Wild Cards 14 - Marked Cards Read online

  No! You can't just let him go like that! But Gregg found himself nodding. Rudo gave a short inclination of his head in return, and left.

  ... A chance at redemption ...

  So what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  He still prowled Jokertown - not as Puppetman, no longer looking to feed on rage and fury and hatred, but searching for more mundane, more human solace.

  So poor Gregg Hartmann can't get it up with normal women anymore. So you only really get off on jokers. Why should you be surprised? That's your penance, too, Greggie....

  She called him "Jack," though Gregg knew that she must have recognized him - one-handed ex-senators whose faces were occasionally plastered all over the various media weren't exactly plentiful. Over the last year he'd picked up this same woman a half dozen times. Her real name Gregg neither knew nor cared to know. On the J-Town streets she was known as Ichor-bod. Her pores oozed a translucent jelly that coated her like a second skin. Her short dark hair was perpetually slicked down like a twenties movie star, and her clothing - what little she generally wore - was stained as if it'd been dipped in Vaseline. If one could have turned off the internal tap, she might have been pretty; as it was, her features were obscured and smeared with gelatinous perspiration.

  She reclined on the bed naked, her legs sprawled carelessly apart, the glistening effluvium of her skin already staining the cheap sheets, the triangle of pubic hair matted with it. She watched him undress with an expression of bored impatience. "What's the problem, Jack?" she asked, her gaze low. "Oh, that's right, I remember. Jack likes it hot. He likes it hot and slick and wet."

  She crawled across the bed toward him. Kneeling, she kissed him from navel to nipple, leaving a glistening trail across his abdomen as he gasped. Her hand caressed him. Where she kissed, where she touched, wherever the strange substance from her body came into contact with his skin, there was a tingling, growing heat - another attribute of Ichor-bod. She cupped his scrotum in her other hand, and the sudden warmth seared upward in his groin, just on the edge of pain. Her breasts were twin fires on his belly.

  Gregg closed his eyes, moaning.

  ... Peanut moaning as Puppetman pumped his libido and lust to unnatural levels, as the unbidden, frightening erection split open his scaly, inelastic skin, melding glorious pain with the pleasure....

  ... Mackie Messer, gleefully dissecting the living Kahina before the horrified eyes of Chrysalis and Digger Downs as Gregg leaned against the wall outside the room and gorged at the feast....

  ... Ellen tumbling down the flight of stairs, and Puppetman reveling in the death-throes of the child dying inside her womb - the child possessed by Gimli (and it was Gimli, no matter what the bastard Tachyon said)....

  "Yes, now that's more like it," Ichor-bod crooned below him. Gregg felt her slip a condom over his length, and he suddenly pushed her down, falling heavily on top of her as his hips lunged forward helplessly.

  Afterward, he took a long shower.

  Gregg could feel her watching as he dressed, as he settled the Leo Barnett mask over his face. Somehow it felt right to wear the face of the man who now held the position Gregg had once coveted. If Ichor-bod noticed the irony, she said nothing. "Here's another fifty," Gregg said, dropping the bill on the nightstand. "A tip."

  Ichor-bod shrugged on the bed. "Whassa matter, Jack? Feeling especially guilty about humpin' a poor joker tonight?"

  Gregg didn't answer. He left her room without another word - he'd learned long ago that whores didn't expect good-byes. On the way down the stairs of the apartment building, he slipped on the gloves with the sewn-on extra fingers: just another joker in the night.

  Just another victim.

  "Senator!"

  Gregg jumped, his heart pounding. The voice came from the alley between the buildings. A shape moved there: a massive, cloaked form. The steel mesh of a fencing mask glimmered in the light of the street lamp. Gregg slowly relaxed. "Oddity. How did you - "

  "Someone needs to talk to you." Oddity beckoned back into the shadows. The slurred voice sounded like Patti's, Gregg's favorite of the menage de'trois trapped inside the powerful, misshapen body. Oddity groaned as shapes moved under the cloak. Gregg remembered Oddity's eternal agony of transformation, too. That pain had fed Puppetman all too well.

  "Patti, I - "

  Oddity stared at him. "I hate that mask, Senator, on you of all people. You shouldn't mock yourself that way. Please, Senator. This really is important."

