Ace in the Hole

  “Oh, my god,” Gregg whispered. The fetus kicked again, softly. He let the power slip out, just a touch. He looked inside Ellen, at the primal colors of the fetus.

  There, wrapped around the child’s emotional matrix like some strangling vine, there were other hues. Very familiar tints and shades.

  Gimli had said it: No, not dead. Just changed. It took me a long time to get back …

  “I can’t believe it myself, sometimes,” Ellen laughed. “It’s so incredible to feel it, to know that this life—our child—is growing inside me.”

  Gregg lay wide-eyed, staring at her stomach and his hand. “Yes,” he told her. “Yes, it’s incredible.”

  “I wonder who it’ll look like?” Ellen patted Gregg’s hand. “I’ll bet it’ll take after you,” she said.

  It can’t be true, he told himself. Please don’t let it be true.

  But he knew it was.

  7:00 A.M.

  “Jesus Christ, stop plucking at me! I don’t need this shit!” Jack gripped the Takisian’s hands, and flung them away like a man flicking water. “Jesus.”

  Tach firmly quashed the irritation he felt rising like gorge in the back of his throat, but still said in slightly aggrieved tones, “I was concerned. You could have been killed.”

  The snap of a lighter as Jack lit a Camel. “Well, find another way to show it. By the way, you look like shit.”

  “Thank you so very much. I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “Hey, ditto.”

  “Jack, what happened? It was all so garbled on the news reports. I’m standing there brushing my teeth when I see you plummeting into the piano.” He cocked his head to one side, and considered. “Which is, I suppose, the only fortuitous thing to come out of this mess.”

  “Fortuitous, hell. I was aiming for that damn piano.”

  Then in a few staccato sentences the ace outlined the rest of the evening; Sara’s clumsy come-on, Jack’s plan for taking the journalist out of the way, the arrival of the horrifying hunchback, the fight. Cognac-flavored vomit hit the back of Tachyon’s throat, and he bolted for the bathroom.

  “Now what?” Jack called.

  Tach emerged wiping his mouth on a wet washcloth. “Sara, where is she now?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. She went out of that room like a missile, and I can’t say I blame her. I haven’t seen her since.”

  Tachyon pressed his hands to his face. “Mothers of my mother forgive me. I didn’t believe her.”

  “What?”

  “She came to me Monday night. Tried to tell me she was in danger. I wouldn’t listen.” The import of what he had just said struck him, and Tach lurched back into the bathroom.

  He was down to stomach juices. The acid burned on its way up. Like the acid eating away at his trust, his certainty.

  Hartmann is an ace.

  Help me.

  You’ll be sorry.

  Arms embracing the toilet, the ceramic rim cool against his burning cheek Tach murmured, “Help me.”

  Jack lifted him to his feet and asked, “How? What is it you need? What the hell’s going on? Why did you bring up a secret ace on Monday? Talk to me, Tachy.”

  “Not now, Jack. Not now. I must find Sara.”

  8:00 A.M.

  Billy Ray knocked and poked his head through the open door. “Security says the stairs are clean, Senator. You two ready?”

  “We’re coming now,” Gregg told him. He finished knotting his tie and adjusted it around his neck.

  Puppetman prowled like a sleek cat just under the surface, waiting. Ellen came from the bedroom and gave Gregg a worried, concerned glance. Gregg smiled back reassuringly, hating the act. “I’m fine,” he said. “Much better this morning since I talked with you. Back to normal.” He put his arms around her and patted her belly. “After all, the kid might just have a president for a daddy, right?”

  Ellen leaned against him. She hugged him wordlessly.

  “He still kicking this morning, darling?”

  “He? And just what makes you so sure it’s a boy?” Ellen teased him, hugging him again.

  Gregg shrugged. Because my child’s a goddamn dwarf joker who’s supposed to be dead. Because I’ve heard him talking to me. “Just a hunch, love.”

  Ellen chuckled against his chest. “Well, he’s been mostly quiet. I think he’s asleep.”

  The breath went out of Gregg in a sigh. He closed his eyes momentarily. “Good,” he said. “Good. Let’s go, then. Amy and John are probably waiting.” He waved to Billy.

