Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel

  They’d caused a scene at the ticket booth on the way in—how could they not? The four of them together, for the first time since before the famous press conference when Drummer Boy quit the Committee. Tourists snapped pictures on cell phones, and Ana cringed because the photo would be all over the Internet in seconds, and she’d get a million phone calls, and yet another summons to the office of Lohengrin to explain herself. But that didn’t matter.

  The joker at the ticket counter, a girl in her late teens with green scales and a sagging throat sac, wouldn’t let them pay, no matter how much they argued about it. They finally let her give them tickets, but Ana shoved forty bucks into the donation bucket in the front lobby out of spite. Then John led them to a display that was so new it still had signs announcing its grand reveal. They’d stared at it for five minute before saying a word, when Michael declared what they were all thinking.

  “That’s fucked up,” he said flatly.

  They, or rather waxworks versions of them, battled the Righteous Djinn in Egypt. Seven feet of Drummer Boy stood in the back, mouth open in a scream, all six arms flexed, some mythological creature captured in sculpture. Curveball braced, as if on a pitcher’s mound, her arm cocked back, ready to throw the stone she held. John Fortune held a commanding hand upraised; the smooth gem of Sekhmet was still imbedded in his forehead. And there was Earth Witch, her expression a calm contrast to the others, kneeling on the ground, lock of black hair falling over her face, pressing her hand down where a realistic-looking crack in the rock opened under her touch. The Djinn hovered above them all, laughing. His features were too plastic to make Ana think he was real. The wires suspending him from hidden rafters were visible. She could look at the image, detached, impassive, and not flash back to the scene as she remembered it, the sounds of screaming, blood soaking into sand, bullet ripping through her own gut. She didn’t remember it hurting so much as she remembered falling, and fading as the world turned upside down around her. She pressed a hand to her side, where the scar lay under her shirt.

  They were all there: Rusty, Bubbles, Bugsy, everyone who’d made the trip to Egypt to try and save the world. An “In Memoriam” section featured Simoon, Hardhat, King Cobalt. It all felt like it had happened to someone else, in another life.

  Two different artists had worked on the figures, and one had clearly been less talented. The Drummer Boy figure was uncanny, every flexed muscle accurate, the rictus of his scream exact in its lines and tension. On the other hand, Earth Witch might have been positioned to be partially hidden because her face was unnaturally smooth, the bend of her body slightly awkward. Ana imagined that not too many people would notice, distracted by special effects: LEDs in Curveball’s hand, John’s forehead, and the Djinn’s arms seemed to bring their powers to life. From hidden speakers, the sound of a desert sandstorm hissed. The smell of baking, sandy air came back to her, and Ana couldn’t tell if her memory generated the sensation, or if the museum really was piping in the chalky, throat-tickling smell.

  Kate tilted her head, her brow furrowed. “Are my boobs really that big?” The figure’s chest bulged inside a too-tight white T-shirt.

  “No,” John said.

  Everyone looked at him. Kate crossed her arms, and if she’d had any ace power at all in her gaze, John would have been flayed.

  Ana laughed. Then laughed some more, hand clamped over her mouth, gut spasming in her effort to stop. They were probably thinking she was crazy. She’d had a lot of surreal things happen to her, even by the standards of wild card Manhattan. But this had to win the prize. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath, hiccupping. “It’s just … it’s just … never mind.”

  They didn’t have much time left and cruised quickly through the rest of the museum. The Great and Powerful Turtles’ shells suspended in procession, the depictions of history that had been old before any of them were born. There was a curtained-off “Adults Only” exhibit, one of the classic dioramas that had been here for decades. John stopped there. “That’s … yeah. That’s the one on my dad. I’ll pass.”

  Put it like that, Ana decided she’d pass, too. They all did.

  Outside, the bright afternoon sun gave her a headache. She had to be at the UN in half an hour, when what she really wanted was a glass of water and sleep. But she didn’t really want to leave the others. She wasn’t ready for the night to be over—even though it was the middle of the next day.

