Death Draws Five Read online

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

  Ray and Angel barged into Fortunato’s suite. Inside it looked like the Jokertown Clinic’s emergency room on Saturday night, crowded with patients and worried on-lookers. Some of them seemed to be members of the other team, Ray realized, but nobody seemed to care, so he didn’t.

  “John?” Angel asked, staring at a worried-looking figure standing near the doorway to one of the bedrooms.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s me.”

  “Creighton,” Ray said.

  “My name’s not Creighton. It’s Strauss. Jerry Strauss. I just wanted you to know that.”

  Ray nodded.

  “John’s in the bathroom, with Fortunato,” Jerry said.

  “They’ve been in there a long time,” Mushroom Daddy said.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked.

  A little old black man standing next to a big young black man armed with an automatic weapon said, “He’s trying to heal him.”

  Ray shook his head. Time enough later to sort out who was who. “Well—has someone checked on them lately?”

  No one said anything.

  “Someone should,” Ray said.

  Still no one said anything. He looked at Angel, who nodded. He went quietly through the bedroom, Angel at his side. He listened at the closed bathroom door, but heard nothing.

  “Should I open it?” he asked quietly.

  Angel nodded again.

  He hesitated, took her hand, then quickly opened the door. Fortunato was lying on the bathroom floor, his son in his arms. As they watched, John Fortune’s golden aura flickered and went out. Ray and Angel stared at each other for a moment, then rushed into the bathroom, vaguely aware of the crowd that had gathered at the door behind them

  Ray gently lifted Fortunato off his son and felt his wrist. He looked at the Angel, then at the others crowded around the bathroom door. “There’s no pulse,” Ray said flatly, as if he could hardly believe it himself. “Fortunato’s dead.”

  “The boy?” Angel asked in a shaky voice.

  “He’s all right,” Fortunato said. He lifted his head and opened his eyes and gripped Ray’s arm hard. It was the only thing that prevented the stunned ace from dropping him. “He’s all right. Tell Peregrine not to worry. He’ll just be a normal boy now. Tell her I took the virus... away...”

  “God,” Ray said. “My God. You have no pulse. You’re dead.”

  Fortunato smiled. “That’s right,” he said, and he kept smiling as his body slumped in Ray’s arms.

  John Fortune opened his eyes, looked around the room, looked at everybody crowding around the doorway, looked at Fortunato’s limp body in Ray’s arms. He asked in a quiet voice, “What happened?”

  The Angel went to him and put her arms around him. She said nothing, but held him as he cried, until he stopped shaking.

  The Feds arrived on the scene, as usual, half an hour too late. Agents from half a dozen bureaus wandered about the lobby of the Angels’ Bower in a daze, watching as EMTs helped the last of the wounded civilians.

  Ray and the Angel sat in the lobby’s wreckage with John Fortune. The Angel held the boy’s hand while he stared numbly into space. Jerry Strauss, who wore his real face, Sascha, back from his fruitless trip to the airport, and Mushroom Daddy stood around them. Barnett was up in his penthouse, praying and refusing to come down. The Witness was still unconscious in the hallway. Magda was still frozen in Fortunato’s suite. Ray figured it would be better to leave them up there for now. Couple less thing to worry about.

  “Man,” Ray said. “I don’t even want to think about trying to explain all this.” He looked at the old black man who had just joined them, and the young big black man at his side. “Like where in the Hell you fit into it.”

  “Us?” John Nighthawk said. “We were never here.” He and the big guy strolled away.

  Jerry looked at Ray expectantly.

  “Go ahead, take off,” Ray told him. “I’ll save a ton of the paperwork for you.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Jerry said sourly, turning to go.

  “And Jerry—” Ray added.

  “Yeah?”

  “It was fun.”

  Jerry paused. “It was. In an odd sort of hallucinogenic kind of way. Come on,” he added to Sascha and Mushroom Daddy.

  “I wonder if I can find another van,” Daddy said wistfully. “Hey! We could drive back together!”

  Digger Downs came by, his tape recorder in his hand. “Hey, guys,” he said.

  Ray looked at him unenthusiastically. He still hadn’t forgiven Downs for once dripping blood on his fighting suit, sixteen years ago. “What do you want?” Ray asked.

  “The story,” Digger said. “What happened between John Fortune and his father during those last moments?”

  “Can’t you leave the kid alone?” Ray asked.

  “No,” John Fortune said quietly. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him about the most powerful ace in the world, and the final gift he gave me.”

  The Angel nodded. “Your father would want the story to come from you.”

