Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.” His voice came out slurred. It felt like his teeth were trying to jostle each other out of the way.

  Darcy sat with him while his head cleared. When he could think a little better, he asked her what happened.

  “They got away,” she said. “Again. And I’m probably going to be fired.”

  “Gaaagghhh—” It was hard to talk because his jaws kept repelling each other. He tried again. “Gosh, I don’t know. I’d be in a real jam if not for you. I bet the Committee could help you out.”

  Darcy stood. She stared at the fence gate where they had entered the junkyard on their failed secret errand.

  “You found the fight club,” said Wally.

  She frowned. “I’m not so sure. We found a few folks and a van. Big deal.” She made a twirling motion with one finger in the air. “And anyway, they’re all gone now. Where the hell did they go?”

  “Oh, I saw the whole thing from up there. They drove away through the magic tunnel. Have you seen my hat?”

  “I think that magnet scrambled your brain. You should probably see a doctor.”

  “Oh.” Well, at least he wasn’t getting smushed into a bloody cube.

  She helped him to his feet. He tried not to lean on her, but she was stronger than she looked. “I think I should take you home.”

  Wally said, “But my car.”

  “No way. You are in no condition to operate heavy machinery. Not even yourself.”

  “Oh. Okay.” They stumbled toward the outer gate. The door on the trailer hung wide open, and a pair of tire tracks had cut deep furrows in the dirt. They led straight to a wall of cars, which struck Wally as weird, though his head was too fuzzy to figure out why.

  Darcy noticed the tracks, too. She stopped to study them. She stared, unblinking.

  Then she said, “When you’re feeling better, I want you to tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Do you like kids?”

  She shrugged, which made him wobble. “I guess. Why?”

  “Good. I think you should meet Ghost,” he said.

  Galahad in Blue

  Part Eight

  TO MOST PEOPLE FORENSIC accounting sounded about as exciting and interesting as watching paint dry, but it was actually something Franny enjoyed. Back at the precinct he began by drafting a request for a warrant. He then called over to the courthouse to see who was signing warrants that day.

  Turned out it was Samuelson, which was great. He was a decent enough judge, but when he wasn’t hearing cases he got blow jobs from hookers in his office. Which meant he liked to keep his office hours free of work. A stupid man might have solved the problem by refusing everything, but Samuelson wasn’t stupid, and he knew that constant denial would lead to challenges and questions, and have the opposite result of what he wanted. The judge also knew that most warrants did result in lowlifes getting hauled in, and lowlives and their overworked public defenders usually didn’t challenge how a warrant got issued. Which meant he was a good bet to sign off on this rather shaky house of cards that Franny had constructed.

  As Franny walked down the hall of the courthouse, warrant tucked into a folder briefcase, he hoped that the judge wasn’t an aficionado of American Hero, and had never heard of Michael Berman. The warrant really was a fishing expedition, but like Jamal, he fully believed that Berman was in this up to his neck.

  Franny had timed it so he walked into the back of Samuelson’s courtroom just as the lunch break was called. The judge’s furry caterpillar-like eyebrows drew together in a sharp frown when he saw Franny enter. Spectators, a bored city beat reporter, and the families of the victim and the accused shuffled for the big double doors. Only one person remained seated, a very tall, very leggy woman with hair a shade of red that was found nowhere in nature, black leather miniskirt, blouse with a plunging neckline, and stiletto heels. Yep, the judge was going to want to get Franny and his warrant out the door, and fast.

  A sharp gesture, and Franny walked down the aisle and approached the bench. “What have you got, Detective?”

  “Warrant for forensic accounting.” Franny slid the paper across the bench.

  “Come in my chambers.”

  Franny followed the judge through the doors behind the bench. It was a cliché of a judge’s chambers—overstuffed armchairs, bookcases filled with weighty tomes that, judging from the dust, weren’t getting touched. No reason to with every case online and available now. A sack lunch sat on the polished mahogany surface of the desk. The pungent smell of corned beef, kraut, and mustard hit his martini-abused gut, and Franny swallowed nausea.

