Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand (17 page)

"I know," Brennan said, looking down at what was left of Chrysalis, "I know."

6:00 A.M.

In the still, sick moonlight, the fingers of the trees reached out for him hungrily as he passed.

He did not look up at that grim starless sky where the moon pulsed like a thing alive, glistening palely with all the colors of corruption. He knew better than to look, or to listen to the terrible secrets the trees whispered in the rustling of branches as bare and thin as whips. He walked through a land black and barren, where dead gray grasses grasped at his feet, and the fear grew in his soul like a black worm.

Huge wings of dry cracked skin stirred the dead air. Eight-legged hunters, lean and cruel as any hound, slid from tree to tree just out of the range of his sight. The endless, deep ululation sounded behind him, promising an eon of terror, an eternity of pain. He knew this place; that was the most frightening thing of all.

When he saw the subway kiosk up ahead, he began to run. So slowly he ran, each stride consuming an hour, but at last he reached it and started down the stairs. He held the railing tight as he descended. Trains roared through mindless gulfs far below him. Still he descended, down and around on steps that spiraled round forever, until he saw the other passenger. He began to chase him, down steps that grew narrow and cruel, and so cold that his bare feet stuck fast, and each step ripped away more bloody flesh.

And he was there again, on that platform, hanging out over the endless subterranean dark, and there was the man before him. Don't turn, he pleaded silently, while inside he gibbered in fear, oh please don't turn.

He turned, and Jay saw that white, featureless face, tapering to one long red tentacle. It lifted its head and began to howl. Jay screamed ...

... and grunted in pain as he fell out of bed, cracking his elbow hard against the hardwood floor. He doubled over and clutched the elbow, making a whimpering sound deep in his throat. It hurt like a motherfucker, but he was almost grateful. There was nothing like a good sharp pain to chase away the nightmare.

He lay there for a good five minutes, until the throbbing in his elbow had finally subsided. Figuring out that his childhood trauma in the Dime Museum had caused the nightmare didn't seem to have cured him of it. He'd wet the bed anyway. At least this time he'd had the sense to sleep in the nude.

He started the water running in the tub, then went to the kitchen, spooned some Taster's Choice into a cup, and waited for the kettle to boil. When the coffee was ready, he took it back to the bathroom. The tub was just about full. Jay set the coffee on the rim, turned off the faucets, and stepped in gingerly. The bathwater felt as hot as the coffee, but he forced himself to stand there until the heat started to feel good. He stretched out in the scalding water and drank his coffee. It made him feel clean again.

Otherwise he felt like shit. Both his elbows hurt, one from falling out of bed, the other from where that psychopath son of a bitch Yeoman had twisted his arm. His nose was still sore from getting mashed against the wall. He had a big bruise on his stomach where he'd gotten mugged by the Monstrous Joker Baby.

He drank his coffee and considered what to do with this good early start he'd made. He had his list, down to four names now: Wyrm, Quasiman, the Oddity, and Doug Morkle. It had to be one of them. So why didn't he believe it?

The problem was, none of his four finalists seemed real tied in with all this other crap that kept turning up, the assassins and eskimos and imposters, and the agile little homunculus that Jay had chased futilely through the Dime Museum.

He sat nursing his coffee until the bathwater was tepid, but all he came up with were more questions. It sure as hell looked like he was dealing with at least two different killers, the strongman who'd done Chrysalis and the chainsaw psycho who'd butchered Digger's neighbors just for the hell of it. Were they working together? That suggested a conspiracy.

Or maybe it was just one lunatic with lots of different powers, like the late, great Astronomer. Someone ought to go dig up the old mais grave and see if he was still in it. But it wasn't going to be Jay; he'd been there the night the Astronomer dropped by Aces High to have dessert and kill a few people, and he was perfectly willing to let someone else swing that spade.

Besides, if he started considering dead suspects, he'd wind up checking where Jetboy had been the night of the murder.

Chrysalis had hired George Kerby to go assassinate Leo Barnett. If Barnett had found out, maybe the killers were working for him. Except what ace in his right mind would work for Leo Barnett? Quasiman? Presuming he could even
remember
that Barnett had saved his life? Okay, so somehow Quasiman stayed smart long enough to do Chrysalis, so what about the chainsaw man and the body in the trash bag that Elmo had left for the neighbors last year, who was that, Friend o' Quasiman? Jay tried to picture Father Squid whipping a chainsaw out from under his cassock, but the thought just gave him a headache.

