Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild

by George R. R. Martin

  So what next? Try to find a kid he barely remembered out of thousands at Jetboy’s Tomb? Or move on down the list?

  No. The Kid was reckless and stupid and had just enough power to get himself in real trouble. It had to be the Kid.

  The game was almost sold out. Only bleacher seats were left by the time Jennifer got to the ticket window, but that was fine with her. She just wanted to sit down in the warm sun, let the reassuring sounds of the crowd wash over her, and think.

  She paid for her ticket, and some atavistic sense made her turn around and look behind. There was a man, moderately tall, slimly but strongly built, dark-haired, dark-eyed. He seemed to be watching her intently, but he looked away the moment after their eyes met.

  Her gaze lingered on him for a moment. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and dark running shoes. The muscularity of his lithe build struck her, then she was carried along the wave of ticket-buyers into the stadium.

  Had he really been looking at her, or was she just getting paranoid? She let out a deep breath. It was probably her clothes that made him stare. She hadn’t exactly had time to try on the clothing she’d taken. The pants were short and tight across her behind and the pullover shirt was also short, leaving a couple of inches of her midriff peeking out. That was it. Her clothes. She was getting paranoid, picking out strangers in a crowd, thinking they were menacing her.

  Not that she didn’t have a reason to be paranoid. After all, there were people after her. Now she just had to figure out why, and, more importantly, how.

  Spector was tired of waiting. His anonymous contact had said eleven-thirty, and it was already several minutes past that. Maybe they hadn’t been satisfied with the way he’d handled Gruber. It wasn’t his fault the idiot had pulled a gun. They couldn’t have been stupid enough to think the bullets did it.

  He leaned against the statue of George M. Cohan and cracked his knuckles. He was aware of the bulge the Ingram was making in his coat. Most of the cops were in Jokertown, but the rest of the city had to be covered, too. It might be good to dump the gun, now that the Astronomer was off his tail. Then again, you never knew when an automatic pistol might come in handy.

  The crowd waiting in line for Broadway show tickets was smaller than usual. Spector had never been to one; they seemed stupid and overpriced. He used to come over from Jersey on New Year’s Eve to watch the ball drop at midnight. It was one of the few times he felt like a part of something bigger than just him.

  The neon signs around the Square were washed out and dull during the day. If his connection didn’t show up soon, he might pick up a whore for some fun. Seeing the tombstones rolled up in some cheap hooker’s eyes would give him a few moments’ relief from the pain. It wouldn’t be great, like the girl in the subway, but it would be distraction. God, he had wanted to kill her. At least hurt her enough to get a reaction out of her. Better to just get drunk and watch the ball game on television, though. A low profile for the rest of the day was not an entirely bad idea.

  “Fuck it,” he said, walking away from the statue. “Those Shadow Fist boys are going to have to do better than this.”

  “Don’t go away mad,” said a deep, nasty voice from behind.

  Spector turned. There was a joker a few paces behind him, closing the distance with slow, measured strides. There was dried blood smeared on his shirt. He had a single eye set in the center of his forehead.

  “You’re late.”

  “It’s been a busy morning. Had a little business to attend to down at the waterfront.” The cyclops made a fist, showing his badly bruised knuckles. “You must be Spector.”

  “Right. So tell me something.”

  “It’s like this.” He looked over his shoulder. “The Gambiones are having dinner at the Haiphong Lily tonight. Family meeting, you know. The don is in the way. He has to be taken care of. That’s where you come in.”

  “Tonight, huh? What’s the job pay?”

  “Five grand.”

  Spector ran his tongue around his teeth, cleaning away more dried blood. He figured this punk had been given a ceiling amount by someone higher up and could keep the rest for himself. The joker didn’t have the brains to snow a six-year-old. “No way. Do it yourself.”

  “Okay, okay. Seven-five.”

  “Ten, or get somebody else. We’re not talking about an easy target here. This is the don you want iced.” Spector took a step back and looked away. He wanted to push this guy hard, so the organization wouldn’t take him for a fool.

