His howling grew louder, and Brennan turned to face the rest of the cell.
“Anyone else?” he asked quietly.
There were mumbled denials, then a high, feminine voice said, “How about me?”
The mob of thugs parted like the Red Sea and there were awed, unbelieving whispers as Jennifer walked naked through the rear wall of the cell. She ran to Brennan and threw her arms around him. “Take a deep breath,” she said, and they sank through the floor of the cell.
It was like nothing Brennan had ever felt before, almost like what dying might be like. They went through the floor and landed, light as feathers, on the floor of the room below the cell.
Brennan ducked out of Jennifer’s arms and glanced around quickly. It was dark and quiet. They seemed to be in some kind of file-storage area.
“Let’s see if we can find you some clothes somewhere,” he said to Jennifer, but she didn’t answer. She looked dazed and drawn, and only turned to look at him when he touched her arm. He suddenly realized what a strain it must have been ghosting him. His mass was well over anything Jennifer had ever attempted to dematerialize before. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Jennifer nodded, but even that seemed to be too much of an effort for her. She collapsed limply on the dusty floor. He bent over her. She was breathing long, shallow breaths. Her pulse was weak and thready.
She obviously needed medical attention, but Tachyon, the only doctor Brennan trusted, was in Atlanta. At any rate, he had no time to agonize over it. They had to move. They needed a place to hide and recover. They needed a sanctuary.
They were being followed.
Jay looked away from the taxi’s sideview mirror. “Somebody’s on us,” he said.
“What?” Tachyon turned all the way around and gaped out the back rear window, staring suspiciously at the Volvo immediately behind.
Jay touched his arm. “Easy. He’s good. You’ll never spot him that way. Cabby.” The detective fished out his wallet. “There’s an extra fifty in it for you if you can lose the gray Dodge. Back about three cars.”
“Sure thing, mister,” the cabbie said, grinning.
Jay rummaged through his billfold, found a ten and three ones, cursed under his breath. A bribe here, a bribe there, pretty soon they add up to real money. He showed the bills to Tachyon. The alien grumbled and came up with the cash, leaning forward to tuck the money into the driver’s shirt pocket. The cabbie hit the gas, and the taxi turned left, squealing. Tachyon landed in Jay’s lap.
In the front seat, Blaise grinned hugely. “Just like Paris, K’ijdad.”
“Huh?” Jay’s mind was on the car behind them.
“Never mind,” said Tach. “You know enough of my secrets.”
Jay glanced behind. “Still on us. Damn, he’s good.”
Tach was flitting about, as nervous as a bird. “What are we going to do?”
“There’s probably not going to be time for any long good-byes.”
The Motel 6 sign loomed ahead.
“Sara’s there, too,” said Tachyon.
It took Jay a moment to place the name; Sara Morgenstern, the reporter who accused Hartmann of being a monster, the one Mackie Messer had tried unsuccessfully to snuff. “Jesus Christ. You got the whole New York Philharmonic there? Maybe the Dodgers?”
“This is no laughing matter.”
“No shit. Punch it, buddy. Everything she’s got.”
The cab gunned down the street, veered into the motel lot on two wheels. They were out before it stopped. Jay threw his last ten at the driver and ran, his broken rib screaming with every step as he dashed across the asphalt.
The door was opened by a dark, round-faced man in his sixties. Behind him on the bed, a pale blond woman clutched a pillow as she watched the tube. The Russian backed up quickly as the three of them rushed inside. Jay slammed the door and locked it. Tachyon went straight for the blonde and yanked her to her feet. Blaise hugged the Russian.
“No time to explain,” Tachyon said breathlessly. “Hartmann knows. There is someone after us.” He grabbed the front of the girl’s dress and ripped it off her with a single sharp yank. Sara gave a shriek and tried to cover herself with her hands, looking at the alien like he’d gone nuts. “Into the shower,” Tach said, pushing her toward the john. She was wearing nothing but a little lacy bit of bra. Her pubic hair was the same pale blond, Jay noted with interest. “Don’t come out, and by the way, you rent by the hour.” Tach got the bra off on the run. Jay had to admire his manual dexterity.
Footsteps came pounding down the hall outside.
