Dead Man's Hand

  “No,” Fadeout admitted. He looked around, suppressing a shiver. “But I was, well, a little concerned about meeting in this godforsaken place. It gives me the creeps.”

  “I like it. Dark. Quiet. Plenty of cover.” Brennan was suddenly tired of all the small talk. “Let’s talk about Chrysalis.”

  Fadeout glanced at Lazy Dragon, who was watching impassively. “I know that you’re looking for Chrysalis’s murderer. You caused quite a scene at Squisher’s Basement. I’m afraid that you totally ruined Bludgeon’s reputation.”

  “It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t the same old Bludgeon.”

  Fadeout nodded. “He’s dying of AIDS. That’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone, but I can’t say that I’m too sorry. The man was a disgusting brute. Now he’s disgusting and pathetic.”

  “I didn’t call this meeting to discuss Bludgeon’s health problems.”

  “Right. I want to help.”

  “Help?”

  “Yes. Help find Chrysalis’s killer.”

  “I see.” Brennan smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. “And in return?”

  Fadeout shrugged. “I want nothing more than you want. I want Kien removed.”

  Brennan smiled slowly.

  “I don’t know what you have against him,” Fadeout continued. “But I know that you want him bad. As for me, well, let’s say that I could envision the Shadow Fists doing quite nicely with a new leader.”

  Brennan glanced at Lazy Dragon. “And a new chief lieutenant?”

  “I’m very generous,” Fadeout said, “to those who help me. I’ve been generous to Lazy Dragon. I was generous to you in the past and can be again.”

  “The only thing I need,” Brennan said, “is information.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Did Wyrm kill Chrysalis?”

  “Well, you cut right to the heart of the matter, don’t you?” Fadeout said, shaking his head.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Fadeout said carefully, “we all know that Wyrm has a violent temper, and he’s totally devoted to Kien. Chrysalis, of course, knew that Kien is head of the Fists, but she’d kept quiet about it. If, however, she found out something that threatened Kien, Wyrm might have had the initiative to do something on his own.”

  “Like finding out about Kien’s new designer drug?”

  “Rapture?” Fadeout asked. “Yes, you’ve learned about our new head candy, haven’t you?”

  “Something about it.”

  “Perhaps Chrysalis learned something about it, too.”

  “And Wyrm killed her.”

  Fadeout shrugged again. “I make no accusations. It is a thought, however. I can make a few discrete inquiries on the subject.”

  Brennan nodded. “All right. I’ll be in touch.”

  “One thing,” Fadeout said as Brennan turned away, “you might keep your eyes open for. Chrysalis’s secret files.”

  “Secret files?”

  “Her information cache. The talk is that she kept meticulous records concerning everything she’d ever discovered on everybody in the city, and those records didn’t turn up when the police searched the Palace. And you can bet that the police had orders to search very thoroughly.”

  “What do you want with these files?”

  Fadeout smiled. “Someone has to take Chrysalis’s place.”

  Brennan shook his head. “You’re an ambitious man. First you want to replace Kien. Now you want to replace Chrysalis.”

  Fadeout shrugged. “A man has to stay busy.”

  “All right,” Brennan said. “I’ll keep my eyes open for them. I may want to have a look at them myself.”

  “Fine,” Fadeout said with a smile. “Have fun catching Chrysalis’s killer. Then come after Kien. I’ll be there to help you.”

  “We’ll see.” Brennan turned, stopped, turned back to Fadeout and Lazy Dragon. “One last thing. Ever hear of an ace named Doug Morkle?”

  Fadeout and Dragon exchanged glances. “No. Should I have?”

  “Beats me,” Brennan admitted. “He’s on my list of suspects, but no one has ever heard of the bastard.”

  “Morkle. Strange name. I’ll ask around.”

  Brennan nodded, turned again, and faded into the night, leaving Fadeout and Dragon to deal with a car whose radiator fluid was now an oily green puddle on the street.

  6:00 A.M.

  Jay opened his eyes and closed them again quickly.

  The light made his headache unbearable. The pounding behind his eyelids was like thunder, the left side of his face was a single dull mass of pain, and he could taste blood in his mouth. Somebody had yanked his hands behind his back and tied them together.

  When he tried to get up, something ground together inside his chest, and the pain was excruciating. A feeble groan escaped his lips. He rolled back and tried to lie very still. Maybe he should just go back to sleep.

  “I heard him,” a deep voice muttered, somewhere far away. “He moaned. He’s coming to.”

  “Bring him here, John,” someone else said. The second voice was vaguely familiar.

  Massive hands lifted him as easily as a grown man might lift a child, carried him across the room, and propped him up in a chair. The hands were not gentle. Jay had to stifle a scream.

  “Open your eyes, Mr. Ackroyd,” the second voice said.

  Reluctantly, Jay tried. His left eye was swollen almost shut.

  The grim reaper sat staring at him across an antique desk.

  “Dutton,” Jay managed, through cracked, bloody lips.