  The joker put his hands on his hips. “You got it.”

  “I’ll want two of that right now.” Spector extended his hand.

  “What? Right here? You’ve got to be kidding.” He glanced around again, this time in melodramatic fashion.

  Spector had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. This moron needed acting lessons and the brains to use them. “They wouldn’t send you here with just change in your pocket. Now pay up, or find me somebody who will.” Spector liked leaning on the punk a little, watching him squirm.

  The cyclops pulled a thick brown envelope from his coat and shoved it in Spector’s face. “Just to show we trust you.”

  Spector tucked the envelope in his coat pocket and smiled. “I won’t even count it. Yet. Now, what time is dinner for our friend the don?”

  “Around eight, so you’ll need to get there a little before. You can eat pretty well, now,” he said, tapping the envelope in Spector’s pocket.

  “When do I get the rest?”

  “Tomorrow night. We’ll let you know where.” He leaned in close. His breath stank of decay. “By the way, if you happen to hear anything about some missing stockbooks, let me know.” He pulled out a small spiral notebook and pen, then wrote a phone number on the top sheet. “You can reach me here for the next few hours,” he said, tearing out the sheet and handing it to Spector. “It’s the Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. I do security work there in my spare time.”

  “You keep an eye on the place, right?”

  The cyclops ignored his joke. “Hey, you have to have a legit job for tax reasons. That’s what the boss says. Looks suspicious otherwise.”

  “Sure. Sure. What did you say your name was? Just in case?”

  “Eye.”

  “And if I can’t get hold of you?”

  “Call the Twisted Dragon. Ask for Danny Mao. Tell him you were born in the year of the fire horse. He’ll take it from there.”

  “How would you like to come with me tonight? Just so you’ll be completely sure the contract was filled.” Spector put his arm around the joker and walked him down the sidewalk.

  Eye shrugged him off. “Just do your fucking job. And keep your faggot hands off.”

  “Pleasure doing business.” Spector watched him walk away. There was time to hit a bar and watch the game before he went to work. The Dodgers had better fucking win today or the don would have plenty of company.

  CHAPTER 7

  12:00 Noon

  The Dodgers were taking batting practice when Jennifer found her seat in the bleachers. The late summer sun was soothing on her bare arms and face. She closed her eyes and listened to the friendly sounds of the stadium, the call of the vendors, the conversation of the fans, the unmistakable crack of bat hitting ball.

  She suddenly realized that it’d been two years since she’d been to a ball game, two years since her father had died. Her father had loved the Dodgers and he’d taken her to many games. She wasn’t that big a fan herself, but she’d always been happy to accompany him. It was a good excuse to get out into the sunshine or the cool evening air.

  She remembered, in fact, the first Wild Card Day game her father had taken her to. It had been in 1969, the Dodgers against the Cardinals. The proud Dodger franchise had fallen on hard times in the mid-1960s, finishing at or near the bottom of the league for five straight years, but in 1969 the incomparable Pete Reiser, who had been in center field for the Dodgers that day in 1946 when the Wild Card virus had rained down from the sky, had come o
ut of retirement to manage his old team. When Reiser played for the Dodgers they’d been a collection of glorious names. In 1969 they were a bunch of castoffs, never-has-beens, and untried rookies. Reiser, the center fielder nonpareil of the ’40s and ’50s, the man who had made the most hits, scored the most runs, and compiled the highest batting average in history, took a ragamuffin team that had finished last in 1968 and led them to first place with a miraculous combination of managerial insight and inspiration.

  Tom Seaver, Brooklyn’s only bona fide star, had pitched on that day in 1969, and beat Bob Gibson, 2-0. The Dodgers’ runs had come, she remembered, on solo home runs by the elderly third baseman, Ed “The Glider” Charles. That game had clinched the division flag for the Dodgers, and they went on to beat Milwaukee in the National League’s first divisional playoffs, and then demolished the vaunted Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

  Memories of the exultation of that day, when an entire city had roared a collective shout of glee, brought a smile to her face. It had been a rare moment, and, looking back, she wished that she’d been old enough to appreciate the absolute and pure joy, untainted by any other emotion or thought. She’d rarely experienced that feeling since, and never with tens of thousands of other people.

