Dead Man's Hand Page 11

  “Around all the candidates,” Hiram suggested.

  “Fine,” Jay said. “I’ll keep digging on this end.”

  “Jay, listen to me, you’d be more valuable down here. Chrysalis is dead, this quixotic investigation of yours won’t bring her back. Start your meter and catch the next flight to Atlanta. I’m hiring you. I’ll want you to be Senator Hartmann’s bodyguard.”

  “The last body I was supposed to guard wound up short a head,” Jay pointed out. “Besides, I thought each candidate had a government ace assigned to baby-sit?”

  “Carnifex is an incompetent braggart,” Hiram said. “Nothing more than a street brawler, really, and not terribly bright. I have more faith in the Secret Service, but they’re only men. At least Barnett has Lady Black attached to him, but Gregg is terribly vulnerable. We need your help, Jay.”

  “Yeah, well, get in line,” Jay said. “Hiram, I got to go. I’ll keep in touch. Be careful. Do what you can.”

  “Popinjay, will you listen to reason for once?” Hiram insisted.

  “Nah,” Jay said, “it might become a habit.” He hung up before Hiram could reply, and headed for the door.

  No sooner did he step out of the office than the phone started ringing behind him. Jay leaned back against the office door and counted the rings. Hiram didn’t give up easily, he had to give him that. On the ninth ring, he sighed, went back into the darkened office, and scooped up the phone. “Look, Hiram,” he said, “I’m not going to Atlanta, goddamn it. If Senator Gregg needs another baby-sitter, do it yourself, you can’t just—”

  “My archer needs help,” a woman’s voice said quietly on the other end of the line.

  A cold chill went up Jay’s spine. He knew that voice. The timbre of it, the cadences, the crisp British accent. “Chrysalis?” he said, in a stunned whisper.

  “Go to him,” Chrysalis said. “Before it’s too late.”

  “You’re dead,” he said hoarsely. Standing in the dark, the phone clutched in a sweaty hand, Jay suddenly felt like the world had been pulled out from under his feet.

  “The eskimo…” Chrysalis began.

  “The eskimo?” Jay interrupted. This was getting weirder and weirder; he felt like he’d slipped down a rabbit hole. Chrysalis was lying dead in her coffin a few rooms away, and here she was on the phone talking to him about eskimos. All of a sudden he got real suspicious. “Who the hell is this anyway?” he asked.

  There was a long silence. “Chrysalis,” the voice said at last.

  It sure as hell sounded like her. “My God,” Jay said with all the awe he could muster. “You’re alive. My darling … my lover … is it really you, sweet one?”

  Another hesitation. “Yes,” the voice whispered at last. “It’s me, darling. Listen. You must save my archer, he—”

  “Yeah, I know, he’s been kidnapped by eskimos,” Jay said. “Maybe you think this is funny, but I don’t. You do a damn good impression, but you’re not Chrysalis. So why don’t you take your eskimos, put Prince Albert back in the can, and go fuck yourself, okay?” He slammed down the receiver so hard it rang.,

  Then he sat there in the dark for a long time, fuming, staring at the phone, daring it to ring again. It stayed silent.

  9.00 P.M.

  Ann-Marie was eight months pregnant with their child. They made love slowly and gently, Brennan kneeling before her, Ann-Marie lying on her side with one leg straight out, the other drawn upward. She was a slight, slim woman, now swollen to ripeness with the child in her womb. Her small breasts were heavy with milk, their nipples dark, pointed, and excruciatingly sensitive to the touch of his fingertips, the caress of his lips. Her face favored her Vietnamese ancestry more than her French, and she was beautiful, beautiful and hungry for Brennan’s touch.

  They made love in languorous slow motion, every minute movement of their bodies perfectly mated in rhythm and cadence, and as they made love Ann-Marie changed. Brennan watched her skin fade and flesh disappear, until he could see the network of blood vessels that laced throughout her body, and the bones and organs underneath their son in her womb. Then the baby melted away and changed and Ann-Marie did, too. She became larger, stronger, with wider hips and larger breasts, invisible but for the veins coursing through them and their dark nipples. Somehow they’d changed positions and Brennan was on his back and Chrysalis was atop him, dreamy passion on her enigmatic face, her nipples bobbing on their invisible pads of flesh as she rode Brennan, grinding her pelvis against his in long, slow, hard strokes that made him groan with each thrust.

