Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks Read online

  Jessica beamed, but said nothing, dropping it in her apron pocket with Timothy’s cage, then giving Trudy a hug. Trudy tousled her hair fondly.

  When the elevator doors opened they were greeted by Detective Kant. “Evening, folks. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Detective Kant,” Kenneth Strauss said forcefully, “these are my clients, and what just happened with Towers and Jessica is a clear case of mens rea. If you want to arrest someone, arrest Towers for showing pornography to a child.”

  “Scary pornography,” added Beth. “The footstool was chasing us.”

  Kant’s lizard tongue flicked out. “No one’s getting out of the Golden Tower until we figure out what happened. Commissioner’s orders. Streets are locked down and we’re searching vans to make sure the Amber Room … uh … hasn’t been teleported out.”

  “I want to go home, Daddy,” Jessica whined.

  “Please don’t upset my daughter,” stressed Jasper von der Stadt. “Please.”

  “Listen,” said Kant, “I’ll try to expedite it as much as I can, but look, see that line there? That’s the only way anyone’s getting out. We’re inspecting all bags and purses, too.”

  Trudy looked. The line he pointed to was long, at least fifty people, with Croyd at one end of it holding her purse, yawning as he waited for her. At the other end of the line was Ramshead and a knot of other cops, along with a police consultant who was tall, thin, and Russian-looking, with a pencil-fine mustache, someone you wouldn’t give a second glance except for the mirror shades he was wearing. At night. Which he didn’t need. Not just because Trudy knew he didn’t have any eyes behind them (though he didn’t) but because Sascha Starfin, the former bartender from the old Crystal Palace, was also a skimmer telepath, so he could see what those around him were seeing while reading their surface thoughts.

  The best plan for dealing with a telepath was avoiding them. Barring that? Slipping them hallucinogens or taking some yourself. But Trudy had already put Jessica through enough. She didn’t want to contemplate what she might do, tripping on the contents of Fantasy’s goodie bag. Jasper tugged Jessica along, getting in line along with the Strausses while Trudy tried to come up with a plan. If she ever had to confess all her capers, she’d prefer to do it at the end of a long life, when the cops couldn’t do anything but be impressed. Now? What would Lucia Ravenswood do?

  Desiree Windermere was at the front of the line. “This?” asked the romance novelist, opening her Regency reticule and withdrawing a hardback book. “It’s an advance copy of my latest, Lady Light and the Heart of Hope.”

  Ramshead nodded his horns at the bodice ripper, but Sascha said, “No it’s not—that’s Catherine the Great’s jewelry box!”

  The mirage dissolved, the hardback resuming its proper appearance of an amber chest. Trudy had read the novels, so she knew what was coming next. Desiree Windermere raised one hand in a dramatic gesture and a blinding burst of light sprang forth.

  Ramshead and the other cops were dazzled, but it is hard to blind someone when they didn’t have eyes. Trudy watched Sascha Starfin struggling with empty air, Desiree Windermere standing a few feet away also struggling with empty air, one of Lady Light’s other tricks in the novels being displacing her image. The trick didn’t work very well with a blind telepath.…

  But Trudy had a trick as well. She used the momentary distraction to step over to the wall, pop the glass from the fire alarm, pull it, then pop the glass back in.

  Desiree Windermere could take a hint. Just as soon as the alarm sounded, huge flames and belching black smoke erupted in the far reaches of the atrium, just like they had in Lady Light and the Burning Heart of Desire when Lucia had pulled the same ruse with her light illusions to escape the palace in Monaco.

  Trudy grabbed Croyd and her bag, sprinting for the door while crying, “Fire! Fire!” She wasn’t the only one. Jasper and Jessica and Beth and Kenneth followed hard on their heels, as did over a hundred wealthy Republicans. The fire alarm completely drowned out Sascha’s feeble cries that it was an illusion, while Ramshead and the other cops still staggered around blind. Residents and restaurant goers and Republicans belched forth from the Golden Tower in a panicked mob, bowling over the sawhorses the police had set up.

  Jasper had picked up Jessica, who was wailing, “Daddy, I want to go home!”

