Marked Cards

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Herzenhagen smoked a cigarette and pondered the news as he watched Peggy Durand draw on her clothes. All the wild cards on Governor's Island gone. None as yet recaptured. All the Sharks killed - though at least Shannon seemed to have wounded his attacker before his head was ripped off.

  For a moment he was distracted by the vision of Peggy drawing on her Spandex bicycle shorts. Amazing, he thought, the things available for young people these days. He'd been raised on Long Island with wealth and privilege - his morphine-addicted Danish grandfather had married American money - and he'd thought himself lucky. But the eighteen-year-old Philip von Herzenhagen, he suspected would have thrown it all away for a chance to live in the Nineties and chase girls who wore Spandex.

  He dragged his mind back to business. It couldn't be a coincidence, he thought, that of the five men killed during the escape, three were Sharks, and that two of these had been killed, not in the escape, but executed quite deliberately in their beds.

  None of the Sharks killed were those named in the Hartmann accusations. Which meant that the killers had other sources of information.

  A leak? Possibly. Perhaps one of the other guards had helped the escapees. Possibly the escape had been arranged from on high. The prison break bespoke organization. Someone in the facility, familiar with its procedures.

  Perhaps there were counter-Sharks out there. Shark Hunters.

  "Be careful," he said.

  Peggy cocked an eyebrow at him as she arranged the feathers of dark hair that fell down her forehead. "What was that?"

  "Something's going on, and I don't know what. But I don't think I want to trust the phones. If you need to call me, I'll be at the club every day from noon till two, and again at dinnertime."

  She smiled at him, her eyes glowing with an intelligence beyond her apparent years. Peggy Durand had been Herzenhagen's mistress in Germany after the war. He had found her in the shambles of the Runstedt Offensive, a naive little girl from Idaho who sold Red Cross doughnuts to angry GI's at ten cents apiece and other favors - exclusively to officers - on a mattress in the back of her truck. He had shown her a better life. Peggy had been attentive and learned her business well; and when the CIA had been formed, Herzenhagen had recruited her as a courier. And after the CIA, she'd followed him into the Sharks. The last few decades she'd been living with Faneuil, but now things had changed.

  After the fiasco in Guatemala, she'd been jumped into the luscious body of an eighteen-year-old runaway named Dolores Chacon, and it was thought too dangerous for her to associate directly with Faneuil, even though he was in another body as well. She was employed as den mother at Latchkey, the organization's jumper facility in Maryland, but Herzenhagen kept finding reasons to call her to New York. He found the combination irresistable - the juicy young breasts and flat belly, the round buttocks and smooth long legs, all inhabited by a sophisticated woman with a lifetime of experience. Better than any real teenager could ever be.

  Peggy sat on his bed, took his cigarette from his fingers, drew on it.

  "When you get back to Washington, you'll have to warn Rudo," Herzenhagen said. "That Croyd creature, for one, was swearing vengeance on him."

  "Warn which Rudo?"

  Herzenhagen looked up at her. "Both of them, of course."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Mr. Diamond peered owlishly through gold-rimmed spectacles and hefted a metal briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills. He searched in his pocket for keys, remembered he didn't have any, and uttered a mild reproach to himself.

  Then he climbed up the wall and went in a window.

  The ineffectual pleadings of his criminal attorney had drained Shad's cash supply, and he needed to increase his liquidity. A small packet of diamonds, retrieved from a safety deposit box in Brooklyn, then transported into Manhattan's diamond district, would do for a start.

  Mr. Gregory Diamond was one of Shad's aliases. He lived atop a building in Jokertown owned by the Diamond Company, Ltd., a division of Diamond Transport, a company held by Diamante N.V., incorporated in Aruba. Diamond's apartment had its own entrance, a huge steel door with massive locks, and its own stair leading to the apartment door.

  For both of which Shad had lost the keys.

  The apartment itself was fairly modest - neat, inexpensive furniture, some throw rugs, and a steel-lined safe concealed behind sliding panels. Shad put the suitcase of cash in the safe, then put Coltrane's Black Pearls on the sound system, jacked up the volume, and took a long shower with the sound of the music wailing over the hissing water.

