Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild

by George R. R. Martin

  “There he is.” Brennan had to shout in Fortunato’s ear to make himself heard. Fortunato turned and saw Jube sitting on top of his news kiosk, short, fat, his tusks glistening in the morning sunlight.

  “Okay,” Fortunato said. He used a little of his power to clear a space in front of the kiosk. He cupped his hands and called up to him. “Can you come down for a minute?”

  Jube shrugged and started to clamber down. Fortunato reached up and took hold of a black, rubbery ankle to steady him. At the moment of contact Fortunato felt a weird vibration go through him. Jube looked down and their eyes locked. Fortunato read his thoughts involuntarily.

  “Yes,” Fortunato answered him. “Now I know.” Jube was not human.

  “I’ve seen you at the Crystal Palace,” Jube said. “But we’ve never been formally introduced.” He held out a hand. “How are you at keeping secrets?”

  “I mostly mind my own business,” Fortunato said. “Does Tachyon know about you?”

  “No. Nobody does but you. I guess I just have to hope you don’t come up with a good reason to give me away.”

  Jube’s face went blank as Brennan walked up and said, “Chrysalis told me—”

  “I saw the Astronomer.” Jube’s head, greasy black and covered with tufts of reddish hair, moved up and down. “About five this morning. I was picking up the Enquirer. Every Monday, you know.” Fortunato cleared his throat impatiently. “He was in the back of a limo, headed down Second Avenue.”

  “How did you know it was him?” Fortunato asked. Jube hesitated and Fortunato made it an order. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I . . . went to some of their meetings. The Egyptian Masons. I thought they had . . . something I wanted.”

  A sudden crash made the alien jerk back in surprise. Fortunato turned around. Just across Hester a plate-glass window had exploded out onto the street. Four Oriental kids in blue satin jackets swarmed out of the store. The last one out smashed the glass of the door with a billy club. “You remember, old man!” the kid shouted. “You don’t fuck with the Egrets, man!” They charged into the crowd and disappeared.

  Brennan had the leather case open and the two halves of his bow together in a second and a half. Even so he had no chance for a shot. He put the bow away again and turned back to Fortunato. Fortunato hadn’t moved.

  “You weren’t kidding,” Jube said. “You really do mind your own business.”

  “I don’t interfere where I don’t know what’s going on,” Fortunato said. He was thinking about 1969, when his power had first appeared. For a few months there he’d been involved with a political underground movement, trying to stop the wholesale slaughter of jokers in Vietnam. Even then, with the issues as clear as they’d been, he’d felt uneasy about it. There had been a woman involved, and when she disappeared that had been the end of it for him. And since then he’d kept to himself. “If I wanted to be a cop, I’d be a cop.”

  He turned back to Jube. “I think you and me need to sit down and have a long talk sometime. When there’s not so much going on. For right now, just keep your eyes open. If you see the Astronomer again, or anybody that you know is working for him, call Tachyon. He can get hold of me. All right?”

  The alien nodded.

  “And for Christ’s sake,” Fortunato said, “try to cheer up.”

  Spector walked slowly up the steps of the subway station, glancing in all directions. The Jack Daniel’s hadn’t helped. He’d seen the Astronomer kill before; he’d even been in on it several times. The old man could tear him to pieces faster than he could regenerate. He shuddered and stumbled on. Gruber’s pawnshop was only a couple of blocks away.

  Flatbush Avenue was quiet, almost deserted. A kid was playing on a stoop, holding a jet in one hand and a blimp in the other. He smashed the plane into the side of the blimp and yelled, “I can’t die yet, I haven’t seen The Jolson Story.”

  Spector shook his head. He didn’t understand why anyone considered Jetboy a hero. The little shit had tried to stop the virus from being released over New York, but he fucked up, failed. For that he got a statue and the adoration of millions.

  “Jetboy was a loser,” he yelled at the kid.

  The boy stared at him, then picked up his toys and scrambled inside.

  Spector reached inside his gray suit and pulled out his death’s-head mask. He slipped it on when he was across the street from the Happy Hocker.