  Samuelson sat down behind his desk and flipped through the warrant. “Nice job,” he said as he scrawled his signature.

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “Don’t make a habit of this.”

  “No, sir.”

  Franny and the leggy redhead exchanged nods as they passed in the doorway.

  Back at the precinct Franny put in calls to the IRS and faxed over the warrant. Once he had access to Berman’s tax returns he would be able to bootstrap into Berman’s bank accounts, and payments from those accounts would lead him to the credit cards. “And then we’ll see what you’re made of, Mr. Berman,” Franny said to the fax machine as the final page of the warrant slid through.

  “You know, it’s never a good sign when you’re talking to mechanical objects,” Beastie Bester said as he lumbered in, heading for the copy machine.

  “Yeah, well, when nobody, including my partner, will talk to me I’m all I’m left with.” Franny hadn’t meant it for it to emerge quite so plaintive.

  “You could have turned it down,” Beastie said gently.

  “No, I couldn’t have. I have my own traditions to live up to.”

  Eventually the material on Berman’s finances landed in his e-mail inbox. Franny got himself a cup of bad precinct coffee. He began to dig into Berman’s life as sketched by the producer’s finances. First Franny looked over the W-2s and W-9s. Hollywood had been very good to Mr. Berman. Next he looked at bank statements for the past six months. Money flowed into the bank account and out just as quickly. There were a lot of overdraft charges.

  He went back to the tax returns. The IRS had given him five years. What Franny found were gambling losses claimed as deductions against gambling winnings. That sent him digging into the credit card statements. There were a lot of charges at casinos in Las Vegas, Cannes, Atlantic City, Monaco, and Kazakhstan. Where the murdered Joe Frank, cameraman for Michael Berman, had also traveled. Franny went back to the bank statements and found ATM withdrawals at various gambling venues. Judging from the number of withdrawals, Berman had lost a lot more than he’d won.

  Franny called Berman’s bank and had the good fortune to end up with a representative who was a Badge Bunny. Once he’d scanned and e-mailed a copy of the warrant she was more than happy to help him, and was very disappointed when she discovered he was in New York City and she was in Houston. After an hour where his ear went numb she had given him online access to all Berman’s checks for the past five years.

  What he found had him jumping out of his chair, and pumping the air in triumph. Berman was a liar. He hadn’t fired Joe Frank. As late as two weeks ago he had been writing checks to the cameraman. He was picking up the phone to call Jamal, when Deputy Inspector Maseryk walked up and dropped a file on his desk. “That big Committee ace Rustbelt and one of our meter maids have been playing detective, and they nearly got Gunderson killed.”

  “I told him not to,” Franny said.

  “Well, he didn’t listen, and I’d like an actual detective to follow up. Maybe they’ll have something useful. God knows we need something. I just hope it’s not another of Darcy’s fantasies.”

  “Yes, sir.” Maseryk walked away and Franny slowly replaced the receiver. What he was doing with Jamal and Berman was strictly off the books. This was his actual job. And maybe the big ace did know something.
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  Wally Gunderson walked toward Franny’s desk, the floor shuddering under his weight, and Franny watched in dismay as paper clips, sets of keys, staplers, and anything made of metal went sailing through the air to land like a flock of futuristic butterflies on the exposed metal skin of Rustbelt’s face, neck, hands, and arms. Cops were yelling, and snatching at their suddenly airborne items. The big iron ace batted in alarm at the clinging objects and only succeeded in having them attach to each other in long strings that dripped from his fingertips. “Ah shoot,” he said in his deep Minnesota accent.

  Rikki, her over-developed chest heaving in alarm, rushed up waving her arms like a modern-day Chicken Little. “The computers,” she yelled. “The computers.”

  Franny suddenly realized what she was ranting about. Rustbelt’s magnetized skin was probably wreaking havoc on the hard drives. He reached up, placed his hands on Rusty’s shoulders, turned him around, and propelled him back out of the precinct. The big head with its steam-shovel jaw drooped. “I’m sorry. I guess I got all magnetized by that magnet.”