  It was his first shower in three years. He made it last till the album ended, tried to wash Governor's Island out of his soul. Then he toweled himself off, put on clean clothes, and decided to catch up on the news.

  He snapped on CNN.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Gregg Hartmann looked ill-at-ease, and had put on fifteen or twenty pounds since Shad had last seen him. Usually a fine off-the-cuff speaker, he now read from notes. His voice was either inaudible or a booming fortissimo.

  It was the content that was riveting. Shad found himself leaning forward, elbows on knees, as he warred in spirit with what the voice was saying.

  "I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow," Hartmann began. "I regret to inform you that I have been deceived. Although I believe that my informants were well-meaning, my own investigations have shown to my satisfaction that they were wrong. The so-called Card Sharks, I now believe, do not exist. They never existed, except in the minds of a small number of deluded people, among whose numbers I until recently counted myself. From the escape and existence of Etienne Faneuil, we unhappily created a fantasy conspiracy...."

  Puppetman, Shad thought. What game are you playing now?

  Maybe he'd better find out.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Mr. von Herzenhagen? The telephone. Mr. Gregg Hartmann, sir."

  Herzenhagen stubbed out his cigarette, and followed his club's balding concierge from the smoking room to where a telephone waited in a small office. He thanked the man, held onto his polite face while the man left, and closed the door before he picked up the receiver.

  "Yes?"

  "Hi. It's me."

  Herzenhagen pursed his lips. "Where are you calling me from?"

  "From the apartment. I haven't been out all day."

  "That's not a secure phone."

  "Hell, nobody has any reason to tap it but us."

  Herzenhagen found it eerily disturbing to listen to Battle's words and cadences in Gregg Hartmann's voice.

  "Only this once," he said. "But after this, use a public phone."

  "I can't. That Hannah woman is staking me out. She's been calling all day, and she finally showed up on the doorstep, but I told the doorman not to admit her."

  "That was good."

  "I think she needs taking care of."

  Herzenhagen gave it some thought. "All in good time," he said.

  "I mean it, Phil. She went batshit after she heard the press conference. Jesus - do you know that she and Hartmann were fucking?"

  Herzenhagen laughed. "So give her a good screw, George! Maybe that'll shut her up!"

  "Listen, this is serious. She knows too much. She's got to be taken care of."

  "It will happen," soothingly, "I promise you. But first she must be thoroughly discredited - after that, no one will care what happens to her."

  "Listen, I want out of here!"

  Out of his body.

  Perhaps, Herzenhagen thought, Battle could be jumped into Hannah, and then Hartmann's body, with Hannah inside, could take a walk off a pier, after leaving a poignant, disillusioned note behind lamenting chances lost. Kill two birds with one stone.

  Herzenhagen smiled as he anticipated Battle's aggrieved complaints at being jumped into a woman's body.

  "Don't worry," he said, "I think I have a way of neatly wrapping up the whole adventure."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  The words rang in Shad's he
ad. I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow.

  He forced the window open and slid silently into Hartmann's immaculate kitchen - apparently Hartmann didn't cook much. From another room, Hartmann ranted on the phone in a grating voice that Shad had never heard before.

  The voice of Puppetman.

  Shad's gloved hands opened drawers until he found a kitchen knife - always useful - and a couple of extension cords.

  Shad heard the phone hang up. Anger bubbled in his veins. He left the kitchen and walked past a dining room and living room to Hartmann's office. Hartmann, in slacks and a striped shirt, stood behind his desk and stared moodily at the phone. Shad walked into the room, and as Hartmann's eyes tracked up Shad stole just a bit of heat, enough to cause an involuntary shudder to run through Hartmann's frame.

  "You!" The line, and the dropped jaw, was straight out of a melodrama.

  "You expecting someone else, Gregg?" Shad walked forward, leaned on the desk, tried to smile, but hatred kept turning the expression into a snarl.

  Hartmann recovered composed his face. He brushed at his graying hair with his prosthetic hand and, as if he wasn't used to it yet, bumped his forehead in the process.

