Marked Cards

  "She remembered Chotol."

  The Color of His Skin

  Part 4

  "You were wonderful again on Peri's show last night," Jo Ann told Gregg as he entered the office. Her skin was more emerald than usual, as if flushed. "My God the pictures Mr. McCoy took, that awful Faneuil ..." She shook her head, and a warty finger impaled the morning paper. "The response has been good - if you ignore the minor riot near J-Town afterward."

  "I heard about it on the way in. How bad was it?"

  "Mostly just taunting and some bottle and rock-throwing back and forth between jokers and nats. No one killed, anyway."

  "That's good." Gregg said. "So what are they saying?"

  "Well, let's see ..." Jo Ann fluffed out the pages, scanning. "'The Davis-Hartmann revelations, coupled with the 60 Minutes expose and other reports, and now Josh McCoy's startling photographs from Guatemala, make a compelling portrait of ugliness in action,'" she quoted "I like that one. But Pan probably doesn't like this: '... The knot of reporters around Rudo and Herzenhagen abruptly doubled in size late last night....' Ummm ... a little further down: '... Sources within WHO say that the board is pressuring Rudo to either answer the increasing accusations or to resign....' Pretty interesting. How about this, from the editorial page: '... President Barnett's request that the Senate reconsider a mandatory virus testing bill has set off a vitrolic exchange of words between the opposing conservative and liberal camps. This observer wonders whether we are not seeing a reflection of the increasingly violent polarity of the public....'"

  Jo Ann dropped the paper back down. "You get the drift, boss. Every magazine from Time to the Sun has had an article about the Sharks, pro or con. Some are blaming the conspiracy for everything from the Dodgers' loss in the World Series to the last recession, at least those who aren't saying that it's all hogwash and the only way to eradicate the disease is to sterilize the carriers. I'll give you one thing - no one is sitting on the fence with this. You sure have an impact when you try."

  See, Greggie? I told you. Use the Gift wisely and you'll he rewarded....

  Gregg chuckled. "I guess. And you're still smiling. What else is up?"

  "Good news," Jo Ann said. "Got a FedEx letter from Marilyn Monroe's lawyers this morning. They're dropping the defamation of character suit they filed. And Hannah's in your office."

  "You have a really idiotic smile, Jo Ann. Did you know that?"

  "Hey, I'm not the Cheshire Cat around here." Jo Ann turned dramatically away and flicked on her computer. "I'll be busy writing letters. I won't hear a thing."

  "Jo Ann - "

  "Your visitor's waiting. Get in there."

  Shaking his head, Gregg went into his office as Jo Ann began rattling the Macintosh's keys. He shut the door behind him. "I have to get a new secretary," he said. "This one treats me like a younger brother - when she's not bugging my office at a client's request. I should have fired her when I had the excuse."

  Hannah smiled. "Jo Ann believes in you," she replied.

  "Uh-huh," Gregg said, going around his desk and sitting. Hannah's blue-green eyes followed him. He found that disconcerting, and pretended to study his appointment book. "And how about you?"

  "I'm beginning to get there."

  Gregg looked up. Neither of them said anything. Gregg felt inside himself for the Gift, the power, and he reached out with that newfound sense to see within her a surprising multi-hued swell. He let the Gift touch her, wonderingly.

  Greggie! Stop it! The voice came suddenly, wrenching his gaze away from Hannah's. He fell out of the Gift with a grimace.

  "Gregg?"

  This isn't what it's for. Leave her alone.

  I haven't DONE anything.

  You can't. You mustn't.

  It's MY Gift. MY power. I can use it as I choose.

  No, you can't. Don't you see? You can't even THINK that....

  "Gregg?"

  "Sorry. Just a twinge - I ... I pulled a muscle yesterday."

  You can't ...

  Gregg glanced at his watch. "We're supposed to meet the WABC people this afternoon, right? Why don't we hit lunch and decide what we're going to say? McCoy's pictures are going to stir the pot even more, and we should be ready for that."

  ... can't ...

  Gregg rose and went to the door. He opened it, watching her as she nodded to Jo Ann and took her jacket from the rack.

  He smiled.

  But I can. Once again, I can....

