Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (53 page)

“May I tell Darcy? She’s feeling real low right now.”

“Sure,” said Franny. He returned to his desk and his computer to search for aces who could open tunnels. It didn’t take long to find one.

He called Stuntman. “Berman’s got a gambling problem,” Franny said. He paused for breath while Jamal gave a low whistle. “And Berman hadn’t fired Joe Frank. He was still writing him checks as late as two weeks ago.”

“Son of a bitch lied to me.”

“Yep, but that’s not the best part. I think I know how the jokers are being taken out of the city.” Franny told Jamal about Rustbelt’s testimony. “So, I went looking for an ace with a power like that. There is one. She was on
American Hero,
Tesseract. I looked up what ‘tesseract’ means. It’s a four-dimensional analogy to a cube. I found some YouTube video of Tesseract doing her thing. She can make an opening in, say, Los Angeles, and reach through to Paris, or Beijing, or somewhere. She can make these openings big enough to walk through, probably even drive through.”

“You have a real name?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Mollie Steunenberg.” There was silence from the other end of the line. A silence that went on for so long that Franny thought they’d been disconnected. “Jamal? Hello?”

“I’m here. Mollie Steunenberg is Berman’s assistant.”

“Oh, holy fuck.”

The Big Bleed

Part Nine

“YOUR GUY JUST ARRIVED.
He’s got the girl with him.”

“Thank you,” Jamal Norwood said. “We’ll be there as soon as possible.” Then he clicked off. He didn’t want to be on the phone with Jack Metz any longer than necessary. Not that he had anything special against Upper East Side building managers, but this one was off-scale creepy.

He had proved to be useful, however. Metz’s call meant that Michael Berman was back in the city with Mollie Steunenberg, aka Tesseract. Jamal knew it was unlikely to be for long.

It was early morning, mid-week, rainy, colder than it should be in New York this time of year. Jamal’s physical and mental state matched the grim weather. He had been dozing, dreaming strange dreams about being chased down a street by the missing joker Wheels, feeling that he was late, ill-equipped, in danger.

On waking, he considered phoning Julia, something he had not done in over a week. But what would he tell her?
I’m feeling great!
Every conversation he could imagine ended in a lie, or a very uncomfortable revelation.

So he didn’t. He distracted himself by watching
TV
with its news of the various campaigns, growing bored as the same stories repeated.

Eventually he turned to a movie channel and, to his amazement, caught the last half hour of
Moonfleet,
a cheap adventure feature he had worked on early in his career. In spite of its title, it had not been sci-fi, but rather a period piece about pirates and smugglers in the Caribbean (though the confusing title likely contributed to
Moonfleet
’s failure … that and an unappealing cast and incoherent script). Stuntman Jamal Norwood had one major gag in the piece, as a sailor who goes aloft during a storm only to have the yards break, plunging him to the deck of a ship.

Who was that young man? So eager, so fit, so certain he was making all the right decisions, making money, making himself into a star—

Right now Jamal merely wished he possessed that young man’s health.

Franny picked him up a block from the Bleecker. “You’re getting good at all this paranoid shit,” the detective told him.

“A little too late.”

“Don’t be a pessimist.”

“Don’t be a cheerleader.”

It was the middle of rush hour, a murderous time to be traveling from Jokertown to the Upper East Side. “I don’t suppose you can use your siren,” Jamal said.

“Sure, but it won’t do us any good.” They were completely gridlocked trying to reach the
FDR
. Eventually it did, and to Jamal’s relief there were no unusual traffic problems.

As they turned into the building’s parking lot, Jamal suddenly feared a Murphy’s Law moment, that they would drive right past Michael Berman and Mollie Steunenberg heading out for a latte or breakfast—

Fortunately, no. Perhaps less fortunately, the attendant at the lot seemed all too aware of their business. “You know, my favorite
TV
series is
Baltimore Stakeout,
” he said. “How do you get into that kind of work?”

“If you have to ask, you’re not qualified,” Jamal snapped.

They met up with Metz, who was as eager as a five-year-old on Christmas Day. “They’re up there! You can hear voices.”

