Jokertown Shuffle

  Another world. A joker's land. I laughed.

  Tachyon's grandson had wrapped his thoughts so I could hear very little of them. Only the barest tinge of his emotions leaked out. He asked me-knowing the answer-if I'd seen the caverns through their minds.

  I told him that I had.

  Then he asked me the question he didn't really want to ask because he was afraid that he already knew the answer. "Did you make them?"

  I was too exhausted for anything but honesty. "I think so, Blaise," I admitted. "I'm not sure, but I've dreamed of them. Still

  … there's a lot more there than what I dreamed. I don't control it. I don't know what-all is down there."

  Blaise gave a brief nod of his head, almost a salute. Confusion radiated from behind his mindshields. He turned and left the lobby without another word.

  "You don't think big enough," the penguin had told me. Well, was this the right size?

  "It's not possible," Kafka whispered. "I saw it, but it's not possible. Ellis is just old ship ballast. It's not even a real island."

  "Then it's the perfect place for a fantasy, isn't it," I told him. I wanted to laugh, but I couldn't.

  While Night's Black Agents to Their Preys Do Rouse by Walter Jon Williams

  I

  Darkness masked the street, concealing its face. Those who walked in the Jokertown night wore their own masks, some visible, some not. In the darkness or in the cold unreal color of the neon light cast by the Jokertown cabarets and boutiques, it was possible to believe that no one, no one at all, was quite what he seemed.

  Darkness itself rolled along the deserted sidewalks, absorbing heat and color unto itself, hunting…

  The Werewolf lay in a doorway, bleeding. His Liza Minnelli mask lay crumpled at his feet. His olive skin was zebra-striped with red pigment, port-wine stains gone mad. One eye was swollen shut. The other two were glazed.

  "Hey." The darkness opened, revealing an imperiouslooking black man named No Dice. He was dressed in a black leather Pierre Cardin trench coat with matching leather beret, a Perry Ellis sweater, a couple dozen gold chains, twohundred-dollar high-top sneaks, the kind with the little squeeze pumps, gold-rimmed shades, a palm-sized green-black-gold leather pendant in the shape of the African continent. "Hey." The man knelt fastidiously, touched the Werewolf's shoulder. "You hurt, homes?"

  The Werewolf shook his head, focused his two functional eyes on the black man. He spoke through split, bleeding lips. "What happened? Why'd it get dark?"

  "No idea, homey. But I heard shots. You been shot?" The Werewolf shook his head again. He tried to rise, but his knees wouldn't support him. The black man took hold of him, helped him steady himself against the doorway. The Werewolf looked at the flaking green paint on the door. Bewildered desperation entered his voice. "This is where it was going down! I gotta help Stuffy!"

  "Police soon. You better shag outta here."

  The Werewolf's hands searched through the pockets of his jacket. "Where's my piece? What happened to Stuffy?"

  "Somebody hit you, man. Gimme your mask. Get outta here."

  "Yeah." The Werewolf panted for breath. "Gotta split." He staggered away, feet dragging on concrete.

  No Dice watched him for a moment. He reached into the pocket of his trench, pulled out a pistol, then put it atop the Liza Minnelli mask that was-this week, anyway-the Werewolves' gang emblem.

  Darkness bled downward from the sky and swallowed him up.

  The revival house was showing Jack Nicholson in Roman Polanski's Jokertown. The last showing had ended three hours ago, and the marquee was dark. The marquee swayed, creaking slightly, in the cold winter wind pouring down the street.

  Across the street was a spray-painted slogan, dayglo orange on brown brick: JUMP THE RICH.

  Beneath the slogan a young woman knelt, hunched over a chalk painting. She was dressed in thirdhand clothing-a shabby baseball cap, a pale blue quilted jacket, and heavy boots two sizes too large. She had to squint in the darkness to see her work, the chalk painting she'd spread across a full slab of concrete sidewalk. It was a bright fantasy landscapegreen hills and flowering trees and a distant rococo Mad Ludwig castle, a scene as far removed from the street reality of Jokertown as could be imagined.

  A man named Anton walked down the shadowed street. He was a huge man in a large belted canvas trench coat, and he had a drooping mustache. He had a heavy diamond ring on each and every finger, sometimes more than one. In one pocket he had seven credit cards his whores had lifted off tourists in Freakers, in another pocket he had their money, and in a third he had a small supply of Dilaudid and rapture, substances his women were hooked on and which he sold to them in return for their share of the earnings. He wasn't worried about people stealing any of this because he had a pistol in his fourth pocket.

