Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild Read online

  The ice sculptures arrived at half past ten, in a refrigerated truck that had fought its way through the holiday crowds from the artist’s loft in SoHo. Hiram went down to the lobby to make certain that there were no mishaps as the life-size sculptures were transported up the service elevator. The artist, a rugged-looking joker with bone-white skin and colorless eyes who called himself Kelvin Frost, was most comfortable at temperatures around thirty below, and never left the frigid comforts of his studio. But he was a genius in ice—or “ephemeral art,” as Frost and the critics preferred to call it.

  When the sculptures were safely stored in the Aces High walk-in freezer, Hiram relaxed enough to look them over. Frost had not disappointed. His detail was as astonishing as ever, and his work had something else as well—a poignancy, a human quality that might even be called warmth, if warmth could exist in ice. Hiram sensed something forlorn and doomed in the way Jetboy stood there, looking up at the sky, every inch the hero and yet somehow a lost boy too. Dr. Tachyon pondered like Rodin’s The Thinker, but instead of a rock, he sat upon an icy globe. Cyclone’s cloak billowed out so you could almost feel the winds skirling about him, and the Howler stood with legs braced and fists clenched at his side, his mouth open as if he’d been caught in the act of screaming down a wall.

  Peregrine looked as though she’d been caught in some other act. Her sculpture was a recumbent nude, resting languidly on one elbow, her wings half-spread behind her, every feather rendered in exquisite detail. A sly, sweet smile lit that famous face. The whole effect was magnificently erotic. Hiram found himself wondering if she’d posed for him. It was not unlike her.

  But Frost’s masterpiece, Hiram thought, was the Turtle. How to bring humanity to a man who’d never once shown his face to the world, whose public persona was a massive armored shell studded with camera lenses? The artist had risen to that challenge: the shell was there, every seam and rivet, but atop it, in miniature, Frost had carved a myriad of other figures. Hiram walked around the sculpture, admiring, picking out detail. There were the Four Aces at some Last Supper, Golden Boy looking much like Judas. Elsewhere a dozen jokers struggled up the curve of the shell, as if climbing some impossible mountain. There was Fortunato, surrounded by writhing naked women, and there a figure with a hundred blurred faces who seemed to be deep in sleep. From every angle, the piece unveiled new treasures.

  “Kind of a shame it’s going to melt, isn’t it?” Jay Ackroyd said from behind him.

  Hiram turned. “The artist doesn’t think so. Frost maintains that all art is ephemeral, that ultimately it will all be gone, Picasso and Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa, whatever you care to name, in the end it will be gone to dust. Ice art is therefore more honest, because it celebrates its transitory nature instead of denying it.”

  “Real good,” the detective said in a flat voice. “But no one ever chipped a piece off the Pietà to put in their drink.” He glanced over at Peregrine. “I should have been an artist. Girls always take off their clothes for artists. Can we get out of here? I forgot to bring my fur muumuu.”

  Hiram locked the freezer and escorted Ackroyd back to his office. The detective was a nondescript sort of fellow, which was probably an asset in his profession. Mid-forties, slender, just under medium height, carefully combed brown hair, quick brown eyes, an elusive smile. You’d never look at him twice on the street, and if you did, you’d never be sure if you’d seen him before. This morning he wore brown loafers with tassels, a brown suit obviously bought off the rack, and a dress shirt open at the collar. Hiram had asked him once why he didn’t wear ties. “Prone to soup stains,” Ackroyd had replied.

  “Well?” Hiram asked, when he was safely ensconced behind his desk. He glanced up at his muted television. A color graphic was showing sound waves coming out of the mouth of a yellow stick man and knocking down a wall. Then they cut to an on-the-scene reporter speaking into the camera. Behind him, a dozen police cars cordoned off a brick building. The street was covered with shards of broken glass, winking in the sunlight. The camera panned slowly over rows of shattered windows and the cracked windshields of nearby parked cars.

  “It was no big thing,” Ackroyd said. “I nosed around the fish market for a hour and got the general idea fast enough. You’ve got your basic protection racket going down.”

  “I see,” Hiram said.