  "All right." Gregg followed the joker into the alleyway. Oddity too had been a puppet, one of the jokers close to him during his years of power. Oddity's great strength and loyalty had aided him numerous times. He told himself there was no reason to be apprehensive, not with Oddity.

  "You went immediately to the goddamn enemy."

  Gregg peered through Leo Barnett's eye holes into the shadows of the alley. A woman stepped out from under a fire escape, shaking blond hair from under a paisley cap. She was dressed like the night: black jeans, a black sweatshirt on the front of which was lettered in red: THE ROX DIDN'T DIE.

  "Ms. Davis ..." Under the mask, Gregg's mouth had dropped open. She knows. How ...? Then it struck him: Jo Ann. She's a member of Father Squid's church. A bug ... The other voice, the one he hated, spoke as well: Hey, Greggie, no reason for you to get pissed. The woman's right - you're a slime.

  Hannah stood in front of him like a sullen Valkyrie, hands folded under her breasts. She didn't look like she'd slept much in the two days since he'd last seen her. There were dark circles of fatigue under her eyes; her face was drawn and pale. She seemed dangerous, nervous, and there was the unmistakable bulge of a handgun at her right hip. Gregg felt the first beginnings of panic. "Pan Rudo and Brandon van Renssaeler visited you not four hours after I left. Did I make another mistake?" she asked him, cutting off his halting protest.

  Tell her, Greggie. Tell her how you're about the worst choice she could have made....

  "Have you decided to take Rudo's bribe?" Hannah continued, raging. She came up close to him, though she was very careful not to touch him. The scent of her shampoo wafted around him, contrasting strangely with her fury. "How much, Senator? How much are you charging for your 'consultation'?"

  The worst thing is that you know that she's right. You're scared. You're scared of Rudo and the Sharks, and scared because you know Hannah's right. Gregg Hartmann doesn't have the balls to atone for his sins, to do what needs to be done. Not any more....

  "Just shut up," he told the voice.

  She blinked at him. "Shut up? Shut up?" Hannah backed away a step, giving a mocking laugh of disbelief. "We came to you for help, Senator. I need to know if you've already betrayed us."

  Not yet. But you've been thinking about it....

  "I don't have to listen to this," Gregg said. He started to turn, but Oddity's hand was on his shoulder. He looked up into the mismatched eyes hidden behind the fencing mask.

  "I think you do need to listen, Senator," Patti said, and though her voice was gentle, there was steel in her grip.

  "Patti, I don't know how you three got involved in this, but you know me."

  "Yes, we do, Senator, and I'm sorry," she said. "We're involved because Father Squid asked me for help. We're protecting Hannah - Quasiman isn't exactly reliable right now."

  "She's got a damn gun for protection."

  "She's also had people shooting at her. She needs all the help she can get. She needs you." Oddity groaned again, and the hand clenching his shoulder tightened briefly. When Gregg looked at it, the fingers were no longer Patti's, but a black male's. "I've been telling Hannah that she's wrong, that you were just being careful. Evan's told her the same thing, and John's a lawyer - he says you were obliged to talk to the other party. But Hannah - "

  Gregg looked back at Hannah, standing with arms crossed as she glared at him. Tell her how after Rudo left, you sat there staring at the box like it was going to bite you, how you k
ept trying to believe all that crap Rudo fed you.

  "John's right," Gregg said to both of them, clutching at the proffered excuse. "You can't expect me to go public with what you gave me without first talking to Rudo. Since you've obviously bugged my office, you also know that I told him what he did was wrong."

  Hannah sniffed. Her sneakers scuffed at the dirty pavement. In her eyes, he found only scorn, as if she were contemplating a turd on a tablecloth. "I'm so damned impressed. He told you that he'd been directly responsible for infecting hundreds of jokers with AIDS, and you gave him a tongue-lashing. My, my. I'll bet you'll turn him over your knee if he kills Father Squid or me. Maybe even send him to his room without supper."

  She started to turn away from him. Once I could have broken you like a stick, you bitch.... Gregg reached for her. "Listen ..."