The Russian took it calmly. “There’s no time,” he said, holding Blaise.
“Yes, there is,” said Tach. “Jay will get you out of Atlanta. For the god’s sake, Blaise, move!”
The Russian disentangled himself from the boy.
“Open up! Open the goddamn door!”
Jay knew the voice. Carnifex.
“Now!” Tachyon urged.
Jay shrugged, pointed at the Russian. There was a pop. All of a sudden they were short a Slav. Tach grabbed some vodka off a dresser, clutched it to his chest, and dove onto the bed.
The door shattered with a crack. Billy Ray stepped through the splinters, brushing aside a jagged shard of wood with the back of his head. He had a gun. A big gun, one of those Dirty Harry jobs. The white gloves he wore as part of his fighting togs made it look even bigger and blacker. He pointed it at Tachyon, which was fine with Jay. He hated guns, especially when they were pointed at him. “All right, where is he?” Ray wanted to know. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Huh?” asked Jay.
“Asshole!” Carnifex shoved at him contemptuously with the flat of his hand. Jay sat down hard. Carnifex looked around, spotted the closet, and acted like he’d made a discovery. He ripped the door off its hinges, grabbed handfuls of clothes, flung them to the floor. There was no Russian in the closet. Ray grimaced, dropped to his knees, peered under the bed. There was no Russian under the bed. He got up, swung toward the bathroom. “Get out of there. Now!”
“Wal, sugah, how many you boys there gonna be?” Sara called out from under the shower, in the worst Southern accent Jay Ackroyd had ever heard.
Frowning, Carnifex stepped into the bathroom. They heard him yank back the shower curtain. They heard Sara scream. They heard a slap. Ray came out of the bathroom with a red cheek and a wet costume, looking dour. “He was here. That goddamn Russian was here.”
“Russian?” Jay looked at Tachyon, shrugged. “I don’t see any Russian. Do you see a Russian? And sweetcheeks in there sure don’t sound Russian. Russian costs you extra.”
“Why did you try to get away from me?”
Tachyon took a long drink. “Because I was afraid you were the press, and I didn’t want to be found visiting a prostitute.”
“You always take a kid?” He gestured at Blaise with the .44.
“Could you put the gun away? It makes me nervous when you wave it around like that. Most fatal shootings are accidental, you know.”
“This wouldn’t be an accident. Answer the fucking question.”
Tachyon cleared his throat. “Well, that is the matter in a nutshell. It’s time the boy learned.” He glanced about the motel room. “This lacks the ambience that I could wish, but she is very good. I tried her myself last night. Of course, nothing can compare with the woman my father gave me on my fourteenth birthday—”
Disgusted, Carnifex bulled out through the broken door.
Jay looked at Tachyon with new respect. “Fourteen?” he said. “No kidding?”
“Oh Ackroyd, please!”
1:00 P.M.
Brennan carried Jennifer, wrapped up in his denim jacket, down into the sewer line. She seemed to be getting worse. Her skin was feeling cool and feverish in turn, and she was murmuring gibberish that Brennan couldn’t make heads or tails of.
He moved as quickly as he could through the semidarkness of the sewer. He had to stop every now and then and put J
ennifer down in order to climb to the surface to check his route, but Brennan had a good sense of direction below as well as above ground. It led him with only a few false turns to his destination. Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. He carried Jennifer back up to the surface and over to the small rectory attached to the rear of the church. He kicked the door several times with his foot. Father Squid opened the door after a moment, his look of annoyance quickly turning to one of surprise and concern.
“Merciful Lord,” he said, “what happened?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment, Father,” Brennan said, pushing past the priest. “Right now we have to get a doctor. One you can trust to keep his mouth shut. Know anybody that fits that description?”
“Well, there’s Mr. Bones—”
“Get him.”
“He’s not a real doctor—”
“Is he good?”
Father Squid nodded. “The people around here swear by him. Sometimes I think he knows more about joker physiology than Tachyon.”
Brennan nodded. “All right. Get him.”
Father Squid bustled off to his bedroom to make the call, while Brennan set Jennifer down gently on the priest’s beat-up old sofa and then flexed his tired arms. He knelt down by her and felt her forehead. It was cold again, although sweat was beading up and running down her forehead and high cheekbones.
