Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand (22 page)

Jay spoke through the handkerchief and tried to disguise his voice. "She's not here," he said. "Who's this?"

There was a moment of silence. "Who am I talking to?" the caller asked, in a sharp voice that was eerily familiar. "Sascha," Jay said, trying to talk like Sascha.

"You're not Sascha," the man said.

So much for that plan. Jay decided his best policy was to shut up and listen.

"Who is this?" the caller demanded. "You play games with me, you're in big trouble."

That did it. He knew the voice. And all of a sudden Jay was deeply grateful that he hadn't phoned the police. He dropped the receiver back into its cradle and got up fast.

Kant could have a cruiser here in minutes. Jay had to move. He'd taken two steps when he noticed the message pad beside the phone. He went back. The top sheet had been ripped
off,
but he could still see the impressions on the sheet below. Two columns of numbers marched down the sheet in parallel. Times.

Jay pocketed the pad and retreated back to the fire escape. You didn't need to graduate with honors from detective school to figure this one out. Flight times. Sascha wasn't going to be coming to work anytime soon, and Jay had a funny hunch he knew what city the bartender had fled to.

Thursday July 21, 1988

1:00 A.M.

"You're taller," Jay said to Digger. Only a little, but when you start at three inches, an inch or two makes a difference. "Yeah, yeah," Downs said, from where he was perched in Oral Amy's lap. "The brat had to come in every morning before school and reshrink the ones needed it most. Otherwise you grow"

"Slowly," Jay said, locking the office door behind him. "Slowly," Digger admitted gloomily. "Where the hell you been? I figured Hartmann had gotten to you for sure."

"Hartmann's in Atlanta," Jay pointed out. "I doubt he even knows I'm alive."

"Don't bet on it," the reporter said, his tone gloomy. "So what's going on? You blow the whistle?"

"No," Jay said. He went on into the back room, turned on the lights and the fan, sat down at his desk.

Digger jumped down off Oral Amy and came trotting after him, his little feet pitter-pattering on the hardwood floor. "What the hell you waiting for, an engraved invitation from the White House?" he said in an aggrieved voice. "They've started balloting down in Atlanta, Hartmann could win the nomination while you're shuffling around picking your nose. You going to let the guy who had Chrysalis killed become president?"

Jay picked up the reporter by his collar. "Do me a favor, Downs, and shut the fuck up," he said, dropping the little man in his wastebasket.

Downs landed among the remains of the pizza and squawked in protest. "What the hell's wrong with you, Popinjay?"

"I found another body," Jay told him. "Jesus," Digger said. "Who?"

"Damned if I know"

"Was it one of Mackie's?" Downs wanted to know.

"I don't think so," Jay said. "This one was pretty ripe, but all the pieces were still attached."

Downs climbed up the pizza box, teetered on the edge of the wastebasket for a moment, and jumped down to the floor. He landed with a grunt. "We got to get Hartmann before he gets us," he said. "I told you how he works...."

"Yeah, you told me," Jay admitted. "It's a great story. It better be, it's all we've got. Your word against his. A presidential candidate versus the guy who broke the story about the Howler's secret love child. Wonder who they'll believe? Of course, you got substantiation-Chrysalis, Kahina, Gimli, hell yes. Too bad they're all dead."

"The jacket!" Digger insisted. "That's your proof!"

"Maybe," Jay admitted. "If we had the jacket. Which we don't. You wouldn't happen to know where Chrysalis hid her stash of secrets, would you?"

Downs shook his head.

"Too bad," Jay said. "What can you tell me about Sascha?"

"Sascha?" Digger looked thoughtful. "Well, he's a telepath. Does that help? He just skims off surface thoughts, you know? But if he was to leak what he picked up ... Christ, you don't think Sascha was tied with Hartmann, do you?"

"The notion did cross my mind," Jay admitted. "Jesus," Digger repeated. "I never paid much attention to Sascha...I mean, he was just kind of
there, you
know? But he was there a lot ... if he was reporting to Hartmann ... she
trusted
him, goddammit. Him and Elmo, she counted on them. Sascha could pick up on trouble before it happened, and Elmo would handle it."

"Unless Sascha was part of the trouble," Jay pointed out.

"Chrysalis ever say anything about Sascha's girlfriend?" Digger seemed astonished. "What girlfriend?" Jay sighed. "Never mind," he said. He got up.

