Dead Mans Hand wc-7

by George R. R. Martin

  "Sure," she said. "Factor in some other parameters. Some of these people are dead. We could eliminate them."

  "Dead people make lousy suspects," Jay agreed.

  Crash typed in a command. "Three hundred and two," she said. "Not much of an improvement. What if I restrict it to city residents?"

  Jay thought about that for a moment. "No," he said reluctantly.

  "Why not?" she asked. "It would cut the list by seventy or eighty names, at least. The computers counting aces from all over the country… Detroit Steel, Big Mama in Chicago, Haymaker in Kansas City. You don't think it was one of them?"

  "No," Jay admitted. "I figure it's more likely our killer is somebody who actually met Chrysalis. It usually works out like that in murder cases. Problem is, there are some out-oftowners who qualify. Billy Ray and Jack Braun, for two."

  "It couldn't be Golden Boy," Crash pointed out. "He's down in Atlanta. Besides, Digger was always saying what a weenie he was."

  "Obviously the mere mention of Braun's name reduced him to a state of abject error," Jay said. He put his hand on her shoulder. She didn't seem to object. "Listen, can this thing cross-index several factors at once?" he asked.

  "No problem," she said.

  "Real good," he said. "I want anyone with a criminal record or a history of mental illness. Hell, give me anyone who's been arrested for a crime, never mind whether they were convicted. Also anyone who's ever been linked to Chrysalis or the Crystal Palace. Anyone who lives in Jokertown. Or near Jokertown… the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown, the East Village, anywhere down around there. Can you do that?"

  "I think so," she said.

  Jay gave her shoulder a squeeze and watched her work. When it was done, Crash leaned back in the chair, stretched, said, "Here goes nothing," and pressed the enter key.

  The machine began to hum and search.

  "It's working through the three hundred two candidates, name by name, taking each suspect and searching the data banks to see if any of our criteria fit," she explained. "You gave me four parameters-arrests, mental illness, ties to Chrysalis, geography. I programmed it to flag each name with stars to indicate the number of fits."

  "Real good," said Jay, who hadn't thought of that.

  Jay grabbed the paper as it slid out of the laser printer, still warm to the touch. Nineteen finalists had survived.

  BRAUN, JACK GOLDEN BOY*

  CRENSON, CROYD THE SLEEPER****

  DARLINGFOOT, JOHN DEVIL JOHN***

  DEMARCO, ERNEST ERNIE THE LIZARD**

  DOE, JOHN DOUGHBOY***

  JONES, MORDECAI THE HARLEM HAMMER**

  LOCKWOOD, WILLIAM SNOTMAN****

  MAN, MODULAR N/A*

  MORKLE, DOUG N/A**

  MUELLER, HOWARD TROLL***

  O'REILLY, RADHA ELEPHANT GIRL*

  RAY, WILLIAM CARNIFEX*

  SCHAEFFER, ELMO N/A***

  SEIVERS, ROBERT BLUDGEON***

  NAME UNKNOWN BLACK SHADOW**

  NAMES UNKNOWN THE ODDITY**

  NAME UNKNOWN STARSHINE*

  NAME UNKNOWN OUASIMAN***

  NAME UNKNOWN WYRM****

  "How does it look?" Crash asked him.

  "Like a start," he said. He showed her the list. "Any of these people ever threaten to rearrange Digger's features?" She looked over the names carefully. "Well," she said, "Billy Ray was pretty upset with him once. Digger wrote a piece on the strongest men in the world, and he said that Billy Ray was minor league compared to Golden Boy and the Harlem Hammer. Ray took it the wrong way." She turned off the computer. "But he's in Atlanta, too, isn't he?"

  "He better be," Jay said, "he's Senator Hartmann's bodyguard." He folded up the list and slid it into his breast pocket. "Two more things. Digger's address." He smiled. And your phone number.

  Well, he thought afterward, one out of two wasn't bad.

  Brennan woke to the jangling of the phone that sat on the nightstand beside the hotel room's lumpy, sagging bed. He sat up and winced as pain lanced through his stiff shoulder and sore back where the Oddity had slammed him against the wall. "Hello."

  "Morning, Mr. Y" It was Tripod. "I've found someone you may want to have a word with. Name's Bludgeon."

  "You're right," Brennan said grimly. "Where are you?"