  Spector crossed the street quickly and tried the door. It was locked. Spector banged loudly on it several times and waited. No sound. He tried again. This time there were heavy hurried footfalls. He heard the lock click and the door opened a crack.

  “I’m busy right now. Come back later,” Gruber said.

  “You’ve got coke on your lapel,” Spector said, pointing at the tailored tweed suit. He put his foot in the door. “It’s Spector. I need to buy something.”

  Gruber opened the door and closed it quickly when Spector was inside. “Buying? That’s a bit unusual. Well, what do you need?”

  “An automatic pistol and a flak jacket.” Spector looked around at the dimly lit clutter. The place smelled of disuse and Gruber’s cologne. “How do you ever find anything in here?”

  “All the important business is transacted in back.” Gruber opened the cage and walked into the back room. He was fat and soft. Spector could have hated him just for that. He followed the little man, bringing his pain into focus.

  Gruber opened a cabinet and pulled out a pistol. “In-gram Mac-11 with shoulder holster. I’d want eight hundred from a normal customer, but you can take it out in trade. You will have something soon for me, I hope.”

  Spector took the Ingram and looked it over. The gun was well-oiled and had a nice heft. “Sure. No flak jacket?”

  “Sorry.”

  Spector had hoped the jacket might help if the Astronomer tried to tear out his heart. Just his luck; it was an item Gruber normally had around. “What about bullets?”

  “Right here,” Gruber said, handing him an unopened box. “Why do you need a gun? I mean, being an ace and all it just seems, um, unnecessary.”

  Spector noticed that Gruber was careful not to meet his eyes. He grabbed the fat man by the ears and pulled him close. Gruber tried to gouge Spector’s eyes with one hand and pulled a .22 automatic with the other. Spector took hold of Gruber’s gun hand and pointed it at the fence’s stomach. There were two shots, both into Gruber’s abdomen. Spector knocked the gun away; he knew that Gruber would be a long time dying from the gunshot wounds. Spector pulled Gruber’s head around, forcing their eyes close.

  “No,” said Gruber, shutting his eyes. Spector punched Gruber in the throat, knocking him to the floor. He straddled the fat man and pinned his arms.

  “Don’t kill me. Please, no.”

  “You’re dead already.” Spector grabbed Gruber’s eyelids and pulled them up. Gruber screamed, but it was too late. Their eyes locked.

  Spector was the only person who had drawn the Black Queen and lived to tell about it. Unfortunately, the memory of his death was always there. He turned it loose on Gruber, projecting his agony into the man’s body, convincing him that he was dying. Gruber’s pudgy flesh believed. His eyes rolled up into his head and he gasped. Spector felt him turn to dead weight and let go.

  He looked at the desktop. Gruber had written one word on a notepad. Stamps. He shrugged and turned away.

  Spector put on the holster and slid the Ingram into it. If he ran into the Astronomer it might help, then again it might not. He closed and locked the cage door, donned his mask, and left through the back.

  Stupid! How much more of an idiot could I have been? Jack thought as he fought his way downtown through the throngs. His anger with himself still burned savagely. He scanned what he could see of Eighth Avenue ahead of him. Where was the girl with the man wearing the purple suit and the dapper fedora?

  He hadn’t called Cordelia’s mother yet. Elouette would just have to wait, impatient or not. Jack had made the one phone
call he thought might do some good. If Bagabond and her animals could just sight his niece . . . He’d take care of the rest. His tongue felt rough, sliding across teeth that were slightly more profuse, sharper, and longer than were normal. He tried to damp the anger. Time enough for that later.

  Control. Obviously he had some now. At first, upon exiting the Port Authority, he’d searched at random, fighting his way first one direction through the crowds, then another. Then the human level of his mind started to calm the urgent reptile brain. Set up a grid. Don’t repeat a line of search. Try downtown. Consider Fortunato a lead. He didn’t know that the guy he supposed was a pimp was one of Fortunato’s freelance talent scouts; in fact, he didn’t know if the man even used that kind of scavenging talent; but it was worth a try. The man with Cordelia would find it easier to fall in with the flow of the crowds down toward Jokertown. Eighth was less crowded right now than the other avenues. Eventually Jack would have to worry about a good crosstown route. But for now, he went on his hunch.

