Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild

by George R. R. Martin

  She caught herself and looked around guiltily. The hallway, of course, was deserted. She summoned all her will, reached out, and put the bag through the chest of the wax figure. She withdrew her hand and left the bag snug in Tachyon’s chest, the two stockbooks of stamps and the mysterious volume safely hidden away until her return.

  Now she had to get in touch with Kien. It might take some doing. She couldn’t simply look him up in the phone book.

  She left the Hall of Fame with one last jealous glance at the Peregrine figure, pondering her next move. She never noticed the eye watching from a curtained doorway at the other end of the hallway.

  The worst of it, Fortunato thought, was having to listen to the goddamned politicians. There were a dozen of them on stage, including Mayor Koch and Senator Hartmann. Tachyon, the bastard, was already gone, cozied up to a gorgeous black woman with plaited hair.

  Hartmann was at the podium. “The time has come for acceptance. A time for peace, as the biblical poet said. Not only for peace between nations, but peace within ourselves. A time to look into our own hearts, human and joker and ace alike. A time not to forget the past, but to be able to look back at it and say, this is where I have been, and I am not ashamed. But my duty now is to the future. Thank you very much.”

  A police helicopter circled overhead. As Fortunato glanced up he saw the Turtle’s shell float slowly over the park and then pass out of sight again.

  Fortunato knew roughly where the kid was. This close to him he could get a vague image of what the kid saw, and he could triangulate off Hartmann as he sat down at the edge of the stage.

  There. Fifteen or twenty yards away, wearing clothes, for once, which meant he’d come in his human form and stayed that way. The kid slouched against a light pole, a good fifteen or twenty feet away from an older version of himself, clearly his father.

  The kid looked around at all the suits and high heels as they offered Hartmann dignified, minimal applause. One side of his mouth turned up in disgust. Fortunato knew how the kid felt. Maybe once there’d been some sincere feeling in these ceremonies, but now it was a case of the bored leading the boring. Nobody came to self-serving political speeches except the people who needed to be seen there, the ones making some kind of political statement themselves by showing up.

  And those few who really did care. The starstruck kids who still had some illusions about personal power, who still believed in that sharp, clean line between good and evil and wanted to wage war across it.

  Fortunato saw the wild card as a kind of Aladdin’s lamp of the unconscious. The virus rewrote DNA to match what it read in the back of the mind. If your luck was bad it transcribed a nightmare, and if you lived through it you were a joker. But sometimes it hit a vein of the pure stuff, like Arnie’s love for dinosaurs and comic books and aces. And even though it made a bit of a joke out of him, it let him live his dreams out on the street.

  The joke was a law of nature, the conservation of mass. Arnie could turn into any dinosaur he could visualize, but his mass remained the same. If he was a tyrannosaur he was a three-foot-high tyrannosaur. Okay for a kid, but he was already thirteen or fourteen, full of adolescent juice and delusions of immortality.

  “Hey,” Fortunato shouted at him. “Hey, kid!”

  Arnie turned to look at him.

  The kid’s arm came off.

  It flopped like the muscles had grown their own brain, and then it was sailing through the air and bouncing across the pavement. Fortunato and the kid both stood there for an instant, not comprehending. And then blood began to fountain out of the ragged flap of flesh and the air smelled like a butcher shop.

  The kid started to change. Even with an arm gone his instincts were good. His remaining arm shrank and grew scales. His thighs began to swell and his stomach shrank.

  Fortunato reached out with his power and tried to stop time. The people around him slowed but the blood pumped undiminished from the kid’s arm socket.

  The Astronomer, Fortunato thought. Shielding the kid from the power that could save him.

  Fortunato tried to run toward him. It was like running in a nightmare, the air thick as wet cement, draining his strength.

  The kid was losing too much blood. It puddled around his tennis shoes, soaked the cuffs of his jeans. He couldn’t finish the change. His left hand had grown a huge, scythe-shaped claw and he slashed futilely in front of him with it. His face was still human except for a bulging lower jaw. The eyes flashed from shock to rage to fear and finally to helplessness.

