Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel

  “I take it you’re about to tell me the worst part,” he said.

  She sniffed. “He’s got this barmy notion that this joker, I suppose it’s actually two jokers because they’re twins and they’re not so much conjoined as they just share a lower body, anyway, Croyd thinks they’re part of this gang that’s been kidnapping people, and they’re coming for him next. You see, he woke up a joker this time so he feels very threatened and fragile … emotionally fragile I mean because he’s hideously strong, with skin like rock, and when he makes a fist his fingers disappear and they become like giant sledgehammers.…”

  Franny pictured his soft nat body going up against hideously strong and rock skin, and sledgehammers. It was not a pretty picture. He rose abruptly, and dumped tea bags into the two mugs. Handed one to Abigail.

  “… He could really hurt someone if he had a mind to, and I’m afraid he does right now. Not that he would. He’s usually very good about controlling his impulses, but when he hasn’t slept…”

  “Is there a point in here somewhere? Are we coming to it soon?” he asked.

  Abigail’s fingers twisted and knotted in her lap. She tore them apart and pressed her palms against her cheeks. “So, he’s planning to kill them—him.” The final words came out in a rush.

  Now it was his turn to run his hands through his hair. “Jesus.” He stood and started pacing. “Why didn’t you report this at the precinct?”

  “Because I don’t want him arrested, and I don’t want him to hurt anyone, and he’s bound to fall asleep soon.”

  “You actually heard him say he was going to kill them?” She nodded. “So, what did you think I could do?”

  “I thought maybe you could help me … put him to sleep. Or help me lock him up until he does fall asleep.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten—I’m a nat. No powers.”

  “Your colleagues at the precinct said you were very clever and—” She broke off abruptly and turned bright red.

  “And what? What else do they say about me?”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That you’re an ambitious prick, and you’d knife anybody, even a friend, to get ahead.”

  That hurt. Enough to completely cancel out the grudging compliment. “I didn’t want the promotion,” Franny said, a refutation not to the woman in front of him, but to the universe at large.

  “All right. And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” Abigail asked.

  “Sorry, it’s been … well never mind, I won’t bore you with it.” He gave himself time to think by draining the last of his tea, refilling his cup with water, and setting it back in the microwave. “Do you know where Croyd is holed up?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you know where I can find these jokers?”

  “They’re working as shills at Freakers trying to get hapless tourists in the door.”

  “Okay, I see two approaches. We help put Croyd to sleep, or we get the jokers out of town. Or maybe we do both, a two-pronged attack.”

  “I’ve tried dousing his food with sleeping pills, but I have to be careful because he’s very paranoid right now, and the couple of times I succeeded it hasn’t done a damn thing. And I’m out of pills. I got them when my mum came to visit and they only gave me thirty, and I used quite a few of them during that nightmare, so I only had about seven to use on Croyd, and I didn’t want—”

  He stopped the seemingly inexhaustible flow of words. “Maybe we need something stronger than sleeping pills.”

  Dr. Bradley Finn, head of the Jokertown Clinic, agreed to see them. Finn was a man in his fifties with silver-streaked blond hair, and a small paunch that pushed out the material of the Hawaiian shirt he wore beneath his white doctor’s coat. The middle-age spread that was affecting the human torso wasn’t echoed in the body of the palomino pony that made up the rest of the good doctor’s form.

  “Yep, you’ve got a problem,” he said after hearing their story. “We’ve had occasions where we really, really needed Croyd to go the fuck to sleep, and we’ve tried everything, even horse tranquilizers. Nothing pharmaceutical works. His wild card decides when he’s going to sleep, aided and abetted by Croyd.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Franny said. “How can he use speed to stay awake, but drugs can’t put him to sleep?”

  “Damned if I know,” the doctor said. “Ask the virus.”

  Franny and Abigail exchanged looks. The doctor sensed their disappointment and her desperation. “Look, I’ve known Croyd for a long time, and I was able to put him to sleep back in the eighties—”

  “How?” Abigail demanded.