  It paid off.

  He came up to the intersection of 38th Street. Suddenly he saw, across the street, a familiar fedora bobbing a bit as though the wearer were looking about himself confusedly. He also saw the back of a head, a quick glimpse of a fall of shining black hair. The fedora moved toward the black hair. The young woman with the black hair moved farther away. She was running.

  Fedora pursued.

  Jack, staring after them, started off the curb. A hand grabbed his shoulder, roughly tugging him back. A honking yellow cab nearly took off his toes and latent snout.

  “Watch it, bub,” said a husky joker standing beside him. “Cabbies don’t give a shit. Not today. Not never.”

  By now, the intersection was full of traffic. The last cabs to make it through had done so. Now there were vehicles lined up in either direction. No one seemed worried about automatic $25 tickets for gridlocking.

  “Never a cop when you need one,” somebody said.

  Jack made it across the intersection like a good broken-field runner. The Jets’d be proud, he thought irrelevantly. This season, they could use him. On the other side of 38th, he realized that neither the fedora nor Cordelia was in sight.

  Damn it. Sooner or later, he thought, striking downtown again. He looked around for one of Bagabond’s birds, a cat, a squirrel, anything.

  Never a pigeon when you need one.

  Having chosen her clothing from the collection of tattered and dirty mismatched coats, pants, and shirts she kept at Jack’s, Bagabond jammed a Greek fisherman’s cap on her stringy hair and left the cats behind as she made her way up to ground level through the tunnels that bypassed Jack’s home. Agile from years of moving through the underground, she used the eyes of the rats who lived in the tunnels to show her the path. The floor-level view she gained from their perspective was enough to avoid most obstacles. She had spent days underground without using her own eyes. It was best to remove herself as much as possible from contact with the mass of people who crawled on the surface as her creatures crawled in their tunnels and burrows.

  Bagabond grasped the rungs of a ladder to the world above her and climbed. Shifting the manhole cover slightly upward, she looked around and saw only a sleeping derelict in the alley. She climbed out, replaced the cover, and limped toward the crowds at the mouth of the alley. Long ago she had found the most direct route to Rosemary Muldoon’s office in the district attorney’s complex. Today, though, the streets were crowded with revelers. Many wore grotesque masks; some were in full costume. Bagabond felt anger at these “normal” people. The virus that had given her a means of survival had also removed her from this human world. Sometimes she regretted it, most of the time she did not. It took no effort to curse the crowd and clear a path to the Justice Center.

  Somebody whistled, appreciative by the sound of it. She didn’t glance around. It wouldn’t be at her.

  Before the security guard noticed her, Bagabond joined a crowd of people waiting for the elevator. Keeping the crowd of three-piece suits between her and the guard, she walked with lowered head and sidelong glances to the stairs. It took several minutes to walkup to the eighth floor but she hated the elevator.

  Instead of the usual receptionist, who knew that she was an old client of Rosemary’s from her days with Social Services, the front desk was manned by a handsome, black-haired man in a brown suit. He was having trouble with the phone as she walked up.

  “Damn! Lost another one. Whoever created hold buttons should be shot. Don’t you agree?” He spoke without looking up from the phone console whose buttons he was punching. “Even though I know that’s no attitude for a lawyer.” He finally looked up and his face registered surprise for just a moment. “Hello. What can I do for you?” He smiled at the bag lady. “Do you want this floor? This is the DA’s office. What are you looking for?”

  “Rosemary.” Bagabond kept her head down and her voice weak and rough.

  “Rosemary? I’m new here, but the only Rosemary here—I think—is Rosemary Muldoon. She’s an assistant district attorney.” He turned to look dubiously down at the phone console. “Well, I could try to buzz her, but . . .”

  “Rosemary.” The derelict’s voice was stronger and angry. When he looked up again, he met, for a mere second, a pair of sharp and clear black eyes.

  “I’ll do my best.” The phone rang. “Paul Goldberg. District attorney’s office. May I help you?”