  The reaper nodded.

  A shadow fell across Jay. He forced himself to turn his head. It wasn’t until you got really close to the Oddity that you realized how big the fucker was. He could hear labored breathing from behind the fencing mask and feel the weight of eyes staring down implacably through the steel mesh.

  “You said you didn’t know the Oddity,” Jay said to Dutton.

  “I lied,” Dutton told him.

  Jay tried to think of a wisecrack, but his mind wasn’t in it. He closed his eyes again, forced them open. He felt like his head was going to explode. “I don’t,” he said, “don’t suppose you got any aspirin you could let me have?”

  “John,” Dutton said, “there’s a bottle of aspirin in my toilet. If you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Let him hurt,” the Oddity rumbled. “He doesn’t care how much we hurt, does he? Let him bleed for a while.”

  “I understand the sentiment,” Dutton replied. “But we do want his cooperation, after all. Please.”

  Grumbling, the Oddity shuffled through the bathroom door in the back of the office. Jay heard the medicine cabinet open with a bang, then the sound of water splashing into a sink.

  “My apologies,” Dutton said. “John’s temper often gets the better of him, and I’m afraid he does not like you.”

  The Oddity returned with a handful of aspirin tablets in one hand and a glass of water in the other. With his hands still tied behind his back, Jay could only open his mouth. The Oddity stuffed in a half-dozen aspirin, then lifted the water to his lips. Jay swallowed until he began choking.

  The Oddity grunted, stood up, and watched Jay sputter for breath. The joker’s right hand, the one that held the water glass, was big and rough, coarse dark hair covering the knuckles. The left was much smaller, more delicate, a woman’s hand, its fingernails long and pointed. Under the thick, dark clothing, Jay could see the swell of breasts. “Thanks,” he managed.

  “Fuck you,” the Oddity snarled.

  Jay turned back to Dutton. “You knew I was coming,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “You or someone like you,” Dutton replied. “How much is Barnett paying you to betray your own people?”

  For a moment Jay didn’t think he’d heard him right. “Barnett?” he said groggily. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Don’t try my patience, Mr. Ackroyd,” Dutton said wearily. “Why do aces insist on treating jokers as though we were retar
ded children? I didn’t get where I am by being stupid.”

  “You may be the smartest guy in the world, for all I know,” Jay said. “But you’re still wrong.”

  “Am I?” Dutton said. “Then why are you here?”

  Jay hesitated. “You know the jacket is the real McCoy?”

  “Yes.” Dutton regarded him from eyes deep sunk in that ghastly yellow face. “Chrysalis hinted as much when she gave it to me to incorporate into our diorama.”

  “The purloined letter,” Jay said. “Hide the goods in plain sight, where hundreds of tourists will see it every day and assume it’s just a replica of itself. Not bad at all. Only she didn’t tell you why she wanted it hidden, did she?”

  “No,” Dutton admitted. “It did pique my curiosity, but I had learned not to press her. After her death, I got the whole story.”

  “From us,” the Oddity put in. “We told him, after you left, that night you led us here. You aces think jokers have shit for brains, but this time the joke’s on you.”

  “Then you know about Hartmann?” Jay asked Dutton.

  “That he’s a wild card?” Dutton said. “What of it? He remains the last best hope we jokers have. Yes, he hides his condition. In the present political climate a sane man has no other choice. The public will never vote for a wild card, not even a latent like Hartmann, not when there’s a chance the virus will express and turn him into one of us. That’s why Leo Barnett wants the jacket.”

  “I’m not working for Leo Barnett—” Jay started.

  “Liar,” the Oddity snarled. “You’re taking his goddamned nat money to help him destroy Gregg.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jay said. “Hartmann’s a killer ace, he—”

  The Oddity moved faster than Jay would ever have guessed, grabbing him by the hair, slamming his head back against the chair, and slapping him hard enough to rattle teeth. “Shut up! Gregg’s the only friend the jokers have!”

  Jay had a mouthful of blood from his split lip. He spat it feebly at the fencing mask and called out to Dutton. “You just going to sit there and watch the Holy Trinity here beat me into ground chuck, or you want to hear me out?”

  “Let him alone, John,” Dutton said. “I want to hear what he has to say.” Reluctantly, the Oddity let go of Jay’s hair and stepped back away from the chair. The joker’s massive body shuddered. The fingers of its left hand seemed to be thickening and its breasts were shrinking visibly.

  “I don’t even know Leo Barnett,” Jay began.

  “You’re an ace who sells his services for money. I doubt that Barnett hired you personally. Nonetheless, you’re working in his interests. Why else would you want the jacket?”

  “That jacket got Chrysalis murdered,” Jay said. “And I hate to mention this, especially when I’m sitting here trussed up like a Christmas goose, but this great joker hero of yours is looking more and more like the one who did the trick.”

  “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 someone 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.”

  8:00 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.

  B
rennan 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 off, 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.”