  He reached out to grasp her warm, soft invisible breasts, and they faded like smoke. Chrysalis slowly vanished, but he could still feel her warmth and wetness on his loins, and then like a ghost she slowly coalesced again, but her flesh was opaque, her breasts were small and hard, her body long, lean, and muscular.

  “Jennifer,” Brennan whispered, and she smiled sadly at him and pulled away, taking all her warmth and leaving him alone and naked. He wept as the pain of her leaving stung him again and again and she slowly faded from his sight in a haze of anguish and tears.

  He squinted through the blur. There was a face swimming in the mist, peering closely at him.

  “Jennifer,” he croaked. His lips were dry, his throat tight and choked.

  “About time you woke up,” the face said in a naggingly familiar voice. “Let’s see if we can bring you all the way out of it.”

  Brennan couldn’t move his arms or legs, but he still had feeling in them. He felt the man grab his upper arm, and then pain shot through it as needles lanced into his flesh in what felt like three or four separate places. Brennan opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t get his tongue or lips to work together. He mumbled something unintelligible, not even understanding himself what he was trying to say. A moment or two passed and suddenly Brennan felt his heart starting to beat faster and faster. His vision cycled in and out, from misty to excruciatingly clear focus, pulsing like a strobe light. He wanted to stand, to shout, to run, but realized suddenly that he was bound in a chair with leather straps. He wrenched at the straps, but they were strong. He gritted his teeth and yanked back and forth, but the chair wouldn’t budge and the leather straps only cut into his flesh. He howled, panting in savage, unreasonable rage. He had to stand up and the goddamned chair wouldn’t let him! He’d get free, he had to! He concentrated all his strength in his right arm and yanked again and again, trying to pull free. He felt blood run down his arm, but he only redoubled his efforts.

  “Sorry,” someone said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to judge the strength of the dosage.”

  He smiled reassuringly and all of a sudden Brennan felt calm and peace flow from the man’s friendly grip into himself. Brennan recognized him. He’d seen him the day before in Chickadee’s. It was Quincey, Kien’s chemist. Quinn the Eskimo. He seemed like a nice man. When Quinn the Eskimo comes around, everybody’s gonna jump for joy. Brennan looked at his right arm and wondered why it was bleeding.

  “That’s better,” Quincey said approvingly. He smiled, and withdrew his hand from Brennan’s upper arm. As he did, Brennan could see that three of his fingers had sharp needles protruding from their tips. As he watched they suddenly slipped back out of sight into Quincey’s fingertips. “Welcome to Xanadu, Mr. Yeoman.”

  Brennan focused on him. “What am I doing here?”

  Quincey shrugged. “You would know the answer to that better than me. One of my mechanical sentries caught you skulking in the garden.”

  “The caterpillar on the mushroom,” Brennan said, suddenly remembering.

  “Yes,” Quincey said. “One of my favorites. Cost me a fortune to hire the animatronic engineers away from Disneyland, but if one can’t have what one wants in one’s own pleasure dome, what good is it?”

  Brennan shook his head. He remembered it all now. The strange note he’d gotten at Aces High, the garden, the caterpillar, his capture, the dream. The dream.

  He closed his eyes. It had all been so real. A
nn-Marie. The last time they’d made love before she and their unborn child had been killed by Kien’s assassins. Chrysalis alive again. Jennifer.

  “So what did you want?” Quincey asked.

  Brennan opened his eyes. “Chrysalis’s killer.”

  “Oh my,” Quincey said. “Well, you won’t find such a person here. This is my pleasure dome. Violence rarely intrudes.”

  Brennan looked around. They were the only people in the room, which looked like something out of an Arabian Nights’ fantasy. There were rich, colorful carpets on the floor, and brocaded silk tapestries, half of them featuring maidens, half featuring slim young men in Grecian outfits—or nothing at all—cavorting in pairs or in groups. There were numerous sculptures in a similar vein scattered around the room on delicate, expensive furniture, and the bed was canopied, with silk and velvet cushions, and throw pillows scattered around.

