Ace In The Hole wc-6 Page 17

  The killer in leather raised his head. A brief pigeon of a woman in a salmon dress with a bow beneath capacious breasts looked up, saw him with the blood upon him and his victim strewn into the corridor bend behind. She jammed fists beneath her eyes and screamed like hell.

  The boy's eyes blazed at Sara. "Remember Jenny Towler," he snarled. And walked through the wall.

  11:00 P.M.

  Mine!

  Puppetman felt the searing, twisted menace approaching. Gregg turned as Mackie ghosted through the wall of his bedroom, a crooked smile set above his crooked shoulders.

  There was a splotchy brown red stain on his right hand up to the elbow that could only be one thing.

  Mine!

  "All the fucking hotel rooms look the same," Mackie said. "Get the hell out of here," Gregg snapped.

  Mackie's grin slid from his punched face. "I wanted to tell you," he said, the German accent broader than usual. "I offed the nigger. but the woman-"

  Mine! He's mine!

  Gregg was surprised that he was able to hear Mackie's voice over Puppetman at all. The power slammed relentlessly against Gregg's hold, again and again and again. Mackie's raw, violent insanity radiated wildly, leaking from the boy's pores with an odor of decomposing meat, and spreading out in front of Puppetman like a rotting banquet.

  Gregg had to get Mackie away quickly or the tenuous hold he had on himself would be entirely gone.

  "Out," Gregg repeated desperately. "Ellen's here." Mackie's mouth twisted, a sneer. He fidgeted, restlessly shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Yeah. I know. In the other room watching goddamn TV. They were showing Chrysalis's funeral. I saw her but she didn't see me. I could've buzzed her easy." He licked his lips. His nervous stare flicked across Gregg's body like a whip as Puppetman hammered again at the bars. "I don't know where Morgenstern is," he said at last.

  "Then go find her."

  "I wanted to see you." Mackie whispered it like a lover, a voice of velvet sandpaper. The lust was honeyed syrup, golden and rich and sweet.

  Puppetman screeched in need. The bars in Gregg's mind started to crumble. "Get out of here," he hissed between clenched teeth. "You didn't get Downs, now you tell me you can't find Sara. What the hell good are you to me? You're just a useless punk, with or without your ace."

  He'd always been easy with Mackie, placating the kid, feeding his ego. Even with Puppetman controlling the hunchback's emotions, he'd been afraid of Mackie; using him was like juggling nitroglycerine: it looked easy, but he was aware that he would only get one mistake. Gregg thought he might have made it now. Mackie's face had gone grim and cold. The lust did a quicksilver change to something simpler and more dangerous. Mackie's right hand was beginning to vibrate unconsciously as a threatening whine shivered the air.

  "No," Mackie said, shaking his head. "You don't know. You're the Man. I love-"

  Gregg cut him off. If there was going to be an explosion, it might as well be a big one. "I told you to take out two people who are a danger to us. They're both walking around now while you're telling me how good you are and how much I mean to you."

  Mackie blinked. Twitched. "You're not listening-"

  "No, I'm not. And I won't listen until all the loose ends are taken care of. You understand that?"

  Mackie took a halting step toward Gregg, his hand up. The fingers were a dangerous blur.

  Gregg stared him down. It was absolutely the hardest thing he'd ever done. Puppetman was a berserk thing behind his eyes, gibbering and frothing with the closeness of Mackie and the emotional backwash spilling around him. Gregg knew that he had only seconds before Puppetman surfaced entirely, before the mental bonds reversed and he would be the one underneath. Yet while he held Puppetman, there were no controls on Mackie and no way to dampen the madness. If the ace took another step, if he swiped at Gregg with that hand…

  Gregg shuddered with effort.

  "Come to me afterward, Mackie," he whispered. "After it's all done, not before."

  Mackie lowered his hand, his eyes. The red violence around him faded slightly.

  "All right," he said softly. "You're the Man. Yes." He reached out with his hand, safely quiet now, and Gregg fought the impulse to back away and run. He concentrated on holding Puppetman for just a moment longer.

  Mackie's dry fingertips traced Gregg's cheek with a strange tenderness, dragging across stubble.