  A handful of flesh came out of the kid’s throat. The blood from his shoulder slowed as his neck began to spurt.

  The kid collapsed. His weirdly jointed legs and the beginnings of a long, stiff tail kept him from falling more than halfway. His chest opened and his heart fell out onto the concrete. The heart seemed to shiver in the sunlight, fibrillating spasmodically for no more than a second before it lay still.

  And then there was a little man, maybe a couple of inches over five feet tall, standing next to the kid’s distorted corpse. He had an ankle-length black robe that was soaked and spattered with blood. His head was too big for his body and he wore thick glasses.

  Fortunato had seen him twice before. Once was inside an Egyptian Masonic temple in Jokertown, seven years before. Fortunato had been looking out through the eyes of a woman he loved, a woman named Eileen who was now dead.

  The second time was when Fortunato had led the attack on the Cloisters. Which had led to the Howler being dead, and to this death, right here in front of him.

  “I waited for you,” the Astronomer said. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come and I’d have to start without you.” His voice had an ugly singsong rhythm.

  Fortunato couldn’t get within twenty feet of him. “Why the kid? For Christ’s sake, why the kid?”

  “I wanted you to know,” the Astronomer said. “I’m not fucking around any more.” He sniffed his blood-drenched fingers. “You’re all going to die. Between now and four A.M. Be sure and set your watches.” He glanced up at the podium, his eyes moving as if he was looking for somebody that wasn’t there. He nodded to himself and smiled.

  “Four A.M.?” Fortunato was shouting. He leaned into the force field that straitjacketed him. “Why four A.M.? What happens then?”

  Then the field was gone and he staggered forward, off-balance. The Astronomer was gone. Time sped up around him. He was unable to look away as the kid’s father saw the mangled ruin of his son and began to scream.

  Spector emptied his beer mug and stifled a belch. The Bottomless Pit, located between 27th and 28th Streets a half-block west of Chelsea Park, was far enough off the beaten track to avoid a crush of tourists. The place had a reputation for violence that kept most of the locals away. There were only two other people sitting at the bar, although all the tables were occupied. The only light in the bar area came from the neon beer signs and the television. He heard billiard balls smacking together in the back room.

  “You want another?” the bartender asked. He was tall, with curly blond hair and a bodybuilder’s physique.

  “Sure.” Spector was a little light-headed. His fingers and toes were getting numb. It was about time. He’d been drinking on and off all day. The Astronomer was off his back, so he could lie low here, get drunk, and watch the game when it came on. That would just about fill the time until he had to go to the Haiphong Lily.

  The bartender drew a beer and set it down on the scratched, pitted wood. Someone had carved “Joyce + whoever I say” into the surface. Spector picked up the beer, enjoying the cold glass on his skin. As usual, the pain was chewing him up inside. Maybe, if everything went well tonight, he’d cap off the evening by killing some tourists. He’d never go to jail for it. That was the beauty of his power. The cops had hauled him in once, but the case had been thrown out in the preliminary hearing. There was never any physical evidence to prove he’d killed his victims.

  “And now, for a special report from Channel Nin
e reporter Carl Thomas, live, at Jetboy’s Tomb.” Spector looked up at the television.

  The young black reporter paused, put a finger to his ear, and nodded. People standing in the crowd behind him leaned around and waved their arms, trying to get into the shot. “This is Carl Thomas reporting. Yet another story in what is already the most violent Wild Card Day in ten years. Apparently, a psychopathic ace killer is roaming the streets. His latest victim is a young boy who had the power to turn himself into a small dinosaur. There is no official word from the police indicating whether the boy’s death is related to the earlier killing of the Howler. However, based on eyewitness accounts, this is the second such attack today by the same person. This morning in Jokertown a man fitting the suspect’s description assaulted what we hope was only his first such victim, twisting his head completely around. Luckily, Fortunato intervened and healed the victim with his ace powers. Sadly, he was unable to do anything to save the boy. This is Carl Thomas, Channel Nine News, at Jetboy’s Tomb.”

