Zoe belly-flopped toward the rifle and grabbed it. She got to her feet, turned toward the faint light of the souk, and collided full tilt with the solid bulk of a man in a black cloak. He twisted the rifle from her grip and immobilized Zoe in a bear hug. A joker in a black robe took the rifle from him and aimed it toward Zoe, The barrel of the thing looked as big as a cannon. Zoe kicked at her captor's legs, but she couldn't get any leverage.
"Whoa, there! What the hell is going on?" The man who held her had a southern drawl. His eyes were huge and yellow, a devil's eyes.
"Those pricks tried to rape me!" Zoe yelled. "Let me go!"
The vendors in the souk continued to set up their wares for morning, pretending not to notice the commotion near the gate.
The joker with the captured rifle looked in at the mess in the cul-de-sac and whistled. "She tore 'em up good," he said.
"Deal with it," the yellow-eyed man said. He turned Zoe around so that she stood beside him. His fingers found a nerve just above her elbow and squeezed it.
"Ouch!"
"Hush," the man said. "Come over here."
He marched her to an enclosed space between the wall and the back of a striped booth that sold tea. He didn't let go of her arm.
"What happened?"
"I'm looking for the Fists. I need to talk to the Black Dog. Those bastards tried to kill me."
"All you wanted was to talk?"
"That's all."
"What's the message? If it has to do with danger for the quarter, you'd better tell me."
"No. I'll talk to the Black Dog, but not to anyone else."
"You just took out three good men," the joker said "Who are you?"
"Zoe. Zoe Harris." That wasn't the name on her paycheck, that wasn't the name on the checks she gave her landlord. "Uh, Sara Smith."
"Yeah. Sure."
"I want to speak to the Black Dog."
"He doesn't like aces. Neither do I."
"I'm not - " But she was. The evidence of her powers was smeared all over the walls of that cul-de-sac. "I don't - "
"Balthazar!" Needles bellowed as he skidded around the corner of the booth. "Let her go, man!"
Balthazar turned Zoe so that she was held tight against him, a human shield. She felt a cold circle of metal push against her ribs. Needles braked to a stop, his claws flashing, and dropped his hands to his sides.
"She's mine. She won't mess up again, I promise. Please, Balthazar?"
"Jesus, kid. You almost got her killed." Balthazar pushed Zoe toward Needles. "Take her home. Get her out of here."
Needles grabbed her waist. "We're going. We're going, okay?"
"Tell him!" Zoe yelled over her shoulder as Needles turned her toward the souk.
"Shut up," Needles hissed in her ear. "Please, Zoe."
There were tears in his eyes. He would die of embarrassment if she noticed them. She let the boy lead her home.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Forty-Second Street wasn't what it used to be. A couple of years back, the Deuce was solid porno theaters, adult bookstores and sleazeball hotels, teeming with hustlers, junkies, and midnight cowboys. These days ... well, you wouldn't call it respectable, but so much of the XXX action had moved over to video that half the porno theaters had been forced to convert to real films or go dark.
The Wet Pussycat used to be half a block down from Jay's office, a lifetime ago. Now Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations owned a whole building in the West Village, Jay's old office had been taken over by a Korean psychic, and the Wet Pussycat was the Cinefan, screening black-and-white classics twenty-four hours a day. It cost nine bucks to get in, which made the Cinefan either the most expensive movie house on the Deuce or the cheapest hotel, judging from the number of bag ladies, junkies, and teenage runaways nodded out in the sagging seats, Jay figured it was the latter.
It was still very dark, though.
Jay waited until his eyes had adjusted, and strolled slowly down the aisle, scanning the faces of his fellow cinefans. Only a few were paying any attention to the screen, where people in evening dress were throwing huge coins at a very large monkey with a piano on his head. The man Jay wanted wasn't hard to pick out. There he was in the sixth row, center, engrossed in the drama, a huge man, ugly as sin, eating popcorn with both hands. Jay sat down beside him. "Rondo Hatten, right?" he said.
Rondo looked at him, startled. He was uglier than half the people in Jokertown. "Jay? What are you doing here?"
