Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild Read online

  CHAPTER 11

  4.00 p.m.

  Electrochemical neutral responses diminished, body slowed to a dreamlike slow motion, the alligator moved among the tunnels deep below the Bowery. The reptile brain wasn’t aware of it, but he was moving vaguely in the direction of Stuyvesant Square. The creature that only sometimes was Jack Robicheaux sought food, wide-nostriled snout casting from side to side as he sought to sense the location of a particularly delectable morsel. The morsel had dark brown eyes and glossy black hair. The alligator’s mind fixed on that image.

  The creature padded through pools of cold radiance shed by the low-wattage trouble lights fixed to the tunnel walls. The sort of maintenance crew Jack Robicheaux sometimes bossed had presumably left the system on, despite not planning to return to work until after the holiday weekend. The city would foot the electricity bill. No one cared.

  The alligator turned a corner and entered a much older section of passage. The floor was slab stone rather than concrete. The ceiling lowered. The creature felt the welcome increase of humidity as his feet plopped down now in brackish pools.

  His unblinking eyes passed incuriously across years of graffiti vandals had scrawled and spray-painted on the stone walls. Near a narrow branching tunnel, someone with considerable time had incised letters in the rock: CROATOAN.

  The alligator didn’t care. He responded only to his basic drives and forged ahead against the awful inertia that tugged him back at every step. Hunger. Still so hungry . . . So needful.

  The dark shallow water now covered the entire passageway. The alligator welcomed it, hoping on a primal level that the level would deepen until the reptile could start to swim. The powerful tail switched slowly with anticipation.

  His ears detected unfamiliar sounds and he halted jerkily. Prey? He wasn’t sure. Anything could be prey ordinarily, but there was something about the noises . . . He heard the scrabbling of a multitude of claws on stone, a hissing sibilance of almost-voices.

  They came upon him from around the next bend. There were at least two dozen of them, most tiny, as small as the web-span of his foot. Others were larger, and a few, the leaders, perhaps a quarter the size of his twelve-foot bulk.

  The larger alligator slowly opened his jaws and bellowed a challenge.

  The smaller reptiles stopped in a semicircle around him, their eyes glittering in the trouble-light glare. Their damp hides shone moistly, the mossy green most pronounced in the smaller ones. The skins of the larger, older alligators held an overlay of hoary whiteness, a dark-bred pallor.

  The pack started to hiss and grumble as one, and started forward. Hundreds of sharp teeth shone bright as polished bone.

  The larger alligator looked at them and roared again. These could be food, but he didn’t want them to be. They were something else. They were as he, even if their forms were much smaller. He closed his jaws and waited for them.

  The smaller ones reached him first, scuttling up, rearing on their tails and hind legs, and rubbing against his own muscled feet. The hisses, some low and rumbling, most high and sharp, filled the tunnel.

  They surrounded him only a short time, the smaller, more agile alligators gamboling about, while the larger reptiles nuzzled against their bigger brother. The larger alligator felt something alien, something puzzling, disturbing on all levels. It was not hunger. It was something like the opposite.

  Then the pack left him, the smaller members again merrily circling a few times before rejoining their comrades down the tunnel and around the next bend. The sound of claws ticking on wet stone receded, as did the scent of other reptiles.

  The larger alligator hesitated then in his single-minded course. Something tugged at him, urging the creature to turn in the passage and follow after the smaller reptiles, to be part of something bigger, something different from what he already was.

  Then the sounds and scents faded, and all the alligator heard was dripping water. He turned back to the darkness of the tunnel ahead and again lifted one foot heavily after the other. The hunger he sought to assuage was somehow more than mere appetite, and right now, he knew there was nothing more important than pursuing the image in his head.

  Jennifer, spending two hours on the street, alone, with no money, no shoes, and very little in the way of clothes, was learning what it meant to be hunted. She was afraid to stay for very long in any one place, afraid that the reptilian joker would track her down again, yet she was afraid to go to anyone for help. She was afraid to return to her apartment in case they’d track her there and discover her real identity, but, with late afternoon coming and night not too far behind, she was afraid to remain out on the street. She had already ignored half a dozen indecent proposals and that could only get worse with the coming of night. She wanted to take some positive action, but she was feeling too harried, too much the hare in the game of hound and hare, to come up with a decent plan.

