Jokertown Shuffle

  Then he turned to the article on Tachyon. Dr. Tachyon, it said, had resigned his position at the Jokertown Clinic. "Intimates," the article said, reported that Tachyon was frantic about the disappearance of his "one-eyed Jill," Cody Havero, and had been unable to concentrate on work. There was a strong implication that he'd been spending his days in an alcoholic coma. Dr. Finn, whom Shad knew both as Wall Walker and Mr. Gravemold, hinted gently at Tachyon's breakdown and also praised Blaise Andrieux, Tachyon's grandson, who had been a "tower of strength in this ordeal." Which didn't much sound like the Blaise that Shad had heard about, but maybe the kid had grown up some.

  There was also a lengthy rehash of Tachyon's history, concentrating on his "drunken peregrinations" following the death of Blythe van Rensselaer. There was also a description of Dr. Havero's "controversial career," along with more speculation to the effect that Cody had been assassinated by a CIA conspiracy anxious to cover up something they'd done in Vietnam. The paper hadn't found anyone reputable to report this last, which came from a "professional psychic known to the police." I'll just bet she's known, Shad thought.

  Shad narrowed his eyes and looked at Cody Havero's picture. The scarred, one-eyed face looked interesting. Maybe she was someone he ought to concern himself about. He could put money out on the street, maybe hear something that the police and FBI hadn't.

  He spent the rest of the day doing just that and came up with zip.

  "I've been trying to sleep," Croyd said. "But it's no good. I'll probably be awake a couple days at least before I can drift off."

  "I could use a flyer around that warehouse. I want to track who goes in and out."

  Croyd gave a peculiar nasal sigh. "Come by and bring more bugs. We'll talk about it."

  "Yo. Homeboy."

  "Homes here."

  "New arrivals at the warehouse. Three people in a limousine. One of them's a lady with a bald head. Then there's a bodyguard and-you're not gonna believe this."

  Shad, whose feet were planted to the vertical surface outside Tachyon's window, was at this point prepared to believe anything. "Try me."

  "St. John Latham. You know, the mouthpiece."

  "Yeah. I know who he is."

  "Some other people showed up just this minute. Some kids in a van."

  "Don't let them see you. They're probably jumpers." Shad couldn't be certain if the following squawk came from Croyd's throat or from careless use of the squelch button. Finally Croyd's voice came back. "Funny company you're keeping."

  "The entertainment never stops."

  Croyd signed off, and Shad relieved a cramp by shifting his stance outside Tachyon's window. Thus far, the evening had been pretty dull, consisting of Tachyon and Blaise polishing off a couple of microwaved TV dinners and a six-pack of Rolling Rock. Shad had always thought of Tachyon as having a more refined palate, but on the other hand, Hungry Man Dinners weren't exactly the mark of a criminal mastermind either.

  Blaise popped a cassette into the VCR and sat down in front of the set. Tachyon opened a bag of Fritos and sat down with him.

  Shad couldn't catch more than a fraction of the film from where he sat, but he saw enough pink flesh and heard enough moaning to be convinced of its nature. Whatever the man was doing to the woman on the film seemed insignificant compared to what the sound track did to "Cherokee."

  Blaise seemed enthusiastic about the action and gave Tachyon a running color commentary on the film. Eventually, Tachyon rose from his chair and kind of wandered around the apartment for a while, then went to the liquor cabinet, mixed bourbon, gin, Cointreau, vodka, and brandy in a tall cocktail shaker, then gulped the lot. He passed out on the bed, got up to stagger to the bathroom and vomit, then returned to the bed and passed out again.

  Blaise took note of all this but did not intervene. So much for Dr. Finn's pillar of strength.

  Hypothesis one: Shad thought: Tachyon was the mastermind behind the whole jump-the-rich scheme. He'd cracked when his girlfriend had disappeared, or earlier; and he'd decided that justice for wild cards was too long in coming, and he'd become a terrorist. He was, after all, the man who when threatened by the Snowboys and the Syndicate, had raised a private joker army-Mr. Gravemold had been in it-then led them into combat twirling pearl-handled sixguns. Looking at it that way, it didn't seem like Tach had been too tightly screwed together in the first place.