  “I’ll get you there, pumpkin.”

  They ran down East Fifty-fifth Street a couple blocks, Croyd yawning and starting to stagger. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I’m just so tired.”

  Trudy popped a spare black beauty into her hand. “Here.” She knew Croyd from before.

  “You’re a pal, Trude.…”

  “Don’t mention it.” She spotted an empty cab. “My friend needs to get to the West German Consulate.”

  “The cops—” the cabbie protested. He shut up as she pressed a few hundred into his hand. “West German Consulate, yes, ma’am.”

  Trudy got Croyd and the Amber Room packed in the back, then slipped him the last of Fantasy’s black beauties. She watched as the cab took off, then spotted a police car moving to intercept. Then the left wheels fell off the cop car, the hub caps and lug nuts reappearing in the garbage can beside her.

  She hurried to catch up with the Strausses and von der Stadts. “Just throwing away some gum,” she explained.

  “Did you leave your purse in the cab?” asked Beth.

  “Blast it, yes!” Trudy exclaimed. “Oh well, just means I get to shop for another.”

  “Is your friend going to be okay?” asked Kenneth. “They’re doing an absolute witch hunt for wild cards right now.”

  “He should be fine. He’s a survivor.”

  “Where did Mr. Croyd go?” asked Jessica.

  “He was very tired. He’d been up a long time and needed to get some shut-eye.”

  “Will he be able to play with us again?” Jessica asked. “Maybe set up a dollhouse?”

  “Maybe sometime,” Trudy said, “but right now he really needs his sleep.”

  She wondered how much the West Germans were going to pay Croyd and how much of that she would actually see. But she shouldn’t be greedy. She had four paintings, almost two dozen lovely amber treasures to pack a curio cabinet, and a keepsake for her shadow box.

  She patted the chess tower in her pocket. Such a lovely memento.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Jasper told her. “You’ve been such a help. Our town house isn’t far from here. After I get Jessica to bed, would you like to stay for drinks?”

  “Sure,” said Trudy, then she glanced up to Jessica and winked. “We nasty girls need to stick together.”

  Jessica giggled.

  Horses

  by Lewis Shiner

  THE WOMAN ON THE other side of the coffee table had a blond crewcut and wire-rimmed glasses. She was around forty. No makeup, a man’s gray sportcoat over a white T-shirt, loose drawstring pants. Dyke, had been Veronica’s first impression, and so far nothing had changed her mind.

  “Things are just a little out of control right now,” Veronica said. “It’s not my fault. I need a little time.”

  The woman’s name was Hannah Jorde. She sighed and said, “I’m so sick of hearing the same old shit.” She put her glasses on the table and rubbed her eyes. “You’re an addict, Veronica. I would have known that in two seconds, even if Ichiko hadn’t told me. You’ve got every symptom in the book.” She put her glasses back on. “I’m going to get you in a program. Methadone. It’ll make you feel better, and keep you alive, but you’ll still be an addict. Only you’ll be addicted to methadone instead of heroin.”

  Veronica said, “I can quit—”

  “Please,” Hannah said. “Don’t say it. Don’t make me listen to it. I just want to tell you a couple of things, and I want you to think about them. That’s all we can get done this first time anyway.”

  “Fine,” Veronica said. She put her hands under her thighs because they had started to shake a little. />
  “You’re an addict because you don’t want to deal with what’s going on inside you. You’re not just killing yourself, you’re already dead.” She let the words hang for a second and then said, “What is it you do for Ichiko?”

  “I’m a—” She stopped herself before she could say “geisha,” Fortunato’s approved term. “I’m a prostitute.”

  Suddenly Hannah smiled. She could be pretty, Veronica thought, if she made a little effort. The right clothes, makeup. A wig for that awful haircut. What a waste. “Good,” Hannah said. “The truth, for once. Thank you for that.” She filled out a slip of paper and handed it across. “Start your methadone and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  A van with a loudspeaker passed her on Seventh Avenue. The recorded message reminded her that it was Election Day and she should exercise her constitutional freedom. Doubtless paid for by the Democrats. Everyone expected a landslide for Bush after the Democrats’ disaster in Atlanta.