  She needed a haven, a place of peace and safety where she could take a breather, rest her sore feet, and, above all, think. The sign in front of a small brick-and-stone building on Orchard Street made her pause. This, she thought, was exactly what she needed.

  It was a church. The sign in front said Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. It looked Catholic. Jennifer had been brought up as a Protestant, but her family hadn’t been very religious and she herself harbored no deep religious feelings. None, at any rate, that would prevent her from seeking refuge in a Catholic church.

  She hurried up the worn stone steps and through the large wooden double doors that opened up into a small vestibule. She stepped inside the vestibule, looked at the doors leading into the nave, and stared.

  The vestibule itself was a small windowless room with flagstone paving. Wooden benches stood along its side walls with coat hooks, now all empty, above them. The closed double doors leading into the church nave were also wooden. A scene had been painted on them in a naive style that would have been beautiful if the subject matter hadn’t been so grotesque.

  The central figure was a crucified Christ, but a Christ like Jennifer had never seen. He—Jennifer thought of Him as He, though she wasn’t exactly sure if the pronoun applied in this case—was naked but for a scrap of linen draped around his loins. He had an extra set of shriveled arms sprouting from his rib cage and an extra head on his shoulders. Both heads had aesthetically lean features. One was bearded and masculine, the other was smooth-cheeked and feminine. Blood trickled down both faces because of the crowns of thorns that each head wore. Four pairs of breasts ran down the front of the Christ’s body, each pair smaller than the one above. There was a gaping red wound running blood onto the lowest breast on the figure’s right side. The Christ was not crucified upon a cross, but rather upon a twisting helix, a convoluted ladder, or, Jennifer realized, a representation of DNA.

  There were other figures in the background of the scene, subordinate to the Christ figure. One was a slight, lean figure dressed in gaudy clothes that resembled Dr. Tachyon. But like the Roman god Janus this Tachyon had two faces. One was serene and angelic in profile. It smiled sweetly and had an expression of benevolent kindness. The other was the leering face of a demon, bestial and angry, dripping saliva from an open mouth ringed with sharp teeth. The Tachyon figure held an unburning sun in his right hand, the side of the angel face. In the left he held jagged lightning.

  There were other figures whose antecedents were somewhat less clear to Jennifer. A smiling Madonna with feathered wings nursed one head of a baby Christ figure at each breast, a goat-legged man wearing a white laboratory coat carried what looked like a microscope while cavorting in a dance, a man with golden skin and a look of perpetual shame and sorrow on his handsome features juggled an arcing shower of silver coins.

  Inscribed above the tableau were the words: Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. Below that, in slightly smaller letters, was Church of Jesus Christ, Joker.

  Jennifer pursed her lips. She had heard a little about this offshoot of orthodox Catholicism that had been embraced by many jo
kers who had a religious bent. The Catholic hierarchy, of course, wanted nothing to do with the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker, and considered it heresy. It wasn’t exactly an underground religion, but nobody who wasn’t a joker knew much about it, especially the secret rites that were rumored to be carried on in subterranean crypts that weren’t as accessible to the public as the churches themselves were.

  This was not the time, Jennifer decided, for theological exploration. She was about to turn and leave the church when a sudden sound, a sort of grasping, sucking, squishy noise, came from the other side of the doors leading into the nave. She froze and the image of Jesus Christ, Joker, split down the middle as the doors swung open. A figure stood there, vaguely illuminated by the banks of candles that were burning within the nave. It was large and bulky, the height of a normal man and twice as broad, and covered completely by a voluminous cassock that hung to the floor. The figure’s hands were hidden in flowing sleeves and Jennifer could barely make out a glabrous, dead-gray face in the shadow of the gown’s hood. The face was round and oily looking with two large, bright eyes covered by nictitating membranes that were constantly blinking. The face had no nose, but a cluster of tendrils hung where the nose should be, twitching and rustling, covering the joker’s mouth like some kind of weird, unkempt mustache.

