Marked Cards Read online

  "What do you want?" The breath was freighted with beer.

  "I need to talk with Jo Ann. You're Sam, right? Her husband?"

  "Yeah." Sam was making no move to invite him inside. "Wait here ..." He turned and bellowed into the interior as he let the screen door close behind him. "Hey, Jo! Someone asking for you ..." Sam's voice trailed off as he went further back into the house. He heard Jo Ann answer, and the two of them talking for a moment. Then Jo Ann came to the door. She stared down at him through the screen.

  "I know who you are," she said without preamble. She looked like she was ready to flee. Her hand stayed on the comforting thickness of the inside door.

  "I know you think you do, but you're wrong," Gregg said quickly. "Please, I need to talk with you, Jo Ann."

  "I aon't think so."

  "You hid a tape recorder in the office after Hannah came, that first time. You always kept the extra key to the office in the front of the file drawer, in the folder marked 'Receipts.' You and Sam met on Black Queen Night; Father Squid introduced the two of you. You two got married the day after the Rox disappeared - you said that something good had to happen that day or you couldn't stand it."

  "How do you know all that?" Jo Ann asked. Her voice was shaky and she kept looking over her shoulder to where Sam's bulk loomed under the ceiling light in the hallway. "What do you want, Battle?"

  "I need to see Hannah and Father Squid. It's very important. And I know all about you because I'm not Battle. I'm Gregg Hartmann." He saw her fairy-tale witch's face twist then, and the rest of the words tumbled out in a rush, falling over themselves. "They had a jumper, Jo Ann. They jumped Battle or somebody into my body before the press conference. It wasn't me who said the Sharks didn't exist, and it wasn't me who was killed - "

  "Fuck you," Jo Ann interrupted. "You tortured Gregg before you killed him, Battle. He could have told you anything. For that matter, you could be reading my mind - the wild card's given that gift to a dozen people I can think of. I'm not talking to you and I'm not telling you anything."

  The door slammed shut on his explanation. Gregg stood there on his six legs, his mouth open under the clown nose. A few seconds later, Sam opened the door again. He had a baseball bat in his meaty hands. "Get the fuck out of here," he said. "I won't have you or anyone upsetting her. I won't turn any damn joker over to the law, no matter how much I despise them, and you probably did a good thing killing Rudo, but if I see you around here again, I will beat the shit out of your ugly goddamn body. You understand me?"

  "I'm not Battle, damn it - " Gregg began.

  Sam kicked open the screen door. The corner of it struck Gregg full in his cartoon-drawing face and sent instantaneous adrenaline surging through his body. He used the pain and the rush to catapult himself into a double-speed retreat.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Jube! Goddamn it, Jube ...!"

  Gregg's voice sounded like a two-year old with an adenoid problem; the cursing sounded almost laughable. He had spent several nights lingering in the shadows of Jokertown, staying away from strangers and hoping to find someone he knew, someone he felt halfway safe approaching. There weren't too many on that list, but seeing the walrus-shape of Jube lumbering by on an otherwise-empty street was a relief. Jube knew everybody and everything. Jube could help him.

  The joker had turned at the sound of Gregg's voice, his eyes trapped in the blue-black, rubbery skin peering at the darkness where Gregg huddled between two closed and boarded storefronts.

  "If you're who I think you are," Jube said slowly, "I don't understand why you're still hanging around Jokertown."

  "I'm not Battle."

  Jube took a careful step away from him and stopped. He moved his papers from one arm to the other and pushed his porkpie hat back on his head. In the light of the streetlamp, bright orange passionflowers wrestled on the aching blue backdrop of his short-sleeved shirt. "I doubt there are two yellow caterpillars around here," Jube said. He was backing away again, his voice sounding falsely jovial. "Though I remember a joke along those lines: What'd the doctor say to the joker woman after she gave birth to triplets?"

  "Jube, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not Battle."

  Jube looked like he was about to bolt, but he waited. "I'm actually Gregg Hartmann," Gregg continued. "I was jumped into this body. I need to get into contact with Hannah Davis and Father Squid. It's very important."

  Jube blinked. He took another step away. "Please," Gregg said.