  “Brain entrainment and suggestion, but it takes time, and he was motivated. He’d promised some girl he wouldn’t go out with her cranked.”

  Franny risked a glance at Abigail. Her face was set as she tried to hold back any reaction. “Problem is when he’s in this state he’s very paranoid—”

  “No shit,” Abigail interrupted the doctor.

  “And this time he doesn’t want to go to sleep because he feels threatened,” Finn added.

  “You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know,” Franny said.

  “Bear with me. In addition to being paranoid he’s also very suggestible.” A faraway expression crossed the doctor’s face as he looked at a memory, and he gave a soft chuckle. He then gave himself a shake. “Point is, if you can get close enough to him you might be able to convince him to go to ground, or obsess about something else until the virus does put him to sleep.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Franny stood and shook hands with the joker.

  They walked out of the clinic accompanied by the sound of clashing bedpans, and the squeaking wheels on carts, moans and cries from patients, and incomprehensible gabble over the intercom. Franny felt like his clothes were absorbing the smells of alcohol, old coffee, overcooked peas, and sickness.

  Outside he said, “I’m going to go talk to these jokers. You keep an eye on Croyd, and warn me if anything changes. Here’s my card and my cell phone number.”

  Abigail started to walk away, then paused and looked back. “Thank you,” she added softly.

  The entrance to Freakers was between the spread legs of a neon multi-breasted joker woman. Standing at the entrance was the joker … jokers. Franny could see why Abby had been a bit vague. From the waist up they looked like two aging bodybuilders, but their torsos plunged into insanely wide hips set atop two pile-driver legs that culminated in extra-wide feet encased in black wingtips.

  The torso on the right wore a T-shirt that read REPENT OR BURN! The one on the left screamed out BLOW ME! The man wearing the religious T-shirt also held a Bible in one hand. “Do not enter this den of iniquity!”

  The twin with the goatee rolled his eyes. “Come right in. Feast your eyes, and grow a chubby—”

  “Actually, I want to talk to you guys.” He flashed his badge. “Detective Black.”

  “What? Why?” said Religious, suddenly dropping the bombastic tone.

  Franny paused, realizing he needed to tread carefully here. If he named Croyd the twins might actually go to the cops, and that would upset Abby. He also realized he didn’t even know their names, and he couldn’t spin a tale when he so obviously had no idea who they were. He took out a notebook and pen.

  “Full names,” he rapped.

  “Rick Dockstedder,” said the twin with the goatee, and jerked his thumb at his brother. “He’s Mick.”

  “Look, I’ve got a tip that you boys ruffled some feathers. Might be a good idea for you to get out of town for a couple of weeks until it blows over.”

  “Whose feathers?” Rick asked.

  “We can’t,” Mick said. “Our mother’s sick. She’s at the Clinic, and her surgery is tomorrow.”

  “Ovarian cysts,” Rick offered.

  “Mention not the private, female parts of our mother,” Mick cried.

  Rick smacked his brother on the back o
f the head. “Jesus, you are such a tool.”

  “Take not the Lord’s name—”

  “And we gotta feed her cat,” Rick interrupted the latest religious eruption from his twin.

  “And she needs my prayers,” Mick added, and shot his brother a smoldering look. That elicited another eye roll from Rick.

  Franny toyed with arresting them on some trumped-up charge and putting them in protective custody, but there would be awkward questions from his superiors. What settled it was the knowledge that he’d want to be there if his mom was sick.

  He temporized. “Well, just keep a close eye out. Maybe get off the streets and just spend your time at her apartment and the clinic.”

  “Who’s after us?” Rick asked again.

  Franny shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to say. It could compromise an informant and an investigation.” He started to walk away.

  “You sure you don’t want to come in?” Rick called.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Bless you, you are a good man, and your purity will surely be rewarded,” Mick shouted.

  Rick smacked his brother on the back of the head then gave Franny a sly smile. “It’s roast beef special today. $8.99.”

  He had had to cut short his lunch, the price certainly recommended it, and the dancers were very … flexible.