Digger Downs was the key. But Digger Downs was missing, maybe dead. It was a real big city out there, and a bigger country beyond it. He could be anywhere.

On the other hand, there was sure as hell one place he wasn't, and that was here in Jay's bathroom. He took one last swig of ice-cold coffee, grimaced, set the cup aside, and climbed out of the tub to towel himself dry.

9:00 A.M.

When Brennan awoke, Jennifer was still asleep in the rumpled bed beside him. He was so tired that he felt as if he hadn't slept at all, and his back and shoulders were still aching from the pounding he'd taken from the Oddity. He wondered if age were creeping up on him, or if it was just that he was already bone weary of the city.

He sat up and swung his feet off the bed, planting them on the threadbare carpeting of the cheap hotel room.

It didn't matter. He couldn't leave until he'd found Chrysalis's killer. He was clear of the murder, but now Elmo was the patsy. He couldn't trust the police to get it right. Of course, Ackroyd was also on the case, but Brennan had never relied on anyone to do what had to be done.

He felt cool hands run gently over his shoulders and glanced backward. Jennifer was awake. She looked at him seriously as she caressed his bruised and aching back. Her hair was damp with perspiration. Her small breasts and rib cage shone with it. She had wanted to accompany him to the funeral home the night before, but Brennan felt that that was a job he had to do alone. She'd been asleep when he'd returned to the hotel, and he'd been careful not to wake her.

"How's your back?" she asked him.

He shrugged experimentally, then grimaced. "Sore. But I can deal with it. How about you?"

"Sore," she said, "but trying to deal with it."

She moved away from him, lay back down on the bed. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Jennifer said. "Enough at least to come and find you. You could have given me more time to think about things."

"You're right."

Jennifer nodded, as if almost satisfied. "So. Did you find out about Chrysalis? Is she really dead?"

Brennan frowned. "She's in a coffin in Cosgrove's Mortuary, all right."

"Then the voices we both heard could be, what? Mimics? Her ghost?"

"Could be..." Brennan said softly, his voice trailing away.

"Then what's on for today?" Jennifer asked, reaching out and touching his shoulder gently.

He looked down at her. "Her funeral is this afternoon. I thought we should attend."

Jennifer nodded again. "What about now?"

"Now?"

Jennifer pulled him down to her. She was slick with perspiration and desire. Her breasts tasted salty, her tongue moist and sweet.

11:00 A.M.

It was beginning to dawn on Jay Ackroyd that he'd wasted the entire morning. He hung up the receiver once again and contemplated his dreary little two-room office. The air-conditioning was broken, the window was painted shut, and it was hot as hell. Jay was hungry and tired and sweaty, and he knew more about Digger Downs than any human being could conceivably want to know. "Except where he is," he told his secretary.

His secretary stared at him with her mouth puckered in a round little O of surprise. Her name was Oral Amy and her mouth was always puckered in a round little O of surprise.

The manager of Boytoys had given her to Jay after he'd figured out which of the employees was putting the pin holes in the French ticklers, and he'd installed her at the front desk by his answering machine. She didn't take dictation, but at least she was blond.

"I've got a real bitch of a headache," he told Oral Amy. She looked at him with her face all wrinkled up in sympathy. Well, either sympathy or a slow leak.

All morning he'd been dialing the phone, asking for favors, and calling in old markers. All morning he'd been lying and shucking and posing as people he wasn't to convince reluctant voices on the other end of the line that they ought to tell him what he wanted to know.

The good news was, there was no one fitting Digger's description in the morgue or any of the city hospitals. The rest was bad.

Digger hadn't booked a flight on any airline Jay could find. He hadn't taken Amtrak or Greyhound either. He carried a MasterCard, two Visas, and a Discover, but the last charge on any of them was a Friday-night dinner at an Italian restaurant two blocks away from his digs on Horatio. The bill came to $63.19, and he'd stiffed the waiter. If Digger had hit the road, he'd been smart enough not to pay his tolls with plastic.