  "Sorry," he said "You caught me at a bad moment." He frowned "I suppose you think I can help you."

  "All I want is to meet a friend of yours."

  "Yeah? Who?"

  Shad smiled. "Puppetman."

  Shad had hoped for a start of surprise, a guilty catch in the voice. Instead, Hartmann seemed genuinely puzzled.

  "Who? Could you, uh, refresh my memory?"

  A good actor. Shad had to hand it to him. He leaned closer to Hartmann and bared his teeth.

  "You know who, all light. An old friend. We first met - when was it, '76? When I was just a kid, and I was working for you. And the next thing you know, I strung some guy up from a lamppost and ran him through with a needle." He gave a cold laugh. "I didn't know I had that kind of anger in me. I thought I was a good guy, you know? Just trying to help people. I didn't know that kind of rage existed. Did you?"

  Hartmann edged away from him, eyes wary. Keeping the desk between them. "What are you talking about?"

  "I figure I met Puppetman again later that day, when I joined the rioters. And later, when I strung up a couple or muggers on the Deuce. And then when I busted up the Los Bozos clubhouse. And - "

  "What do you want?" Hartmann said. "If it's help, I can arrange it. I've got friends who can hide you."

  "What do I want?" Shad repeated. The rage boiled in him, exploded in a shriek. "I want the man who wrecked my life! I want Puppetman!"

  Alarm and confusion warred in Hartmann's face. "Calm down, okay? I'll get you what you want. But you have to tell me who to call. What's Puppetman's name?"

  Shad laughed as he came around the desk. "You don't know?"

  Hartmann looked blank. "No. I don't."

  "Perhaps you can call up - oh, I don't know - George Gordon Battle? Was he the one who paid you off?"

  Shock drained Hartmann's face of color. Shad grabbed him by the throat. Hartmann reacted quickly - for a nat, anyway - by trying to kick him in the knee, and by driving his linked hands up as a wedge between Shad's forearms, breaking the stranglehold. But Shad was faster than a nat, and stronger, and he avoided the kick and doubled Hartmann over with a mid-knuckle punch to the solar plexus. He grabbed Hartmann again, slammed him down in his chair. Hartmann tried to smash him in the head with his prothesis, but Shad rapped him in the face with a fist, hearing the nasal cartilage crunch, and then stunned him with an open-hand slap to the side of the head.

  Hartmann put up a suiprisingly good fight, all things considered. Maybe he remembered his old Army training.

  Shad tied him to the chair with extension cords. Hartmann coughed on the blood running from his broken nose, spat, looked up with incredulous eyes. "Wait!" he said, "I'm not who you think I am."

  "Yeah, Gregg baby," Shad said. He wadded a piece of paper and stuffed it in Hartmann's mouth. "I know that."

  He took out the knife and showed it to the bound man.

  "This is going to be unnecessarily brutal," he said. "But hey, it's only what you taught me." He smiled. "And if you've got any fancy mental powers, better use 'em now."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Shad found he hardly had to think at all. He'd had it done to him once, he knew how it went. It was a thing he'd already thought about, already visualized so completely during his years in stir that no mental effort was required - no thought, no feeling, nothing that stirred or repelled. Nothing but business.

  Hartmann babbled a lot when Shad took the gag out to ask questions. He talked about will and the flames of cigarette lighters. He kept trying to pretend he was someone else, presumably someone this wasn't happening to.

  Shad could have told him that didn't work. He'd tried all his life to be someone else, and it wasn't something a person could do.

  Eventually Hartmann told him things. He wasn't very coherent by that point, but it was a place to start

  None of this was going to make Shad any happier. It wasn't going to release or bury his demons. It was just something that had to be got out of the way so that, in some future moment, he could become more himself. Free from Puppetman. Free from the ice that prison had injected into his veins.

  Free to be, in some distant future time, horrified by everything he was doing.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  In Hartmann's blood Shad wrote Race Traitor and George Battle Lives! and Sharks Revenge on the wall. Then he changed his blood-spattered clothes and called the police. He told them that he lived across the street from that nice Senator Hartmann and that he'd seen several men in masks break into the apartment. Then he called every television station in the city and told them the same thing.