  "Hey, Chalktalk. Baby. Ain'tchoo got a place to sleep?" The young woman sprang up from her drawing, faced Anton in a defensive crouch. The streetlight gleamed on needle teeth, flexed claws. A stray piece of chalk fell from a pouch on her belt, rolled unnoticed into the gutter.

  " I ain't gonna hurtchoo, baby." Anton maneuvered to head off the young woman's escape. "Just wanna take you home and give you something to eat."

  The street artist hissed, flashed claws through the air. "Aw, Chalktalk," Anton said. " I ain't dissin you. I bet you real pretty when you get cleaned up, huh? Bet the boys like you."

  He had the girl back up against the wall. She was shifting her hips back and forth, trying to decide which way to bolt. He reached a hand toward her, and her claws flashed, too swift for the eye to follow. Anton jumped back, stung.

  "Joker bitch!" He shook blood from his hand, then reached for the belt of his coat. "Wanna play for keeps, huh?" He smiled. " I can play that way, bitch. Bet I know just whatchoo like."

  And then the darkness rolled over him. The girl gave a little gasp and flattened herself against the brownstone wall. " I believe, Anton," said a voice, " I told you I didn't want you in my neighborhood anymore."

  Anton screamed as he was hoisted off his feet. The darkness was as complete as if an opaque mask had been dropped over his head. He scrabbled in his pocket for his pistol. There was a crack as his arm was broken across the elbow. Another crack, the other arm. Another crack, his nose. All had come so swiftly, one-two-three, he couldn't cry out.

  He cried out now. And then cold flooded him. His bones seemed filled with liquid nitrogen. His teeth chattered. He couldn't summon the strength to yell.

  "What did I give you last time?" the voice said conversationally. " I believe it was second-stage hypothermia, correct? Lowered your body to about was it eighty-eight degrees? Just made you a little uncoordinated for a while."

  Anton was still hanging in the air. Suddenly he felt himself falling. He wanted to scream but couldn't manage it. His fall stopped short. There was a horrible wrenching of his knees and ankles.

  "Let's go to the third stage, shall we? Shall we make you eighty-one degrees?"

  Heat funneled out of him. He could feel his heart skip a beat, then another. Anton ceased to feel altogether. His breath rattled in his throat, trying to draw warmth from the air.

  "I told you to stop stealing, Anton," the voice said. " I told you to stop pimping underage joker girls to tourists. I told you to stop beating and raping girls you meet on the street. And you go right on doing it. What does that make you, Anton? Stupid? Stubborn?"

  The voice turned reflective. "And what does this make me?" Cold laughter answered the question. "A man of my word, I believe."

  The darkness flowed away, revealing what it had left behind. Anton, gasping for breath, swayed in the wind. He had been strung up from a streetlight, his feet lashed to it by the belt of his trench coat. His pockets had been emptied of money. The credit cards and the drugs remained, enough to put him in prison. Or at any rate the prison hospital.

  Droplets of blood made little patterns on the pavement as the wind scattered them-each, until chilled by contact with the air, a precise
81 degrees Fahrenheit.

  "Chalktalk? Girl? You all right?" Darkness flowed toward the fantasy landscape on the pavement.

  The street artist was gone.

  The flowing darkness paused, alert to movement in the night, alert to body heat. Saw none, then looked downward. The fantasy landscape was brighter, as if lit from within. Invisible clouds traced moving shadows on the landscape.

  And in it the young girl was running. Up over a green hill, and out of sight.

  Night surrounded the phone booth, which stood alone in a puddle of yellow beneath a streetlamp. Despite the spilling light, it was difficult to see just who it was who picked up the receiver and dropped a coin into the slot.

  "Nine-one-one emergency. Go ahead."

  "This is Juve." (pronounced Hoo-vay). His words had, a strong Spanish accent. I heard shots. Shots and screams.' "Do you have an address, sir?"

  "One-eighty-nine East Third Street. Apartment Six-C."

  "May I have your full name, sir?"

  "Just Juve. I want to be anomalous."