  "I heard that was what you were telling people, a couple months ago, back before you killed Rudo," Jube said. "That's a pretty unbelievable tale, considering no one's been jumped in years, not since the Rox went down. Not that it matters. I was never much impressed by Gregg Hartmann. I wasn't surprised that he sold us out at the end."

  "Damn it, he - I didn't!" The word came out as a screech and Jube jumped backward, a few papers scattering to the ground. "It wasn't me. I'd already been jumped."

  Disbelief pulled at the thick skin of Jube's face. He was backing away again, and Gregg scuttled out from his hiding place before the joker decided to turn and run. "Jube, you have to believe me. What I have to tell them is urgent. I need - "

  They both saw the squad car turn the corner and head down the street toward them at the same moment. Jube looked once at Gregg, then at the cruiser. His hand started to lift. "Jube, no," Gregg said, but the joker stepped out from the sidewalk, waving the cops down.

  Gregg didn't wait to see any more. He fled.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Ellen?"

  "Who are you? This is an unlisted number - who gave it to you?"

  "Ellen, please, just listen for a minute. When the Hartmann estate was settled, you were the prime beneficiary. There was also a safety-deposit box at First Manhattan Trust - about $20,000 worth of bonds in there. The will specifically mentioned an old grandfather clock that Gregg had kept as part of the divorce settlement, which was to go back to you. You and Gregg bought the clock in Germany during the WHO tour, just before Berlin - Sarah Morgenstern was along, too, remember? She was the one who saw the clock first, sitting in the dusty rear corner of that old antique shop."

  "How do you know all this? Who are you?"

  "Ellen, I'm telling you all this so you'll believe me. I know what was in the will because I wrote it. I'm Gregg, Ellen. Gregg. I need your help. I know I don't have any right to ask you, but ... Ellen? Ellen? Hello ...?"

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Furs was a long-time companion. The lion-maned joker had been on various of Gregg's staffs for years, had been campaign manager for New York when Gregg had run for president. Even though he'd drifted from politics to general media consultation in the years since, he still had worked with Gregg on various joker's rights committees and organizations, which was why Gregg had gone to him for help with the Peregrine show.

  Furs knew him. Furs had connections.

  For Jokertown, Furs lived upscale. The apartment building had a doorman, a burly joker with long, rubbery arms and a decidedly suspicious demeanor. Gregg decided not to risk the front door, not after his previous experiences. He waited until night, scaling the side wall of the building like a large yellow limpet, peering through windows until he found Fur's fourth-story apartment. He could see a television tossing light at the walls, but no one was watching and the sound was off. The window to the living room was unlocked; it opened when Gregg pulled it up. He scrambled over the sill and into the dark room with a thump, the curtains swirling. He looked around the room - Furs was here; a beer, the head still foaming, stood on the coffee table in front of the couch, and Gregg could smell his presence somewhere close by. Gregg moved into the room.

  "Stop right there."

  The voice came from the bedroom. Gregg turned to see Furs standing in the open doorway, sighting down the short barrel of a handgun gripped in both hands.

  "Furs," Gregg said softly. "I'm not going to hurt you. I need to talk." As Gregg took a step toward Furs, the fingers tightened around
the weapon.

  "I know who you are. I also know what you can do to this." Furs waggled the gun. "Take another step, and I won't wait for you to get close enough. Now, back up into the corner over there. That's it - nice and slow."

  As Gregg retreated, Furs moved into the room, going over to the phone. His gaze still fixed on Gregg; he reached down for the receiver. "Furs, please listen."

  "You're a Shark, Battle - "

  "I'm not - " Gregg started to interrupt, but his tiny, high voice had no hope of carrying against Furs's booming bass. "Shut up. You're a murderer. You helped destroy the Rox. I have nothing to say to you." Gregg couldn't see well enough to tell what he was dialing, but Furs only hit three numbers: 911, then. He was calling in the cops.

  Gregg wasn't going to wait for that. "Furs," he said desperately, and then words simply failed him. There was nothing to say. Furs wasn't going to believe him any more than the others he'd tried.

  Furs let go of the gun with one hand, to pick up the receiver. With the motion, Gregg leapt for the open window.