  The morning staff briefings were held in the campaign headquarters one floor below. Gregg had always taken the stairs down—while he could have commandeered an elevator, it hardly seemed worth it. Now he was glad for the routine. He knew exactly what he needed to do.

  You’re sure? You’re sure this will end it? The power was vibrating with intensity. Puppetman’s voice was insistent.

  I don’t know. If it doesn’t, we’ll find another way. I promise. Now that we know, we can plan. Just wait and be ready.

  The stairwell was an ugly contrast to the halls: stained concrete landings connected by steep metal stairs. They nodded to Alex James, stationed there as usual. Echoes rebounded as Billy held the door open and let Ellen pass. Gregg caught the door and motioned to Billy to precede him.

  I don’t want to do this. I don’t, Gregg thought.

  We don’t have a choice. Puppetman. Eager.

  He searched in his head for Gimli and found nothing.

  He let Puppetman loose.

  As Ellen approached the stairs, the power lanced from Gregg in a rush, fearing that if he hesitated at all Gimli would stop him again. He invaded her long-open mind and found what he wanted.

  It was all there, as he knew it would be: A faint, swirling vertigo as Ellen looked down the stairs; an uneasy feeling of imbalance from the unaccustomed forward weight of her stomach. Puppetman wrenched brutally at both responses, dampening everything else in her mind. When the inevitable quick panic followed, he amplified that as well.

  It took less than a second. It was worse than he’d thought it would be.

  Ellen tottered, screamed in fright. Her hand grasped far too late for the handrail.

  Puppetman leaped for Billy Ray in that instant. He truncated the adrenaline surge as Billy saw Ellen lose her balance on that first step, slowing the ace’s superb reflexes. Gregg himself could have done nothing even if he’d wished, trapped behind Ray. Billy made a valiant leap for Ellen; his fingertips grazed her flailing arm and then closed on empty air.

  Ellen fell. It seemed to take a very long time.

  Gregg pushed past the horrified Ray, whose hand was still futilely outstretched. Ellen lay crumpled against the wall on the next landing, her eyes closed and a deep gash streaming blood down one side of her head. As Gregg reached her, her eyes opened, clouded with pain. She tried to sit up as Gregg cradled her and Ray shouted for James to call an ambulance.

  Ellen moaned, clutching suddenly at her stomach. There was bright blood between her legs. Her eyes widened.

  “Gregg,” she breathed. “Oh, Gregg…”

  “I’m sorry, Ellen. My god, I’m sorry.”

  Then she began to cry with tremendous gasping sobs. He cried with her, mourning for the child that might have been, while another part of him celebrated.

  For that instant, he hated Puppetman.

  9:00 A.M.

  The breakfast crowd was thinning out. The people who came here—some black, some white, all working class—had to get to their jobs. Spector was a hell of a lot more comfortable eating here than at the Marriott. There were too many people he was tempted to kill there, and after last night’s attack he was in a particularly foul mood. He’d been working his way through the morning newspaper, but so far hadn’t seen anything about Tony getting sent to the hospital by a group of anti-joker thugs.

  He’d let Shelly check Tony into the hospital. He didn’t want to be around when the cops showed and started asking questions. No
point in pushing his luck. Shelly had given him a strange look when he took off, but he knew she wouldn’t talk. She was satisfied that he was on their side and that would be enough.

  Spector finished the last of his hash browns and bacon. The coffee was hot and they kept his cup filled, so he didn’t feel like going anywhere just yet. He was beginning to lose his enthusiasm for this job, anyway. Maybe he should just pay Tony a visit and skip town.

  He’d sort it out later. Right now he was going to relax and mind his own business.

  The press were lined up six deep in the waiting room. Gregg caught a glimpse of them every time the doors opened: a wash of portable video lights, a flurry of electronic flashes, a babble of shouted questions. The news of Ellen’s fall had spread rapidly. Before the ambulance had arrived at the hospital, they were waiting.

  Billy Ray leaned against the wall, scowling. “I can have security move them if you want, Senator. They’re like a flock of buzzards. Ghouls.”

  “It’s okay, Billy. They’re just doing their job. Don’t worry about them.”

  “Senator, I was so close, I tell you.” Billy clenched his hand in front of his face, his mouth twisted. “I should have got her. It’s my damn fault.”

