Dead Mans Hand wc-7

by George R. R. Martin

  "That's not true," the Oddity said. The voice was softer than before, gentler, unmistakably a woman's voice. And now the left hand was the one that was blunt and callused. The fingers of the right had grown longer and lost their hair, and the skin had turned a deep chocolate brown. "Why should we want to hurt Chrysalis?"

  "Because Gregg Hartmann told you to, and you just love Senator Gregg, don't you?" Jay snapped.

  "Gregg is a good man," the Oddity said. Jay thought the joker sounded a little defensive.

  "The Oddity couldn't possibly have killed Chrysalis," Dutton said patiently. "If you were a patron of the arts, Ackroyd, you'd know that Evan is a sculptor. Once he worked in clay, bronze, marble. These days, he sculpts in wax. But Patti and John lack the talent, so Evan can only work during the brief times when his mind and at least one of his hands emerge from the Oddity. He seizes those moments when they come, day or night." Dutton sounded almost sad as he dropped the other shoe. "Evan was right here during the murder, working on a new Mistral for our Gallery of Beauty. What does that do to your theory?"

  Jay was suddenly aware of the blinding pain behind his eyes again, and all he wanted to do was go home and be sick. "Shit," he managed. "Then Hartmann must have sent some one else. Carnifex maybe, or Braun. Or maybe this guy Doug Morkle, I don't know"

  "You're reaching, Ackroyd," Dutton said. He looked over at the Oddity. "Why don't you tell us what really happened, Patti?"

  The Oddity turned toward Jay. Even the way the joker moved seemed different now, subtly feminine. "No joker would have hurt Chrysalis. She was one of us. The killer had to be working for Barnett, looking for the jacket. Maybe he was only trying to beat the secret out of Chrysalis, but he went too far." The Oddity sounded utterly sincere.

  "That so?" Jay said. "Mind telling me the guy's name?"

  "There's no way to be certain," the Oddity said, the woman's voice somehow eerie and frightening coming from the huge, misshapen body. "Perhaps Quasiman. He's a poor simple-minded thing who does as he is told, and he owes his life to Reverend Barnett." The Oddity's right hand gestured daintily in the air. It was a man's hand, the nails bitten right down to the quick. "Or perhaps some ace who sells himself for money, the way you do."

  "You're telling me Chrysalis died to protect Hartmann, 'cause he's such a great friend of the jokers, right?" Jay looked first at Dutton, then over at the Oddity. "Then answer me this. If she was so fucking concerned about keeping Hartmann's little secrets, why didn't she destroy the jacket a year ago?" The perpetual grin on Dutton's yellowed face pulled into a momentary grimace. "That question troubled me as well," he said, "but my partner's plans were often subtle, and her motives were sometimes obscure. No doubt she was playing some game."

  "That jacket was her life insurance," Jay said. "Now that she's dead, it's time to cash in the policy."

  "Do you have any idea what's going on down in Atlanta?" Dutton asked him patiently. "Thousands of jokers have gone south to peacefully demonstrate in support of Hartmann. They've been welcomed with arrests, street brawls, attacks by the Klan. Yesterday there was a near riot when a hundred men in Confederate uniforms fired on the crowd. Barnett has already managed to pull the teeth out of our jokers' rights plank, and if he's elected, the good reverend will put us all in camps. Many people believe that Gregg Hartmann is the only thing that stands between this country and joker genocide." `A lot of people believed in Hitler, too,' Jay said.

  Dutton sighed. "This conversation is as pointless as your quest, I'm afraid. You see, it really doesn't matter who you're working for, Mr. Ackroyd. You're too late. Much as I hated to damage a genuine historic artifact, too much was at stake to take any chances. Go back to your employers and tell them it's over. We burnt the jacket."

  "Ashes to ashes," the Oddity said. "You can't hurt Gregg now"

  "The tainted blood is gone," Dutton told Jay, "and if God is merciful, Gregg Hartmann is going to be the next president of the United States."

  5:00 A.M.

  Squisher's Basement was still as crowded, still as dark, still as smelly as it was when Brennan had discovered it a few days before. The same bartender was behind the bar and mostly the same customers were scattered about the room, though this time around Bludgeon was absent. A couple of the regulars greeted Brennan jovially and one asked him if he was going to slap around another ace.