"I got a sudden to urge to see King Kong at two in the morning, what else?" Jay said, helping himself to some popcorn. It was stale and tasted of hot grease. Golden Flavor, they called it at the concession stand. Some things never change.
"It's Mighty Joe Young," Rondo corrected him.
"Just so long as it isn't giving you any ideas," Jay said.
"How did you know I was here?"
"You weren't at home, you weren't at the office, and you weren't at Ezili's. Where else would you be?" On screen, the big monkey was tearing up the nightclub now and lots of people in evening dress were running and screaming. "Don't you have this on tape?"
"On laserdisc," Rondo corrected, "but there's nothing like seeing it on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen."
"Right," Jay said. "I forgot, you're a purist, you want the whole filmic experience, the sticky floors, the rancid grease on the popcorn, the audience all around you ..."
"Hey, shut the fuck up," someone behind them shouted.
"Let's go over to Port Authority and grab a cup," Jay told his partner. "We need to talk."
"You don't want to miss the part where Joe saves the orphans from the fire," Rondo Hatten said.
"Yes I do," Jay told him. "Besides, I think we got some orphans of our own that need saving."
"I told you guys to shut the fuck up!" the angry voice said. A hand the size of Rhode Island grabbed Jay by the shoulder.
Jay glanced back. The face behind him was prettier than Rondo Hatten's, but not by much; the breath that came with it was a lot worse. "Don't you know it's rude to talk in a movie theater?" Jay asked. He shaped his right hand into a gun and pointed it between the close set eyes. "Let go of me, please."
"You want that finger shoved up your asshole, you just keep pointing it at me," the angry man said.
"Wrong answer," Jay said squeezing his trigger. There was the familiar soft pop and the angry man was gone. He turned back to his partner. "Let's go."
The junior partner in Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations, who sometimes called himself Mr. Creighton and sometimes Jeremiah Strauss and sometimes Mr. Nobody, cleaned the Golden Flavor off his fingers with a napkin and followed Jay up the aisle and out onto Forty-Second Street. "Where'd you send him?" he asked when they were outside the theater.
"Our Lady of Perpetual Misery," Jay said.
"The church?"
"The steeple," Jay said. "He didn't look real religious to me, but you never know. Besides, if Quasiman is going to pop into my bedroom, I figured turnabout was fair play."
"Oh," Jerry said. "He found you, then." He scowled. A scowl on Rondo Hatten's face was quite a sight to see.
"He found me," Jay admitted.
Jerry brooded on that as he ambled along, hands in his pockets. Finally he got the complaint out. "How come he wanted you?" he said querulously. "What am I, a potted plant?"
Jay sighed. As much as he liked his junior partner, Jerry's insecurities sometimes wore him out. "I've been working Jokertown a long time. Father Squid and Dutton and the rest trust me. They don't know who you are."
"My name is right there on the door with yours. Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations."
"So you're a name on a frosted glass door. Jokers don't trust anyone, not without good reason. What's Creighton to them? They don't even know his first name. For that matter, I don't know his first name. Does Creighton have a first name?"
"I haven't made up my mind yet."
"Real helpful," Jay opined, deadpan.
"Even so,"
Jerry said. "It was rude. I was the one on duty. He could have told me what the case was about. All he said was, 'The Black Trump,' and 'Where is Jay Ackroyd?', and I was so startled I told him. Then he vanished, just like that, without so much as a by-your-leave. He treated me like I was nobody."
"You are Nobody," Jay put in.
"Yes, but he doesn't know that."
Jay was losing his patience. "Father Squid didn't give him any messages for Humphrey Bogart."
Jerry looked startled. "How did you know that I was - "
"I'm a trained detective," Jay said. "You know, Jerry, if you keep turning into movie stars around the office, people are going to figure out that Creighton's not what he seems."
"It wasn't Bogart, it was Sam Spade," Jerry said, his tone defensive. "I forgot I had it on. The office was closed, the door was locked, I was finishing up the report on the Wedaa surveillance, and all of a sudden Quasiman pops out of nowhere. There was no time to work on my face." He put on a peevish tone and tried to change the subject. "What's a Black Trump, anyway?"
"No idea," Jay told him, "But I don't like the sound of it."
