, he was in heaven.

  P. J. O’Rourke heaven, in fact—the fire felt like sitting in a Jacuzzi with a couple of lines up each nos
tril and a teenage girl by your side eeling out of her string bikini and getting ready to audition as a sword-swallower for Barnum & Bailey. This was fine.

  Best of all, he could still hear the little girl crying. “Where are you, honey?” he yelled. She didn’t seem to hear, just kept bawling, but that was enough. He went down a short hallway wallpapered in big batts of flame, gave a wall a jolt so hot the inferno around him seemed tepid. It went away in a puff of yellow incandescence.

  She was sitting in about the only square yard of the whole fucking building that wasn’t on fire, a little girl in pigtails and smoldering pj’s with Yodas all over them. He walked up to her, knelt, and smiled.

  The roof fell in.

  Even the firemen gasped when they heard the thunderous series of cracks and saw a fresh spray of sparks shoot up through the column of smoke. Sprout screamed, “Daddy!” and threw herself forward.

  A Puerto Rican cop in a riot helmet grabbed her arm. “Hold on, little lady,” he said. “Your daddy’ll be fine.” The wet lines on his cheeks made a liar of him.

  JJ Flash lay on his side with the little girl beneath him and an elephant on top. He moved, felt the raw ends of ribs grate against each other.

  The girl was still alive, sheltered by his body. A miracle she hadn’t seared her lungs. He looked up. There was still more building to fall on him, and while the flame couldn’t harm him, a structural member could damn well snuff his lights. And there was only so long before the little girl breathed in the flames that were crowding around like teenyboppers at a Bon Jovi concert.

  “As Archbishop Hooper said,” he grunted, “‘More fire.’” Hugging the girl to him, he reared up. The flame rushed in with a joyous greedy roar. He thrust his arm down its throat.

  It wasn’t fire that almost nailed the poor son of a bitch working his futile hose from the end of the ladder. It was a jet of incandescent gas and vaporized cement and steel, bright as the sun and a couple degrees cooler. For a heartbeat the inferno died back to a few stray flickers.

  A man flew out of the hole the jet had made. Flames wreathed his body and the little girl he hugged against him. They were absorbed into his body as he landed lightly next to the frantic family.

  “Here you go, ma’am,” JJ Flash said, handing the girl to her mother. “Better let the medics look her over before you hug her too tight.”

  He turned away before they could try hugging him, scanning the crowd for Sprout. All Mark’s personae shared his overriding imperative love for her; they couldn’t help it. Plus he just plain liked the kid.

  “Madre de Dios,” the Puerto Rican cop said, staring at Flash.

  Kimberly Gooding reeled away. Her mind was spinning. Unraveling as it went.

  And then she saw him. Standing at the end of the block, immaculate in his camel-hair coat. He caught her eye and nodded.

  For the first time since she’d known him, St. John Latham was showing something like emotion. He was showing … triumph.

  She knew, then, what she had been a party to.

  Kimberly put her hands to her cheeks and dug in, slowly and deliberately, until the nails drew blood from just beneath her eyes.

  “Mr. Latham,” Judge Conower asked gravely, “where is your client?”

  “She has been released to the custody of a private mental-health clinic.”

  “And her condition?”

  Latham paused just a sliver of a second. “She is in a fragile state, your honor.”

  “Indeed. Mr. Latham, Dr. Pretorius, kindly step forward.”

  The house was packed today, and Pretorius was expending lots of effort not to have hackneyed thoughts about bread and circuses. He glanced aside at Mark, who sat beside him wearing a lightweight buff blazer over the bandages wrapped around his upper body. JJ Flash or Mark A. Meadows, his ribs were cracked just the same. Mark only had eyes for his daughter, sitting at the table in the center between the opposing camps, directly facing the bench.

  “This court is compelled to find that Ms. Gooding is clearly too unstable to be entrusted with custody of Sprout Meadows.”

  Pretorius caught his breath. Could it be—

  “On the other hand,” the judge said, turning to him, “your client is in fact an ace—perhaps several aces, whose names have been linked to extremely risky and irresponsible behavior. Moreover, he seems still—and in spite of his sworn testimony—to be a user of dangerous drugs, if the preliminary tests conducted on the vials recovered from the street at the site of last night’s fire are any indication. In fact, at the close of these proceedings, Dr. Meadows will be remanded to the custody of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

  “With these facts in view I cannot in conscience award him custody of the girl, either. Therefore I declare Sprout Meadows to be a ward of the state, and remand her to a juvenile home until arrangements can be made for a foster family.”

  Pretorius slammed down his cane. “This is monstrous! Have you asked the girl what she wants? Have you?”

