Ace in the Hole

12:00 NOON

  Jack hadn’t found Blaise on any of his intermittent searches, and he decided it was time to head for the hospital and tell Tachyon that Blaise was gone.

  Hell. The kid would probably be right by his grandad’s bedside.

  Hartmann supporters were wandering about the Marriott lobby in various attitudes of inebriation or exhaustion. Yellow warning tape fluttered around the hole that Jack had driven into the floor. Jack saw the pert waitress he’d noticed before and gave her a wink. She grinned at him. He was sufficiently preoccupied with notions concerning the waitress that he didn’t see Hiram until he almost tripped over the huge suitcase—almost a trunk—that the man had set next to him.

  Hiram seemed as surprised as Jack. The big man’s eyes were wide in alarm. Maybe the suitcase contained something valuable.

  Hiram had a man with him, a thin joker with a little mustache and webs of skin over hollow eye sockets.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Jack stepped around the suitcase. He looked up at Hiram.

  “Won’t you be staying for the acceptance speech?”

  “Ah. No. I’ve—uh—stayed longer in Atlanta than I meant to, anyway.” Hiram’s eyes gazed at Jack out of bruised sockets. He was a mess: his hair awry, his collar open to reveal the sore on his neck. Maybe he’d slept in his suit. He took Jack’s arm and led him away, out of earshot of the thin joker. “Actually, I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

  “I’d been hoping to see you, too.” Jack ventured a smile. “I wanted to thank you for the other day. You maybe saved me from getting hurt, making me light that way.”

  “I’m glad I was able to be of assistance.” Hiram glanced over his shoulder at the joker and gave a nervous smile. He turned back to Jack. “I wanted to tell you something,” he said. His tone sent a little warning signal down Jack’s spine. Whatever was coming, Jack knew he didn’t really want to hear it.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I wanted to say that I understand now,” Hiram said. His voice was leaden. “That you were right when you said that you didn’t know till you’ve been tested.”

  “Oh,” said Jack. He didn’t want to hear this confession. Whatever Jack was, whatever he’d done, he didn’t want anyone else’s sins rattling around in his own head. He had trouble enough coping with his own.

  “When I was attacking you the other day,” Hiram went on, “I was really attacking myself. I was trying to deny my own betrayals.”

  “Yeah.” Jack just wanted Hiram and his soap opera to leave. What kind of betrayal could someone like Hiram pull off, anyway? Buy second-rate cuts of veal for his restaurant?

  Hiram looked at him, eyes bright, as if he was expecting some kind of wisdom from Jack, some way to handle this burden of self-knowledge. Jack didn’t have much to give.

  “You can’t change the past, Hiram,” Jack said. “You can maybe make the future a little better. We’ve done that, I think, with what we’ve done in the last week.”

  “Hiram.” The joker was looking at them with his blank eye sockets. Jack had the uneasy feeling he was being scrutinized. “It’s time to go.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Hiram was panting for breath, as if the conversation had somehow exhausted him.

  “See you around, maybe,” Jack said.

  Hiram turned without a word and headed back to pick up the suitcase. Either it held nothing, or Hiram had made it light.

  A giddy wave of paranoia struck Jack at the sight of Hiram hefting the huge suitcase and heading for the big revolving doors. Suppose Blaise …

  But no. The suitcase was big, Jack realized, but not big enough to hold a teenage boy.

  The events of the last few days had made him jumpy.

  1:00 P.M.

  Even with the medication, Puppetman could feel Tony Calderone’s pain. It tasted spicy. He tweaked it, just for the pleasure. Tony grimaced and jumped slightly in his bed, joggling the laptop on his food tray. His face went visibly pale.

  “You okay?” Gregg asked, ignoring Puppetman’s interior laughter.

  “Just a twinge, Senator. No big deal.” His denial was belied by the sweat on his forehead. Puppetman giggled.

  Now leave him alone. We have to work.

  No problem, Greggie. It just feels so good to be free again. We’ve put it all together. It’s all ours now.

  “I’ve been thinking about the speech, Senator,” Tony was saying. “I think I’ve come up with the catchphrase we’ve been looking for. I was looking through all the old speeches. You remember what you said in Roosevelt Park when you declared that you were running?”