The Port Authority Bus Terminal was a hop, skip, and a couple of junkies down the street. They found an all-night doughnut stand. Jay ordered coffee, black and very strong, served in a cardboard cup. Jerry got a cruller sprinkled with powdered sugar. The muggers and the chickenhawks were giving them a wide berth, and no wonder. Rondo was almost as big as the monkey in the movie, only meaner. "I can see why you picked this look," Jay said.
Jerry smiled. It looked odd on that huge misshapen face, shy and tentative and strangely gentle. "Rondo's great for walking around bad neighborhoods late at night," he said proudly, "but you wouldn't want to wear him on a date."
"No," Jay said, "listen, we got trouble. A whole bunch of Jokertown's leading citizens were picked up earlier this evening. Father Squid, Charles Dutton, Finn and another doctor down at the Jokertown Clinic, Oddity, Troll, god knows who else."
"Picked up?" Jerry said. "By the police?"
"Feds, I think. The NYPD knew nothing about any of this until it went down. They were howling bloody murder for an hour or two, then someone got a phone call and now they won't say a word. Quas said Snotman was involved, so I had Melissa do some digging."
"You went to her first?" Jerry said miffed again.
"She was with Justice for years, she still has contacts. I figured she could find out the score if anyone could. I was right. The operation was Special Executive Task Force, start to finish. The strikes were well coordinated, simultaneous, and there was a SCARE ace with each team. Snots at the Dime Museum, Lady Black at the Jokertown Clinic, Jim Dandy at the church. Slamdancer, Bloodhound, and a couple of others are in town too, so it could be there were more arrests we don't know about."
"Hoo boy," Jerry said. "Sounds serious. Was anyone hurt?"
"The Oddity tried to fight back and Snotman pounded them into guano. Then Quas gave Snots a bear hug and both of them vanished. That's the last time anyone has seen Snotman."
"Where did they take the people they arrested?"
"That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Problem is, the answer is classified. No one has been charged with a crime, you understand. According to my sources in the cophouse, Father Squid and Dutton and the others are just being held in protective custody."
"Can they do that?" Jerry said, surprised.
"Not legally," Jay said. "Melissa is going to hunt up Dr. Praetorius, he'll file a habeas corpus and wave some papers at them, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it doing a whole lot of good. You know what this smells like to me?"
"Card Sharks," Jerry blurted suddenly.
"Bingo," Jay said, smiling.
"But why?" Jerry asked. "What's this all about?"
"I don't know," Jay admitted. "What's worse, I think the feds just scooped up everyone who does know." He leaned across the table and brushed powdered sugar off his junior partner's lapel. "Now here's the interesting part. Quasiman isn't the the only one on the loose. He said that Hannah Davis escaped them at the museum, along with a joker who may or may not be Gregg Hartmann."
"Hartmann?" Jerry said. "Hartmann's dead."
"Is he?" Jay asked. The last few years, with the jumper gangs running around stealing people's bodies, you could never be sure who was dead and who wasn't. Dr. Tachyon, the Turtle, Elvis, even Jerry and Jay themselves, at certain points all of them had been presumed dead. "Maybe he is and maybe he isn't, I don't care. The point is, somewhere out there is a loose end. Two loose ends, actually. Hannah Davis and a joker who looks like a yellow caterpillar."
Jay had a good view of the escalators that led down to the subway. A boy got off the Up while Jerry was pondering the case. He stood there a moment, a file folder tucked under his arm while his eyes searched the terminal. A firefly was buzzing around him.
He was well dressed for a kid who looked no older than eleven. His suit was Italian, charcoal gray, and he wore it with black wingtips, a white shirt, and a red silk tie, but there was still something about him that made you think of Heehaw. Maybe it was the mop of blond hair that fell across those deep blue eyes, or maybe it was the freckles. He had freckles on freckles on freckles.
His firefly was a point of light, bright and quick, tireless. It darted and circled around him like an electric mosquito.
"Him too?" Jerry said when he saw the kid. "Why am I always the last one on the big cases? If you called Sascha back from Maui, I'm going to be really annoyed."
"I wouldn't dare," Jay said. "Sascha knows where all the bodies are buried. Never mess with a telepath's vacation."