  Gregg closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, Mackie was already gone.

  Drawing his fingers down the strings, Tachyon pulled a sigh of music from the violin. The Secret Service agent swung his head in that heavy slow way of a bull confronting an irritant. Tach nodded politely to him. The man brightened considerably, cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, and quickstepped to where the alien was sitting cross-legged on the floor outside Fleur's room. Sounds of revelry drifted down the hall from a nearby room party.

  "Hi."

  "Hello."

  "My daughter's crazy about you, and she'll kill me if she finds out I met you and hadn't gotten your autograph. Would you mind?"

  "No, I'd be delighted." Tach pulled a notebook from his pocket. "Her name?"

  "Trina. "

  For Trina with love. He signed his name with a flourish. "Uh, excuse me, but what are you doing out here?"

  "I'm going to play the violin for the lady in that room."

  "Oh, a little romance, huh?"

  "I hope. I won't make any trouble, sir. May I stay?" The agent shrugged. "Yeah, what the hell. But if people complain-"

  "Not to worry."

  Tach lifted his bow, tucked the violin beneath his chin. A few years ago he had arranged Chopin's Etude in A flat for solo violin. The notes fell from the strings like crystal beads, like water chuckling over stones. But beneath the joy was a strain of sadness.

  The faces of women. Blythe, Angelface, Roulette, Fleur, Chrysalis. Farewell, old friend. The door to the hotel room was flung violently open. Tach stared up into her smoldering brown eyes. Hello, my love?

  "What are you doing? Why won't you leave me alone? Please, please, just leave me alone!" Her hair flew about her face.

  "I can't."

  She was on her knees before him, hands gripping his shoulders. "Why not?"

  "It makes no sense to me. How shall I explain it to you?"

  "You've twisted and corrupted everything you've ever touched. Now you're trying to do it to me."

  He didn't deny it. Couldn't deny it. "I think we could make each other well. Wash away the guilt."

  "Only God has that power."

  He tentatively touched a strand of hair with the tip of a finger. "You have her face. Can it be that you don't have her soul?"

  "You damn fool! You've made her into something that never existed."

  She jerked her head away. His fingers trailed across her cheek, and he felt moisture. The violent withdrawal carried her a few steps to his left. Fleur leaned her forehead against the wall, every line of her bodv etched in agony. Tach laid the bow across the strings. Played.

  12:00 MIDNIGHT

  In the latex clown's head mask, Gregg was simply another of the jokers trying to stay cool in the sticky Atlanta humidity. The temperature was stuck permanently in the low nineties; the breeze felt like a moving sauna. The mask was an oven, but he didn't dare take it off.

  It had taken time to arrange his escape from the hotel. Ellen had finally gone to sleep, but there was no telling when she might wake. He hated taking the risk, but he had to do something about Puppetman.

  The power had gained the strength of desperation. Gregg was afraid that its struggles were already too visible to outsiders.

  Discarded Flying Ace Gliders transformed into Fucking Flying jokers crumpled underfoot as Gregg stepped over the gutter and into Piedmont Park. Shapes moved through the trees and around the grassy hillocks. Police swept the perimeter with regularity, trying to keep the jokers in and anyone else out, but it was easy enough for Gregg to slide past them in the darkness an
d enter the surreal world of the park.

  Once inside, the city at his back was forgotten. A tent village had sprung up on one of the hillsides, spreading shouting laughter and light. A bonfire flickered close by; he could hear singing. The jokers passing in front of the fire threw long, shifting shadows across the grass. Deeper in the park behind the peaked tents, Gregg saw erratic phosphorescent brilliance there were enough jokers whose skin glowed, flashed, or radiated that it had become a nightly custom for them to gather on a hilltop at full dark like human fireflies: a UPI photographer's shot of them had become one of the more memorable images of the convention-outside-the-convention.

  Gregg navigated through the park under Puppetman's guidance, following the tug of mental strings from the puppets within the crowd. There were many of them in the park, mostly longtime J-Town residents whose neuroses and foibles were familiar and much-traveled territory for Puppetman. Often he'd ignore them for the thrill that came from twisting some new puppet to his will, but not tonight. Tonight he was after sustenance, and an easing of the power's needs, and he'd take the quick, easy path.