  “I’m afraid, though,” Quincey said thoughtfully, “this is going to have to be one of those times. I’m putting the finishing touches on an important project. We can’t have you nosing about. Excuse me while I make a call.”

  The needles extruded smoothly from his fingertips again. They were white as bone—which they probably were—Brennan realized, and hollow. After a moment a clear fluid oozed from the central one, and Quincey plunged them into Brennan’s arm again.

  “It’ll only hurt for a moment,” he confided.

  It seemed very quiet in the house as Jay headed back to the wake. He was surprised to find that Jory had abandoned his post by the door. Instead Waldo Cosgrove stood there, wringing his damp little hands and looking very sorry indeed. Jay went past him, stepping into a strained, icy silence.

  The mourners had backed off discreetly from the two men in the center of the room, but everyone was watching them.

  Jory stood in the aisle between rows of folding chairs, his face dark with anger. “What did you say, sir?” he asked.

  A newcomer stood over the casket, looking like death incarnate. Tall and slender, he wore a hooded cloak over a black wool suit. At first glance Jay thought he was in a mask; given the occasion, a singularly tasteless mask, too. Then he spoke, and Jay realized that the death’s-head—yellowed and noseless, teeth bared in an eternal grin—was his real face. “I said,” the joker repeated in a deep, chilly voice, “that this is not Chrysalis,” He waved a gloved hand over the young woman in the casket.

  His words made Jay’s stomach do a sudden lurch. If it wasn’t Chrysalis in the coffin, if somehow he’d been mistaken about the body he’d found, then maybe she was still alive somewhere, and the voice on the phone …

  “I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Jory said, his accent deepening under the stress of the moment. “Sir, you’re causing a disruption, and I’d thank you to leave.”

  “I think not,” the man in the black cloak replied. “I came here to see Chrysalis one last time, to make my farewells. And what do I find? Some nat fantasy lying in a coffin, and a roomful of people forbidden to speak her name.”

  “Her name was Debra-Jo Jory, and she was my daughter!” A vein in Jory’s neck had begun to throb.

  “Her name,” the joker replied coldly, “was Chrysalis.”

  Father Squid moved close to him. “Charles, he’s from Oklahoma, he knows no better. We must respect his grief.”

  “Then let him respect ours.”

  “He does not mean to give offense,” the priest said.

  “That makes this charade no less offensive.” The joker’s eyes, deep-set in his skull face, had never left Jory.

  Waldo Cosgrove hurried forward nervously. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please don’t quarrel. This is not the time or the place, is it? Our dearly beloved Chrysalis, oh, ah, Debra-Jo, that is, well, surely she would not have wanted—”

  “What I want,” Jory said suddenly, “is for you to throw out this ugly sonofabitch, Cosgrove. You hear that? Either you call what passes for the law hereabouts, or I will, but either way this asshole is going out onto the street.”

  Waldo looked helplessly around the room, searching for some way out of this mess. Jay felt sorry for him. Finally, meekly, the funeral director turned to the joker and said, “Charles, please, it’s customary in these matters to honor the family’s wishes.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. He made a gesture that took in all the jokers in the room. “And we are her family, Waldo. Not him. He doesn’t even know what her name was.” He turned his back on Jory and walked to where Cosmo sat on his chair. Cosmo looked up and adjusted his round, wire-rim spectacles. There was fungus growing on the back of his hand and a gray five o’clock shadow beneath his jaw. He said nothing. “I want to see her, Cosmo,” Charles told him. “Show her to me. Show her to me the way she really was.”

  “No!” Jory shouted. “I forbid it!” He stormed forward, jammed a finger at Cosmo. “You hear me, boy?”

  Cosmo looked at him, said nothing, looked back at Charles.

  Someone gasped. All eyes went to the casket.

  The color had begun to bleach from Debra-Jo’s soft skin.

  “Goddamn you,” Jory swore at Cosmo. He spun around to face Waldo. “You there! Call the police! Now!”

  Waldo’s chin trembled as his mouth worked silently.

  In the casket, the smooth pink flesh and hints of rose had faded. Her skin was bone white, as smooth and pale as milk. Here and there, it began to turn waxy and translucent.