  The loud crack of a bat meeting a ball brought her back to the present, and she wiped the smile off her face. These reminiscences weren’t doing any good. Fleeing the perilous present by taking refuge in pleasant memories of the past was no way, she realized, to solve anything. Men were after her, and she had to figure out why. Well, actually she knew why. Obviously they wanted the books back. But how had they tracked her down so quickly? And why did they kill Gruber? No, that’s not right. They thought she had killed Gruber. She hadn’t. If they hadn’t, and she knew that she hadn’t, who had?

  Something strange was going on and Jennifer was caught in the middle of it. She suppressed a shiver. Suddenly the sunlight wasn’t as warm. The people around her didn’t seem as innocent. Kien’s men had tracked her to the Happy Hocker. They could very well track her here. Any one of these “Dodger fans” sitting around her could be a killer.

  She glanced around and froze when her worst fear seemed to be confirmed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dark-haired man who had been watching her in the ticket line. He was sitting two rows behind her and to her right. He was pretending to be looking at his scorecard, but he was also surreptitiously studying her.

  He could be the killer. At the very least he must be an agent of Kien’s. Jennifer looked firmly ahead. What to do? She could, of course, go to the police. But then she’d have to admit that she was Wraith, the daring thief who’d made the front page of even the staid New York Times. They could probably protect her from Kien’s men, but she’d end up doing hard time for the string of burglaries she’d committed.

  She clenched her teeth as she saw from the corner of her eye that the man was moving toward her.

  What to do? What to do? The frantic refrain ran through her mind, keeping pace with the pounding of her racing heart. Nothing, she told herself. Be calm. Do nothing. Deny everything. He can’t do anything to me with all these people around.

  Darryl Strawberry, the young right fielder obtained two years ago in a trade with the lowly Cubs, was putting on a show in the batting cage. Everyone’s eyes were on him as he whacked balls into and over the bleachers in right, left, and center field. No one was looking at her and the man.

  Fear knotted her insides as he set a large hand lightly on her shoulder and said, in an unexpectedly soft voice, “Wraith,” and she utterly and totally panicked at his use of her alias and ghosted, leaving him with an astonished look on his face as he stared at her pants and shoes lying in a crumpled heap before her bleacher seat, and holding her shirt in his right hand.

  She heard him blurt “Wait!” and then she was gone, sinking through the structure of the bleachers like a stone ghost.

  An officious security officer waved the limo to a position behind the bunting-hung stands. Riggs opened the door, and his expression gave new meaning to cat and canary. Tachyon, his color already heightened by her ministrations and the heat of the day, turned an even more fiery red, and said in an urgent undertone, “We will be leaving as soon as my speech is over.”

  “Very good, Doctor. Will we then be going to Ebbets Field as planned?”

  “No!” Tachyon added something explosive in his own language, and, tucking Roulette’s arm beneath his, escorted her up the back stairs and onto the stands. A large group of dignitaries were already assembled in a semicircle around the podium. She saw Hartmann looking peevish while the mayor of New York hung over the back of his chair and agitated for support for his upcoming gubernatorial race. The ace in the white jumpsuit, hood now thrown back, hovered solicitously nearby. He was staring glassily into the crowd at a nubile teenager whose breasts strained at her halter top, and Roulette noticed that his face didn’t quite come together. The eyes weren’t quite level, and the nose seemed to blossom like a wisted tuber above a too-small mouth and chin. He looked like an artist’s clay model the artist had gotten bored with before completing the bust.

  Seated in the second row of chairs was a distinguished-looking Oriental. Periodically he jotted quick notes in a leather-bound book, and Roulette noticed that the gold fountain pen left a trail of gold ink. She made a face over the affectation, considering how often money did not translate into class or taste. The man’s dark eyes lifted from the book, and stared with frightened intensity at a silver-haired man whose tailoring screamed “lawyer.” This man seemed to be looking for an opening to interrupt the unending flow from Koch and speak to Hartmann.