  One of the threads led to Peanut.

  Peanut: a puppet since the mid-seventies, one of those he'd used during the tragedy of the '76 convention. The joker was a sad, simpleminded man whose skin had been turned brittle, hard, and painful. He'd been Gimli's associate within the defunct JJS, and his right arm had been hewn off by Mackie Messer just over a year ago-Peanut had come between Mackie and the Nur al-Allah's sister, Kahina. Arrested with others in the organization after Gimli's death, Peanut had been quickly released after Gregg's office interceded on his behalf.

  Peanut had always been troubled by his friend Gimli's deep hatred of Gregg. Peanut had admired the Hartmann he knew. After his release, he'd even worked as a volunteer for the NYC campaign staff, canvasing the Jokertown district during the primary.

  Peanut was like an old lover. Gregg knew all the buttons to push.

  No one paid much attention to Gregg. Most of the jokers went bare faced, flaunting their jokerhood, but enough of them still wore the masks that Gregg was not overly conspicuous. He lingered at the edge of the tents, on the fringes of the crowd around the bonfire. He sat against a tree bearing a wind-tattered "Free Snotman" poster.

  Sweat rained from his face onto the headlands of his Black Dog T-shirt.

  He could see Peanut off to his right. Gregg dropped the bars around Puppetman-the restraints faded far too fast, emphasizing just how feeble was his hold on the power.

  Puppetman lanced out toward Peanut, examining the colors of the joker's dim mind and looking for something… tasty. The hues of Peanut's mind were simple and plain. It was easy to separate the strands and find the ones Puppetman could use. With Peanut, as with so many of the jokers he'd taken, those strands were linked to sex. Puppetman knew that-no matter how they might deny it-most jokers loathed their appearance. They hated the thing they saw in the mirror. Many found other jokers just as repulsive. Fortunato had been one of dozens who profited from that truth: there was a vigorous, thriving market in Jokertown for nat prostitutes willing to entertain joker customers.

  Peanut suffered as much as anyone from the stigma. His body tissues were unpliable and ridged. His face looked as if he'd slathered mud over it and then baked it in the sun. At the joints of his limbs, the skin often cracked and split, leaving pus-filled, slow-healing sores and scabs. Peanut was ugly, and Peanut was just smart enough to realize how slow witted he was. For a nat, that was an unhappy combination. In jokertown, especially, it was far worse.

  For Peanut (Gregg knew) sex was a rare mingling of pain and pleasure. His erections hurt and the leathery skin there cracked and bled from the friction of sexual contact. For days afterward he'd suffer.

  Yet the wild card hadn't dampened the urges or stopped him from craving the release the act brought; if anything, his drive was stronger than normal. Peanut was a regular customer of the cheapest J-town whores; when he couldn't afford even their business-like ministrations, he'd masturbate in his flop, quickly and guiltily.

  Puppetman knew that, knew it well. There were many times that Puppetman thought the wild card had been designed strictly for his benefit.

  Caressing Peanut's mind, he saw the pulsing yellow of lust and knew that it had been days for him. The urge was there, already strong. Puppetman reached out, slowly brightening the color and saturating it, until there was room for little else. Gregg, watching, saw Peanut grimace. The joker rose and walked away from the fire. Gregg waited, then followed behind.

  There were tints and shades within the golden primary: an orange wash of muted sadism; the azure desire for nats; a coral-green preference for oral stimulation. Puppetman had seen such facets in every puppet. Desire was always complicated and sometime contradictory. Normally such things remained subdued or even denied-stuff of fantasies and masturbatory visions, minor whorls in the flood. But Puppetman could make the tendencies flare, make them dominant passions. He could force someone to become a violent rapist or a humiliated slave; he could make them seduce a child or a friend's spouse.

  It was a favorite trick.

  Do whatever you want. Just make it quick. Remember Gimli…

  Puppetman snarled at the reminder. He prodded brutally at Peanut's mind and waited to see what would happen. Peanut wandered to the edge of the encampment where a stand of trees held darkness. He seemed agitated, his whole body turning as he glanced from side to side. Gregg watched from the cover of one of the tents as Peanut seemed to come to a decision and headed into the trees.