  John said, “This is going to sound really weird—but I’m glad we could do this. You know—get together.”

  “Drink some margaritas, fight a little crime,” Kate said.

  DB added, “Like what, ‘Team Hearts catches muggers for old times’ sake’?” He scoffed, but Kate bowed her head and smiled.

  At least nobody died this time, Ana thought, but didn’t say it. She didn’t want to ruin the mood. “Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

  They exchanged phone numbers and called cabs. Having reached a compromise with his mother that didn’t involve American Hero, John agreed to return home for a visit before moving on. DB’s manager had arranged a flight back to LA. Everyone managed hugs. Even Kate and John, though theirs was fleeting. Still, if those two could be civil to each other, maybe world peace had a chance.

  Before folding himself into his cab, DB leaned over Ana—his immense body filled her vision—rested a hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. His other hands pattered a beat. Straightening, he smiled. She was shocked, and embarrassed to notice she was blushing red hot. “Call me next time you’re in town?” she said.

  “You bet.”

  His cab drove off, and Kate stared at Ana. “What was that about?”

  She couldn’t even make a guess.

  Ana and Kate shared a cab. Kate would stay at the apartment—catching up on sleep, if she knew what was good for her—while Ana went to work to try to talk Lohengrin off the ceiling. Not likely she’d succeed, but she’d try. “I’m sorry the night didn’t really go the way I planned it.”

  “Maybe not,” Kate said, and her smile was bright. “Still, it was a hell of a party.”

  Ana couldn’t argue with that.

  Galahad in Blue

  Part Five

  HE HAD MET CURVEBALL and Drummer Boy. And he’d been a complete zero, a modern day Joe Friday, just the facts, ma’am. He could have done something to make an impression … but no. At least he’d managed to take custody of the DVDs that Drummer Boy had grabbed.

  By the time he got back to the Five, Joe Rance, small-time hood with a lot of arrests and a lot of pleas, had already lawyered up. Franny studied the multi-limbed joker in his cell. “Has he said anything?” Franny asked Sergeant Vivian Choy.

  “He asked for a lawyer and then clammed up. That’s the problem with career criminals,” she said. “They get arrested enough times and we end up teaching them how to beat an interrogation. You get anything from the aces?”

  “Not a lot. They did have these.” He showed her the DVDs. Franny jerked his head toward the multi-limbed joker. “Is his lawyer still around?”

  “No, Flipper had a court date.”

  “Great. I’ll leave a message, and meantime I’ll check these out,” Franny added, gesturing with the DVDs.

  “Take the player out of Mendelberg’s office and plug it in in the conference room. The one in there is a piece of shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  Once he had everything set up Franny loaded one of the fight club videos. The images of the screaming spectators were almost more revolting than the two jokers locked in combat in the ring below. Under the bright lights the blood seemed garish, almost fake. The people watching weren’t rednecks in T-shirts and jeans. They wore tuxedoes and floor-length gowns. The lights glittered off diamonds and gold cuff links, and glistened in their sweat-damp faces. Discreetly attired waiters moved through the crowd carrying silver trays with champagne flutes.

  Franny was too new in Jokertown to be able to identify many of the jokers who passed b
eneath the camera’s unfeeling lens. If Father Squid were here, he would have known them. Franny decided to ask for help from Dr. Finn. Some of these people had probably passed through the clinic.

  He picked up another DVD, the handwritten label read And the Beat Goes Down. Franny loaded it. Drummer Boy’s broad back and hips pumped accompanied by harsh grunts, and a woman’s shrill cries. At one point they rolled over placing the woman on top and Franny recognized Tiffani, one of the contestants from American Hero’s first season. Face flaming, Franny quickly ejected the DVD, feeling like a Peeping Tom. He picked up another one—Bath Time was the title. He watched Jade Blossom squeeze water down her back as she lolled in a bathtub. The next cut was of Curveball, one long shapely leg extended out of the water as she scrubbed down with a loofah. He kept watching that one. He tried another, and another. The disks were a mix of the fight club and sex tapes from American Hero featuring Drummer Boy fucking an astonishing number of the female contestants.