  “I’ll do it myself then,” Jory said. He started for the phone.

  There was a sound like a stack of two-by-fours might make if you broke them all at once. Everything stopped. Jory looked up, and up, and up. Into red eyes that stared down from beneath a huge, swollen brow ridge. From his nine-foot vantage, Troll gazed down at Jory, cracked his knuckles once more, then closed his huge green hand into a fist the size of a country ham. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea,” Troll said, in a voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of the world’s deepest gravel pit.

  All around the room, the mourners mumbled agreement.

  Her skin had gone all the color of wax paper, and you could see the tracery of veins now, and dark shadows of bones and organs beneath the fading flesh.

  Jory whirled back to the casket and slammed the lid down hard. “Get out of here!” he screamed, distraught beyond words. “All of you, out of here.” He looked around at all the joker faces with loathing. “You people,” he said. “You all stick together, don’t you. Damn you. You did this to her, you rotten—”

  Jay took his hand out of his pocket, pointed. Jory vanished.

  When the mourners realized what had happened, the tension drained from the room with a rush. Father Squid shook his head, facial tentacles bouncing from side to side with the motion. “Where did you send him, my son?” he asked.

  “Aces High,” Jay said. “A good meal, a few drinks, maybe he’ll feel better. It was getting too damn ugly.”

  The joker called Charles stepped up to the casket and opened the lid. Chrysalis lay there now. Skin as clear as the finest glass, perfectly transparent, ghostly pale wisps of muscle and tendon beneath, and under that bones and organs and the blue and red spiderweb of blood vessels.

  It was as much an illusion as the other had been, but it was the one they wanted. It was Chrysalis as she’d looked in life.

  Jay’s last lingering doubts vanished as he stared at the body, and with them any last lingering hopes. Chrysalis was dead; the voice on the phone had been an imposter’s.

  Charles looked at her for a long moment, then turned away, satisfied. He patted Cosmo on the shoulder before he walked off. Hot Mamma dropped to her knees, smoking hands waving in the air, and began to weep again. Others pressed close around the casket, quiet and reverent. The Oddity stood in the corner, watching.

  Jay caught up to the skull-faced joker as he stepped out of the parlor. “Charles Dutton, I presume.”

  Death turned and looked him in the eye. “Yes.”

  “Jay Ackroyd,” he said,
offering a hand. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  10:00 P.M.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you, Mr. Ackroyd,” Charles Dutton said. A hot July wind gusted down the Bowery, flapping the joker’s long black cloak behind him as they walked. “Chrysalis and I were business associates, but I can’t claim to have known her well. She liked her little secrets.”

  “You should know, you were one of them,” Jay said. “How come no one knew Chrysalis had a partner?” He had to walk quickly to keep up with Dutton’s long-legged strides.

  They passed the Chaos Club, and Dutton waved politely to the doorman. “The limelight suited Chrysalis, and I prefer to avoid it,” he said. “Tonight was something of an exception. I’d intended to quietly pay my last respects, but when I saw what that posturing fool had done, I couldn’t help but get emotional.”

  “Jory was her father,” Jay said.

  “Her beloved father,” Dutton agreed, “who made her a prisoner in her own home for years, because he was so deeply embarrassed by the way she looked. You see, I do know a little of her history. It was not something she liked to talk about, but when she first came to Jokertown, she needed my help to open the Crystal Palace, and I insist on knowing the background of my business associates.”

  “You lent her money?”

  Dutton nodded. “She arrived in the city with a considerable fortune in bearer bonds. However, she wanted to buy almost half a block, not only the building that became the Crystal Palace but the adjoining properties as well, all that debris. I don’t imagine I have to tell you that Manhattan real estate is expensive, even in Jokertown. There were other costs as well. The restoration, fixtures and furnishings, the liquor license…”

  “Bribes,” Jay suggested. A car passed them, going the other way up the Bowery. Jay watched its lights recede in the long plate-glass window of the laundromat they were passing.

  “The city inspectors work so hard,” Dutton said, “as do our police and firefighters. Periodic tokens of esteem are always a wise policy, particularly for a joker. Costly, though.”