  Hannah whirled around and slapped his hand aside contemptuously. Reflexively, Gregg raised his hand to strike back. Hannah pushed him and Gregg stumbled, staggering backward. His head slammed into wet, soiled brick. For a moment his vision blurred as interior fireworks splattered and burst against his eyelids.

  She looked down at him, sagging against the filthy wall. "I should have known better," she said. "You're a fat, old, powerless man living on memories."

  Anger filled him with that, a searing denial that rose from deep inside him. His head roared drowning out the voices and the pain, and the blood-red tsunami battered against unseen, five-year-old walls in his mind, foaming and tearing. A fat, old, powerless man ...

  From beneath the fury, something rose. Gregg almost felt dizzy with the presence. He stood, drawing in a deep breath and confronting Hannah's ridicule with sudden honed steel in his voice. He pulled off the Barnett mask and threw it to the ground.

  "I won't let you insult me that way," he said. And the words burned. They nearly lit the darkness. "Not after all I've done for the jokers. Over the years, I've nearly died for the wild card: in Syria at the hands of the Nur, in Berlin to terrorist kidnappers, in Atlanta to a crazed joker, during the invasion of the Rox to Herne. Everything I've done has been in the best interests of those infected by this damned virus. You have no right to question my intentions or my methods."

  Yes! Gregg's voice had gone resonant and deep, the way he'd sounded when Puppetman filled his speeches with conviction. He felt young, powerful. The words flamed, and Hannah looked suddenly uncertain. Gregg pulled the glove from his right hand and held up the prosthesis in front of her face, turning it so she could not escape the vision. "You want to compare scars, Hannah? Here's one of mine."

  Oddity growled wordlessly in the background. Hannah stared at him wide-eyed, as if seeing Gregg for the first time. For a long second, she held his unmasked gaze, then the resistance in her collapsed. "I - " she began, and stopped. She paced to the back of the alley like a caged beast, one hand beating against her thigh. Gregg saw the back of her sweatshirt: IT JUST FADED AWAY.

  Gregg wanted to shout, to scream in delight. It was torture to simply stand there. Under his shoes, molded plastic crackled like dry fire.

  My God, I thought it was lost and dead, but I've found it again! The power ... And in response: Don't you see, Greggie? It's been returned to you as a gift, a tool to allow you to atone for your sins, a way for you to make up for all the pain and misery you've caused. A gift...

  Gregg marveled.

  When Hannah came back to him, the bristly defiance was gone from her voice. "Senator ... I ... well, I guess the only thing to say is, I'm sorry." Her hands fluttered up from her sides, fell again.

  The apology was so sweet it almost made him grin. Instead, he simply nodded. "I understand. You've been under an enormous amount of pressure. Your apology's accepted, of course. And please, can we drop the formality, since we're on the same side here? I'm Gregg."

  "Gregg." She glanced quickly away from him, biting her lower lip. "Umm, did I just make a total ass of myself?"

  "No. You just reminded me again how important all this is." Gregg allowed himself a small smile. He tried to project some of his newly returned ability into the gesture, feeling - tasting - her passion. He touched her shoulder with his left hand, wanting to take her as he used to take puppets, to make the full psychic connection.

  He felt nothing. He couldn't do it.

  The charisma, the conviction was back in his voice, but this was not Puppetman. Gregg couldn't find the strings of her emotions, couldn't follow them back to their sources and make her dance the old dance. He could only tug gently at her feelings, not shape them completely. Hannah wanted so badly to believe him; that was the only thing that had made it possible.

  Still, even this truncated power, after having it all vanish for so long, nearly took the breath from him. He nearly missed her question.

  "Did you hear Barnett's speech tonight?"

  "No. I was - "

  "- occupied. We know." Hannah's look was almost shy, but it still made Gregg look aside for a moment. Ashamed, Greggie? Ahh, too bad - well, you should be....

  "Barnett called for mandatory blood testing for anyone who is currently in or is applying for a public service position," Hannah told him. "That's every doctor, every nurse, every health care worker, every police officer, every firefighter, every last government worker. 'The great majority of decent people have a right to know if the person treating them is infected by this horrible scourge.' That's what Barnett said. He's promised to sign the legislation as soon as Congress puts it on his desk. Zappa's already stumping for support, and you know how effective a speaker the vice president can be. A coalition of senators and representatives has pledged to introduce a joint bill in session tomorrow. It's starting - all the controls and oppression you oppose. First, it'll be the testing, then.... That's why ..."