  “Billy, don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault.”

  Gregg sat head in hands on a couch outside the surgical clinic. It was a careful pose: The Distraught Husband. Inside, Puppetman was exuberant. He rode Ellen’s pain, relishing it. Even under the haze of the anesthetic, he could make her writhe inwardly. Her worry for the baby was a cold, primal dark blue; Puppetman made the emotion an achingly saturated sapphire, fading slowly into the orange-red of her injuries.

  But better—far, far better—was Gimli. The Gimli-thing that had fastened itself on his child was in torment, and there were no drugs to blunt that pain, nothing to stop Puppetman from doubling and redoubling it. Gregg could feel Gimli suffocating, choking, screaming inside Ellen’s womb.

  And Puppetman laughed. He laughed as the baby died because Gimli died with it. He laughed because at last the insanity was over.

  The infant’s slow, horrible death was tasty. It was good.

  Gregg felt it all numbly. He was being split in half.

  The part of him that was Gregg hated this, was appalled and disgusted by Puppetman’s exuberant response. That Gregg wanted to weep rather than laugh.

  You shouldn’t feel relief. It’s your child dying, man, a part of you. You wanted it and you’ve lost it. And Ellen … She loves you, even without Puppetman, and you betrayed her. How can you not be sad, you son of a bitch?

  But Puppetman only scoffed. Gimli had it. It wasn’t your child, not any longer. It’s better that it dies. It’s better that it nourishes us.

  In his head, Gregg could hear Gimli sobbing. It was an eerie sound. Puppetman chuckled at the anguish and desolation in it.

  Gimli’s cry turned abruptly to a rising, hopeless shriek. As his voice rose in pitch, it began to fade, as if Gimli were falling away into a deep, dark pit.

  Then there was nothing. Puppetman groaned orgasmically.

  The door to the surgery swung open. A doctor in sweaty scrub greens emerged. She nodded to Gregg and Ray, grimacing. She walked slowly toward them as Gregg rose.

  “I’m Dr. Levin,” she said. “Your wife is resting now, Senator. That was a terrible fall for a woman in her condition. We’ve stopped the internal bleeding and stitched up the scalp wound, but she’s going to be badly bruised. I’ll want to X-ray her hip later; the pelvis isn’t broken, but I want to make sure there’s no fracture. We’ll need to keep her a day or two at least for observation, but I think—eventually—she’ll be fine.”

  Levin paused, and Gregg knew she was waiting for a question. The question. “And the baby?” Gregg asked.

  The doctor tightened her lips. “We couldn’t do anything for him—a boy, by the way. We were dealing with a prolapsed umbilical and the placenta had torn away from the uterus wall. The child was without oxygen for several minutes. With that and the other injuries…” Another grimace. She rubbed at her hand, took a deep breath, and looked at him with sympathetic dark eyes. “It was probably better this way. I’m sorry.”

  Billy pounded the door with a fist, tearing a jagged splintery hole in the wood and gouging long scratches down his arm. Ray began cursing softly and continuously. Puppetman turned to feed on the guilt, but Gregg forced the power below the surface once more; for the first time in weeks, the power subsided docilely. Gregg faced the wall for a moment.

  With Puppetman satisfied, the other part of him grieved. He swallowed hard, choked it back. When he turned, the doctor wavered in a sheen of genuine tears.

  “I’d like to see Ellen now,” he said. His voice sounded wonderfully drained, superbly exhausted, and far too little of it was an act.

  Dr. Levin gave him a wan smile of understanding. “Certainly, Senator. If you’ll follow me—”

  10:00 A.M.

  The first thing Jack thought when he heard about Ellen was: Yes. The secret ace.

  “Where’s the senator now?”

  “At the hospital.”

  “And where’s Ray?”

  “With him.”

  Maybe Ray could keep the freak away, then. Jack had other things to do.

  Sara’s tattered notes seemed like a cold weight in Jack’s breast pocket. He looked around, saw campaign workers milling around the HQ, pointlessly and silently, like survivors of a disaster. Which, of course, they probably were.