  When he went back to the apartment in Jokertown, he went to the shower and stayed under the hot spray for a long time. He ate the heat as it rained on him, and the water fell to the porcelain floor cold as ice.

  The Color of His Skin

  Part 5

  Gregg had a vague memory of his soul being wrenched away from his body, and then of running screaming through the night, followed by a period of darkness. He wondered how long he'd been out.

  Gregg wasn't quite sure what he felt like. That told him that he was still in shock, because he knew damned well that he should be screaming.

  He'd been jumped.

  He seemed to have come to rest in a midtown alley in a nest of discarded rags. They smelled of ... well, a dozen varieties of piss, a trio of motor oils, a trace of lingering perspiration from six or seven people, ancient semen and vaginal secretions from a few encounters, at least thirty old food stains, and a hundred things that he'd never smelled before - it seemed his new body had a wonderful sense of smell; hardly an asset at the moment.

  He squinted toward the light at the end of the alley, realizing that anything more than a few yards away looked blurry, and the street beyond the alley's mouth was just a wash of color. He might have a great nose, but the eyes sucked. Wonderful. He was going to need glasses.

  Gregg lifted his right arm: the stubby caterpillar limb that came into his myopic view sent his mind reeling again. He shut his eyes, shivering like a frightened baby. He tried the experiment once more - and once more what he saw wasn't even vaguely human. There were three short fingers at the end; he could wiggle them.

  Taking a deep breath strongly spiced with the varied aromas around him, Gregg bent his head to look at his body. He looked like a four foot long weinerwurst dipped in fluorescent yellow paint. Six legs/arms. Spiky tufts of hair protruding from the cylindrical rolls in the skin. He couldn't wait to see what his face looked like.

  "Fucking shit, I'm a joker!" he squealed, and heard a voice that sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk.

  Gregg waited for the mocking, taunting voice inside. He knew what it would say: Whassa matter, Greggie? You finally got what you've always deserved, that's all.... But the voice didn't come. I
nside his head was only silence.

  It seemed a very small compensation.

  He crawled out of the rag pile. He had to find someone. He had to get help and find a way to get his body back.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  He couldn't hail a cab - they wouldn't stop for a fire hydrant with legs. Besides, he couldn't even see them until they were nearly on him.

  He walked to the nearest bus stop. The nats who were there when he scuttled up gave him sour looks of disgust and moved on, refusing to stand near him - which was fine by Gregg, as he found that they all reeked. Three buses went by in an incredible wash of fumes before Gregg decided that none of them was going to stop.

  He went around the corner, waited until a group of nats had assembled and the next bus had stopped, then scurried quickly toward the open door. The driver looked down at him as he humped his way up the stairs, and the glare was plain even with Gregg's poor vision.

  "Get off my bus, Mac."

  With Puppetman, it wouldn't have been a problem. Even with the weaker new "Gift," he might have been able to blunt the antagonism. But this body had no such powers. He couldn't feel the man's emotions at all - all he could do was smell the stench of his body. He suspected that the driver was on the second or third day in pair of underwear. "Look, buddy," Gregg answered, "this is an emergency. I'm Gregg Hartmann. I've been jumped."

  "Yeah. And I'm Elvis, and my wife's Amelia Earhart. Get the fuck outa here."

  Gregg narrowed his eyes and drew up on his hind legs. He suspected that the gesture hardly looked intimidating. "This is public transportation. I have as much right to use it as anyone."

  "Yeah? I don't see no fare, and I don't see no tokens, and I don't see no pockets where you could hide 'em, either. Now, you gonna back outa here or am I gonna have to toss you out, worm?"

  Gregg glanced at the faces of the passengers. Most were pointedly ignoring the confrontation, staring fixedly through the windows. Those that were watching wore matching scowls.

  "Fuck you," Gregg said "Fuck you all." Even to his ears he sounded like a two-year old. Laughter followed him down the steps.