  Bagabond started toward a door behind Goldberg, but it opened as she reached for the knob.

  The woman behind the door was petite, about three inches shorter than Bagabond. The bag lady knew that because they had once been obliged to exchange clothes. Rosemary’s eyes varied from dark brown to hazel, depending on her mood. Today they were dark and intense.

  “Hello there. Good to see you. Go right in. I’ll be back in a moment.” Rosemary Muldoon held the door for the bag lady. Before she entered the office, Bagabond looked back at the receptionist’s desk. Rosemary nodded. “Paul, call that temporary service again. Tell them if someone doesn’t show up in fifteen minutes, we’re calling another service. This is ridiculous.”

  “Yes, Ms. Muldoon. I hope I didn’t offend your client.” He smiled apologetically at the bag lady, who shook her head once, sharply.

  “My friend, Paul,” Rosemary said. “Hold my calls, will you, please?”

  The man behind the desk sighed and nodded. “Of course, Ms. Muldoon. I look forward to seeing you again, Miss,” he said to Bagabond. He was already reaching for a ringing phone as Bagabond stared at him again, then turned and limped into Rosemary’s office.

  “Donnis is on vacation and things are a mess.” Rosemary shut the door and walked over to the walnut desk. “Here we are, understaffed, and our newest addition has to answer phones instead of working on the caseload. He’s decorative, though.” Rosemary perched on the side of her desk. “They offered me new carpet to replace this ghastly green shag. I took another staff attorney instead.”

  “Good choice.” Bagabond sat down on the edge of an old straight chair. She took off her hat and brushed the hair out of her face.

  “How’s Jack?” Rosemary reached out and took the cap from Bagabond. Putting it on, she looked inquiringly at Bagabond, who shook her head.

  “Doesn’t go with the tweed.” Bagabond sat back carefully, as if worried the chair would collapse. “Okay, I guess. We’re not talking all that much right now. I just got a call from him before I came over. He’s out hunting a niece who ran away to New York City.”

  Rosemary raised an eyebrow.

  “Her name’s Cordelia Chaisson. Sixteen. Country girl from Louisiana. Jack says she’s real pretty—tall, slender, black hair, dark brown eyes. That’s all he told me. He sounded pretty upset.”

  “I’ll put the word out in the station houses,” said Rosemary. “That much I can do. Too many kids run away to the city.” She took a fountain pen out of the desk set by her hip.

  Bagabond nodded her appreciation. “How’s life of
f the street?”

  “Who says I’m off the street? With this job, I never leave.” Rosemary sighed and continued to play with the fountain pen. It was obvious she had other things on her mind. “Things are getting worse with the Family. The Butcher—remember Don Frederico?—is killing anyone who threatens his authority. It’s no way to run the Gambione Family. We’re no longer completely in control in Jokertown. Somebody’s setting the jokers against us, the Family. They’re just being used, of course.”

  “The jokers are always getting used. Either they’re the great downtrodden minority of this century, or else they’re a plague to be eradicated.” Bagabond fixed her with wide black eyes.

  Rosemary continued, “They get something when they pay protection to the Gambiones. That’s one tradition that even the Butcher doesn’t dare abandon.” She gestured with the pen. “I keep thinking that if my father had just had a son, to take over the Gambiones, this wouldn’t be happening. Maybe that S.O.B. Butcher will have a nice accident. Slip in the bathtub or something.”

  “He always was bad news.” Bagabond smiled humorlessly up at Rosemary. “Even in our brief acquaintance, I can’t say that he made a good impression. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know. I usually avoid Jokertown, but the rats like it down there. Lots of food.”

  “I don’t want details, please.” Rosemary shivered. “You want to know what else is making my life interesting? First thing I hear this morning is that there’re some valuable notebooks on the street. I don’t even know whose they are, but the Egrets want them. If the Egrets want them, so do I. You really do hear the strangest things, so if you find out anything about this, I would appreciate it.” Rosemary wouldn’t meet Bagabond’s dark gaze. “I feel as if I’m using you, Suzanne, but you know things no one else does. Thanks.”