  The secret ace had gone after Hartmann first, Jack figured, because Hartmann had more delegate votes. That was the only way to explain all the things that had gone wrong, from the networks cutting to commercial breaks during Carter’s seconding speech to the riot before the platform fight to Ellen’s miscarriage.

  The thought of which, on reflection, made Jack burn with anger. The secret ace was picking not just on a candidate, but on civilians the candidate was close to.

  Sara Morgenstern, who knew the ace’s identity, had disappeared. Jack, along with the Secret Service, had been trying to find her all night long.

  Devaughn was gone from HQ, and so was Amy. Jack went to the phone, ordered a thousand and one roses delivered to Ellen’s room on his credit card, then he headed next door to the media center. He found an unused VCR, picked up some videocassettes of the other candidates as well as their campaign biographies, and took them to his room.

  Maybe Gregg Hartmann’s candidacy was finished. Jack couldn’t tell, and couldn’t change things one way or another.

  He only knew one thing for certain. He was going to have to call Rodriguez and tell him to take charge of the delegation and vote his proxy for Hartmann on every ballot. Jack had other things to do. He was going hunting for the secret ace.

  Even though a hotel is a fortress armored against the outside world, the outside gets in anyway, in subtle ways. Trying to flow through the crush of delegates and press toads, Mackie could tell it was morning, from the light that managed to battle inside, from a taste of the Chilled Sliced Processed Air Product extruded by the AC. Maybe it was just that as a Hamburg harbor rat he had an instinctive dread of morning, and could smell it when it lurked outside.

  His hands were jammed in pockets, his head jammed in memories. Sometimes, when he was young and had fucked up again, the fog of booze would lift enough to permit his mother to fix him with a stern, bleary look and say, Detlev, you disappoint me so, instead of just shrieking and hitting him with whatever came to hand. He hated that the most. The shrieking he could ignore, the blows he could weather by tucking his head painfully between uneven shoulders and turning away. But the disappointment went right through him; there was no defense against that.

  Every particle of his life had been a disappointment to somebody. Except when his hands were steel, were knives. When the blood ran: no disappointment there, oh no, laughter inside: yeah.

  Until the last two days. Two chances: two failures. All he had to show was an incide
ntal nigger in a suit worth more than Mackie’s entire body. He thought at least the big glowing gold weenie was meat when he crashed the rail last night, but then this morning he saw on the news that he crashed through a piano and wasn’t hurt.

  He was glad about the piano, anyway. Son of a bitch never played his song.

  Ahead of him he saw a pair of dark well-filled suits crowding a man with a garment bag over his shoulder, back toward the wall, out of the clotted traffic flow. They were leaning into him in that way pigs have when they know they have your ass. Mackie snagged a shred of conversation:

  “No, really, I was wearing my pass just a moment ago. In all this crush, somebody must have brushed against me, knocked it off—”

  That made Mackie smile. He had no need of badges. No need to squirm in the grip, unreeling lies as obvious as a whore’s smile to amuse the pigs and make them give each sideways smirks. He was still Mackie, MacHeath the Knife as big as legend. Not a bug like this nat crasher.

  He phased and sideled softly, through the crowd and through the wall, toward his rendezvous with love and disappointment.

  John Werthen had arranged for the makeshift press conference in the gymnasium/auditorium of the hospital. As Amy accompanied Gregg around the back of the small stage there, he felt a sudden distress pulse from her. “John, you ass,” she whispered, then glanced at Gregg guiltily. The auditorium had been used for a Lamaze class the night before. Charts of the stages of labor, cervix dilation, and positions of the fetus were stacked in one corner. They almost seemed a mockery.

  You had to do it, he reminded himself quickly. You didn’t have a choice.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Amy said. “I’ll have someone get rid of them.”

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The tragic death of the Hartmann infant had become The Story of the convention. Wildfire rumors flared through the convention—Hartmann was pulling out; Hartmann had decided to take the VP spot behind Dukakis or Jackson or even Barnett; Hartmann had actually been the intended victim of Nur terrorists; a simultaneous attempt had been made on the lives of all the candidates; a joker was somehow involved in Ellen’s fall; no, the baby had been a joker; Carnifex had pushed Ellen or he’d just watched her fall without moving; Barnett was calling it the hand of God; Barnett had called Hartmann and they had prayed together.