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  In the time since the War for the Rox, and especially in the last few months, Jokertown and the district surrounding it had increasingly become polarized, armed enclaves. During the daytime, there was little trouble as long as you kept to main streets and avoided alleys and other lonely places. During the day, jokers and nats mingled on the sidewalks, and if they avoided one another or if there were stares, words, or an occasional more intense incident, well, that was the chance you took.

  But at night ...

  Walking in or out of Jokertown was like passing through a border. A nat violating the unmarked boundaries risked being harassed by vigilante bands of jokers. A nat in J-Town was well-advised to wear a mask. Nor was it any less dangerous for a joker walking out of the district, for a block or so away, youthful nat gangs bullied hapless jokers.

  At night, there was violence. There were fists, knives, clubs, and guns. There was blood and even the occasional death. At night, if you wanted to move in or out of J-Town, you drove. Even then you stayed to well-lit streets, you kept the doors locked and the windows up, and unless there were other cars, you didn't stop for lights or signs.

  In the erratic, block-wide no-man's-land girdling Jokertown, the order of society had broken down entirely. In that space, a joker moved: a limping, assymetrical travesty like two different bodies bisected down the middle and glued together. In the shadows of the boarded-up buildings, other shapes moved with it.

  "Hold up a second John!" Gregg tapped the minivan driver on the shoulder. "Can you pull over?"

  The driver, a bearded nat, glanced over at the woman sitting in the passenger seat. "Debra?" The woman shrugged back at John, and he looked at Gregg in the rearview mirror. "Here? You two call the shots, but you're out of your minds if you want to take a stroll in this place." John turned the wheel of the minivan over until they bumped the curb.

  "Gregg?" Hannah said. She was sitting next to Gregg in the rear seat. Behind them, a videocamera sat on top of boxes of equipment and coils of cable: John's equipment. "What's going on?"

  "Just give me a moment." Gregg was already opening the side door to the van and getting out.

  The four of them were on their way to Jokertown. Debra Rashid was a reporter for WABC; John was her videographer. Gregg and Hannah had just taped the interview in the station when Gregg suggested that they continue the interview while walking the streets of Jokertown. Debra had agreed quickly: added color would enhance her chances of getting feature play with the story.

  Gregg hadn't quite known what he'd planned to do, but it seemed that fate had handed him a plum. The emotions here nearly knocked him down with their intensity.

  Across the street, the pathetic joker glanced at them once and then continued his hobbling progress toward Jokertown. This block was one that had seen far more than its share of trouble in the last few years. Most of the buildings - three story tenements, for the most part - were vacant, blinking down at them with windows of broken glass. Only a few lights betrayed the presence of those too poor or too stubborn to move away. Trash littered the gutters, the streetlamp poles were rooted in the broken glass of their shattered lights. At eight o'clock, the street traffic was already zero.

  Greggie, this is grandstanding. You don't need this.

  Just shut up. I know what I'm doing.

  Behind him, Gregg could hear John grunt as he lifted his videocam to his shoulder. Hannah was a warm presence at his shoulder, and he could feel Debra's unease, like a taint of blood in water. And there were other
emotions out there, ones that only Gregg could sense. "Hey!" Gregg called to the joker. "Let us give you a ride."

  The joker looked at them. Gregg caught a glimpse of the face: half-feminine, half-male, and totally mismatched. Two entirely different faces. S/he didn't speak, but stared at them for a moment before shaking the head. The joker lurched forward, almost falling before the much shorter left leg touched the pavement. "Look, my friend, get in so we can all get the hell out of here. It's not safe," Gregg called after him.

  "You got that right, mister."

  The voice was an adolescent snarl. Four teenagers strolled confidently out from between two buildings; another trio appeared at the mouth of an alley across the street. They were street punks - all leather and chains, their hair spiked and multi-colored, and they were nats. The leader, a kid with electric-blue hair and a dragon tattoo snarling down his left arm, smiled at them evilly, flipping a long knife in one hand. The blade sparkled in the minivan's headlights. "Newspeople," he said. "Hey, Debra Rashid - I recognize you. Great tits, even on the tube. You out to catch some nasty footage?"