  Hypothesis one-point-one: He'd become a terrorist, and he'd killed his own girlfriend because she'd found out. Hypothesis two: Tachyon and the grandkid have been jumped. That's someone else in there. This theory explained everything very neatly except for where was Tachyon's real mind?

  They Stole Tachyon's Brain, Shad thought. Next on the Tachyon triple feature.

  If they'd had any sense, the bad guys would have killed Tachyon, the real Tachyon, right away-as they'd probably done with Cody Havero, who was in a position to spot the switch.

  If Tachyon was jumped, Shad wondered, when had it happened? Could it have been two years ago, at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta? Tachyon had made a sudden political turnabout, and there were plenty of rumors of aces hidden among the delegates.

  Shad didn't think it too likely. No one had heard of jumpers until long after the convention, though that didn't mean they hadn't existed. But it had only been recently that Tachyon's behavior had changed radically.

  There was no evidence either way so far, at least from Shad's fly-on-the-wall perspective. Though if that was Tachyon in his own body, he'd been keeping his taste in cinema well hidden.

  The thing was, what was Shad going to do about it? Whoever was in Tachyon's body, he was an evil son of a bitch. He's stolen Shelley's body and Lord knew how many others.

  He thought that Tachyon was going to have to simply disappear. And Blaise was going to have to go with him. Ten minutes later, Shad had about decided to join Croyd at the warehouse, but at that point Blaise got up and turned off the TV He shook Tachyon awake, and the two started getting ready to go out. Blaise moussed up his hair and put on a stressed-leather jacket and enough gold chains to make No Dice jealous. Tachyon looked disinterestedly through his wardrobe and more or less donned things at random. Which was probably what he normally did anyway.

  Shad slipped down the face of the building and got on his bike so that he'd be ready when Tachyon left. "Homey." A voice honked in his ear.

  "Yeah, Wingman."

  "People are moving out. Looks like a whole convoy. The limo, the van, that blue Lincoln, some other people on motorcycles."

  "Stick to Latham. I want to see where's he's heading."

  "Roger, wilco. Look, I can't carry this radio on the wing, so it'll be some time before my next report."

  "I'll be waiting."

  Tachyon and Blaise left the apartment building-Tachyon wasn't walking very straight-and went to the garage around the corner where they checked out a black Saab Turbo. Blaise drove. Shad followed them to the offices of Global Fun amp; Games. When he got there, he could see Croyd overhead. Shad chained his bike and went up the back wall of the office building. He perched atop the penthouse, and Croyd flapped to a landing near him, panting for breath.

  "I'm not in shape for this," he said. "You should climb more buildings."

  "The whole convoy came straight here. I don't know where they're all headed, but-"

  "The penthouse would seem indicated."

  "Yeah."

  "Fly over to the other building, and catch your breath. When Latham leaves, I'll give you the high sign, and you follow him."

  "Man. I sure hope I'm awake when this all comes to a head. I'd like to know what's going on here."

  Judas Priest began to thunder from beneath Shad's feet. He could feel the bass rumble through his soles.

  Croyd took a few wheezing steps to the parapet and launched himself off into the night. Shad cloaked himself in darkness, then peered over the edge into one of the windows.

  Van Gogh's Irises sat on the penthouse mantlepiece, vibrating to the heavy metal booming
from eight-foot-tall speakers. Nelson Dixon, the painting's new owner, strutted up and down on the boardroom table in two-thousand-dollar handmade shoes. Jokers, including Kafka, hung around a boardroom table, not mixing much with a bunch of kids who were probably jumpers. A well-muscled bald woman stood in the corner and watched everyone with an expression of cold contempt. Near her, Shad recognized the lawyer St. John Latham. Shad wondered if Latham had been jumped but decided not-no jumper could possibly imitate that frigid manner. Shad also recognized the comptroller for the city of New York, a famous Wall Street bond profiteer, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum, and somebody from the old Reagan administration whom he couldn't otherwise place. Then Blaise came in with Tachyon, and the boy jumped up on the long table with Nelson Dixon, and the two exchanged high fives. Tachyon swayed to a chair and seemed to pass out again.

  An interesting start to the meeting.