  Gregg pursued.

  He almost ran into the joker.

  Peanut had stopped a few yards into the woods. Gregg could hear what had caused him to halt: the panting groans could be only one thing. Peanut was standing motionless, watching the hidden joker couple as they screwed. The colors of his mind were confused, uncertain.

  Puppetman touched him again.

  Feel it? You can't just stand there and watch. Look at her. Look at her legs wrapped around him. See how she moves her ass under him, lifting her hips so he drives in deeper, eager, and hot and wet. That could be you. You want her. You want to feel her legs tighten around your hips, you want to feel your cock deep in her warmth, you want to hear her sighing in your ear and telling you to fuck her, fuck her deep and hard and good until you explode inside her…

  Peanut tugged at his belt buckle with his one hand. The joker's pants pooled around his ankles.

  But she won't want you. Not Peanut. You're disgusting and ugly, all hard edges. You're stupid. She'd be disgusted; she'd feel dirty and violated..

  Puppetman could feel the lust and anger building in concert. He orchestrated it, adding pressure until he felt it simmering. You'd have to be the master. It's what you want, what-she wants. I know you. I know what you've thought when you stroke yourself.. Puppetman was sighing himself, ready. Ready to feed at last.

  Peanut squatted down, hunting in the underbrush. When he straightened, Gregg could see a thick branch clutched in his fist.- The joker raised the weapon.

  Go ahead. Hit him and take the bitch. You want it. You must.

  And Gregg heard deep, mocking laughter.

  Gimli. Where are you, damn you! Gregg cursed. Where are you hiding?

  Why, right here, Greggie. Right here. Gimli laughed and in that moment, the dwarf's wall slammed up as it had every time these past few weeks. Puppetman howled in frustration as the strings to Peanut were suddenly, jarringly, severed.

  "No!" The shout might have been Gregg, might have been Puppetman. Puppetman flung himself against the mental barrier, trying to break through before it was too late. Peanut, startled, turned to see the figure in the clown mask. The stick dropped from his hand as the pair on the ground struggled to their feet.

  What's the matter, Greggie? Can't control your goddamn pet?

  Puppetman, exhausted and weak, cowered inside. Gregg fled, panicky at being seen. He'd never been caught before, never been noticed. Branches whip
ped at him as he ran blindly. Peanut shouted after him in alarm.

  But there was no escape from Gimli's voice. Gimli was always there-as Gregg shoved his way through the tent encampment, as he stumbled from the park back into the streets, as he found his way back to the Marriott.

  How much longer can you hold him, Greggie? the dwarf taunted. A day? Maybe two? Then the bastard's going to fucking eat YOU. Puppetman's going to tear loose and fucking eat you whole.

  Spector couldn't see them across the lobby, but he knew they were there. A knot of people, Hartmann and his entourage, were moving toward him. There wasn't much noise. Spector took a step out to meet them. People were looking in his direction without noticing him. His pulse quickened as they got closer. Cameras flashed around Hartmann. Hartmann held out his hand to Spector.

  Spector reached out and noticed he was wearing white gloves and a black leotard. People began to laugh and point. Spector gritted his teeth and locked eyes with the senator. He could feel Hartmann's blood boiling with pain, his ragged breathing, his heart trip-hammering into oblivion. An instant of satisfaction, then it was over. He fell to the floor. Absolute silence. The camera flashes continued, strobing around them. Spector kicked him over with his foot. It was Tony. His face was horrible, caught in a last scream.

  Hartmann laughed and Spector looked up. He was surrounded by Secret Service. They drew their guns and pointed them at Spector. The barrels looked impossibly large.

  Spector was opening his mouth to say something when the first shot took his lower jaw off. He tried to back away, but more bullets knocked him off his feet. Pieces of him were being ripped away. One of his eves went dark. He'd been shot before, but it had never been like this. He could feel the rain of slugs pushing his body across the floor. Several of his fingers were gone off one hand. He held up the other in front of his face. It was still perfectly white, not a drop of blood on it. His other eye went dark.