  The sound of the gunshot was deafening. Something hot and powerful slashed across his rear body segment, the impact making Gregg's body tumble. There was no pain, only the sensation of heat and the horrible smell of gunpowder, and then the blinding surge as metahuman automatic reflexes kicked in. He heard himself screaming, and found himself tearing around the perimeter of the living room as a stunned Furs whirled hopelessly behind him.

  Gregg saw the window on the second circuit. He turned in mid-air and half-fell, half-scrambled down the side of the building.

  He ran through the streets of Jokertown like a demented banshee until he blacked out.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  He came back to consciousness, as he expected, back in the sewers. His body had healed, though there was a long scar in the yellow skin. It was warmer, at least. He wondered how much time had gone by, and then realized that he didn't care. In the sewers, it was easy to feel despair.

  "I can't live this way," he told the dripping walls. "I won't live this way."

  The walls declined to answer.

  "I don't want to be a joker," he said into the dripping, odoriferous darkness. Only the varied, pungent smells of the city's waste returned to him. He almost wished that the voice would sound in his head scolding him and mocking him - at least it would be something.

  But he sat in unyielding darkness and silence, and he knew there was no refuge for him - not with Hannah or anyone else. If he stayed in this body, he would spend the rest of his life running. The murder of Rudo would always be hanging over him: that was the lesson he'd painfully learned over the last weeks. He would spend the rest of his life in hiding, or he would find himself in the hands of the criminal justice system - for a murder he didn't commit, for the death of a man who wasn't Pan Rudo, but some stranger. In the maelstrom of his despair, Gregg could think of only one way to get out of the body in which he found himself trapped - a way he'd already tried unsuccessfully once before.

  This time, though, he would use the one commodity that might purchase his freedom.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "I need to talk to Brandon van Renssaeler."

  "Who is this calling, please?"

  "Tell him.... Hell, tell him it's Sirhan Sirhan."

  "Sirhan - ? Who - ?"

  "Just tell him. Please."

  Gregg drummed several of his feet on the telephone stand next to the couch. He kept his eye on the door, ready to bolt for the open window if he heard anything. Luckily for Gregg, it seemed that a whole slew of people in upper floor apartments didn't expect burglars to climb sheer walls.

  "This is Brandon van Renssaeler," the phone squawked tinnily on the table. Gregg leaned down toward it. "Who the hell is this?"

  "Gregg Hartmann."

  The retort came a breath too late. "Gregg Hartmann is dead, and you're a sick person, whoever you are."

  "If you really believed that, you'd have already hung up, Brandon. Come on, my friend, we've known each other for years. You want details about you that only I could know? I can give them to you. But I'm sure your Shark friends have already given you my new description. After all, this was Battle's body first."

  "Listen, I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, but I can't talk to you right now. If you'd like to come to the office ..."

  "Not a chance, Brandon. Remember, I'm wanted for Pan's murder - but it wasn't Pan, was it? The real Pan has a nice shiny new body, just like Durand and Faneuil. Well, I want one too."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. Pan Rudo is dead."

  "Just shut up and listen. We've both been involved in politics, so we know about compromises. Your little group's on the run, but you've managed a few victories lately; in fact, things are swinging your way again, and the last thing you want is to lose the momentum. The nat public's tired of the violence, and they're willing to make the jokers scapegoats if that means an end to it - I saw in the paper where Barnett has a new anti-joker bill on his desk for signing. Right now the person who's the main thorn in your side is Hannah Davis. The publicity Hannah and her group are getting is the only thing keeping Congress from passing the full-blown Quarantine Regulations. You took me out, but Hannah hasn't eased off the pressure on you, and I know the woman well enough to know that she's not ever going to do that."

  Gregg paused, taking a breath and hating himself. Brandon didn't interrupt. Gregg could hear the man's breath, waiting. "She wouldn't, but I would," Gregg said at last.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're interested now, aren't you? Look at it from my perspective. The truth is that I was never involved in this because of any moral conviction or idealism. This never was my fight. Right now I'm stuck in a joker's body and, frankly, I don't like it. I want to be normal. How's this for a proposition? Let's play your game once again: you jump me into Hannah's body and Hannah into this one; let her take the rap for Rudo. Maybe she'll even get killed resisting arrest, right? As Hannah, I can finish the job you people started with my old body - confess that poor murdered Gregg Hartmann was right, that the evidence was manufactured and the whole Shark conspiracy was a fraud. Once that's over, you can jump me into a new body of my choice and we'll call it even."