  Downs had his tape-recorder out and was listening with a wide grin—Visions of a Pulitzer probably dancing in his head, Ray thought—as Billy Ray and the Angel strolled away.

  “Well,” Ray said, gesturing at the devastated lobby and the squads of cops and federal agents wandering around it in a daze, “alone at last. Got any plans for this evening?”

  The Angel shook her head. “Do you?”

  “I was thinking of a good meal, a hot shower, a romp in the sack, and then about twenty hours of sleep. How’s that sound?”

  “Billy—” She stopped, started again. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”

  “We can always find some time for that. I guess.”

  “Do you really believe that you and I can make it?”

  Ray shrugged. “I don’t know. I believe we’d be crazy not to try, though. Besides, I could drink a case of you. Whatever that means.”

  “You remember our song!”

  “Remember it? Hell, I’ve never even heard it.”

  The Angel smiled and put her head on his shoulder as they stepped through the debris littering the lobby floor.

  “By the way,” Ray said. “You look bitching in red.”

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Cardinal Romulus Contarini sat alone in Nighthawk’s suite. He jumped when Nighthawk opened the door and came in on silent feet.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Nighthawk sighed. “Well, you were wrong, as usual.”

  “Wrong?” Contarini said angrily. “I was not wrong! I am righteous in my faith and in my wrath! We will begin again,” he said, a cunning look in his eyes. “The diabolists cannot match the might of Mother Church—”

  “But you were right about one thing,” Nighthawk said thoughtfully as he approached the Cardinal. “There is a false prophet in this story.” He removed the glove from his left hand. “It was you,” he said, reaching for the cowering churchman.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  He had barely said Hello, when suddenly it was time to say goodbye. But life, and death, are like that, Fortunato thought. He remembered the last great Zen lesson.

  Enlightenment comes to you only when you stop looking for it.

  He stood some where, on some thing, the universe open before him.

  The End

  DEATH DRAWS FIVE starred:

  Billy Ray...............................................................created by John J. Miller

  Fortunato.............................................................created by Lewis Shiner

  John Nighthawk...................................................created by John J. Miller

  Jerry “Mr. Nobody” Strauss...................................created by Bud Simons

  The Midnight Angel..............................................created by John J. Miller

  Co-starred:

  John Fortune..
...........................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

  Ellen “Cameo” Allworth......................created by Kevin Andrew Murphy

  Leo Barnett...............................................created by Arthur Byron Cover

  Peregrine..................................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

  Digger Downs........................................................created by Steve Perrin

  Mushroom Daddy............................................... created by John J. Miller

  The Witness (The Bigger Asshole).................... created by John J. Miller

  Butcher Dagon.....................................................created by John J. Miller

  Cardinal Romulus Contarini...............................created by John J. Miller

  Dr. Bradley Finn.........................................created by Melinda Snodgrass

  Featuring:

  Jay “Poppinjay” Ackroyd............................created by George R.R. Martin

  John “The Highwayman” Bruckner...........created by George R.R. Martin

  Father Squid.........................................................created by John J. Miller

  Daniel “Yeoman” Brennan...................................created by John J. Miller

  The Living Gods........................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

  Usher, Magda, and Curtis Grubbs.......................created by John J. Miller

  The Witness (The Asshole)..................................created by John J. Miller

  Alejandro Jesus y Maria C de Baca.....................created by John J. Miller

  The Jokka Bruddas................................................created by John J. Miller

  Sascha Starfin.......................................................created by John J. Miller

  Blood and Buck....................................................created by John J. Miller

  With:

  Josh McCoy...............................................created by Gail Gerstner-Miller

  Peter Pann..................................................created by George R.R. Martin

  Jennifer “Wraith” Maloy-Brennan........................created by John J. Miller

  Elmo Schaeffer......................................................created by John J. Miller

  Special Guest Appearance:

  Cole Porter

  CHAPTER TWO

  New York City: Tomlin International Airport

  CHAPTER THREE

  Las Vegas, Nevada: Mirage Auditorium

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Las Vegas: The Mirage

  CHAPTER FIVE

  New York: Heading North on Route 17

  JOHN J. MILLER

  CHAPTER SIX

  New Hampton, New York

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  New York City: Jokertown Clinic

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the air to Branson, Missouri

  CHAPTER NINE

  Peaceable Kingdom: Barnett’s Office

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

  APOCALYPSE

  Table of Contents

  wildcardsDeathDrawsFiveKindle

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 6615dd8a-3d2e-4626-93f9-7e44b33c2434

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 28.11.2011

  Created using: calibre 0.8.25 software

  Document authors :

  George R. R. Martin

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