  “The waterfront draws crooks like a picnic draws ants, that’s no secret. Smuggling, drugs, the rackets, you name it. Opportunities abound. Your friend Gills, along with most of the other small businessmen, paid the mob a percentage off the top, and in return the mob provided protection and occasional help with the police or the unions.”

  “The mob?” Hiram said. “Jay, this sounds suitably melodramatic, but I had the impression that the mob was made up of ethnic gentlemen partial to pinstripes, black shirts, and white ties. The hoodlums who were troubling Gills lacked even that rudimentary fashion sense. And one of them was a joker. Has the Mafia taken to recruiting jokers?”

  “No,” Ackroyd said. “That’s the trouble. The East River waterfront belongs to the Gambione Family, but the Gambiones have been losing their grip for years now. They’ve already lost Jokertown to the Demon Princes and the other joker gangs, and a Chinatown gang called the Egrets or Snowbirds or something like that has run them right out of Chinatown. Harlem got taken away a long time ago, and the bulk of the city’s drug traffic no longer flows through Gambione hands. But they still controlled the waterfront. Until now.” He leaned forward. “Now there’s competition. They’re offering new and improved protection at a much higher price. Maybe too high for your friend.”

  “His son is in college,” Hiram said thoughtfully. “The tuition is quite substantial, I believe. So what I witnessed this morning was a little, ah, dunning?”

  “Bingo,” Ackroyd said.

  “If Gills and his fellow merchants have been paying the Gambiones for protection, why aren’t they receiving it?”

  “Two weeks ago, a body was found hanging from a meat-hook in a warehouse two blocks from Fulton Street. A gentleman by the name of Dominick Santarello. He was ID’d by fingerprints, his face having been beaten into ground round. A colleague of Santarello’s, one Angelo Casanovista, turned up dead in a barrel of pickled herring a week prior. His head was not in the barrel with him. The word on the streets is that the new guys have something the Gambiones don’t—an ace. Or at least a joker who can pass for an ace in a bad light. These things do tend to get exaggerated, but I’m told he’s seven feet tall, inhumanly strong, and ugly enough to make you wet your pants. He goes by the charming nom de guerre of Bludgeon. The Gambiones are overmatched, I’d say.” He shrugged.

  Hiram Worchester was aghast. “And what about the police?”

  “Gills is afraid. One of his friends tried talking to the police, and his body turned up with a flounder shoved down his throat. Literally. The cops are investigating.”

  “This is intolerable,” Hiram said. “Gills is a good man, an honest man. He deserves better than to have to live in this kind of fear. What can I do to help?”

  “Lend him the money to make his payment,” Ackroyd suggested with a cynical smile.

  “You can’t be serious!” Hiram objected.

  The detective shrugged. “Better idea—hire me to be his full-time bodyguard. Does he have a nubile daughter, by any chance?” When Hiram didn’t respond, Ackroyd got up and slid his hands into his jacket pocket. “All right. There might be something to be done. I’ll work on it. Chrysalis might be able to tell me something useful, if the price is right.”

  Hiram nodded and rose behind his desk. “Fine,” he said. “Excellent. Keep me posted.” Ackroyd turned to go. “One more thing,” Hiram said. Jay turned back, raised an eye-brow. “This Bludgeon sounds, ah, ill-tempered to say the least. Don’t do anything too dangerous. Be careful.”

  Jay Ackroyd smiled. “If Bludgeon gives me any trouble, I’ll dazzle him with magic,” he said. He made a gu
n out of his fingers, three fingers folded back, index finger pointed at Hiram, thumb up straight like a hammer.

  “Don’t you dare,” Hiram Worchester told him. “Not if you want to eat tonight.” Ackroyd laughed, and slid his hand back into his pocket, and sauntered out.

  Hiram glanced back at his television scene. They were running an interview with the Howler. The interviewer was Walter Cronkite. A ten-year-old clip, Hiram realized, from the Great Jokertown Riot of 1976. He changed the channel, hoping to see some coverage from Jokertown and Jetboy’s Tomb, and perhaps get another glimpse of Peregrine. Instead he got Bill Moyers, doing a commentary in front of a large still photograph of the Howler. The Howler seemed to be much in the news this morning, Hiram thought. He was curious.