  Shad took pictures through the window with a pocket camera and wished he had eavesdropping equipment.

  The bald woman came forward and called things to order. The music faded away. People spoke. File folders were produced and passed around. Party bowls of cocaine and rapture moved up and down the table.

  Shad wondered where Constance Loeffler was. The new head of Global Fun amp; Games had to be a part of this scene. The meeting went on for several hours. Nobody thought to look out the window and wonder what a piece of darkness was doing poking its head below the sill.

  When things broke up, Shad had decided whether to follow Tachyon or the Van Gogh. The art attracted him more-he wanted to see where they were keeping the loot. He followed it to the same brownstone warehouse in Jokertown.

  Damn. Still, he had a good start. All he had to do was follow people around. Connect the dots.

  Then do what he always did.

  Later that night, he slipped into Shelley's hotel room, just to see what it was the one-eyed girl had put on top of the tall cabinet. He picked the lock and slid in silently, wrapped in darkness. Shelley was breathing easily on the bed. Shad walked up the wall and peered at the top of the cabinet. His mouth went dry.

  What the girl had put there was her own eye. And her hand. The eye was looking down at Shelley's sleeping figure. Apparently Shad had not caught its attention.

  He got the hell out of there.

  Next morning, following instructions, Shelley set her window shade to the angle that meant yes.

  And the jumpers came and got her.

  Two nights later, Croyd collected his last payment of cash and bugs. Between the two of them they'd collected a large dossier, following and photographing every person and every car they could connect with the jumping scheme. Shad's files bulged with data.

  Tachyon. St. John Latham. Curator of the Metropolitan Museum. The city comptroller. Shad had been in and out of each of their apartments, though without finding much incriminating. Nelson Dixon. Probably Connie Loeffler. Maybe even Donald Trump, who the hell knew? Trump had sure been going through a lot of changes lately. Hell, he'd gone and fired his wife. Nelson Dixon had fired a lot of people, too, including his entire security network. He bet the new security people were part of the scheme.

  It wouldn't be the jumpers in their bodies, Shad figured. Fifteen-year-old street punks couldn't pull off impersonations this complex. Jumpers were just the means of entry. Shad guessed that the new tenants were probably well-educated jokers from Ellis Island, people who might have been Nelson Dixon or Donald Trump themselves if their wild cards hadn't been stacked against them.

  How many millions were going into that warehouse?

  Along with guns bought with converted bearer bonds, medical supplies from the Jokertown Clinic, drugs from the Snowboys, paintings from the Metropolitan collection…

  The question was how to bust it open. His usual method was to infiltrate, then turn the bad guys against each other. But this was too damn big. And infiltration would be difficult. He wasn't a jumper, wasn't a joker, wasn't a Snowboy, and he certainly wasn't whatever the bald woman was.

  The third night, he followed Tachyon to the warehouse. The Saab couldn't get in because there was a navy-surplus deuce-and-a-half sitting in the open main door. Blaise and Tachyon conferred inside for a few minutes, and then the Saab led the truck onto a pier on the Lower West Side. Shad remembered himself as Mr. Gravemold, fighting a paranoid albino Croyd and a near-invincible Snotman on this same pier. It seemed the pier wasn't keeping any better company since that time.

  He slipped through the pier rail and walked inverted over the water. He stopped when he heard the truck brakes squeal, then the slam of doors and the sound of voices. The water near the pier began to bubble. Shad's nerves gave a leap. He summoned darkness to cover him.

  Something broke surface, a gelatinous hemisphere streaming with cold Hudson water. Shad's mouth went dry as he saw the bulbous eyes, up top like a bullfrog's, and the leering twisted mouth. He was used to jokers but he wasn't used to this.

  "Let's hurry it up," the thing said. "I got dinner waiting." Its veined skin split open, and another joker stood up inside. The joker was built along the lines of a beer truck, with a heavy armored exoskeleton to strengthen him, and he began to take heavy crates from those above and stow them carefully inside the shimmering dome.

  The crates seemed evenly divided between food and munitions.

  "My aching back," said the aquatic dome. "I hope you're ready for a slow ride home."