As he held her hand it began to turn ghostly in his as she phased in and out of her material state, uncontrollably and unconsciously.
“Jennifer!” He tried to wake her up, but she didn’t seem to hear him. He was afraid to shake her, afraid to move her at all.
Her skin was white as death, her breath infrequent and shallow.
Father Squid came back into his neat little living room, bringing a blanket that he gently draped over Jennifer. “He was in. He’ll be here soon. Now, tell me, my son, what’s going on here?”
“I guess I owe you that,” Brennan said. He settled down tiredly on the floor next to Jennifer, refused the priest’s offer of coffee, and told him what had happened that day.
While he spoke, half of his mind was condemning the obsession that had put him and Jennifer in this desperate situation, and half was wondering about the palace and Chrysalis’s downstairs neighbors, and how he could get by the police surrounding the place.
When he finished the tale, there was a slow, measured knocking on the rectory door. Father Squid went to answer it and let in a tall black man who looked like a resurrectionist out of a Boris Karloff movie. Mr. Bones was old, thin, and gaunt. He wore a white shirt and an old black suit that was clean and neatly repaired, but much too short for his long, lanky limbs.
This joker wasn’t severe as things went. In fact, the two feathery antennae growing out of his forehead were rather attractive. They twitched like ferns blowing in a gentle breeze as Father Squid introduced him to Brennan.
“This the patient?” Bones asked as he knelt down before Jennifer. He stripped the blanket off her. As he took her pulse he bent very close to her and moved his head up and down her body. His antennae twitched and rotated like sensitive radar receptors.
“How is she, doctor?” Brennan asked quietly.
“I’m not a doctor,” Bones replied, still running his antennae over Jennifer. After a moment he rocked back on his heels and looked at Brennan and Father Squid. “Her system’s had quite a shock. Right now all we can do for her is let her rest.” He covered her with the blanket and stood up. “And hope for the best.”
4:00 P.M.
“So, Nephi,” Jay said, leaning against the hood of Jesse Jackson’s limo. Tachyon was inside the Hyatt Regency, conferring with his new candidate, and Ackroyd was getting tired of waiting. “The feds pay good, or what?”
Jesse Jackson’s ace bodyguard looked at him like he was some kind of canker sore. He was a tall thin Mormon with a receding hairline, a gaunt chiseled face, and the best damn posture Jay had ever seen. The press called him Straight Arrow; the nameplate over his breast pocket said NEPHI CALLENDAR. “Some of us are not interested in personal gain,” he told Jay. “Some of us are just grateful for a chance to serve God and our country.”
Jay smiled. “Yeah, sure. And some of you just like to beat people up, right?”
Straight Arrow frowned and looked away.
“Heard that Carnifex got in some kind of brawl Sunday night,” Jay said casually. “Or maybe it was Monday morning. Really pounded the shit out of some guy.”
“Is that a fact?” Callendar did not seem terribly interested. “I wouldn’t know. I’m sure no more force was applied than was appropriate to the situation. Ray is an experienced agent with an outstanding record.”
“A hell of a dresser, too,” Jay said. “Me, I don’t think I could wear all that white. It’s a bitch to keep clean. I like your outfit a lot better.” The Mormon ace wore a tailored gray dress uniform. It looked very crisp and proper and military, until you picked up on the Justice Department insignia on the sleeves and the dark red braid on cap and shoulder boards. His collar was fastened with a jeweled pin fashioned in the shape of a flaming arrow. “Free laundry service come with the job, or you guys have to pay the dry cleaning yourself?” Jay wanted to know.
Straight Arrow took a long pointed look at Jay’s puce suit. “I’d recommend burning, not cleaning,” he said.
“Funny man,” Jay said. “These are Tachy’s. I think he wants them back, don’t ask me why.”
“Why all the interest in laundry, Ackroyd?”
“When my face got rearranged, I bled all over my lucky shirt.” The bruises were a delightful greenish yellow shade today. “You know how it is when you got a lucky shirt. I figured you feds might know a place where I could get it cleaned. I hear that Carnifex had blood all over him after his little fracas on Sunday night.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Ackroyd,” Callendar told him. “As far as I know, Ray was with Senator Hartmann Sunday night, as per his assignment. If a situation arose requiring him to use force, regulations would have required that he file a report. No such report is on file.”