  Jennifer stared, swallowed hard.

  The figure took another step into the vestibule and she heard again the faint squishy sound, like suckers on stone. The joker had a strange musty smell to him, as of the sea, or of things that lived in it.

  He regarded Jennifer with his bright, solemn eyes, and when he spoke his voice was somewhat muffled by the tentacular tendrils that covered his mouth, but Jennifer could understand his words clearly.

  “Welcome to Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. My name is Father Squid.”

  The nictitating membranes on Father Squid’s eyes slipped back and forth rapidly over his protruding orbs, although the eyes themselves remained open and staring. He smiled, maybe, behind the fall of tentacles that masked his mouth. At least his cheeks rose and his voice took on an even more gentle, kindly tone.

  “Don’t be afraid of me, or any you would find within these walls, my child. I perceive that you may be in need of help. I would endeavor to assist you, if I only knew what you needed.”

  The priest’s words spoken in plodding sentences calmed Jennifer immediately. Somehow she couldn’t be afraid of someone who said things like “I would endeavor to assist you.”

  “Well, um, Father, I guess I do need help. I’m not sure that you could help me, though.”

  “Perhaps,” Father Squid said, “perhaps not. However, I’m sure that your coming to Our Lady Of Perpetual Misery was no accident. Perhaps our Lord guided you to our door. Perhaps you should simply tell me your story.”

  Why not? Jennifer suddenly thought. Perhaps he really could see a way out of this mess.

  “All right,” she began, then fell silent again. Father Squid nodded, as if he could read the hesitation on her face.

  “Do not worry, my child. Everything you tell me will be held in the strictest confidence.” He opened the door and pointed into the nave. His hand, taken outside the voluminous sleeves of his cassock for the first time, was large and gray with long, attenuated fingers. Jennifer could see faint circular depressions, like vestigial suckers, impressed all over its palm. “The confessional is within. The priest-penitent bond is well known and universally respected. Everything said there shall be privy between us.”

  Jennifer nodded. The priest-penitent bond was as strong as that between lawyer and client and, in fact, was less easily broken. If the priest was trustworthy, that is. She looked at the large, solemn-faced joker and decided she trusted him.

  Father Squid held open the door and stood aside as she entered Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, Church of Jesus Christ, Joker.

  Bagabond shivered as the trio walked through the heavy deco doors at the entrance to the Tombs. “I can see why they call it the Tombs,” she said.

  Paul shook his head. “Goes back more than a century to the first prison they built on this site. This is the third. Originally the building really did look like an Egyptian tomb.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  He touched her on the shoulder. “I know. I may be a criminal lawyer, but I hate jails too. They make me feel like a trapped animal.” He spoke quietly. Rosemary, moving briskly ahead of them toward the desk sergeant, apparently didn’t hear.

  “Most animals are free, unless enslaved by a human.” Bagabond looked at him directly. Paul flinched at her stare.

  “True.”

  Bagabond looked past him. “I think Rosemary wants you.” The assistant DA had turned away from the desk and was waving at Paul.

  Flicking her consciousness through a wino rocking on a lobby bench, a man who was no longer humanly aware, Bagabond watched the expression on Paul’s face change from confusion to thoughtfulness, and then to interest. She followed Paul up to Rosemary as the assistant DA argued with the desk sergeant.

  Rosemary was unhappy. “You can’t have lost him. This guy was teleported into a cell. How many people teleport into here every day?” Rosemary glared at the bald officer sitting above her. The cop glowered back.

  “If he teleported in, he wouldn’t come through this desk,” said the sergeant. “He don’t come through this desk, he ain’t got no paperwork. No paperwork, no way to trace him. He’s here, we got no record.” The officer leaned back in his overburdened and creaking chair, and smiled down at Rosemary. “Ya gotta follow procedure.” He tucked his many chins against his barrel chest and looked pleased with himself.