  Silence.

  "Brandon? Jesus Christ, Brandon, have some compassion. We're friends, remember? I don't care any more about the Sharks or Hannah or any of it. I just don't want to be a goddamn freak." Gregg could hear his voice break with the word, almost a sob. He took a deep breath.

  "This ... this isn't a decision I can make on my own."

  "I didn't figure it was."

  "How can I get in touch with you?"

  "You can't." The feeling of hunger was washing over Gregg again. The metal table lamp smelled positively luscious. "Brandon - don't fuck this up. If I want, I can blow the Sharks entirely out of the water with everything I know. I've got absolutely nothing to lose. I'll turn myself in publicly and loudly, and eventually the truth will come out - all of it, Brandon, including stuff you'd rather no one knew. You don't want that - and I don't want to be a joker the rest of my life. Let's work together. I'll call you. Tomorrow at four."

  "That's too soon. I ... I need at least two weeks. There's people I need to get in touch with, and they're ... hard to contact."

  Gregg sighed. He had to find Hannah, somehow, in any case. That would take time. "Two weeks then," Gregg said. "You'll hear from me."

  Gregg hung up before van Renssaeler could reply.

  You're vile, Greggie. You're soiled beyond redemption.

  Gregg waited for the voice, but the accusation never came. He told himself that he should be happy - he was free, free to do whatever he wanted or needed to do, free for the first time since he'd been infected with the virus. There was no Puppetman to foul him up with its demands, no Jiminy Cricket to nag at him from the other side. Gregg was on his own, he was whole. He could do whatever was needed and nothing, nothing inside him would disagree.

&
nbsp; Gregg sat in the dark for an hour wondering why he felt so fucking miserable.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  There was only one problem: finding Hannah.

  At one time, Gregg would have known exactly where to start. There had been one person who knew everything that happened in Jokertown, and who would sell that information for the right price: Chrysalis. But Chrysalis was long dead, and the person who had inherited her mantle - Charles Dutton - wasn't someone Gregg felt comfortable approaching. He had no leverage with Dutton.

  So there had to be another way to approach it.

  Luckily, the sewers went everywhere....

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Evan, so good to see you. It's been quite a while." Dutton's low tones echoed in the still hall of the Museum. From Gregg's refuge in one of the Turtle's old shells, hung high above the main gallery, the voice sounded sepulchral and ghostly - perfect for this place filled with the ghosts and shadows of Jokertown's past

  "Patti's been dominant for awhile. I've been ... tired. I don't think I'll last that long, but I thought I'd get back to work on the church fire diorama while I could."

  Gregg peered through one of the holes in the shell. In his fuzzy vision, he could see the Oddity's bulk, in its usual floor-length cape. Dutton's skull-like visage was just below.

  It had taken more than two weeks. He'd found the main sewer lines into the Dime Museum, wriggling up through the fragrant miasma into the basement of the building. The museum, with its ornate displays and labyrinthian rooms, had afforded as many hiding places as he needed. Each night, as Dutton was busy closing the halls above, Gregg would enter. He'd overheard dozens of Dutton's private phone calls in his office, late at night after the museum had closed, but none of them had revealed anything. He'd looked through the man's papers on the rare occasions that Dutton left the museum; none of them were more than routine. He supposed that he could have melted the locks on the desk or the office safe to see what was inside, but that would have revealed his presence, and the odds seemed against the careful Dutton having anything there, either. The man had visitors - some of the visitors and their concerns quite surprising to Gregg - but the snatches of conversation he'd heard from them had also afforded nothing useful. One night there was a meeting of local jokers headed by someone called Hotair, where there'd been extensive discussion about Jokertown affairs. While Hannah and Father Squid's names came up more than once, no one gave any clue as to where they might be hidden.