  That brought back memories—it hadn’t been long after that speech that he’d had Kahina killed in front of Chrysalis and Downs to guarantee their silence about his ace. That certainly worked well, Gregg thought ironically.

  But it did, Puppetman insisted. It kept things quiet through the campaign. Tachyon found out too late. It’s all taken care of now.

  I suppose … “What phrase where you thinking of, Tony?” Gregg asked the speechwriter.

  Tony punched a key and read the words on the LCD screen. “‘There are other masks than those Jokertown has made famous.’ Your own line, too, if I recall, and a good one. ‘Behind that mask is an infection that’s all too human … I want to rip the mask off and expose the true ugliness behind, the ugliness of hatred.’” Tony tapped the screen. “That’s a powerful image. I think it’s time we built on it.”

  “Sounds fine to me. What have you got in mind?”

  “I’ve been working along those lines since last night. And I’ve had another thought.” Tony grinned, and Gregg felt an upwelling of pulsing yellow—Tony was proud of this one. He pushed the laptop aside and sat up straighter in the bed. His fingertips drummed on his thigh in excitement.

  “What if we had everyone wearing masks: you, Jesse, everyone on stage and all our delegates out in the audience? Jokers, aces, and nats, every last one masked so you can’t tell the difference. Then, when you hit the right line—” Tony closed his eyes, thinking. “I don’t know, something along the lines of, ‘It’s time for all of us to remove our masks, the masks of prejudice, of hatred, of intolerance’ but stronger, much stronger, and with a lot of buildup. And just as you say it, boom, everyone rips off their mask and tosses it in the air.”

  Gregg chuckled. He turned the scene over in his mind. “I like it. I think I like it a lot.”

  “It’s hot. It’s a guaranteed spot on every channel. Can you see it, all those masks in the air? Man, you talk about an image. It rivets the wild card issue in every voter’s mind, and Bush is going to have a hell of a time getting drama like that at the Republican Convention.”

  Gregg slapped the bedsheets and stood up. “We’ll run with it. You start working on the speech; I’ll get together with Amy, John, and Devaughn and get this coordinated with our people. Tony, this is good. When you have a full draft, send it up to Ellen’s room. I’ve got the modem on the Compaq set up.”

  “You got it, Senator.” Tony grinned.

  “The public’s never going to forget what happens tonight, Tony. Get cracking; we don’t have much time.”

  Gregg was grinning as he left the room. Tachyon was out of the picture, the nomination was wrapped up, and now the perfect image for the coming campaign. He was so pleased he didn’t even listen to Puppetman’s whining for just one last taste of Tony’s pain.

  3:00 P.M.

  “Although there was a small portion of the carpus remaining, I chose to amputate a few inches farther back on the radius.”

  Dr. Robert Benson’s method of delivery was dry in the extreme. No bedside manner at all, thought Tachyon, staring with sick horror at the ungainly lump of bandages swathing his right arm. Perhaps he thinks I can take it being a physician myself … Well, he’s wrong.

  His arm throbbed in time to the beating of his heart. Tach glanced up at the IV mechanically clicking fluids into his body. They had inserted the needle into the big vein on the back of his left hand. Good, they noticed I
was right-handed.… no stupid, no right hand to put it in. He gagged.

  “Feeling nauseous?” Benson held a basin under his chin. “That’s natural, the aftereffects of the anesthesia.”

  “I … know. How … long … what time?”

  “Oh, time. A little after three on Sunday.”

  “So … long.”

  “Yes, physically you’re very run down, and the massive shock and blood loss,” he shrugged.

  “I’m hurting.”

  “I’ll send in a nurse with another shot.”

  “I’m very allergic to codeine. Use morphine or—”

  “Doctors make the worst patients. Always trying to take over their own treatment.” But Benson smiled as he made a notation on the record. “Go back to sleep.”

  Tach felt his lower lip trembling. “My hand.”

  “From what I’ve seen of the news clips you’re lucky to have gotten off so lightly.”

  “Doctor.” Benson paused at the door, looked back. “Don’t tell them.”