  Rosemary grabbed the edge of his desk with both hands and took a deep breath.

  Before she could speak, Paul said, “I believe his name is Bludgeon, the Bludgeon.” He interjected the information into the conversation in an obvious attempt to keep his boss from either apoplexy or killing the desk sergeant. Rosemary swung around to stare at him with wide, angry eyes. “Large, muscular build,” Paul continued. “Somewhat like your own.”

  “Nothin’ comes to mind.” The sergeant grinned widely as Paul turned to Rosemary, shrugging in resignation. She turned back toward the sergeant.

  Voice tightly controlled, she said, “Perhaps you could find an officer for me.”

  “Lots of ’em around.” The sergeant gestured at the room around them where a number of people, both police and those under arrest, had stopped their own conversations to listen to the exchange.

  Rosemary closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. Wearily she said, “Where might I find Sgt. Juan FitzGerald?”

  “Juan,” said the desk sergeant, as though pondering a lengthy list. “Why dinya say so? Juan’s down in Block C. Can you find your way, or should I assign an officer to hold your hand in the dark?”

  “I know the way.” Rosemary stalked toward the first gate leading down into the cellblocks. Paul and Bagabond trailed her. The corners of Bagabond’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

  “What’s so funny?” Paul glanced apprehensively at Rosemary’s back.

  “What she puts up with. I would have ripped his throat out.” Bagabond spoke matter-of-factly. Utterly sincerely.

  Paul looked confused for a moment and then smiled. “Nah, too many witnesses. Besides, no throat, no information.” He nodded to himself. “What you want to do is invite him to one of these stairwells and then break his kneecaps.”

  Bagabond stopped and looked at him with respect for the first time. “Right on, Mr. Goldberg. I like that.”

  “I’m glad. The name’s Paul.”

  “Suzanne,” she said. “You can call me Suzanne.”

  “Will you two come on?” said Rosemary from ahead of them. “I’m not holding this elevator forever. Conduct your romance on your own time.” She stared at them, apparently realizing how flat her joke was falling. Paul and Bagabond exchanged self-conscious glances. “Right.” Rosemary got into the car first and punched the floor button.
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  At Block C, they underwent a cursory search before walking through the peeling, tan-painted steel gate. Turning a corner in the cellblock, the three of them halted at the sight of the hulking giant nearly filling the entire corridor from one dull green wall to the other. His back was to them.

  Bagabond uttered a small miaow of alarm, and both Rosemary and Paul looked at her.

  “The things I do for this city.” Rosemary started forward. “Rosemary Muldoon, district attorney’s office. What’s happening here?”

  The giant maneuvered to face her. Two men standing beyond him started to speak too.

  “My client—”

  “This gentleman—”

  “I want out!”

  “Hold on!” Rosemary cut them all off. “FitzGerald, talk to me,” she said to the uniformed officer. “You other two, hold that thought and stay right where you are.”

  The lawyer in the light gray Armani suit spoke loudly enough for Rosemary and the others to hear as she passed, “NYU, I’d venture to guess.” There was no mistaking the tone.

  Rosemary pulled the six-foot Puerto Rican officer down the hall.

  Bagabond glanced at Paul and nodded toward Bludgeon. “Keep an eye on him.”

  “Great.” Paul smiled at the lawyer and the towering man beside him. He stuck out his hand. “Paul Goldberg, DA’s office. How’s it going?”

  Bagabond followed Rosemary.

  “Just what is going on?” the assistant DA said to FitzGerald. “Who’s the snappy dresser?”

  “He says he’s from Latham, Strauss.” The officer looked abashed at Rosemary’s expression of disgust and disbelief.

  “Not bad for an oversized punk.” She nodded. “What exactly happened?”

  “This Bludgeon just popped in. Had to be Popinjay—Jay Ackroyd.”

  “I’ve heard the name.” Rosemary shrugged. “This city doesn’t need any more vigilante do-gooders.”