  Juve hung up and in the instant before the darkness claimed him, smiled. The emergency dispatcher would never comprehend that in his very last statement, he had meant exactly what he said.

  The streetlight shone green. Then yellow. Then red. Colors that reflected on the dark chalk landscape drawn on the pavement below.

  The wall read: JUMP THE RICH. Red light glowed off the orange graffiti, off the little droplets of blood on the pavement.

  Anton swung above, his body growing colder with each red drop that spilled from his swinging form.

  When No Dice walked into Freakers, the air turned chill. People shivered, shuddered, turned apprehensively toward the door.

  No Dice only smiled. He just loved it when that happened. No Dice ignored the stage show and glided regally to a booth in the back. Three Liza Minnellis sat on its torn red plastic seats. All were wearing black bowler hats, as in the movie Cabaret. At least they'd spared him the net stockings. "My man," said No Dice. He looked from one Minnelli to the next, uncertain whom to address.

  "Mister No Dice." A big man rose from the booth. No Dice knew he was Lostboy from his high-pitched voice. "Lostboy" said No Dice. "My man." As if he'd known all along which Liza to talk to.

  No Dice gave all three of the 'Wolves the homeboy handshake-thumb up, thumb down, finger lock and tug, back-knuckle punch. Then he sat down in their booth. His long leather coat creaked.

  "Lookin fresh, No Dice," said Lostboy.

  No Dice smiled. "Manhattan makes it, Harlem takes it."

  "That the truth," said one of the Lizas.

  "Order you a drink?" Lostboy said. He grabbed a waitress as she passed. "Chivas Regal. Straight up."

  No Dice leaned over the table. "Wanna move weight," he said. "Wanna move kilos."

  Lostboy picked up his highball glass and deliberately threw its contents on the floor. "I always like my man No Dice." Lostboy reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag of blood-fresh from the blood bank and guaranteed free of AIDS. He began squeezing it out into his empty glass. "My man No Dice always wants weight, always pays cash, doesn't give attitude. Got his own clientele up in Harlem, so he never cuts into our action. Never no hassles with No Dice."

  "That the truth, homes," said No Dice. "I'll drink to it."

  No Dice's smile turned a little glassy as Lostboy lifted his Liza Minnelli mask and his proboscis unrolled from beneath his tongue into the red fluid.

  "Chateau AB Negative," he sighed. "My favorite vintage."

  Whoever answered the phone answered it in Chinese. "Can I speak to Dr. Zhao, please?"

  "Who shall I say is calling?" The switch to English came smoothly enough.

  "Juve."

  "One moment."

  Juve knew the place he was calling, had been in it a few times. The bar-restaurant was on the second floor above a grocery, and it didn't even have an English name, just a sign in Chinese characters on the door. Juve gathered that the gist of the name was simply Private Club. Sitting in red leather booths would be soft-voiced Asian men in Savile Row suits and handmade Italian shoes, very probably packing Israeli submachine guns.

  "This is Zhao."

  "This is Juve. You still lookin' for Dover Dan? The guy with three eyes who stole your product in that apartment down on East Third?"

  "Ah." A moment's thought. "Should we discuss this over the phone?"

  "Ain't no time to get up-close-and-personal witchoo, man. He's in Freakers with some of his homeboys."

  "And you're certain he's there."

  "He was there five minutes ago. He took his mask off when he got his drink, and I seen him."

  "If this information is correct, you may apply to me tomorrow for my very special thanks."

  "You know I'm a man of my word, Dr. Zhao." Juve hung up the phone.

  Darkness hovered uncertainly around him. He stared up at the glass front of One Police Plaza. Anything else to do tonight?

  Might as well go home.

  He buttoned the collar of his black leather trench and headed southwest on Park Row. One Police Plaza glowed across the street. He kept to the shadows.

  "Simon? Is that you, Simon?"

  The distorted voice wailed out of a doorway. Juve jumped at the sight of a figure huddled under a salvaged old quilt, the sad-faced old female joker whose face seemed to have collapsed into itself, so heavily wrinkled it looked like that of a bloodhound.

  Terror rolled through him. He wasn't Simon anymore. "Simon?" the joker said.

  "Not me, lady," Juve said. "It is you!"

  Juve shook his head and backed away. The woman lurched to her feet, tried to reach for him.