  Benson scratched his chin. “About the virus, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t.”

  Eyes closed, Tachyon evaluated his condition. The painful throat from the endotrachial tube, the overall sense of disorientation from the anesthesia, a painfully distended bladder, and, overriding all, the thundering pain from his mangled arm. The phantom fingers of his right hand twitched convulsively.

  If he were at home, he could have a hand regrown in a matter of weeks. But would the wild card virus now twined lovingly in his DNA permit a normal growth? Or would it place some horror at the end of his arm?

  It seemed the final and ultimate irony that he, who had killed his own kin attempting to prevent the release of the virus and spent forty years laboring among its victims as a means of atonement, should be forced to suffer so much.

  “Just manifest and get it over with!” he cried aloud. Tears ran hotly into the hair at his temples, and matted in his sideburns.

  The virus maintained its smug silence.

  4:00 P.M.

  When Jack stepped into Tachyon’s hospital room, he saw the red-haired alien writhing on the bed, clutching his stump. “Jesus,” Jack muttered, and walked fast to the bed. “What just happened?”

  “I keep reaching for things with my right hand.” Limply.

  “Call the nurse. Put your stump in a sling, help you remember.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Still cradling his stump.

  Jack reached for a cigarette and lit up. “You want me to call the nurse, get you a shot?”

  “No.” Tachyon’s mouth was a thin line.

  Jack blew smoke at him. “People think I’m a macho asshole. They haven’t dealt with Takisian princes, that’s all.” He glanced around the room. “Has Blaise been here today? I’ve been sort of looking for him. I want to make sure he’s okay.”

  “I have not seen him.” Worry crossed Tachyon’s features.

  “Someone saw him with Jay Ackroyd. That detective guy who zapped that freak away before I could pound him.”

  “And saved my life, from all reports,” Tachyon pointed out. His left hand touched his stump. “If Blaise is unsupervised he could get into trouble.”

  “Precisely my thought.”

  Tachyon’s manner turned imperious again. “Find my grandchild, Jack.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Tachyon sat up, pointed with his good hand at the closet. “Get my clothes, will you?”

  Jack looked at the alien in surprise. “Tach, don’t worry. I’ll find him.”

  “I must go to the convention.”

  Jack laughed nervously. “It’s all over. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

  Tachyon froze, his violet eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

  Jack gave a sigh. “No one’s told you, huh?”

  “What happened?”

  Jack hesitated. He didn’t want to get into this. He took a long drag of smoke, tried to get it over with fast. “Gregg and Jesse cut a deal. Jackson withdrew and threw his support to Gregg. Gregg’s got the nomination, Jackson will be veep.”

  “No.” Tachyon’s eyes dilated in horror. “No, no, no.”

  Impatience rattled through Jack’s mind. “Will you stop worrying about Gregg’s stability, for heaven’s sake? He put this whole deal together. He’s on top of things, okay? Even with all these aces gunning after him.”

  “No! No! No!” A jolt of horror ran through Jack as Tachyon raised his right arm high, then brought his stump smashing down on the railing of his bed. The stump smashed down again and again.

  Jack dropped his cigarette and grabbed Tach’s arms. He wrestled the thrashing alien back to the mattress, held him till he calmed down. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Tachyon just glared at him.

  The thought struck Jack with the force of a hurricane. Suddenly he felt as if he were blown off his feet, whirled away into darkness, carried off somewhere without light, without security, without hope.

  “Gregg, right?” he said. “Gregg’s the secret ace.”

  Tachyon just looked away.

  “Talk to me, damn it!”

  “I cannot.”

  Jack’s knees felt as if they wouldn’t support him. He lurched backward, groping for a chair, and sat down. His cigarette was smoldering on the floor and he picked it up, took a long drag. A tentative, fragile calm descended on him.

  “Tell me, Tach,” he said. “I need to know. I need to know if I fucked up again.”

  Tachyon closed his eyes. “It no longer matters, Jack.”

  “The one thing I do right. The one thing I do right in years, and—” Jack looked in surprise at the cigarette he had just crushed in his hand. He looked for some place to put it, found none, shrugged, dusted it off onto the floor.