  He stood and paced around the conference room table. Did the American Hero disks qualify as evidence? He knew he needed to watch the fight disks, but this stuff? His stuttering thoughts settled, and he picked up a fight club disk and a sex disk and compared the printing on the titles. It looked like the same hand had lettered both. So maybe the same cameraman? But it wasn’t like he’d signed his work, so who would know? He needed to talk to somebody associated with the making of American Hero. He knew Peregrine had something to do with it.

  The door to the conference slammed open, and Sergeant Taylor, who was normally on the desk, rushed in. His eyes were wide, and his usually drooping wings were fluttering with agitation.

  “Detective! You’re wanted! At the holding cells!”

  “Why? What?”

  “You can see faster than I can explain,” Homer said.

  Franny ran. There was a clot of people gathered around the door of Rance’s cell. Franny pushed through them, and checked at the sight of Joe Rance slumped on the steel toilet, orange jumpsuit around his ankles.

  Gordon the Ghoul knelt at the man’s side holding one wrist. The extra, vine-like appendages between his waist and his real arms were blackened and wilted as if a fire had swept down those faux arms. Gordon climbed back to his feet and dusted off the knees of his slacks with an embroidered handkerchief.

  “What happened?” Franny demanded of nobody and everybody.

  “Somebody made him dead,” the pathologist answered.

  “Yes, thank you. I gathered that. How?”

  Gordon rolled the body off the john, and inspected the blackened posterior. “Electrocuted. Got him right in the ass.”

  “God damn it!” Franny swung his fist at the wall, only to have it caught by a giant paw tipped with vicious claws.

  “Don’t,” Beastie said. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”

  “I never even got a chance to talk to him!” Franny took several deep breaths, fought for control. “Did he say anything? Anything at all?”

  Head shakes all around.

  “Should have let me squinch him down, and put him in the castle,” Jessica Penniman said. Slender and delicate with flyaway blond hair, she didn’t match anyone’s idea of a cop.

  Vivian Choy glared at her. “Hard to question a suspect when they can barely talk because their vocal cords are the size of threads.”

  “Harder when they’re dead,” Jennifer snapped back.

  “Stop it,” Franny ordered. Amazingly both women did.

  Gordon motioned to a couple of orderlies, who entered the cell and loaded the body on a gurney. “I’ll have the autopsy report for you tomorrow,” the medical examiner said as the sad little parade passed by. “But I’m pretty confident I won’t find anything more.”

  Franny went to his desk and began writing up the report. The death of a prisoner in custody would bring in internal affairs, and lawsuits would follow. He could just imagine the reaction of the precinct brass to this FUBAR.

  Aside from the bureaucratic shit that was about to hit the fan, there were very real consequences for his case. This was the first real, clean break they’d had, and now the suspect was dead. He asked Bronkowski and Michaelson to stop by his desk to see if Rance had said anything to them during his arrest. Typically Bugeye refused, but Michaelson agreed. Unfortunately Rikki had nothing to add. “He was pretty woozy,” she said, as she fidgeted in the chair next to his desk. “Look, if there’s nothing else, I’m beat. My shift ended hours ago.” She stood up, and stretched her whip-lean body. “Sorry Eel got away from us. If he hadn’t, Rance would still be alive.”

  Franny sat, drumming his pen on his desk. It was a safe bet that Eel was behind the murder. Franny pictured the sewers beneath the city, a highway, albeit a disgusting one, for Eel. He could travel everywhere, enter anywhere. And Franny was the lead investigator on this case. He wondered if his home address was obtainable online? Probably, everything was. He pictured himself vulnerable, sitting on the toilet taking a crap. His sphincter tightened. Do they still sell chamber pots, he wondered? A bucket would work too. He resolved to stop at a hardware store before he went home that night.