  A man leaned out of the van and said, “Hey, baby, did you vote today?” She showed him the manicure on her right middle finger. That went for the American political system, too. What kind of freedom was it when the only people you could vote for were politicians?

  She got in line outside the methadone clinic, pulling her coat tighter around her. It was embarrassment as much as cold. She didn’t know which was worse, to be surrounded by so many junkies or to be taken for one of them. They mostly seemed to be black women and white boys with long greasy hair.

  At least, she thought, she was still on the street. Ichiko had given her three choices: check into a detox center, see Hannah, or look for another job.

  Her turn came and the woman at the window handed her a paper cup. The methadone was mixed in a sweet orange-flavored drink. Veronica drank it down and crumpled the cup. The black hooker behind her teetered up to the window on impossibly high heels and said, “Weeee, law, give me that Jesus jizz.”

  Veronica threw the cup on the street and looked at her watch. Time enough to get uptown to Bergdorf’s before her dinner date.

  She should have guessed from the name he’d used to make the dinner reservation: Herman Gregg. But she didn’t figure it out till she got to the table.

  “Holy shit,” Veronica said. The subdued light of the restaurant was enough, even for Veronica, to know the face. “Senator Hartmann,” she said.

  He smiled weakly. “Not senator anymore. I’m just an ordinary citizen again. But you can see why I didn’t want to be alone tonight. You know what they say about politics and strange bedfellows.”

  “No,” Veronica said. “What do they say?”

  Hartmann shrugged and put the menu down. “How hungry are you?”

  “I don’t care. If you just want to go upstairs, that’s fine.” He’d already told her he had a room upstairs at the Hyatt. “Don’t feel like you have to buy me dinner, like this is a real date or anything.”

  “Somehow this isn’t quite what I expected. I’d heard so much about Fortunato and his extraordinary women.”

  “Yeah, well, Fortunato’s gone. Things have fallen off a bit. If you’re not happy, you don’t have to go through with it.”

  “I’m not complaining. I guess you’re more human than I expected. I kind of like that.”

  Veronica stood up. “Shall we?”

  He was very quiet in the elevator, didn’t touch her or anything. Just one hand on the elbow as they got out, to point her toward the room. Once inside, he locked the door and turned the TV on.

  “We don’t need that, do we?” Veronica asked.

  “I have to know,” Hartmann said. He took his jacket off and folded it over a chair, then untied his shoes and put them neatly underneath. He loosened his tie and sat on the end of the bed, his tiredness visible in the curve of his spine. “I have to know just how bad it is.”

  When Veronica came out of the bathroom in her bra and panties, he was in the same position. Bush was running almost two to one ahead of Dukakis and Jackson. Concession speeches were expected momentarily. She helped Hartmann off with the rest of his clothes, put a condom on him, and got him under the covers.

  He didn’t want anything fancy, just got right down to business. As he rocked against her, the election returns continued in a steady stream: “Texas now shows Bush with a staggering fifty-eight percent of the vote, and that’s with thirty-seven percent of the precincts reporting.” Hartmann’s spasm happened quickly and left him on the edge of tears. Veronica stroked the small of his back, where the sweat had just broken, and made soothing noises. Just as he rolled off her, one of the TV reporters said his name and he sat up guiltily.

  “Many of us must be asking ourselves the same question tonight,” the reporter went on. “Could Gregg Hartmann have beaten Vice President Bush? It was just two and a half months ago that Hartmann withdrew from the race after his loss of composure at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. That convention will long be remembered, not only for its bloodshed, but as a turning point in the nation’s attitude toward victims of the wild-card virus.”

  She carried the used condom into the bathroom, knotted it, wrapped it in toilet paper, and threw it away. The odor of sperm almost gagged her. She sat on the edge of the tub and washed herself and then brushed her teeth, over and over, telling herself she didn’t need a shot, not yet.

  It was after two when Hartmann turned the TV off. Bush was a joke, Hartmann told her. His campaigning against drugs was sheerest hypocrisy, given what his CIA had done in Central America. His cabinet officers would never live up to his claims of ethics, and his “kinder, gentler” America would have no room for aces or jokers.