  “Fuck.” Spector reached for his beer and knocked it over. Foam spread slowly over the bar. “They have to come on the goddamn TV about that. Couldn’t have kept their ugly mouths shut.”

  “. . . that terrible tragedy. In an apparently unrelated incident Frederico Macellaio was killed in an automobile accident earlier this afternoon. Macellaio, also known as ‘the Butcher’ and reputed to be a major figure in the city’s underworld, was dead at the scene.”

  “It’s just not my fucking day,” Spector muttered.

  He pulled out his wallet and motioned to the bartender, but the man was looking at the door. Spector turned. There were three punks standing just inside the doorway. They all had black hair cut like Moe of the Three Stooges. The words BEDTIME BOYS were emblazoned in red on the backs of their leather jackets. Each carried a fiberglass skateboard. The leader, who was a head shorter than the other two, wore mirrored sunglasses.

  “Shake everybody down,” said the little boss, blowing on his fingertips.

  Spector’s barstool creaked loudly as he swiveled to face them. He was worried about the kid with shades; his power was no good unless his victim’s eyes were visible. The other two he could handle.

  “Nice of you to get that out for us,” said one of the stooges, eyeing Spector’s wallet. “Hand it over.”

  Spector shoved his wallet back into his pants pocket. “Fuck off, you little shit. While you still can.”

  “Feed ’im his teeth, Billy,” said the leader. “It’ll save time with everybody else.”

  Billy whipped the board around his body a couple of times, then swung it up into an attack position. It reminded Spector of the Chinese bench fighters he’d seen in kung fu movies. These guys obviously knew what they were doing. He’d have to take them out in a hurry. He locked eyes with Billy. Spector’s death flowed into him. Billy fell face first into the bar-rail.

  “Shit, get him, Romeo.” The little punk was still directing traffic.

  Romeo looked at Billy’s body, then at Spector. Mistake. Five seconds later he was dead on the floor.

  Spector sensed movement and raised his arm, reaching for the Ingram with his other hand. The skateboard slammed into his forearm, jolting him hard enough to knock him over and send the gun flying. He bounced off a table and landed on the floor. The gun was several feet away. The punk dropped his skateboard and grabbed the pistol. He centered it on Spector’s chest and smiled. A cue ball caught him in the side of the head as he pulled the trigger.

  Spector rolled as the bullets tore up the table and floor. He felt bits of wood dig through his clothes and into his flesh. He crawled to the remaining Bedtime Boy. The kid sat up and shook his head. The sunglasses were gone.

  “Good-bye,” Spector said.

  The punk met his eyes and gasped, then keeled over.

  Spector grabbed the Ingram and holstered it, then stood. The bartender was looking at him, afraid but annoyed. Nobody was talking.

  “Some people got no manners at all. These boys are doing the big sleep now. Serves them right,” Spector said, rubbing his arm.

  The bartender gestured tentatively toward the door.

  “Don’t worry. I’m gone.”

  “Hey, tough guy. Throw us back our cue ball.” A short, well-built man in a white tank top pointed at Spector’s feet.

  He picked up the ball and tossed it back. “Nice shot.”

  The bartender coughed.

  Spector walked out into the sunlit street, reaching inside his shirt to tug the splinters out. The fight with the skateboard punks had momentarily made him forget about the Astronomer. He sucked air in through his clenched teeth. With Butcher dead, the job was probably off. Couldn’t hurt to find out, though. He pulled a quarter from his pants pocket.

  He found a pay phone just down the street from the Bottomless Pit. There was no answer at the Dime Museum, so Spector called the Twisted Dragon and asked for Danny Mao. After waiting for a few moments a young Oriental came on the line.

  “Danny Mao. Who’s this?” The voice was smooth and assured, with only a trace of accent.

  “My name’s Spector. I was born in the year of the fire horse. I need to get in touch with one of your people. Guy with a Boston accent, sharp, careful.”

  There was a brief pause. “Mr. Spector, I’m not familiar with you. Who gave you my number?”