  "Uncle Chowder's Clam Bar," Tripod said.

  "Right." Brennan hung up. He sat for a moment on the edge of the bed. He was still tired and he ached from the beating he'd taken the night before. Worse, he missed Jennifer more than he had ever missed anyone or anything. Perhaps, he thought, he had lost too many friends and lovers down through the years and he was getting too old and weary to bear the losses anymore.

  He stood carefully and stretched his sore back and shoulder cautiously.

  To hell with it, he told himself. He had never given in before. He wouldn't start now. He needed rest, but there was no time. He needed food, but he could take care of that easily enough. He needed Jennifer above everything, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  As he dressed he decided to leave his bow behind. There was no way he could pull it properly the way his shoulder felt. He'd lost his other weapon, his Browning, the night before, during his tussle with the Oddity.

  Great, Brennan thought, just great. He had to face Bludgeon empty-handed. What a way to start the day.

  Tripod was lounging against a building whose grimy brick facade was in desperate need of a sand blasting. A flashing neon sign proclaimed the ground-floor restaurant UNCLE CHOWDERS CLAM BAR while a mollusk with a top hat and cane and pink neon smile did a fluttering dance on stick-thin legs. A picket fence of rusty iron bars screened off a stairway that led to the basement. The battered sign bolted to the fence had a pointing six-fingered hand painted on it, a sure sign that they were in Jokertown.

  "Squisher's Basement," Brennan read. "Charming." He turned to Tripod. "You're sure Bludgeon's still in there?"

  "I been watching," the joker said, "and he ain't come out."

  Brennan nodded and pulled out a sheaf of bills from his jeans' pocket. He peeled off two twenties and gave them to Tripod.

  "They don't much like nats in Squisher's," the joker said. Brennan smiled underneath his mask. "Thanks for the warning." He went down the stairs.

  Squisher's was already crowded with jokers who felt compelled to drink their breakfasts. It stank of infrequently washed bodies, spilled beer, and indifferently sopped vomit.

  It was dimly lit, but Brennan could see the heads of the patrons swivel to stare at him as he entered. Conversations stopped as he approached and picked up again when he passed by. Tripod had been right. This was strictly a joker hangout and it looked as if they liked it that way.

  The biggest aquarium Brennan had ever seen was set behind the bar over the shelves of liquor bottles. Something floating in the dark and oily water suddenly surged against the glass and poked his head over the side, blowing water from a hole in the top of his skull. He stared at Brennan with cold, unblinking eyes.

  "Don't get many of your kind in here," the joker finally said. His ghastly face was set in a hairless round head, his fish mouth was filled with rows of pointy teeth. "Nats, I mean. You are a nat, right?"

  "I have business with one of your customers."

  Squisher gave him the fish eye. "What kind of business?"

  "It's none of yours."

  Brennan could hear the jokers seated along the bar mutter among themselves.

  "This is my place," Squisher said. "Whatever happens in it is my business." He glanced down into the water, reached out a long boneless arm, and caught something. Brennan saw orange scales flash as Squisher dropped a small fish into his mouth, gulped twice and swallowed, then looked back at Brennan.

  Brennan removed an ace of spades from his hip pocket and held it out toward the joker.

  Squisher squinted, then reached out a long sinuous arm that ended in a collection of twitching tentacles and took the card from Brennan. He brought the pasteboard close to his face, looked from
it to Brennan, then silently slid under the water of his aquarium.

  Brennan turned to face the room where everyone was suddenly very interested in their drinks, and spotted Bludgeon sitting alone at a table in a far, dark corner.

  He recognized the joker instantly. He'd only seen him once before during a crazy, confused brawl in Times Square almost two years ago, but Bludgeon didn't have the kind of face you could easily forget.

  He was seven feet of ugly, with a puckered, scarred face and a right hand that was a twisted club of muscle and bone. He was thinner than the first time Brennan had seen him, so thin that his filthy clothes hung loosely on his frame. His skin was blotchy, his hair long and greasy. He sat alone, staring at nothing and mumbling to himself as Brennan approached. The whites of his eyes were a clouded yellow shot through with scarlet veins. Brennan stared at him, unsure whether to feel pity or disgust.

  "Whadda fuck you want?" Bludgeon asked after a long moment.