  "Not today," Brennan said with a smile. "Just a drink and a few words with a friend." Tripod was perched on the edge of a bar stool at the end of the bar, his pelvic arrangement making it impossible to sit on the chair in a normal manner. "What'll it be?" the mouthless bartender asked, his voice rasping from a small hole cut at the base of his throat. "Irish whiskey. Tullamore."

  The bartender continued to wipe glasses with a rag that Brennan wouldn't have used to wipe his nose.

  Brennan sighed. "All right. Scotch."

  "Scotch we got," the bartender said, taking down the bottle of Importer's from the wall and pouring a shot. Squisher peered cautiously from his aquarium. "How's it going, big guy?"

  "All right," Brennan said, pulling a roll of bills from his pocket and peeling off a five.

  "Hey," Squisher said, "your money's no good here. Friends of Squisher drink for free."

  Brennan nodded and put the money back in his pocket. "Thanks. I'll remember that."

  Brennan took his drink and joined Tripod at the end of the bar, where he was sipping a mug of beer through a straw. The joker asked, polite as always, "What's up, Mr. Y?"

  "Anything new?" Brennan asked quietly.

  Tripod pursed his lips. "Nothing, Mr. Y I been wearing my feet o$; but Sascha's gone, man. He's lying low somewhere, and I can't find him."

  Brennan nodded, took a sip from his drink. "Something new has cropped up. It may be connected with the murder, but I'm not sure yet. You know anything about a drug called rapture?"

  "Oh yeah." Tripod nodded. "Very new. Very chic. They say that it makes everything feel real good, you know, better than ever. Food. Sex. Other drugs. Even pain."

  "Pain?"

  "Yeah. Like some R-heads might take a razor blade to themselves 'cause it feels so good. It doesn't feel too good when they come down, though."

  Brennan nodded. "Maybe Chrysalis discovered something about the drug that led to her death. It had to be something big, something awful, not just knowledge that the drug existed."

  "You know," Tripod said thoughtfully, "Sascha's girlfriend was a rap-head. At least I seen her around with blue lips sometimes."

  "Girlfriend?" Brennan said. "Sascha had a girlfriend?"

  "Yah. You didn't know about her? She's a real hot babe by the name of Ezili Rouge. But it's not as if she's real close to the blind boy. She's got a lot of boyfriends. Girlfriends too. I hear she's even real fond of puppy dogs and like that." Brennan frowned. "Is she a hooker?"

  "Probably. She gets dough from somewhere and she's got a lot of it."

  "Do you know where she lives?"

  "Hey, she's not in my league. I've seen her around. Face of an angel gone bad. Weird red eyes and a body that'd tempt a saint to sin. I'd give a leg to get a piece. 'Course, I got more legs than I know what to do with anyway."

  "What about the police? Was she ever mixed up with them?"

  Tripod shrugged. "Maybe. She's spent a bundle on drugs. You gotta figure the police have been at least interested."

  "What kind of drugs?"

  "You name it, she's bought it. H, crack, coke, speed, ludes, pot, PKD, dust, designer stuff like rapture. Christ, if the rumors are half-true she's bought enough dope to send an army up the highway to heaven."

  Brennan frowned. Perhaps Sascha had gotten hooked on something that'd put him under Ezilfs control. Perhaps he'd let slip something to Ezili, who told Quincey, who told Wyrm. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. "Where does she hang out?"

  "Couple places." Tripod gave him the names of some clubs, none of which had savory reputations.

  Brennan finished his drink, put the glass down on the bar, and su
rreptitiously dropped two twenties on the floor.

  "Thanks." He turned to leave, stopped, looked back at Tripod, who was slipping the bills into his ankle pocket with the oddly articulated toes of his middle foot. "One last thing. Ever hear of an ace named Doug Morkle?"

  "Morkle? What the hell kind of name is that for an ace?" Brennan shook his head. "Damned if I know."

  The back half of Dr. Finn looked like a palomino pony; the front half looked too young to be a doctor. "What happened?" Finn asked as he taped up Jay's ribs.

  "I was looking for a sport jacket," Jay said morosely. "Remind me never to use your tailor," Finn replied. He finished the taping. "There. How's that feel?"

  "Tight," Jay complained. He tried to flex his arm and winced at the pain. "Makes it hard to move."

  "Good," Finn said. "I wouldn't want you doing too much moving until that rib knits. You're very lucky, Mr. Ackroyd. A few more inches, and the bone might have punctured a lung."