  He turned on the sound.

  CHAPTER 6

  11:00 a.m.

  A parade in Jokertown was always a unique experience. No need to create some fantastic creature out of wire and flowers and paper. No, here the jokers could provide all the grotesquerie required with just their miserable bodies. There was no Joker Queen either. Several years ago they had tried to introduce the notion, Tachyon explained as he guided Roulette through the crowds, but he had been so revolted by the notion that the planners had dropped the idea. There were a number of politically active jokers who hadn’t forgiven him yet.

  Sara Roosevelt Park had been cordoned off, and was filled with belching, grinding flatbed trucks all carrying fantastic scenes on their utilitarian backs. Off to the west a knot of sweating cops were demolishing a vast, double-headed phallus. Roulette noticed that a number of men in the crowd looked away each time a crowbar bit deep into the latex. To the west the Joker Moose Lodge Bagpipe Band was tuning up. The braying of the pipes sounded harsh in the still, sultry air.

  “Are you the parade’s grand master?” Roulette asked with more acid than she’d intended.

  “No,” Tachyon snapped back, and she found herself staring at his rigid back as he scanned the crowd.

  A portly joker, his nose replaced by a long trunk ending in several tiny fingers, broke from the edges of the crowd like a calving iceberg, and chugged toward Tachyon.

  “All set?” he asked, thrusting out a hand.

  “All set. Des, may I introduce Roulette Brown-Roxbury. Roulette, Xavier Desmond, owner of the Funhouse, and one of Jokertown’s most sterling citizens.”

  “Some would argue that that’s an oxymoron.”

  “My, we’re crabby today,” Tachyon teased, with a touch of acid.

  A look passed between the two men, and Roulette realized that theirs was a complex relationship. They were friends, they respected one another, but something lay between them, a memory of ancient pain.

  This flash of cattiness had an unusual effect. Rather than strengthening her desire to kill the man it somehow made him all the more charming. He was not perfect, or even perfectly evil. Just “human,” and therefore understandable, and she cursed the insight, for it is easier to hate in the abstract.

  Des glanced at his watch. “Running late as usual.”

  “I just hope delays and the heat don’t conduce to any shall we say . . . incidents.” He tugged on his upper lip. “I can’t help but think of ’76 when I see all these police.”

  “There was a strange feel on that day. Mercifully we’ve never felt it since.”

  “Well, I’d best mingle.” He caught up both of Roulette’s hands, and pressed a quick kiss onto each. “I will be back to collect you before we get under way.”

  “Are you sure I should be with you? Maybe we could just meet for lunch afterward, or something . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “No, no. I need the support.”

  “Difficult situation.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Roulette pulled her eyes from Tachyon’s fast-vanishing form.

  “If he doesn’t take part in the parade he’s accused of showing contempt for the jokers, and favoring the aces. When he does join in—which he’s done for the past five years—he’s accused of being a heartless parasite, living off the misery of the jokers he helped create. A little tin-plated king of his own freak kingdom.”

  Her eyes roved the park. Sno-cone vendors hawking through the crowd, police with sweat stains in the pits and front of shirts, Tachyon like a tiny redheaded, red-clad devil in the midst of a Dantesque scene as jokers doubled for demons. Just do the job, and get out of this. That was all she wanted now.

  Somehow she had to pry him loose, seek the privacy of a hotel or apartment, and make the kill. She couldn’t cut him out yet. His sense of duty would keep him in this freak parade, and he was a featured speaker at the tomb. Her thoughts propelled her, carried her across the park toward the Takisian, while behind her Des frowned over her abrupt departure.

  Perhaps a sudden indisposition? Stupid! All that would get her was a bed at the Jokertown clinic. Definitely the wrong bed. Perhaps a—Use your goddamn body! Most men’s brains seemed to be lodged in their penises!

  His welcoming smile embraced her. “Ah, I think you must be a telepath. I was just coming for you.”

  “Were you?” she heard herself reply, but the voice seemed to be coming from a long distance. “I hope you’ll continue to come for me.” Her arm slid around his neck, and molding her body to his, she pressed a kiss onto his mouth.