  “Of course not,” Conower said. “We are acting on the advice of a qualified expert in children’s welfare. You could hardly expect us to consult a minor in matters this important, even if the minor in question were not … special.”

  Sprout leapt to her feet. “Daddy! Daddy, don’t let them take me away!”

  With a wordless bellow Mark jumped onto the table. Bailiffs with sweat moons under their arms were on him like weasels, pulling him back down. A couple of men in suits stepped off from the rear wall and began making their way purposefully through the crowded courtroom.

  Mark managed to get a hand inside his blazer. It came out with something, darted to his mouth.

  “Stop him!” the judge screamed. “Cyanide!”

  Another bailiff threw his bulky body across the table at him. And through him, into the front row, scattering TV cameras and onlookers and a portable spotlight array. The two bailiffs who had been wrestling with Mark fell against one another and rolled back to the floor.

  In Mark’s place a glowing blue man stood atop the table. He wore a black hooded cloak; stars seemed to glow within its folds. He shot the court the finger, wrapped the cloak about him, and sank with all deliberation through the table and the floor.

  Dr. Pretorius thumped the bottle of Laiphroaig down on the table and measured by eye how much of it he’d killed at a shot. About a quarter, he thought; about right. He passed the bottle across the desk to Mark.

  “We fucked up,” he announced as Mark’s prominent Adam’s apple worked up and down.

  “No, Doc,” Mark said breathlessly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Bullshit. I told you to run; I should have stuck to my guns. Now you’re on the run without the girl … sorry; shouldn’t have reminded you.”

  Mark shook his head. “It’s not like you did remind me,” he said quietly.

  Pretorius sighed. “You know what we did, Mark? We compromised. You cut your hair. I went against the wishes of a client because I thought it was for his own good. An aging hippie and an old libertarian: we sell out and for what? To screw the pooch.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The door opened and Ice Blue Sibyl came in to massage his shoulders with her blue-ice fingers.

  “What will you do now, Mark?” he asked.

  Mark gazed out the window at the darkness that lay over Jokertown. “I have to get her back,” he said. “But I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll help, Mark. Anything I can do. Even if I have to go underground myself.” He grabbed a pinch of belly. “I’m getting flabby. Spiritually as well as physically. Might do me good to go on the run. And in this kinder, gentler America, I suspect it’s what I’ll have to do, soon or late.”

  But Mark said nothing. Just stared out the window.

  Somewhere out there, beyond the open wound of Jokertown, his daughter was crying.

  You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You

  by Walton Simons

  ACES HIGH WAS AS cl
ose to deserted as Jerry had ever seen it. Two-thirds of the tables were empty, and there was nobody whom Jerry recognized as a celebrity. There was an aura of tense quietness, almost expectancy, about the place. Hiram was nowhere to be seen. Luckily, it didn’t affect Jerry’s appetite.

  Jerry had eaten the shrimp and other goodies out of his salad and was ready to move on to his steak. Jay Ackroyd, whom Jerry had paid off, was happily chewing away at his lamb, occasionally pausing to wipe a drop of gravy from the corner of his mouth with a silk napkin.

  “You’re not still stuck on Veronica, are you?” Ackroyd asked.

  “Nope. I’m giving up destructive women for Lent. Hopefully, it’s a habit I won’t get into again.” Jerry sliced into his steak. It was deliciously pink and oozed juice. He stared at it a moment, then set down his knife and fork and took a large swallow of wine. “Besides, I don’t care about her anymore.” He’d been practicing the lie for weeks. “Now, about our other friend?”

  “Right.” Ackroyd pulled a file from his briefcase and handed it over to Jerry. “Here’s everything I could find on Mr. David Butler. It’s mostly background. He’s rich, well schooled, good family, good future. He has a wild streak, but most rich kids do. Lots of clubbing, probably bisexual. But this is New York.”

  Jerry took the file and flipped through it. “Don’t know where he is now, though?”

  “Nope.” Ackroyd chewed and swallowed. “You seem to specialize in people that disappear, don’t you?”

  “I guess.” Jerry didn’t bother to try to hide his disappointment. If he hadn’t let Tachyon talk him into going to the police, Jerry might have nailed David himself. “Any hunches?”

  “There’s something going on at Ellis Island. Gangs of kids, some dangerous jokers, maybe even an ace hiding out there. They call it the ‘Rox.’ Only teenagers could come up with a name like that. Probably as safe a place as any for a kid wanted by the law. Cops don’t go out there anymore.” Jay grabbed a waitress as she walked past. “See if Hiram will visit with us, will you? Tell him it’s Jay. If not, well, let me know when you get off.” He gave her a wink and slipped her a ten.