  The wild-card issue meant little to Veronica. Fortunato, the man who had brought her in off the streets, was an ace. Her mother had been one of Fortunato’s geishas and had meant for Veronica to have a college education and a real career. But Veronica had turned tricks anyway. The money was easy and it was easy as well to think of herself that way, as a whore. Together Miranda and Fortunato had decided that if she was going to sell her body, she might as well do it right. Fortunato had brought her back to his apartment and tried, unsuccessfully, to make her into one of his ideal women. She loved him in the way that people loved something sweet and not entirely of this world.

  Because of Fortunato she’d met—and had sex with—other aces and jokers. None of them had seemed quite real to her, either. There weren’t even that many of them, not compared to unwed mothers or the homeless or old people, not enough to deserve all the attention they got. And it wasn’t like it was a disease that other people could catch, like AIDS or something.

  That thought gave her a chill. For a while the wild card had been contagious, and her sometime boyfriend Croyd Crenson had been spreading it. She’d been exposed to him but fortunately nothing had happened. She didn’t want to think about it.

  Eventually Hartmann fell asleep, the soft flesh of his stomach shaking with muffled snores. Veronica lay awake, counting all the many, many things she didn’t want to think about.

  She didn’t sleep even when she got back to Ichiko’s, around dawn. This time it was the idea of seeing Hannah again that kept her turning from side to side, chills moving up through her from her stomach.

  She got up around noon and made a breakfast she couldn’t eat. Ichiko walked her out to the cab or she might not have made it. Even then she tried to tell the cabbie to stop, to let her out, but she couldn’t find her voice. It was like being back in convent school, being sent to the principal, the oldest, scariest nun in the world.

  She walked up the stairs and into Hannah’s office. She couldn’t feel her legs. She sat in the middle of Hannah’s square, gray couch. Today Hannah wore jeans and a man’s dress shirt and a cardigan with interwoven gold thread. Veronica couldn’t take her eyes off the sparkles of gold.

  “Did you have a chance to think?” Hannah asked her.

  Veronica shrugged. “I’ve been busy. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking.”

  “Okay, let�
��s start with that. Tell me about the things you do.”

  Without meaning to, Veronica found herself talking about Hartmann. Hannah kept asking for details. What did he look like naked? What exactly was the taste in her mouth afterward? She sounded like she was only mildly curious. What was it like when his penis was inside her?

  “I don’t know,” Veronica said. “It didn’t feel like anything.”

  “What do you mean? He was inside you, but you couldn’t feel it? Did you have to ask him if he was in yet?”

  Veronica started to laugh, and then she was crying. She didn’t know how it happened. It seemed to be somebody else. “I didn’t want him there,” she said. Who was that talking? “I didn’t want him in me. I wanted him to leave me alone.” Her whole body shook with sobs. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why am I crying? What’s happening to me?”

  Hannah moved over next to her and wrapped her arms around her. She smelled like Dial soap. Veronica buried her head in the golden fibers of her sweater, felt the softness of the breast underneath. Everything gave way then and she cried until she ran out of tears, until she felt like a wrung-out sponge.

  Standing in line, Veronica tapped her foot nervously on the sidewalk. One of the long-haired boys behind her sang a song about shooting up in a low, monotonous voice. “You know I couldn’t find my mainline,” he sang. He didn’t seem aware he was doing it.

  Veronica wanted the methadone, wanted it badly. What do they put in that stuff? she thought, and stopped herself before the laughter turned into the other thing again.

  She put her hand into her purse and held on to a folded piece of paper with Hannah’s phone number on it.

  Veronica came in on a blast of cold air and stood for a second, rubbing her hands together.

  “Flowers for you,” Melanie said. She had a Russian-language textbook open while she watched the phones. Melanie was new. She still believed in Fortunato’s program, that they were geishas not hookers, that men actually cared how many languages they spoke and whether or not they could discuss postmodernist critical theory. When she finished her telephone shift, she would be off to cooking class or elocution lessons. Then, that night, she would spread her legs for a man who only cared that she had lots of red-blond hair and big boobs.