  For an instant there was withdrawal. Had she over-played the moment? Then their tongues met, and all restraint was swept away. His tongue teased, thrust past the barrier of her teeth. His hand, hot against the nape of her neck, pulled her closer. A chorus of appreciative catcalls rose around them, and they broke apart.

  “Well,” Tachyon gusted, and, pulling a handkerchief from a pocket, patted briskly at his forehead.

  She snuggled in close, and pulled his arm through hers. “I was very sad earlier. You’ve changed all that, and I wanted to thank you.”

  “Madam . . . Roulette, thank me anytime you wish.”

  A chauffeur, tail lashing at the ankles of his boots, held open the door of a large gray Lincoln.

  “Ah, Riggs, punctual as always. I often wonder how you tolerate me, for I am so notoriously unpunctual.”

  “I’ve learned to bear with it.” His voice was like soft velvet, and his luminescent green cat’s eyes seemed lit from behind with amusement.

  “Riggs, this is Roulette Brown-Roxbury. She is our guest for the day.” A pinch to her fingers. “And I hope into the night.”

  Riggs touched the bill of his cap. “Ma’am.”

  “So, you employ jokers,” she remarked as she slid across the leather upholstery.

  “Of course.” And the reply struck her as smug. “Riggs’s reflexes and night vision are far superior to an ordinary human’s. I’m very grateful to have my safety in his capable hands.”

  The lead float was nosing majestically onto the Bowery. Behind it P.S 235’s marching band swung into a snappy rendition of the “Pineapple Rag.”

  Senator Hartmann’s open car was next in the line. An ace jogged beside the limo. At least Roulette presumed he was an ace. Most normal secret-service agents didn’t run about dressed in white form-fitting jumpsuits complete with black hood covering face and head.

  Hartmann beamed and waved, every inch an elder statesman. Someone in the crowd lining the street shouted out, “How about ’88, Senator?”

  “Suggest it. I’m ready,” Hartmann called back, and grinned as the laughter and cheers rippled through the throng.

  Two more floats, the mounted patrol, then Riggs put the big Lincoln in gear, and they rolled out at a steady ten miles per hour.

  “Why not an open car?” Roulette asked, and from overhead a whining answered as the sun roof slid back.

  “I may have lived on Earth for forty years, but I’m still a Takisian. I’m damned if I’m riding in an open car for anyone. And on Wild Card Day my enemies as well as my friends are abroad.”

  Fifteen minutes later, and he dropped back onto the seat fanning himself with his handkerchief. “Dreadful weather.�
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  “Here.” She had been exploring while he had perched on the roof and waved to the crowd, and had discovered the bar.

  “Dubonnet on ice. What an elegant lifesaver you are. Are you joining me this time?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved in close, her thigh pressing against his. They each took a thoughtful sip, then she ran one long nail down his cheek, noting the way his sideburns lay in red-gold whorls against his white, white skin. She paused, and inspected the small isosceles-shaped scar on his pointed chin.

  “What happened?”

  “Combat training. Sedjur and my father agreed we should leave it as a reminder to move more quickly next time.” And his face closed down while tears of grief blurred his lilac eyes.

  It was the moment. She cupped his face between her hands, and kissed him, her lips coaxing the rigidity out of his mouth. A tear splashed warmly on her hand, as she licked the tiny point of moisture away.

  “Why so sad?”

  “Because Sedjur is dead, and my father, were he aware, would like to be. I think memory is a curse.”

  “Yes, so do I.” Her hand slid down the satiny fabric of his waistcoat, and gripped his waistband. His gasp played counterpoint to the rasp of the zipper. “So let’s explore sensation and the moment, and forget memories.”

  She had him free now, and was gently rolling his penis between the palms of her hands. He stiffened instantly, his back arching, and beads of sweat broke across his brow and upper lip.

  “By the Ideal, woman, what are you doing?”

  She gave him a Mona Lisa smile, took him in her mouth, and gave gentle suction. One hand shot out and hit the control, raising the window between them and Riggs. He moaned as her tongue teased at the underside of his glans.

  “Have mercy,” he groaned, one hand twisting in her braids.

  “All right.” She drew back.