  Hannah stopped, biting her lower lip. She was glorious, the emotions cascading from her like a fountain. So attractive.

  So very, very attractive.

  "Senator ... Gregg - we can't wait any longer. My God, all the hidden manipulations, all the strings they pulled."

  Manipulations. Strings. You remember those, don't you, Greggie.... Hannah nodded toward Oddity, watching them silently near the mouth of the alley. "Patti suggested something the other night: look at what happened to you, in '76 and again in '88. Doesn't it make you wonder? Who would the Sharks have been most against having as president? If they were willing to assassinate the Kennedys, what would they have been willing to do to you?"

  Christ! Gregg couldn't speak, couldn't answer. Of course! I missed Rudo. I could have missed others. Could Tachyon ...? His other voice seemed equally stunned. You see! There it is, Greggie: redemption, redemption for it all! "There was nothing in what you gave me to indicate that, Hannah," he heard himself protest automatically.

  "No," she admitted. "But the Sharks were there. Given their ideology, they must have been. You want yet another reason to go after the Sharks, Senator? Try revenge."

  "I would say that you're fairly adept at manipulation yourself, Ms. Davis." She colored nicely at the soft accusation. Gregg hurried into the gap, his words laced with the old power. "Hannah, I have to be certain that all your facts are correct and verifiable before we move." He was certain as soon as he said it. Gregg was not a particularly devout man: call it God, call it Fate, call it Destiny, call it Accident. Whatever, Gregg had been handed a Gift. He'd been given back a portion of what he'd once had, and he intended to use it. "Hannah, I will take care of this. It is very, very important to me."

  Hannah gave him the first smile he'd seen from her. Behind her, Oddity was nodding.

  It was what he would have told her anyway. But now conviction lent strength to the words. This time he meant them. Tomorrow, he'd start things rolling.

  After all, now he had something to prove.

  This is your chance, Greggie. This is your one last chance to get it all back. If Hannah's even halfway right, you can redeem yourself.

  He wasn't going to blow it this time.

  Two of a Kind />
  by Walton Simons

  She was beautiful, the kind of woman men killed or died for. The gabardine suit wasn't tailored to show off the exquisite contours of her body, and her hair was pinned back. It didn't matter. One look into her crimson eyes and any man was lost, swallowed up in the promise of a single, sensual glance. Seeing her made coming into work every morning a pleasure.

  "Is he in yet?" Jerry eased himself onto the corner of Ezili's polished mahogany desk. Everything in the offices reflected taste and wealth. From the plush carpeting and deco fixtures to the location itself. Ackroyd and Creighton took up half a floor of the most expensive office space in Manhattan.

  "Yes. He actually came in early, I think. I hope there's no trouble at home." Ezili smiled, a look that went beyond mischief into a kind of unconscious predation.

  "I don't think there's much chance of that. Hastet would never allow it." Friendly as she was, Jerry couldn't help being intimidated by Jay's wife. But then, she was a Takisian.

  Jerry rapped on the smoked glass of the door, right under the painted letters which read:

  JAY ACKROYD, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

  "Come in," Jay said. Jerry stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Ackroyd straightened a stack of papers against the desktop and put them in a drawer. "How are you today? Ezili keep you up late again?"

  "That's off and on, you know that." Jerry sat in the chair next to Jay's. "I want to sit in on the next meeting. The one with Hartmann."

  "Hmmm."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means hmmm," Jay said. "Jesus, now you've got me quoting the movies. I don't know. He's a big fish and I don't want to spook him."

  Jerry tapped his fingers together. He didn't buy Jay's excuse, but that wasn't the real issue. "I'm a full partner. I want to be treated like one."

  "You are treated like a full partner. Your fake name is as big as mine on the office stationery." Jay held up a piece of paper. "See. Ackroyd and Creighton. You never did tell me why you chose such a weird nom de snoop."