  The rest of the gang had casually blocked the joker's path, spreading themselves out in a wide circle around him/her. They were laughing, taunting the joker and joking between themselves.

  "Hey, maybe we cut it down the middle and get two jokers, y'know."

  "Hey, Skunk, you like boys - you take the right half."

  "Fuck you, asshole."

  The joker still hadn't spoken. S/he whirled around frantically, clumsily, its eyes wide in terror. Knives and chains had appeared in the kids' hands; the intensity of the emotions upped a notch in Gregg's head. Two of them had handguns, and Gregg felt a quick fear. There were more of them than he'd thought, and the guns scared him. His confidence did a nosedive.

  He heard the whir as John thumbed on his camera. Dragon-tattoo's gaze went to John, saw the camera, and he took three quick steps, placing his hand over the lens. "You turn that fucker off, man," he snarled.

  At the same time, Gregg felt a change in the emotions of the kid. Where before there had been only scarlet rage, there was now a faint tracing of cool blue coming from him. He's not entirely sure about this, Gregg realized. He hates the camera. That decided Gregg.

  "Get the hell out of here," the kid was saying. His knife was pointing at John's abdomen, and another kid - with a semiautomatic pistol leering from his fist - came over to back up Dragon-tattoo. "This ain't none of your business. Give me the damn tape and then get the hell out, or you get the same treatment as freak meat over there. Your choice, tourists. We don't gotta be nice."

  John was glaring at the kid, but Gregg could sense that it was only bravado. Debra touched Gregg on the prosthetic. "I think we'd better go," she said, her voice shaky. "Please. Hannah, get back in the van. John, give him the tape. Mr. Hartmann - "

  It won't work, Greggie. The power's not strong enough.

  Fuck you. It's MY Gift. I know what I can do with it.

  Gregg stepped forward, interposing himself between the kid and John. John's lens followed him, still taping.

  "Don't do this," Gregg told Dragon-tattoo, and let the Gift loose. With the words, the trace of azure uncertainty in the young man shivered as if struck.

  The kid snorted, then wiped at his nose with the back of a leather-clad hand. "Wassa matter, you don't like seeing violence, dude? You must not watch much TV." The youth looked at Gregg with suddenly narrowed eyes. "Hey, I know you, too," he said. "You're goddamn Gregg Hartmann, ain't you? And the blond chick's the Davis woman. Shit, guys, we got a fucking celebrity audience tonight. Genuine joker lovers."

  The rest of the gang laughed. "Don't let him give you no shit, Blades," one of them called out, and at the same time suddenly swung his chain; the steel links slashed air and caught the joker on the side of the head. S/he screamed and went down, blood gushing as the side of the face opened with a jagged cut. The joker fell, and they kicked the helpless body as they stepped over it, coming across the street to Gregg and the others. The joker moaned, unconscious.

  "See, the meat'll keep for a few minutes," Blades said. He smiled toward Hannah. "You want a swing at freak meat, lady? Feels good. It really does. Almost as good as sex."

  "You're sick," Hannah scowled. She started toward the injured joker, and Blades reached out for her with his free hand at the same time. Gregg intercepted the hand. For a second, the tableau held: Gregg staring at Blades, his good left hand clenched around the teenager's wrist while the emotional matrix swirled around them, strong and vivid. He could sense the muzzles of their weapons trained on him.

  Careful, Greggie ...

  "Hey," Gregg said. The word flared with the Gift. "Let's call this a draw. You guys go your way, we'll go ours. Violence isn't going to solve anything. It isn't going to make the virus go away."

  "It is if we kill every one of the fuckers." Blades wrenched his hand out of Gregg's grasp. "And right now you ain't in much position to bargain, are you, old man? I look around and I see we got all the big cards. High caliber ones. Sharp ones." He grinned, twirling the knife edge in front of Gregg's eyes. He still grinned but underneath Gregg could still sense that unease. He let the Gift wrap around it, slowly, carefully coaxing it forward. So slow, so clumsy, this power ...

  But it's all you got, Greggie. I told you, but you wouldn't listen. Now you'd better be right.