  "Anything to give Granddad a kick in the teeth," Blaise said. Tachyon and the jokers looked uncomfortable. Granddad, Shad thought. Tachyon had been jumped. And he was on the Rox.

  Tachyon and Blaise lay flat on a case of antitank rockets.

  The big joker stepped out, the dome sealed, and in complete silence, it vanished from sight beneath the river.

  The deuce-and-a-half rumbled as it started up.

  Shad decided to burglarize Tachyon's apartment again. Maybe he'd find something incriminating this time.

  On the pavement below Tachyon's window he found a chalk drawing of himself, dressed as he was just now, his feet planted to the wall. Shad's head swung wildly, his ears alert to the sound of laughter.

  He heard nothing.

  He found nothing in Tachyon's apartment.

  He wondered, as he scuffed the drawing away with his shoe, if his role in this was ordained by someone not himself. If he was a pawn.

  And he wondered if that someone had chalk dust on her fingertips.

  "Hi. My name is Lisa Traeger these days. I'm calling from the trust officer's desk while he's off converting about half a million dollars to bearer bonds. I just thought I'd let you know I'm still among the living. I'll call back later, when I get some free time."

  Lisa Traeger. He knew the victim's name now.

  He heard the phone call hours after it was recorded. He'd seen the jump after having followed the Lincoln from the brownstone warehouse, but he hadn't known Shelley was a part of it. Shad was waiting by the phone when it rang again.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "This is, ah, Miss Traeger. I was wondering if you would care to join me for a night on the town."

  "Are you free?"

  "Nobody's watching. They trust me. I'm a criminal now, just like them."

  He wasn't completely certain he believed that.

  He met her at Tavern on the Green, in the Chestnut Room, which was one of the few rooms in the restaurant where people lurking out in Central Park couldn't watch them through the glass walls. He had taken a few circuits of the building before he'd gone in, just in case, and seen nothing, not even a detached eyeball.

  Shad wore a blue blazer, gray wool slacks, and regimental tie. Lisa Traeger was in her late thirties, white, darkhaired, dark-eyed, and handsome. She carried a leather briefcase that Shad suspected was stuffed with bearer bonds. She wore a black off-the-shoulder Donna Karan evening dress and a Georges Kaplan fox wrap with the price tag still on it. Emeralds shone at her throat and ears. She ordered champagne and a warm chicken-salad appe
tizer with bacon and spinach.

  "Brilliant," she said. "It went without a hitch. Traeger'll be held till tomorrow morning, and then I'll have to get the hell outta town."

  "How do you feel?"

  "Glorious. That joker body was old. I'm young againwell, younger. And my senses are much better. I can taste things again." She laughed as champagne went up her nose. Her skin glowed against the background of polished brass and rare wormy chestnut.

  Sadness whispered through Shad's bones. "Traeger's hurting," he said. "Wherever she is."

  Shelley considered that for a moment. "She'll make them the same deal I did. Wouldn't you?" She gave him a shaky smile. "I don't want to think about that anymore. I just want to be human again." She gave a brittle laugh. "I want to be safe for a little while, okay?"

  She ordered the Muscovy duck in juniper sauce. Shad, to be polite, ordered the veal escalope and ate a few bites. He hadn't had solid food in days, and his stomach griped at him. His nerves kept giving little jumps as new people entered the room, as he checked them against his mental files of people connected with the jumpers' scheme. He saw nobody he knew. She ordered a bottle of Puligny Montrachet Latour '82, and Shad sipped a glass. Alcohol danced warm spirals in his head.

  Outside, a cold winter wind flogged at the trees of Central Park. Shad put on No Dice's leather trench coat and got on his bike. Shelley gave a laugh and climbed on behind him, her hose-covered thighs gripping him. They sped up Central Park West, heading uptown. He danced the Vincent left and right, eyes straining, awareness reaching out, trying to make sure he wasn't followed. He stole heat from the cars and buildings they passed, a degree or two at a time, until his body roared with fire.

  Shelley took his shoulders, leaned forward, spoke into his ear. "Wherever you want to go."

  Wherever. Right.

  Wherever ended up being a suite at the Carlyle. Shelley paid with Lisa Traeger's Gold Card. She hadn't been human for a long time. She wanted to do the most human thing of all.