Of course, he might have bought a plane ticket under an assumed name, and paid cash. Or boarded the Metroliner to D.C. and bought a ticket from the conductor. Or escaped to the wilds of Jersey on a commuter bus out of Port Authority, exact change only. Or walked across the goddamn Brooklyn Bridge. There were eight million ways to leave the naked city, and some you just couldn't check.

There were eight million places to stay in the naked city, too. Jay called a half-random, half-cunning selection of motels and hotels that struck him as Digger's kind of place. He even tried a few that definitely weren't Digger's kind of place, just in case Downs had tried to be clever. Digger wasn't registered anywhere.

He did find Digger's aged mother in Oakland, who told him that she hadn't heard from Tommy since he sent the flowers on Mother's Day, but she was still real proud of her boy the journalist. She kept scrapbooks with every word Tommy had ever written, even the little articles he used to do for his high-school newspaper, and said Jay was welcome to look at them the next time he was in the Bay area. Jay thanked her very much and left his number in case she heard from Tommy. Mrs. Downs read it back to him very carefully and suggested he might phone Peregrine, seeing as how she was Tommy's girlfriend and all. Jay mentioned that this was news to him. Mrs. Downs said it was a secret, on account of Peregrine's image.

His sister in Salt Lake City didn't know where he was. Neither did either of his ex-wives. Wife number one asked if he was in trouble, and said, "Oh, good," when Jay admitted that he was. Wife number two offered to engage Jay's services on a little matter of alimony. He took it under advisement.

His college roommate didn't remember him.

The journalism professor he'd listed as a reference on his job application was entirely fictitious.

The phone company had no record of any calls from his home number yesterday.

Jay tried Crash at Aces just in case, but no, there hadn't been word one from Digger. Mr. Lowboy still wasn't worried. He was telling them to save space in the August issue for a real Digger Downs blockbuster. "Real good," Jay said glumly, wondering if the news of Digger's grisly death would fit Lowboy's definition of blockbuster. This time maybe Digger was really going underground for a story. Crash asked him if he was having any luck.

"Lots of it," Jay told her. "All bad. I don't suppose he had any friends on the staff there? One of the other reporters, maybe? A poker buddy, a drinking companion, the best man at his weddings, that kind of thing? Somebody who'd let him crash on his couch until all this blew over?"

"No," Crash said. "He was too good. The other reporters resented the way he always got the big assignments and the cover stories. You should have heard them gripe when Low boy sent him on that tour around the world. Digger can be charming when he wants, but he'd very competitive when he's going after a story"

"Damn," Jay said. "Did the guy have any friends at all?"

"Well," Crash said, thinking, `he must have.' "Famous last words," Jay said.

"I know a lot of people thought Digger was a pain in the neck. He could be very abrasive, but he had a sweet side, too. You'd be surprised. A lot of the people he wrote up just loved him " She paused thoughtfully. "Well, at least until the stories came out," she amended., "Terrific," Jay said with a minimum of enthusiasm. "Listen," he started, "maybe you can-" His mind went off on a tangent, and the words stopped coming.

"Jay?" Crash asked after a moment of silence. "You okay?", "Fine," he said. "But I just had this real weird idea."

Noon

The sun was a shiny coin flung high in the sky, obscured by a haze of pollution and a sheath of angry clouds that were motionless in the thick air. The heat and humidity made it hard to breathe as Brennan and Jennifer waited patiently in the queue that was shuffling forward into Our Lady Of Perpetual Misery. Jokertown always took care of its own and Chrysalis was going to have a fine send-off.

People walked, crawled, hopped, and slithered into the church past a couple of bored cops who were stationed at the entrance. At least the city had enough sense to assign Kant, their tame joker cop, to this duty, but Brennan wondered what the police were supposed to detect in a gathering where masks were common. They barely glanced at Brennan, who was wearing a full-face mask, reserving most of their attention for Jennifer, who looked a lot better in black than Brennan.

The church was packed. The pews already full, Brennan and Jennifer found standing room in the back next to the droning fans that were trying to move the stifling air. Chrysalis's casket sat near the altar, covered with a carpet of flowers. There was a vast, hurried mumbling as the Living Rosary Society told their beads as they said their prayers for the repose of Chrysalis's soul.