A teenaged hooker sauntered up to the freckle-faced boy. "So who are you, Peter Pan?" she asked, to general laughter.
"That's Pann, you douchebag," the boy snapped at her. He pronounced it Pahn. "It's Dutch."
"Peter," Jay called out. "Over here."
Pann turned and spotted them. He walked over briskly. "I want double time for this," he said as he sat down. "Do you know what time it is, Ackroyd? Pinkerton's never woke me up at three in the morning." His tink darted around his head, buzzing. Peter swatted at it irritably.
"Let's see the picture," Jay said. He didn't bother asking if he'd gotten it. Pann had been with Pinkerton's in Chicago for nine years before Jay hired him away. He was as good as they came. Not to mention being a wild card.
Peter handed him the file folder. Jay opened it and took out a mug shot, a glossy enlargement of the face of a young woman. It was a terrible picture, but she was still beautiful. He showed it to Jerry Strauss. "Hannah Davis," he said. "This is a blowup of her fire department ID photo."
"I remember seeing her on Peregrine's Perch," Jerry said. His Rondo Hatten face suddenly brightened. "I get it," he said eagerly. "We're going to find her."
Jay shook his head. "Nah," he said. "The feds are."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Ray was not a happy camper on the flight back to D.C. He and Crypt Kicker sat across the aisle from each other, the only passengers in the small courier jet winging back home at supersonic speeds.
"Jesus, Bobby Joe," Ray said, "how could you work for that scum?"
Puckett shrugged ponderously. When he spoke it was even more difficult to understand him. Since Ray had crushed his windpipe his every breath was accompanied by a gasping wheeze that sounded just awful. Ray often wondered what incredible spark of vitality kept the dead ace going and going after suffering such tremendous physical damage. Maybe it was as Puckett himself believed, a touch of the divine.
"Well, I'm sorry, Billy, but they told me they was doing the Lord's work."
"I don't pretend to know God's mind," Ray said, "but somehow I doubt that he wants all jokers and aces wiped from the face of the earth."
Puckett shook his head ponderously. "That's not what their serum does," he said. "It helps people, not kills them. Why, I feel better already."
"WHAT!" Ray jumped up in his seat and backed away from Puckett as far as he coul
d get. "You let them inject you with the Black Trump?"
"Sure," Puckett wheezed. "And I don't feel bad at all."
"You stupid son of a bitch," Ray groaned. "You just stay over there. Keep your distance."
Jesus! If Crypt Kicker was infected, maybe he'd caught it too. He'd fought the dead ace, touched him, for Christ's sake. Ray suddenly ran to the plane's tiny bathroom and locked himself in. He scrubbed his hands furiously, part of himself saying that this was foolish, that it was probably already too late. Another part of his mind said well, maybe not.
Puckett was an unusual case. He was an ace, for one thing. For another, he was already dead. How the Black Trump would affect him would be anybody's guess. Maybe it wouldn't affect him at all.
Ray went back into the cabin and sat as far away from Puckett as possible.
"I'm sorry, Billy," the dead ace said in an apologetic voice. "I didn't mean to hurt you when we was fighting. I just want to do the Lord's work and avert suffering and all."
"That's fine," Ray said. "You just do it over there while I stay here."
An hour passed and Ray began to think that maybe he was worrying for nothing. Puckett, after all, was the most indestructible being he a ever run across. Nothing could do the motherfucker in. Nothing could -
Puckett suddenly turned from his seat in the front row to face Ray sitting in the back.
"I feel strange, Billy. Did it get hot in here?"
Ray stood slowly, staring at Puckett. "No, Bobby Joe, I don't think so."
Puckett pawed at the hood that covered his face, finally pulling it off to reveal his grotesque features. Puckett had killed himself before his ace had turned so strangely. He'd put a gun in his mouth and blown away most of his right cheek and his eye. That part of his face was a hideous ruin. The other part was even uglier. It was speckled with dozens of tiny hemorrhages. His remaining eyeball was filled with blood and was a sickly purple color. As Ray watched, Crypt Kicker's eyelid started to leak blood and a black fluid ran from his nose down over his mouth and chin.
The hulking ace stood, clutching at the cabin wall for support. He tried to shuffle toward Ray.
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