  “Not your fault,” Franny said as he plucked metal detritus off Rusty, and set it in a pile just inside the door. He spotted a coffee vendor’s cart on the far side of the street down by the corner. “We can sit on the bench at the bus stop. I’ll buy us some coffee.”

  “Sure,” Rusty said, as he plucked off an overlooked paper clip.

  “How do you take it?”

  “Lotta cream and sugar.”

  Franny sprinted down the street and bought a couple of cups. Joining Wally on the bench Franny took a swig, and felt his gut rebel. He stared down into the black depths, and realized he had been subsisting on coffee for the past few weeks.

  “What did you need from me, Officer?” asked Rustbelt. “Darcy wrote everything up, and I sure hope you fellas aren’t gonna fire her. She works real hard to be a good policeman.”

  Franny set the cup on the sidewalk next to him. “Well, that’s not my decision, but I’ll certainly put in a word for her. I did read Darcy’s report, but it’s a little…” He considered the twenty-seven-page-long report filled with an exposition about the decay of cities, analysis of traffic patterns, traffic camera logs, parking violations, and a detailed sketch of a junkyard, and finally settled on a neutral word. “… detailed. I just need to hear what happened when you reached that junkyard. Darcy’s report was a little vague on exactly how the perps got away.” Franny’s pen was poised over his notebook.

  “There was a tunnel, and this skinny guy wearing a towel. And he stuffed some stuff up my nose, and I got all woozy. Oh, and this red-haired woman. She was driving the car when it went into the tunnel.”

  “Was she a joker?”

  “No, just a girl.”

  “Girl. So she was younger?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Franny asked a few more questions, but it seemed he had exhausted Gunderson’s store of useful information. Vaporlock was old news. What was new was the woman, and the use of a clear ace power.

  The bus pulled up, the doors opened, and the driver glared at Franny and Rustbelt. “Let me guess, you’re just passing the time?”

  “Sorry.” Franny stood. Shook hands with Wally. “Thank you, Mr. Gunderson.”

  “Did anything I told you help?”

  “I think so.”

  “May I tell Darcy? She’s feeling real low right now.”

  “Sure,” said Franny. He returned to his desk and his computer to search for aces who could open tunnels. It didn’t take long to find one.

  He called Stuntman. “Berman’s got a gambling problem,” Franny said. He paused for breath while Jamal gave a low whistle. “And Berman hadn’t fired Joe Frank. He was still writing him checks as late as two weeks ago.”

  “Son of a bitch lied to me.”

  “Yep, but that’s not the best part. I think I know how the jokers are being taken out of the city.” Franny told Jamal about Rustbelt’s testimony. “So, I went looking for an ace with a power like that. There is one. She was on American Hero, Tesseract. I looked up what ‘tesseract’ means. It’s a four-dimensional analogy to a cube. I found some YouTube video of Tesseract doing her thing. She can make an opening in, say, Los Angeles, and reach through to Paris, or Beijing, or somewhere. She can make these openings big enough to walk through, probably even drive through.”

  “You have a real name?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. Mollie Steunenberg.” There was silence from the other end of the line. A silence that went on for so long that Franny thought they’d been disconnected. “Jamal? Hello?”

  “I’m here. Mollie Steunenberg is Berman’s assistant.”

  “Oh, holy fuck.”

  The Big Bleed

  Part Nine

  “YOUR GUY JUST ARRIVED. He’s got the girl with him.”

  “Thank you,” Jamal Norwood said. “We’ll be there as soon as possible.” Then he clicked off. He didn’t want to be on the phone with Jack Metz any longer than necessary. Not that he had anything special against Upper East Side building managers, but this one was off-scale creepy.

  He had proved to be useful, however. Metz’s call meant that Michael Berman was back in the city with Mollie Steunenberg, aka Tesseract. Jamal knew it was unlikely to be for long.