“You actually saw them, though, right?” Jamal said.

Metz nodded.

Within minutes, Jamal and Franny were heading up the service elevator. Jamal carried a Watchman tuned to the cameras they had hidden in the apartment the night before, toggling from one view to the other. They were cheap Radio Shack–style equipment that couldn’t be monitored remotely and of the two men one was too busy to man the cameras 24/7 and the other was too sick. No, the cameras were there because of Tesseract and her power. Both Jamal and Franny knew they needed to grab the girl first. Otherwise she’d be gone, and Berman with her. Jamal could see Berman and Mollie in motion in and out of the living room and hallway. They were out of view for minutes at a time, presumably in the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms.

Jamal loathed stakeouts and had not prepared for this one. Thank God Franny seemed to be … the police detective had not only suggested hauling two folding chairs up the elevator, he produced water and an energy bar without asking. “I hope this doesn’t take all day,” Jamal said, knowing that he was now grumbling like a man twice his age.

They had deliberately chosen the back hallway as a site for the second camera because it gave them their best opportunity to surprise Tesseract and grab her.

“We should have miked the place.”

“Well, we didn’t,” Jamal said. “So we wait.”

Their planning for Operation Grab Michael Berman had been complicated because they were skirting the edge of legality. “I don’t suppose you have any black bag team you could activate,” Franny said. “To find this shit and install it.”

Had Jamal still been on duty with
SCARE
, he could easily have given the task to just such a group—right after Carnifex signed off on the warrant and the budget. “Haven’t you created a team of Jokertown irregulars?”

“Not yet,” Franny said. “And if this goes tits up, not ever.”

Then there had been the question of warrants. “I can get one,” Franny had said. “Might take a day, or at least hours. What about you?”

Jamal shook his head. “Right,” Franny said. “Hard to do that when your bosses have no idea—”

“—And you’re on medical leave.”

They could just have gone ahead, warrantless. But, eager as he was to put Berman, and by extension this whole gaggle of joker-nabbing criminals, out of business as swiftly as possible, Jamal was unwilling to allow those arrested under U.S. law to skate because he and Franny acted like movie cops. “Do what you can as quickly as you can.”

While Franny worked the warrant issue, Jamal trolled through the audio and video shops on Eighth Avenue in search of surveillance gear—which turned out to be easy to acquire, though a bit hard on his credit card.

That night he left a message for Franny, then collapsed. When he awoke, yesterday morning, Franny’s message was: “Warrant in hand; good to go.”

Shortly after twelve-thirty
P.M.
Jamal and Franny heard raised voices from inside the apartment, Berman yelling something at Mollie and receiving a blistering answer in return. “All right,” Franny said, “I withdraw my petty complaint about lack of audio surveillance…”

Wearing a T-shirt that displayed two of her more notable features and a pair of shorts that would, if worn in public, have gotten her arrested in certain communities, Mollie stormed into the hallway carrying a bag of garbage.

“Showtime!” Jamal whispered. Franny displayed a pair of handcuffs (“Double-locking Smith & Wesson,” he had told Jamal earlier. “Bought them for twenty-five bucks!” He unlocked them—

—As Jamal pushed the door open, smiling and saying, “Hey, there!”

The girl was stunned into silence and immobility as Jamal wrapped her up—not the most unpleasant act he had performed in the past few weeks—allowing Franny to cuff himself to her, his left wrist to Mollie’s right.

Now Mollie found her voice. “What the fuck?” she shouted, writhing and struggling and trying to slap Franny with her left hand.

Her voice brought Berman—in rumpled khakis and an
American Hero
T-shirt—into the hallway.

Jamal was ready for him—“Hi, Michael!”—diving at the producer and slamming him against the wall in a hammerlock, an action he had wanted to take for at least five years. He got a second pair of cuffs on Berman. “In case you’re wondering, you’re under arrest.”

Berman had sufficient composure to say, “Do you have a warrant?”

Franny slapped the warrant on his chest. “Read, weep.”

They hauled Berman into the living room. Jamal shoved him into an expensive-looking leather chair while Franny took Mollie to the couch. “Why are you doing this?” she asked the detective.