  "What about my head?"

  "The X-rays show only a very mild concussion," Finn. told him. Nothing to worry about, as long as you take it easy.

  "Might as well," Jay said, "can't dance."

  "Too bad," Finn said. He grinned and did a quick little four-legged softshoe. "I cut quite a rug myself."

  "I'll just bet. Do I get anything for the pain? This headache would be killing me if I wasn't so distracted by my rib."

  Finn took a pad out of his pocket and scrawled a prescription. "Here," he said, ripping off the top sheet and handing it to Jay. "This ought to help."

  "Thanks." Jay hopped down off the examination table. It was a mistake, and the broken rib let him know that right away. "Oh shit," he said, gritting his teeth.

  "Don't want to go around jarring yourself that way," Finn said, altogether too cheerfully for Jay's taste. "I wouldn't drive in your condition either. Do you have a ride home?"

  "I'll take a cab," Jay said. Charles Dutton had taken him to the clinic, after he'd satisfied himself that Jay had nothing more of value to tell him, but he didn't imagine that the joker had hung around in the waiting room. Even if he had, Jay figured he'd had more than enough of Dutton and the Oddity for today. "You did the autopsy on Chrysalis, didn't you?" he asked.

  "Yes," Finn replied. "The police always call us in on joker autopsies. The coroner doesn't feel qualified to deal with our unique joker physiology." The little centaur looked away and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "A terrible thing. We see a lot of murder victims here in the clinic and it's never pretty, but the way her body was mutilated…" Finn shook his head.

  "Yeah." Jay touched his bruised and swollen face, thinking that he knew just how she must have felt.

  5:00 P.M.

  Brennan awoke still soaked with sweat and numb from a half-remembered dream in which all of his friends and lovers were killed slowly and excruciatingly by some unseen agency he was powerless to stop. He was reassured somewhat when he spotted Jennifer sitting in the room's only chair, listening distractedly to the transmitter they'd planted on Quasiman. She heard Brennan stir, turned to watch him sit up and run his hands through his hair.

  "About time you woke up," she said. "I'm suffering from terminal boredom listening to Quasiman stumble through his day."

  "Nothing to link him to the murder?"

  She shook her head. "Either he's incredibly clever, which frankly I doubt, or he has no connection with Barnett's crowd."

  "What'd he do today?" Brennan asked.

  "Got up early. It took him a while to figure out how to use the mop, then he washed the church's floors. Went up on the roof for a coffee break and forgot to come down. Father Squid called up to him to remind him to mow the lawn in the graveyard. That was a tough one. By the time he figured out the lawn mower, it was lunch. He spent the afternoon mowing and trimming. Once the transmitter stopped sending for forty-five minutes. I think it accompanied Quasiman into whatever alien dimension it is that he slips into."

  "You ask me, he's just what he appears to be. A sweet, terribly afflicted church handyman."

  "Figures." Brennan picked his jeans up off the floor and slid into them, then rummaged through the bureau for a fresh T-shirt. "I got a possible line on Sascha this morning from Tripod. It seems he has a girlfriend-"

  He stopped and stared at the plain white envelope that was lying on the worn carpet just inside the door to the hotel room.

  "How long has that been there?" he asked Jennifer. She turned, looked at the envelope, and frowned. "I don't know. I didn't notice it before."

  Brennan crossed the room and picked up the envelope. It was unsealed and unaddressed. He opened it and took out the single piece of paper it held with a message scrawled in a familiar childish hand.

  "Sorry how things turned out befour," it read. "I only want to help you. If you want to find a reel rap-head, go to Chickadee's."

  "Damn," Brennan muttered to himself. "Just what the hell is going on here?"

  6:00 P.M.

  "Jesus," Digger said. "What's wrong with your face?" Jay closed the office door behind him and looked down at the reporter. Digger was almost eight inches tall now. In a couple more days he might be able to pass for a dwarf. "I'm disguised as a guy who got the shit beat out of him," he said. He moved slowly across the office and sat down. The radio was babbling something about the convention. It made his head hurt even more. He turned it off.

  "God, it hurts just to look at you," Digger said. "You realize that half your face is purple?"

  "Good thing I don't wear a tie. The colors might clash."