  He realized he had left the DVDs in the conference room when Homer had burst in. Franny went to collect them, and stood holding them for a long moment. All hell was about to break loose over this murder. He really didn’t have time to call Peregrine right now. Could he ask Stevens? Would his supposed partner be willing to do that for him? Then Franny realized that he knew someone who had federal clout, and who had actually been on American Hero. He returned to his desk, and called Stuntman. The agent answered on the first ring with a terse, “Norwood.”

  “I confiscated some DVDs this morning,” Franny began. “Some of them show my missing jokers fighting in a kind of gladiatorial arena, but others are from the first season of American Hero, and they’re … well, let’s just say somebody had pinhole cameras where there shouldn’t have been cameras. What’s clear is that the same person prepared both the fight club DVDs and these Contestants Gone Wild DVDs from American Hero.”

  “Am I on any of these DVDs?” Norwood’s voice was low and rather dangerous.

  “Not that I saw. I just thought given that you were on the show you might have contacts.”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “I’ve got problems. A prisoner died while in custody.” Franny wasn’t going to say more, but he knew a shitstorm was about to break over his head, and he had a feeling he was going to get blamed for what had happened to Joe Rance. “One of the people kidnapping jokers. This could have broken the case. He could have told me where they were taking them. Where they are now! They’re in that ring, and it’s brutal. Some of them have to have died.” Disgust at his own impotence choked off the words. Worse, Franny realized he’d shown weakness and admitted to police incompetence to a Fed. He waited for the inevitable insult.

  Instead there was a long silence, and Norwood said quietly, “I’m sorry. I understand these are your people being taken. I’ll talk to Michael Berman, he actually runs the show, see what I can find out.”

  “You’ll let me know what you learn?” Franny asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll make copies of the DVDs and send them over to you.” Franny hung up.

  It was late afternoon by the time he’d finished copying the DVDs and sent them to Norwood, finished his report, talked to internal affairs and Rance’s public defender.

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” the joker lawyer wheezed asthmatically. “Rance told me he was open to making a deal in exchange for immunity.”

  That little tidbit added to Franny’s sense of despair and the stunning headache that had settled behind his eyes. He realized it was nearly six P.M., and he’d had nothing to eat since the night before. He started out in search of dinner, only to be waylaid by Apsara. “Remember, tomorrow night, Starfields, eight o’clock. Dinner with my parents. They’re looking forward to meeting you. And wear your dress uniform.”

  “That’s
just for funerals and parades,” he said, his headache intensifying.

  “They don’t know that, and you look very handsome when you wear it.” She started away with that swaying dancing gait.

  But Franny had had it. Three long strides and he caught her by the upper arm. “No.” He pulled her aside and said in a low voice, “I’m going along with this for your sake, but I don’t like it, and I’m not going to act like a clown.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and trembled on the ends of her lashes.

  “Forget it, Apsara, the tears won’t work. And what does your phi think of all this?” It was low of him, but it had the desired effect.

  “You’re right,” she whispered. “Be yourself, Frank.”

  “I could recommend the same to you,” he growled.

  Those About to Die …

  Part Four

  THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN and the guard prodded him forward and he slid out onto the smooth floor of a small arena. He blinked under the bright lights, barely able to make out the ranks of expectant faces that ringed him. They stared at him from behind a wall of thick glass. Above it, a crosshatch of netting enclosed the space. Whatever this was, he was trapped in it.

  The guard shoved him forward, and then retreated back through the door. It closed, trapping Marcus in the oval. This can’t be happening, he thought.

  He’d told himself that again and again since he’d woken up in that small room with Asmodeus and Dmitri. He’d said it several times to Father Squid as they talked. The priest—kindly, grave, the membranes of his eyes sliding closed and then opening again—had assured him that it was, in fact, happening. “We are trapped in a garden of evil,” he had said. “Have courage, son.”

  Marcus gaped at the spectators. Men and women in suits and fancy dresses, champagne glasses in hand. Fat men grinned their pleasure. Beautiful women rubbed up next to them, bejeweled and gaudy. Some of them clapped. A few shouted at him, jeers or encouragement—he wasn’t sure which.