  At the far end of the front row sat a major rock-and-roll figure whose “Joker Aid” concerts had raised several million dollars—none of which had yet reached Jokertown. Roulette gave a cynical smile. From her days at the UN she knew in just how many ways money could be channeled and skimmed. Tachyon and his clinic would be lucky if they ever saw $10,000. . . .

  Her thoughts drew up short. The Takisian’s voice penetrated her black study. “Roulette, here.”

  She glanced about confused, focused on the folding metal chair, seated herself.

  “My God, Mrs. Brown-Roxbury! What are you doing here?” She stared into Senator Hartmann’s pale brown eyes. He gave an embarrassed cough. “Oh damn, that sounded rather rude, didn’t it? I’m just so surprised and delighted to see you. Mr. Love told me you had left the UN, and I was sorry to hear it.”

  “The UN? What is this talk of the UN? You worked there?” broke in Tachyon. “Senator, good to see you.” The men shook hands across her.

  Roulette opened her mouth, and shut it again as Hartmann took over the conversation for her. “Yes, Mrs. Brown-Roxbury was an economist with the United Nations Development Program.”

  “Not that we ever managed to develop a damn thing,” she replied mechanically.

  Hartmann laughed. “That’s my Roulette. You always did give ’em hell up there.”

  “Mrs.?”

  “Don’t panic, I’m divorced.”

  Hartmann went nattering on about the “wonderful work being done by the IMF and the World Bank” while overhead the striped awning, erected to give some relief from the sun, snapped and popped in the wind. It created an odd punctuation to his sentences.

  “Yes,” pop “the electrification pro” snap “ject in Zaire is a” pop “classic example of the fine work. . . .”

  A discreet cough interrupted the flow. “Senator.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “St. John Latham, with Latham, Strauss.” Latham leaned in close, his pale eyes expressionless. “My client.” A hand indicated the Oriental gentleman, and Hartmann slewed around to look.

  “General Kien, how the hell are you? I didn’t see you come sneaking up here. You should have said something.”

  Kien slid the notebook into his coat pocket, rose, and shook the senator’s outstretched hand. “I didn’t wish to disturb you.”
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  “Nonsense, I always have time for one of my staunchest supporters.”

  Latham’s pale, expressionless eyes shifted to Kien, back to the senator. “That being the case, Senator. . . . The general has suffered a severe loss this morning. Several very valuable books of stamps were stolen from his safe, and the police are having little success in recovering them.” The lawyer eyed Tachyon, but the alien showed no inclination to move. With a shrug he continued. “In fact, they don’t seem to give a damn. I pressed them, and was told that given the other problems attendant on Wild Card Day they haven’t got time to worry about a simple burglary.”

  “Outrageous. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of pull with New York’s finest, nor would I want to tread on Mayor Koch’s territory.” A quick smile to the mayor still hovering hopefully on the outskirts of the conversation. Hartmann’s eyes slid thoughtfully across the ace. “Still. . . . Allow me to offer you Mr. Ray, my faithful Justice Department watch-dog.”

  Kien tensed, and exchanged a glance with his expressionless attorney. Roulette wondered if the lawyer’s face ever displayed anything other than cold calculation.

  “That would be fine—”

  “Sir,” Ray interrupted. “My job is to guard you, and meaning no offense, you’re a hell of a lot more important than some stamps.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Billy, but your job is whatever the hell I tell you it is, and I’m telling you to help Mr. Latham.” The senator didn’t seem so charming now. The ace shrugged and capitulated.

  “Thank you, Senator,” Kien murmured softly, and he and Latham faded back through the chairs, drawing Billy Ray with them.

  “Now, where were we?” The smile was pinned firmly back into place. “Oh, I remember, talking about your tremendous contributions.”

  Roulette pressed her shoulder urgently against Tachyon’s, with a display of that disconcerting sensitivity he understood.