"Where you going?" Digger asked. "Out," Jay said.

"When are you coming back?"

"Later," Jay said as he unlocked the door. He needed a quiet drink. Some food would be nice, too. Not to mention sleep, but somehow he didn't think sleep was part of tonight's program.

Brennan tossed and turned on the lumpy bed, halfasleep and half-awake, tormented by dreams that he couldn't separate from reality He kicked off the confining, sweat soaked sheets and glanced over at Jennifer. She was still soundly asleep. The clock on the bedstand beside her said that he had about two and a half hours before his meeting with Fadeout. He needed more sleep, but he doubted that it would come.

The memory of Chrysalis was a dull ache in his mind. Like Tachyon had said, her ghost was a demanding one. He fantasized dropping the card she'd given him on the body of the man or woman, ace or joker, who'd killed her. The only problem was that he could only conjure a big blank spot for the identity of the murderer.

It wasn't Bludgeon, it wasn't the Oddity. He couldn't really picture Quasiman in the role of cold-blooded killer. That left Wyrm and Doug Morkle as the final possibilities from Ackroyd's list. Wyrm, maybe. Morkle, who the hell knew?

He turned again restlessly toward the window, and froze. He wondered if he were still dreaming, or if he was just hallucinating.

The window seemed to have grown to gigantic proportions, lending credence to the notion that he was only dreaming that he was awake. It was framing Chrysalis from the neck up. He'd recognize her anywhere. It was her gleaming skull, her blue eyes, her red, pouting lips.

He stared for a good five seconds, then closed and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, she was gone. He lay there in bed staring at the now-empty window, telling himself to get up and go to it, but he was afraid.

He lay there and closed his eyes and told himself that it was only a dream, and after a while he'd almost convinced himself that that was true.

3:00 A.M.

"Coffee, Jay?" Vi asked him.

He'd grabbed a booth by the window. The counter drew a lot of strange people during the graveyard shift, and Jay wasn't feeling real sociable. "Yeah, please," he said. "And give me a patty melt, too. Extra onions, side of fries."

"Gotcha." Vi poured his coffee and left to place his order. Someone had left a rumpled
Daily News
in the booth. Jay smoothed it out and read the lead story. The Democrats had started voting down in Atlanta. Hartmann had broken well in front, and he was gaining strength with each ballot. Leo Barnett was several hundred votes behind, followed by Jackson, Dukakis, and Gore. Much as he hated to admit it, Digger was right. He had to do something. But what?

He pushed aside the newspaper, took his list from his pocket, and looked at the names again. Wyrm, Quasiman, Bludgeon, the Oddity, and Doug Morkle. Yeoman swore it wasn't Bludgeon. If the mystery player was really Hartmann and not Barnett, that deep-sized Quasiman's motive. Jay hadn't turned up a damn thing pointing at the Shadow Fists, and the M.O. was all wrong for Wyrm anyway. He still didn't know who the fuck Doug Morkle was, but by now he didn't care. It had to be the Oddity. Didn't it?

Jay dug out the list of flight times he'd swiped off the scratch pad by Ezili's phone. He took a sip of coffee. "Fuck it," he said aloud. It didn't have to be the Oddity.

Atlanta was too damn close. It looked like the flight time averaged about two hours, nonstop. The earliest departure left at 6:55 in the morning, and got into Atlanta at 9:07. The killer could have caught the last plane out of Atlanta Sunday night, dropped by the Crystal Palace in the early hours of the morning to murder Chrysalis, and still made it back to Georgia in time for the opening of the convention. Which meant that some of the other names on the list deserved a second look.

If Downs was telling the truth, Chrysalis had sent her assassin after Gregg Hartmann. She hadn't told anyone, yet somehow Hartmann had found out. The leak
had
to be Sascha. Elmo had been hiring the assassin just about the same time Chrysalis was getting killed, which meant somebody had known what she was going to do
before
she did it. New York had too damn many telepaths as far as Jay was concerned, but Sascha was the only one who was close to Chrysalis.

Jay took a swallow of
coffee,
grimaced, and cursed himself for a fool. He should have seen it much earlier. Sascha had been there when Jay found the body; even without eyes, he'd sensed an intruder in the building. So why hadn't he sensed the killer?

Or had he?