  “Tach,” Jack said. “I need to know this. I got Gregg nominated, never mind how I did it. I need to know whether I did good or not.”

  Tachyon’s eyes were still closed. Jack looked at him in rising anger.

  “Are we going to have to play twenty questions here, Tach?”

  Tachyon said nothing.

  “Is Gregg a secret ace?”

  No answer.

  “Sara Morgenstern accused Gregg of being a killer. Is that true?”

  Nothing.

  “The little freak who tried to kill Sara. Does he work for Gregg?”

  The last words were a shout. Tachyon just lay there, his eyes closed. Finally he spoke.

  “Go away. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Rage blazed in Jack’s mind. He rose from his chair, lunged over the bed to shout in the alien’s face. “You’re so arrogant,” he said. “You’re such a goddamn prince. You say it’s over, so it’s over. You say that people should stop supporting Hartmann, and you give no reason, but they’re supposed to go along with you because you’re a Takisian prince and you know better than anyone else. Has it ever occurred to you that if you’d just fucking condescended to tell some of us lowly Earth scum about Gregg, we might have managed to put the brakes to his campaign without getting Barnett elected? Instead you just ordered me to deliver California to Jackson, and expected me to say, Yeah, your lordship, whatever you say.” Jack shook his fist in front of Tachyon’s closed eyes. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you can trust a human being now and again? Has it?”

  No answer.

  “Damn you anyway!”

  Tachyon said nothing. Jack turned and bolted the room like a runaway locomotive. His rage fueled his long stride out of the hospital, down the corridor, out into a blazing, humid afternoon that seemed to suck the anger right out of his body.

  He headed vaguely toward the Omni. He really didn’t have anywhere to go. He didn’t know what to do about Hartmann, and Blaise could be on this particular street as well as anywhere.

  If only the goddamn alien had trusted us, Jack thought.

  Then it occurred to him that maybe it was he, Jack, years ago, who had
taught Tachyon not to trust anyone, not with anything that mattered.

  That thought depressed him all the way home.

  The speech was set, protocol for the evening’s speeches had been set with Devaughn and Jackson’s staff, Gregg had called the other candidates personally and asked each of them to join him on the campaign road in their home states. Dukakis and Gore had been politely enthusiastic, congratulating him on the victory and promising their help to unify the party. Only Barnett had been cool, as Gregg had expected.

  To hell with him. We’ll take him as a puppet and play with him the next time we meet.

  Ellen was sleeping. Calderone’s latest version of the acceptance speech was in the Compaq waiting for him. He could hear Colin, the joker Secret Service who had replaced Alex James, scuffing his feet outside the room.

  Gregg kissed Ellen, saw her eyes flutter open. “I’m going back to the hotel and meet with Logan and a few others,” he whispered. Ellen nodded sleepily.

  Gregg packed the Compaq into its bag and collected Colin at the door. “Heading back to the Marriott,” Colin said into his walkie-talkie. “Bring the car around to the side entrance. Get some people on the elevators.”

  On the first floor, Gregg heard a familiar voice at the desk. “Please, mister. Listen, they’re for the senator’s wife…”

  Peanut. Puppetman stirred.

  “Just a minute, Colin…” Gregg headed for the lobby, Colin relaying the change of plans to the others.

  Peanut was holding a rather bedraggled but huge bouquet of flowers, trying to give it to the guard behind the desk. The man shook his head repeatedly, grimacing.

  “What’s the problem, Marvin?”

  He’d met Marvin while wandering the hospital this morning. Marvin was a slow moving and lazy security guard, the butt of a dozen jokes Gregg had heard over the last few days from the doctors, the nursing staff, and the orderlies. They’d shaken hands in passing: Puppetman had sensed immediately Marvin’s distaste for his job. In fact, there didn’t seem much that Marvin liked at all, jokers least of all.

  “He wants me to take the flowers up to your wife’s room,” Marvin growled, pulling at the belt slung underneath the overhang of belly. Marvin didn’t like politicians either, especially Democrats. He eyed Colin’s blue-suited athletic figure with contempt. “Looks like he got them outta some damn trash can, if you ask me.”