  “A joker named Eye. Look, I was contacted this morning about a job. Things have changed, I have to find out what he wants done. Can you help me or not?”

  “Possibly, but he’s a very busy man, particularly today. Perhaps I can have him contact you later.”

  “Fine. I’ll take the notebooks to someone else.” He figured the lie would get Mao’s attention.

  “Ah, I see. Where are you now?”

  Mao had bitten hard. The notebooks must be even more important than Spector had originally guessed. “You just give me the number, or I’ll make sure the word goes around that you held up delivery on these babies.”

  “Call 555-4301. It’s his private line. You’d better not be jerking us around . . .”

  Spector hung up on Mao in midsentence. A chic young couple was standing behind him, obviously waiting to use the phone. He stared at the woman, grabbed his crotch, and licked his lips. They hurried away. Spector dropped another quarter into the slot and punched in the number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Latham.”

  It was the person who’d called that morning. No question. The only Latham he was aware of was a big-cheese lawyer. “This is Spector. Have you heard about Butcher?”

  “Of course. His death does alter a few things.” Latham didn’t act surprised to hear from him. There was the sound of fingers on a keyboard.

  “So everything’s off, right?”

  “Let me see. I think it would be best for you to have dinner at the Haiphong Lily in any case. The Gambione Family is extremely vulnerable right now. I don’t think they could stand to lose any more leadership. It could destroy the Family entirely.”

  “So; you want as many senior members killed as possible. Right?” Spector looked around to make sure no one was in hearing distance.

  “Yes. We might be able to work out a bonus situation for you based on how many you neutralize.”

  “Fine. Eye said you’d set it up for me to get in with no trouble. Is that right?”

  “I’m sure that’s the case. By the way, who gave you my private number?”

  “Smooth punk named Mao.” Spector hoped they gave the kid bamboo shoots under the fingernails.

  “I see. Thank you, Mr. Spector. We’ll be in touch. Good hunting.”

  Spector hung up the phone. The quarter dropped into the change box. He looked up and down the street; if the Astronomer got hold of him there wouldn’t be a bonus. There wouldn’t even be a tomorrow.

  Out on the street again, Jennifer took stock of her situation. She wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes. She had no shoes. She’d spent her last dime on the taxi that brought her
back to Manhattan. What to do next?

  Before she could make up her mind, though, things were decided for her.

  They came out of nowhere. Two men emerged from the pedestrians milling around her, gripped either arm, and hustled her down the street.

  “Make a sound and you’ll die,” one whispered to her, and she swallowed the instinctive scream welling in her throat.

  The crossed the street and went into a small park across from the Dime Museum. There were three other men there, waiting. One of them was the reptilian joker she’d first seen in Kien’s condominium.

  “The booksssss,” he hissed, coming close to Jennifer. “Where are they?”

  She flinched backward from the long forked tongue that lolled from his mouth.

  “I-I don’t have them on me.”

  “I can ssssee that.” He stared without blinking at her bikini-clad figure. “Where are they?”

  “If I told you then you wouldn’t need me.”

  The reptilian joker grinned, dripping saliva from the overlong incisors that hung down from his upper jaw. He leaned forward and his tongue flickered caressingly over Jennifer’s face. She flinched backward at the warm, wet touch of it. The joker stooped and his tongue slipped down the column of her throat, between her breasts, then up again and down her bare arms. It rasped sensuously on her forearm and Jennifer shivered, half in fear, half in delight. The man gripping her right arm held it stiffly at the wrist, and the joker licked her palm before she could close it into a fist. The tongue lingered on her hand, then the joker straightened himself and pulled his tongue back into his mouth.

  “We don’t need you anyway,” he hissed. “You tasssste of the alien, Tachyon.” His eyes narrowed. “Why did you give him the book?”

  The card hadn’t lied, Jennifer thought. The suit had once belonged to Tachyon and this joker had somehow gotten his scent off it. She couldn’t deny his accusation, but she didn’t want to tell them that she’d put the books in the statue, either. She had to come up with a good story, but she wasn’t a very good liar.