  "Talk on the street is that you killed Chrysalis," Brennan said lowly.

  A spark of animation kindled in Bludgeon's sick eyes. "Yeah," he rumbled. "It was me. I offed the cocksucking bitch. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it."

  "First tell me how you killed her."

  Bludgeon held up his clubbed right fist. "I beat the fucking whore's brains out with my hand. It's all I ever needed. Never needed a fucking gun, never needed no goddamn knife. Just my hand."

  The twitch of disgust in Brennan's face, the loathing in his eyes, went unnoticed by the drunken joker. "Where?" Brennan said softly.

  "Where what?"

  "Where'd you kill her?"

  "In that shithole saloon of hers, man," Bludgeon mumbled. "I threw her on the bar and stuck my dick in her and fucked the living shit out of her." He laughed and a mad light shone in his sick eyes. "Then just to make sure she was dead I beat her fucking head in. Just to make sure."

  "You scum," Brennan said through clenched teeth. "You shit-eating scum. I'd kill you where you sit if I didn't know that you're lying."

  Bludgeon blinked, his porcine eyes staring at Brennan without comprehension. He stood up when Brennan's words finally soaked into his clouded brain, and screamed a stream of obscenities. He pushed the table at Brennan, but it only scraped slowly across the floor and Brennan sidestepped it easily.

  Bludgeon howled and swung his clubbed arm. Brennan avoided the slow-motion punch and grabbed Bludgeon by his wrist and shoulder and threw him against the bar, scattering jokers right and left.

  Squisher rose agitatedly from the depths of his aquarium as Brennan picked up a chair.

  "My tank!" the joker screamed. "Don't break the glass!" Bludgeon, pinned against the bar and breathing hard, looked at Brennan with fear and pain in his eyes. Brennan swung the chair, smashing him across the gut, and Bludgeon gasped like a fish out of water. Brennan swung again, catching Bludgeon on the side and slamming him down across three bar stools. Bludgeon made a feeble attempt to stand, but his slack muscles wouldn't work. He sighed, bubbling the bloody froth on his lips, and made weak swimming motions with his arms.

  Brennan checked his third blow when he saw that Bludgeon had nothing left in him. He dropped the chair, the tubular metal of its back and legs twisted into an ornate abstract sculpture.

  "You didn't kill her," Brennan said in a low voice. "Why say you did?"

  "I need a fucking job," Bludgeon panted. "No one will touch me. No one will give me a fucking chance. I figured… I just figured Fadeout or somebody in the Fists would give me a chance, you know just give me a fucking chance…"

  "You pathetic lying shit," Brennan said in a low voice. He had known it wouldn't be this easy. Partly out of frustration, partly because he wanted Chrysalis's killer to know that he was on his trail, he turned to face the room and said, "I was Chrysalis's friend and I'm going to find her killer. Bet on it."

  He dropped an ace of spades on Bludgeon and stalked out of the bar. Before he got out the door one of the bar's bolder patrons was stripping the leather jacket off Bludgeon's back, slapping him in the face when he protested in a sad, tremulous whine.

  11:00 A.M.

  Digger's apartment was a fifth floor walk-up on Horatio in the West Village. In the playground across the street, some teenagers were shooting baskets, shirts against skins. Jay stopped to watch for a few minutes. They had a couple girls playing, but they were both on the shirts side, more's the pity.

  A heavyset man with a shaved head sat on the stoop of Digger's building, drinking a can of Rheingold. When Jay stepped off the sidewalk, he got up and blocked the door. "You got business here?"

  The man had three inches and fifty pounds on him, not' to mention an eagle tattooed on his right biceps and a gold hoop in one ear. "I'm looking for Digger Downs," Jay told him.

  "He ain't home."

  "I'll check for myself, thanks."

  "The fuck you will. We had enough freaks comin' round for a free look."

  Jay didn't like the sound of that. "You had trouble here?" The man crushed the beer can in his fist. "Nothin' like the trouble you're gonna have."

  He mulled over the idea of popping this asshole down inside an abandoned subway station, but decided to try it the easy way first. "I want to know what happened here," he said. He took a fold of bills out of his pocket. "So does Mr. Jackson."

  "I don't know no Mr. Jackson," the man said, "but you lay a tenspot on me, you can go inside and look."