  "That's what they want you to believe," Gregg told him. The Gift made his voice powerful, but only Blades was responding to it. The others were lost in a bloodlust, their emotions too powerful and opposed to alter. The realization made his strategy at once simple and difficult: unless he turned the leader, he could not control what might happen. Fear lent desperation to his words. "That's the lie they want you to buy into, but it isn't true. And guns and knives aren't power. Not really." Each word chipped away some of the confining anger and isolated the young man's underlying unease at what he was doing.

  He's the key. Turn him and the others follow....

  Gregg continued, hurrying the words. "You don't want to make a mistake here. Think about it. We're not some poor lone joker who wandered onto the wrong block. Touch us, and there's going to be a big response. People know who we are and where we are. They know when to expect us, and they're probably already looking. You're going to have cops all over this place. Your place. Call tonight a draw, my man, and no one loses face. C'mon." Gregg gestured toward the fallen joker. "You've made your point. There's no reason to hurt him anymore, or us."

  "You're scared, Hartmann."

  "You're damned right I'm scared. No one wants to die. No one wants to be hurt. Not jokers, not nats. Not you." The kid's uneasiness flared into more saturated fright. The Gift strengthened inside Gregg, arcing outward like an acetelyne flame.

  The kid scoffed. "I ain't scared, Mister Suit. Ain't none of us scared of protecting our turf." The rest of the gang scowled and muttered behind Blades, and there was nothing in them but hate. Nothing Gregg could use. Their emotions threatened to shatter the uncertainty contained in their leader's own rage, and Gregg hurried to shield Blades with the Gift.

  "But you are scared," he said. "Just like me. You wouldn't be out here if you weren't scared - scared of the wild card, scared because you know that there's always a chance for the virus to infect you, and you might turn out to be just like that." Gregg pointed to the fallen joker across the street. Inside Blades, there was a surge of pale white against the red, dampening it. "Think about it, Blades. He isn't any different than you. Not really. It's a goddamn virus. You don't choose to become a joker."

  "Man, you talk too much. You know that?"

  "You're right, I do. So why don't you use that? You want the jokers to stay out of your territory, right?"

  "You got it, old man."

  "Then let me tell them for you. You know who I am; you know the jokers listen to me. I'll tell them for you; I'll tell them all to stay away. That's what you want, right?" Repeating. Reinforcing. Shoring up the emotions.

&
nbsp; Blades sniffed. He shrugged. Gregg said nothing, watching instead the intricate play of emotions within the boy. Suddenly, the kid shoved his knife into the scabbard stuck in his boot. "You better tell 'em good, old man. You tell 'em good, 'cause the next ones we find we kill. You got that?"

  "I got it, Blades ... thanks."

  The kid turned without another word, stalking off. One by one, the others followed. In a few seconds, the four of them were alone in the street once more.

  "Fucking great footage," John whispered behind Gregg.

  Hannah and Gregg went to the joker as John continued to film, as Debra began to lay a commentary in the background. Together, they helped the bleeding person to his feet. Hannah smiled once at Gregg as they walked slowly across the street toward the van.

  "You were incredible," she said. "God, I was petrified, but you ..." She shook her head. "You got us out without any more violence."

  He had no answer for that He shrugged, suddenly almost shy, and he marveled at the azure admiration for him that he sensed inside Hannah.

  I did it! Gregg exulted as he and Hannah placed the joker on the floor of the van. You see? It's more powerful than I thought. I can make them do ANYTHING!

  Greggie ... Softly. Sadly.

  Hannah began to clean the joker's head wound with sterile bandages from a medical kit Debra handed her. She paused a moment, looking up at Gregg as she brushed her hair back from her face.

  She smiled again.

  Her smile was far, far more compelling than the voice in his head.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  The following night Gregg took Hannah to dinner at Aces High, with Oddity along for protection. Aces High was a shadow of its old self - nearly deserted, the service mediocre, the food good but not exceptional. Hiram wasn't in, and Gregg recognized only one or two of the few patrons. Despite that, the three of them enjoyed themselves. Hannah especially seemed to shed the shadows the last year had wrapped around her, laughing and talking in an animated voice. She touched Gregg's hand often, sitting very near, and there were times when he imagined he could feel the heat of her leg close to his under the table. They stayed for two hours, lingering through appetizers, dinner, and dessert.