  It was early morning, mid-week, rainy, colder than it should be in New York this time of year. Jamal’s physical and mental state matched the grim weather. He had been dozing, dreaming strange dreams about being chased down a street by the missing joker Wheels, feeling that he was late, ill-equipped, in danger.

  On waking, he considered phoning Julia, something he had not done in over a week. But what would he tell her? I’m feeling great! Every conversation he could imagine ended in a lie, or a very uncomfortable revelation.

  So he didn’t. He distracted himself by watching TV with its news of the various campaigns, growing bored as the same stories repeated.

  Eventually he turned to a movie channel and, to his amazement, caught the last half hour of Moonfleet, a cheap adventure feature he had worked on early in his career. In spite of its title, it had not been sci-fi, but rather a period piece about pirates and smugglers in the Caribbean (though the confusing title likely contributed to Moonfleet’s failure … that and an unappealing cast and incoherent script). Stuntman Jamal Norwood had one major gag in the piece, as a sailor who goes aloft during a storm only to have the yards break, plunging him to the deck of a ship.

  Who was that young man? So eager, so fit, so certain he was making all the right decisions, making money, making himself into a star—

  Right now Jamal merely wished he possessed that young man’s health.

  Franny picked him up a block from the Bleecker. “You’re getting good at all this paranoid shit,” the detective told him.

  “A little too late.”

  “Don’t be a pessimist.”

  “Don’t be a cheerleader.”

  It was the middle of rush hour, a murderous time to be traveling from Jokertown to the Upper East Side. “I don’t suppose you can use your siren,” Jamal said.

  “Sure, but it won’t do us any good.” They were completely gridlocked trying to reach the FDR. Eventually it did, and to Jamal’s relief there were no unusual traffic problems.

  As they turned into the building’s parking lot, Jamal suddenly feared a Murphy’s Law moment, that they would drive right past Michael Berman and Mollie Steunenberg heading out for a latte or breakfast—

  Fortunately, no. Perhaps less fortunately, the attendant at the lot seemed all too aware of their business. “You know, my favorite TV series is Baltimore Stakeout,” he said. “How do you get into that kind of work?”

  “If you have to ask, you’re not qualified,” Jamal snapped.

  They met up with Metz, who was as eager as a five-year-old on Christmas Day. “They’re up there! You can hear voices.”

  “You actually saw them, though, right?” Jamal said.

  Metz nodded.

  With
in minutes, Jamal and Franny were heading up the service elevator. Jamal carried a Watchman tuned to the cameras they had hidden in the apartment the night before, toggling from one view to the other. They were cheap Radio Shack–style equipment that couldn’t be monitored remotely and of the two men one was too busy to man the cameras 24/7 and the other was too sick. No, the cameras were there because of Tesseract and her power. Both Jamal and Franny knew they needed to grab the girl first. Otherwise she’d be gone, and Berman with her. Jamal could see Berman and Mollie in motion in and out of the living room and hallway. They were out of view for minutes at a time, presumably in the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms.

  Jamal loathed stakeouts and had not prepared for this one. Thank God Franny seemed to be … the police detective had not only suggested hauling two folding chairs up the elevator, he produced water and an energy bar without asking. “I hope this doesn’t take all day,” Jamal said, knowing that he was now grumbling like a man twice his age.

  They had deliberately chosen the back hallway as a site for the second camera because it gave them their best opportunity to surprise Tesseract and grab her.

  “We should have miked the place.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Jamal said. “So we wait.”

  Their planning for Operation Grab Michael Berman had been complicated because they were skirting the edge of legality. “I don’t suppose you have any black bag team you could activate,” Franny said. “To find this shit and install it.”

  Had Jamal still been on duty with SCARE, he could easily have given the task to just such a group—right after Carnifex signed off on the warrant and the budget. “Haven’t you created a team of Jokertown irregulars?”

  “Not yet,” Franny said. “And if this goes tits up, not ever.”

  Then there had been the question of warrants. “I can get one,” Franny had said. “Might take a day, or at least hours. What about you?”