  The Big Bleed

  Part Five

  OPERATION RE-PO WHEELS COMMENCED far too early the next morning. That is, three A.M. Which figured: Jamal had left the planning to Sheeba. She was a big fan of special operations stories, where the raids always took place in the middle of the night, when the target was likely asleep or otherwise weakened. And the streets were emptier.

  They gathered in their ops center, joined by a young FBI agent Jamal had never seen, a nat named Gunn—surely fodder for a million jokes (“Is your first name ‘Lone’?”)—who was a little pudgy, pale, and clearly from the accounting side of the Bureau.

  “We’ll have your unit and two of ours,” he said, pointing to locations on the streets bracketing their target’s residence. He smiled. “If Wheels rolls, we’ll be ready for him.” Gunn was also, as Jamal soon realized, one of the annoying compulsive punsters.

  Sheeba had reverted to Big Sister mode, had brought coffee for all of them. Of course, she had probably stopped off at a Dunkin’ Donuts to upload a dozen for herself.

  Jamal took a sip, and regretted it. The coffee was nasty. They did have several key operational details to get straight before they got too close to their target.

  Nevertheless, Sheeba’s briefing was, well, brief: name, images of Wheels. Rap sheet vitals, mostly suggesting he wouldn’t be armed. “How could he be?” Gunn said. “He hasn’t got arms.”

  Sheeba had a question. “What about Fort Freak? Do we bring them in?”

  “Speaking of knuckleheads,” Gunn said.

  Jamal quite agreed that Fort Freak was a collection of knuckleheads, but so was every other police department he’d worked with at SCARE. And, to be fair, not everyone at Fort Freak was equally useless: Francis Black had actually made this raid happen. “Actually, we should have.”

  “Doubt they’ll be able to do much at three A.M.,” Sheeba said.

  “Or at any A.M.,” Gunn said.

  “I have to let Franny know,” Jamal said. “Let me text him.”

  “He won’t appreciate it at this hour.”

  “He’ll be even more unhappy finding out we staged a raid in his precinct after it’s done.”

  They finished up the basics: address, type of building, the likelihood that Wheels lived on the ground floor (“Thank God for small favors,” Sheeba said). Rules of engagement. Where Wheels would be taken—the federal lockup on Rikers—and by whom (Jamal with the FBI team).

  Gunn had already departed when Jamal asked, “How do we haul him in?”

  “What do you mean?” Sheeba said. “We will have the wagon—”

  “The guy is literally the size of a truck.”

  “I will, ah, remind them the moment we’re done here.”

  “Yeah,” Jamal said, “remind them to bring a flatbed and chains. Tell them to think King Kong.”

  Jamal and Sheeba grabbed their vests and weapons. As they were leaving, Jamal noted that one of the computers was live, Skyping. “Big husband is watching?”

  “He’s interested.”

  That was a surprise. Sheeba had been so skeptical of Wheels’s value as a target that Jamal assumed that Billy Ray felt the same way. Maybe not.

  Or maybe he was just afraid of having his team screw up.

  Jamal had spent considerable time traveling into, out of, and around Manhattan wondering who lived in its buildings. The fancy Upper East Side towers held no mysteries, obviously: the rich, often the foreign rich. Upper West Side, yuppies, families, more diversity.

  One thing they had in common? No jokers.

  But everywhere else … the East Side near the FDR, Eighth Avenue and Fifty-second … in all those grim brick buildings with their tiny metal entrances, those windows above the awnings, the places where the smells of food from the restaurants below had to be overwhelming …

  And in the worst places. The old tenements on the Lower East Side and TriBeCa and SoHo and Jokertown. Worker storage units, obviously, but Jamal had no idea what the workers looked like.

  Well, tonight he would.

  The Explorer glided down narrow streets wet and shiny enough for a Ridley Scott commercial. There were few inhabitants to be seen … the master of one all-night news kiosk, a skinny man who looked to be homeless who was nevertheless sweeping the sidewalk in front of a closed Le Pain Quotidien, an amazingly tall tranny hooker leaning against a door, a three-legged joker hobbling God knew where.…

  None of them spoke for several minutes, not until the Explorer made the turn from Grand onto Ludlow. “Okay,” Sheeba said, “we’ve got our warrants.”