Okay, so Sascha picks the assassination plot out of Chrysalis's mind and leaks it to Hartmann, who sends Mackie Messer to make sushi out of Digger Downs, and someone else, someone with superhuman strength, to take Chrysalis out of the game. The Oddity? Maybe...

But Jack Braun was a Hartmann supporter, and Billy Ray was the senator's bodyguard. The brutality of the murder seemed out of character for Braun. Carnifex had a nasty reputation ... but maybe that didn't matter. According to Downs, the Syrian girl claimed Hartmann
made
her slit her brother's throat, so maybe he compelled Braun to do his dirty work the same way.

Vi came bustling up with his patty melt in one hand and a fresh pot of coffee in the other. She set down the plate and refilled Jay's cup. He folded up his papers and put them away. "Who you like for president, Vi?" he asked the waitress. She snorted. "They're all crooks," she said as she walked off. "I wouldn't vote for none of them."

Jay stared at his patty melt. The onions were grilled almost black, just the way he liked them. He tried a french fry. It needed ketchup. "Hey, Vi," he called out, but by then she was back behind the counter, waiting on a couple of hookers who'd just strolled in off Forty-second Street.

The Oddity was still a better candidate than Golden Boy or Carnifex, Jay decided. Hartmann would have had to have learned of the assassination the night before to get either Braun or Ray on a plane on time, but if he
had
known that far in advance, why the hell did it take him so long to send Mackie after Digger Downs? And why not have Mackie take care of Chrysalis, too? Why use two killers, either of whom could implicate him? And why dispatch someone from Atlanta when he had local talent on the scene? That is, assuming Mackie
had
been on the scene. Maybe he'd been in Atlanta, too. That would explain why it had taken him so long to make his try for Downs.

The hell of it was, if Hartmann was an ace, every name on the goddamned list would need a second look; Troll, Ernie the Lizard, Doughboy, hell, they were probably
all
Hartmann fans. None of them seemed to have any particular motive for killing Chrysalis, but maybe they didn't need one, maybe they were Hartmann's unwilling pawns, like Kahina. So where the fuck did that leave him? Jay took a bite of his patty melt and chewed thoughtfully.

Was
Hartmann a secret ace? Digger said so, him and his goddamned nose. Some evidence; a smell that no one else could smell. The cops would just love that. The only way to prove Digger's story was to find that jacket. Jay tried to think where he might hide if he was a jacket, but the only thing that came to mind was a closet, and all the obvious closets had been checked pretty thoroughly.

The patty melt needed ketchup too. "Vi," Jay called loudly.

She came over with the coffeepot in hand and stopped when she saw his cup was still full. "Whatcha need, honey?"

"Ketchup," Jay said.

Vi looked disgusted. "Honest to Christ," she said. "What do you think that is?" She pointed.

Jay blinked. The ketchup bottle was right there on the table, over against the window between the napkin dispenser and the salt-and-pepper shakers. Vi gave a put-upon sigh and walked off. Jay picked up the bottle, unscrewed the top and poured a good-sized puddle on his plate. How stupid could he get, the damn thing was right there in front of him all the time.

Then it hit him.

4:00 A.M.

The forgotten cemetery, left untended for several decades, had become a pocket wilderness in the city. Many of its graves had collapsed during the years of neglect. Its weathered tombstones, most bearing names as forgotten as the cemetery itself, were canted crookedly throughout the rank undergrowth. The graveyard had an air of melancholy decay about it, but Brennan didn't mind. He liked its silent darkness. It was almost as quiet and peaceful as the country.

He wore dark clothes and carried his compound bow, assembled and ready for use. The bow was the proper weapon for this place, stained as dark as the night that hid Brennan and as quiet as the corpses that kept him company as he waited.

The silence was finally broken by the approach of a car that Brennan heard but couldn't see from his hiding place in the bushes. He could hear the driver park outside the crumbling brick wall that surrounded the graveyard and kill the engine. Doors opened and slammed shut, and there was silence again.

Then Brennan heard something heavy move through the. undergrowth.

He froze. From the sounds it made, Brennan could tell that it was big. He took a deep breath, but could smell nothing beside the annoying city odors that penetrated even here. He stood still, holding his breath in a night so quiet that he could hear the blood rushing through the capillaries in his ears. He heard it move through the bushes and high grass, searching for him.