Before Jay could reply, Tachyon emerged through the front door of the Hyatt, Jesse Jackson at his side. The sidewalk was crowded with Jackson supporters waving bright red JESSE! signs. Straight Arrow’s eyes moved restlessly, scanning the faces, as the two men clasped hands and lifted them over their heads. The black man was so much taller that Tachyon had to stand on his toes.
A ragged cheer went up, then Jackson and Tachyon headed for the limo, smiling and shaking hands as the spectators crowded in around them. Jackson pressed the flesh with practiced ease, but Tachyon looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“What now?” Jay asked Tachyon when he reached the limo.
“Jesse wants us to talk to the jokers outside the Omni,” Tachyon explained. He was wilting in the Atlanta heat. “He and I together. His positions on wild-card issues are just as strong as Hartmann’s, if they will only listen…” He gave a long deep sigh. “Jay, if you have other leads to follow up, there’s really no need for you to come along.”
Jay thought about it for a moment. As far as he knew, he didn’t have a single lead that was worth a damn. He shrugged. “Might as well,” he said, “can’t dance.”
Inside the limo, the air-conditioning was cranked up and cooking, but Tachyon wilted visibly once out of the public eye. Even Jay could see how much he dreaded facing the jokers who had gathered in front of the convention center, many of whom considered him a traitor for deserting Hartmann in his hour of need. “They hate me now,” he said with despair, glancing through the tinted windows at the crowds.
“Only some,” Jackson said as the limo came to a stop. “It’s not as if you switched your support to Barnett. I’m not that unacceptable, am I?”
“Not to me.” Tachyon squeezed Jesse’s arm. Jay wasn’t sure who was reassuring whom. “And you will convince them. I know it.”
“Well, help me a little.”
“I will do my uttermost best,” T
achyon declared.
The limo doors were thrown open, and they climbed out one by one. Secret Service men in dark suits and sunglasses were watching the crowd suspiciously, and a squad of uniformed cops had cordoned off a narrow path from the limo to the flatbed truck, hung with red Jackson banners, where the microphones were waiting. Jokers pressed closely around them on all sides. Some stared in dead silence. Others grinned and yelled out their support. Still others screamed obscenities. Everyone was cooking in the heat.
“How can they hate them so?” Tachyon asked plaintively of no one in particular. “They are pitiful, and so brave. So very brave.”
The cops struggled to hold back that sea of twisted humanity as the jokers surged forward. Slowly, the party began to make its way down to the truck. Hands were thrust at them from all sides, between the linked arms of the policemen, over their shoulders, around their backs. Jesse moved along one side of the line, grabbing each hand in turn, giving it a quick squeeze, then moving on to the next. Tachyon, less enthusiastic, worked the other side. An elderly man with gills spat in his face. Others tried to kiss his ring.
Jay kept his hands shoved deep in his pockets, several paces behind. Straight Arrow walked beside him, keeping a careful eye on Jackson. The ace’s broad forehead was dotted with sweat.
Overhead the Turtle slid across the sky. Sometime during the night someone had painted HARTMANN! across his shell in silver letters three feet high.
A vast, pale wall of moon-faced flesh suddenly loomed up behind two policemen, broke through the cordon, and waddled toward Tachyon. Secret Service men reached for their pistols. “No, it’s okay,” Jay said, “that’s Doughboy. He’s simple-minded, but he won’t hurt him.” Straight Arrow weighed Jay’s words, gave a curt nod. The Secret Service relaxed. Doughboy and Tachyon exchanged a few quiet words. The alien looked like he was going to break down and cry.
“I hate this,” Straight Arrow muttered.
Somewhere in the crowd, a chant of “traitor!” went up. Tachyon stopped and hid his face in his hands. Jesse had to put an arm around his shoulders and whisper encouragement in his ear to get the Takisian going again. Even then, Tach’s smile looked like it had been pasted on. The alien grasped the flipper of a legless joker who had thrust it up between a policeman’s legs. He said a few words, smiled, moved on. More hands reached for him.