  Her hand closed on air. She stared around her. The darkness had engulfed Juve entirely. "Simon!" she screamed. "Help me!"

  The darkness didn't answer.

  He was No Dice again by the time he got a cab heading north. He had been Juve wearing No Dice's clothes, he thought, and that had made him uncertain, made him overreact when his identity was challenged.

  Who was still alive, he wondered, who remembered Simon?

  Some old joker lady apparently. He couldn't remember ever seeing her. He wondered why her appearance had frightened him so much.

  The cab left him at Gramercy Park. Darkness carried him up the side of a whitestone building on raven wings. He opened the roof entrance with his key and went down two flights of stairs, then padded on an old wine-colored carpet to his apartment door. The door and frame were steel sheathed in wood. He opened several locks and stepped inside, then pressed the code that would disconnect the alarms.

  The apartment was spacious, comfortably furnished. In the daytime it was full of light. Books were lined alphabetically on shelves, LPs and CDs on racks. The hardwood floors gleamed. There wasn't a dust speck out of place.

  He put on a Thelonius Monk CD, took off No Dice's clothes, and had a shower to wash off the man's musky cologne. A large bedroom wardrobe, also steel sheathed in wood, had a combination lock. He spun the combination and opened the door, then hung No Dice's clothes next to Wall Walker's, which hung next to Juve's. On a shelf above was a feathered skull mask. Wrapped in plastic, fresh from the dry cleaner's, was a NYPD uniform, complete with badge and gun. There was also a dark cloak he'd once worn during District Attorney Muldoon's ace raids on the Shadow Fists.

  In the rear of the closet was the blue uniform and black cape he hardly ever wore anymore, the costume that marked him as Black Shadow. Black Shadow, who had been wanted for murder since the Jokertown Riot of 1976.

  He looked at the varied sets of clothing and tried to remember what it was that Simon wore.

  The memory wouldn't come.

  After a few years, he realized he didn't know what to call himself anymore. It had been years since anyone had called him by his real name, which was Neil Carton Langford. The last anyone had heard of Neil was when Columbia tossed him out for not ever getting around to finishing his M.A. thesis. Black Shadow had been
an outlaw for fourteen years. He'd been Wall Walker for a long time-it was his oldest surviving alias-but Wall Walker was too genial a personality for the kind of life he led most of the time. The other masks came and went, transient and short-lived.

  Finally he settled on calling himself Shad. The name was simple and had a pleasant informal sound. It was a name that promised neither too much nor too little. He was pleased at finally figuring out what his name was.

  No one, other than himself, called him by that name. Not that he knew of, anyway.

  When he'd started out, there'd been other people whose line of business had either intersected his or complemented it. But Fortunato had gone off to Japan. Yeoman was gone, no one knew where. Croyd was asleep most of the time, and he was usually on the other side of the law, anyway.

  Maybe it was time for Shad to hang up his cape. But if he did, who would be left to persecute the bad guys? All the public aces seemed to be engaged in lengthy public soap operas that didn't have much to do with helping real people. None of them had Shad's expertise.

  He might as well stay with it. He didn't have a life anywhere else. Not since 1976, when he'd realized what lived inside him.

  When he woke, Shad drank coffee and watched the news. The coffee didn't do much for him-no normal food did-but when he was living his normal existence in his normal uptown upper-class apartment, he tried as far as possible to act like a normal person.

  The news was enough to wake him up, though. Shortly after eleven o'clock the previous evening, a group of what witnesses described as "casually dressed Asians" walked into Freakers, strolled to the back, drew machine pistols, and smoked three jokers wearing Liza Minnelli masks. Another Werewolf in another part of the bar returned fire, splattering one of the Snowboys in return for being disembowelled by about forty semiwadcutters. One of the Wolves had actually survived in critical condition but was not expected to be conscious and of any use to police for a long time.

  No Dice was going to have to contact someone else to get his shipment of rapture.

  The news rattled on. A vice president of Morgan Stanley had supposedly skipped town with hundreds of millions of investors' funds. Nelson Dixon, the head of Dixon Communications and owner of the Dixon-Atlantic Casino, had just bought another art treasure, van Gogh's Irises, for $55 million, a private purchase from an Australian billionaire who'd run into hard times. He'd also fired his entire security staff and hired new people, complaining that the old people had been lax about the jumper threat.