  The phone buzzed in its dashboard mount. “FBI is on station.” Sheeba pulled the Explorer to a spot in front of a fire hydrant, the only open one on either side of Ludlow Street. That moment, at least, felt like a movie production—

  “Do we have to wear the jackets?” Jamal said. The last item they had to don were blue Windbreakers with the word SCARE written on the backs in huge yellow letters.

  “Yes. That was the one thing Billy made me promise: wear the jackets!”

  Wheels’s building was a typical tenement, pre–World War II, six stories tall, decayed, soot-covered. “How many jokers you figure you’ll find here?” Jamal heard himself ask. “And just how the hell are we supposed to get around back?”

  Sheeba held up an iPad with an illuminated street map: it showed a narrow alley to the south of the actual address that ran to a courtyard of sorts in the back. It was so narrow that it wasn’t visible from half a block away.

  The alley was SCARE’s route. The FBI would hit the front door. The backup team would stand off to the north, ready to move laterally, should Wheels slip the leash.

  Sheeba closed the iPad and left it in the car. “Showtime,” she said. “Isn’t that what they say in Hollywood, Jamal?”

  “We say ‘action.’”

  But the reminder was apt. He had not been able to shake the feeling that this was a movie … except that on movie sets, things moved slowly and deliberately. It wasn’t unusual to spend six hours rigging and rehearsing a single stunt.

  Now they were just walking quickly up a dark Jokertown street at three A.M. Up ahead, Jamal could see the three FBI agents approaching from the opposite direction.

  Sheeba had her hand to her earpiece. “Turning into the alley,” she said quietly.

  And they did.

  “Tight quarters,” Jamal said. The alley was so narrow that Jamal felt as though he could have touched the walls merely by spreading his arms.

  Sheeba was thinking the same. “How the hell does Wheels get in and out?”

  “He sucks in his gut,” Jamal said.

  In the courtyard, fo
rty feet away, the edge of an ancient garage door—the kind that opened like a vertical accordion, not a roll-up—glimmered in the yellow light from apartment windows. As they got closer, about to turn the corner, Jamal and the others could see a second door next to the first, and a single floor of truly ancient rooms above both. It was quiet enough that they could hear their shoes scraping on the broken pavement. No music. Then, a voice from around front: “Open up! FBI!” And the sound of a door being forced.

  Still no response in the courtyard. “Which one is he in?” Jamal asked.

  “One way to find out,” Sheeba said, striding toward the first.

  A siren started grinding from somewhere out on Ludlow. In seconds, it was a full howl. Sheeba stepped back, trying to talk loud enough to be heard by the FBI, but not so loud that she spooked Wheels. “What’s going on?”

  She listened. Then shook her head in disgust. “Fire station!”

  Sure enough, a fire unit, siren blasting, cherries flashing, rolled south to north down Ludlow, rousing the neighborhood. Windows lit up in the apartment building, and much worse, in the garage unit. The right-hand garage door opened and—with no warning rev of an engine, and no lights—a vehicle emerged. It skewed into a right turn in the small courtyard, then executed a left into the alley.

  Sheeba was in the courtyard and managed to skip out of the way. She held on to her radio, screaming, “He’s in the wind!” Jamal started chasing the vehicle down the alley.

  Reaching the street, Wheels pulled up short, obviously wanting to be sure he wasn’t rushing into traffic. The hesitation allowed Jamal to jump for the truck bed.

  Which, as it turned out, was like trying to mount a wild horse.

  It was … alive, sweaty human flesh. Nothing to grab on to—and the smell! Like a locker room mixed with oil-stained garage. All Jamal could think to do was shout, “FBI! You’re under arrest!” (He had enough presence of mind to know that SCARE would mean nothing.)

  All this warning did was spur Wheels to motion. The joker managed to turn on four appendages, like a show horse in an arena, aiming left, facing directly at Gunn and his FBI partners.