  Wit was a lost art, Jay decided; on the other hand, he'd just saved ten bucks, so he shouldn't complain. He unfolded a ten-dollar bill and put it in the man's thick, callused hand.

  "C'mon," the man said, "I ain't got all day." They went inside. The entryway was small and dark, doorbells mounted beside the mailboxes. While the big man fumbled for a key, Jay found Downs and pressed his button. There was no answer.

  "You really lookin' for Digger?" his host said, grunting again, as he opened the inner security door. "Like I told you, he ain't here." They stepped through the door, and he pointed up the staircase. "You want to see the bloodstains, they're up on four and five. I been humping up and down all day, I'm sick of all them fucking steps."

  "Are you going to tell me what happened here, or should we play twenty questions?"

  "Fuck, I thought the whole city knew, the way the cops were crawling all over the place yesterday. You oughta read the Post, mister. Double murder."

  "Oh, shit," Jay said, a sinking feeling in the bottom of his stomach. This iced the cake, he supposed, but the frosting was a real ugly flavor. "Downs?"

  "Nah. It was Mrs. Rosenstein, she's got the apartment across the hall from Digger, and Jonesy the super."

  "Let me guess," Jay said. "They were beaten to death."

  "Fuck no."

  It had been a long time since Jay Ackroyd had been that surprised. "No?" he said.

  "Nah. They was cut to pieces, both of 'em, by some nutcase with a buzz saw. I was the one that found 'em. God, you should've seen it. I took off early yesterday, had this sum bitch of a hangover, and when I come home, there's this shit lying right in front of my door. I'm up on three. Fuck, I almost stepped in it. It was all bloody, like something you'd find in the garbage behind a butcher shop, some piece of meat nobody wanted, y'know? So I nudge it with my foot, and I seen it had an eye in it. Know what it was?" He leaned forward, and Jay could smell the beer on his breath. "Jonesy's face! Not the whole thing, only half of it. It must of fallen down the stairwell. The rest of him was on the fourth-floor landing. I don't know how he made it that far, his whole fucking belly was cut open, and his guts was spilling out on that fag Cooper's welcome mat. His hands was all slimy from trying to stuff 'em back in, but one of them whatchacallits, intensines, it went all the way up the stairs to the fifth floor. That was where I found Mrs. Rosenstein. Betcha never knew them intensines was so long, right?" He shrugged. "Well, the cops took the bodies away, but there's still blood all over the goddamn walls. Now that fuckin' landlord is gonna have to hang some new wallpaper
. Bet it takes him six months, though."

  "What about Downs?" Jay demanded.

  "Fuck if I know. He ain't been home. The cops checked his door, but it was still locked. He's just off doing some write-up for that fuckin' magazine. He's gonna be pissed when he finds out what he missed. What a laugh."

  "A riot," said Jay, who didn't think Digger would be pissed at all. "Hey, you ever been in Newark city jail?"

  "Fuck no," the man said, with a frown.

  "Oh, good," Jay said. "I spent a night there once. It really sucks." He pointed. Air rushed into suddenly empty space with a pop that sounded almost like a hiccup, and Jay was alone in the hallway. He started up the stairs, smiling. That was pointless and petty, and if he kept doing stuff like that he was going to get himself sued one of these days. But sometimes it just felt so good.

  He spotted red-brown traces on the third-floor landing, and droplets on the wooden banister between three and four, but the serious bloodstains began on the fourth floor. The faded wallpaper showed long dark streaks in two places, where the custodian must have staggered against the wall as he tried to flee, maimed and bleeding, holding himself together with his hands.

  That was pretty bad, but the fifth-floor landing was a lot worse. There were dried brown smears where a body, or a piece of a body, had struck the wall. The carpet runner had soaked up so much blood it looked black in places. The spray had gone everywhere. The walls were spotted by it, as if the hallway had come down with measles. Over his head was a trapdoor to the roof, and even that had caught a few stray droplets.

  Jay looked around and tried to reconcile what he was seeing with what he'd seen yesterday morning in the Crystal Palace. It didn't add up. A buzz saw, the asshole downstairs had said; it sure as hell looked like it. The West Village Chainsaw Massacre; no wonder the Post had had a field day. By comparison, Chrysalis had hardly bled at all. A few drops on her blouse, a little down low on the walls, but nothing like this.