  "Don't worry about it, in a day or two the swelling will go down and the bruise'll turn green." Downs sounded like a man who had been there himself; sometimes the public didn't appreciate crusading journalists. "Where the hell you been?" Sleeping," Jay said. The painkillers made him groggy. "Sleeping? Jesus, Ackroyd. All hell is breaking loose down in Atlanta, Hartmann's something like three hundred votes from the nomination, and you decide to take a nap?"

  "Downs," Jay warned, "I just woke up, my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton, I've got a concussion and a broken rib but I don't dare take any more painkillers because I can't think straight when I do, and I lost the goddamned jacket, so if you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'm going to pop you to the middle of the Holland Tunnel to play in traffic, okay?"

  Digger made a noise like a man whose aged grandmother had just been run over by a semi. "You lost the jacket!" he screeched.

  Jay sighed. "Dutton destroyed the damned thing before I could get to it," he said wearily.

  "Jesus," Digger said, his irritating little voice in a panic. "Jesusjesusjesus, what are we gonna do?"

  "We're running out of options," Jay admitted. "Not to mention time." He tried to think. It wasn't easy, the way his head was pounding. "Look, maybe Kahina had something else beside the jacket. Blood tests. Letters. Anything. I know, it's a long shot, but what else is there? How much do you know about her?"

  "I did a little digging after… after she died," Digger said. "Very low key, y'know? I didn't want to stir nothing up. The chick was in the country illegally, I know that much. With her background, I didn't think it was likely she smuggled herself in, so she must have had help, but whoever did it was a pro, covered up her trail real nice."

  "What about after she got here?"

  Digger shrugged. "She was living in Jokertown under an assumed name. You shoulda seen where she was staying, a real dump. The girl had guts, I'll give her that, but it wasn't like she knew what she was doing. She couldn't of been more conspicuous if she tried. The day she arrived, she was even wearing one of them black Moslem things, you know, whatchacallit, a chador. She switched to American clothes pretty quick but it didn't help much, she was still the only nat in the hotel, and it was obvious she just loathed jokers."

  "Then what the hell was she doing working with Gimli and Chrysalis?" Jay said bluntly.

  "She wasn't working with Chrysalis," Digger said. "That was Gimli's idea, Kahina was against it all t
he way. They had some huge fight about it. They fought all the time. Religion, politics, strategy, they didn't agree on anything." He shrugged. "Hey, politics makes strange bedfellows, right?"

  Jay frowned. "How do you know all this?"

  "Chrysalis told me," Digger admitted. "Gimli had a leak in his little conspiracy, and you know how it was, if anything leaked anywhere in Jokertown, you could bet your sweet ass that Chrysalis would hear it."

  "Yeah," said Jay thoughtfully. He got slowly to his feet.

  "Where you going now?" Digger asked.

  "Jokertown," Jay said. "I got an urge to see Kahina's last known address for myself."

  7:00 P.M.

  Brennan looked around Chickadee's helplessly, wondering what to do now that he was here, alone. Jennifer was waiting for him outside, this not being the type of club where she could go and not attract attention. He went up to the bar and ordered a Tullamore. He was nursing it silently, letting thoughts crawl lazily, fruitlessly through his mind, when a slurred, drunken voice said, "You're the one was my little girl's friend."

  He glanced down annoyedly, did a double take, and stared. The man who had spoken looked like Joe Jory, but he had been changed. His chin was virtually gone. His nose had been turned into a pig snout, and two-inch-long incisors protruded from his helplessly grinning mouth. His eyes were beady and red, as if he'd been drinking, or weeping, for hours.

  "What happened?" Brennan asked.

  Jory gave a helpless shrug, as if nothing mattered anymore. " I don't know. I went to a bar last night. It was in an alley and the doorman was dressed all in black. He smiled a real strange smile and let me in for nothing, he said, nothing at all. I told some of the people inside about my little girl, about how beautiful she'd been and what the virus done to her, and they brought me drinks and told me how sorry they were that my child was a joker and they told me to tell everyone about it. I got up on a stage and told everyone how awful it was, how we didn't have jokers in Oklahoma and people laughed at me. They laughed and laughed and someone yelled, `You do now!' and this ugly bouncer threw me out of the bar. I went to another place and people still laughed at me and I realized that something horrible had happened, like someone put a mask on my face but I couldn't take it o$: I drank till I passed out and in the morning I went back to the bar to make them turn my face back so I could be a real person again, but the bar was gone. It wasn't there…"