Jokers Wild

Chapter Twenty-five

6:00 a.m.

After Jack left, Bagabond was left to stare at her transformation. The mirror revealed an attractive woman in her midthirties who tried to smile, but gingerly, as though her face might crack. She turned away. The suits had been barely tolerable, and only because she saw them as protective color. This dress revealed too much of someone she didn't know. For a moment, she considered changing into the dirty, torn clothing she had worn for so long. This new persona frightened her.

The black and the calico cats came up to her in response to her broadcast of pain. The calico leaped into her lap and licked her under the chin while the black rubbed his back against her calf. They questioned her about the sending. Bagabond tried to explain. She sent a picture of Paul to them both. Neither cat was impressed by the human they saw. Even Bagabond's emotional shadings of the face she remembered were not enough. The black looked up at her and imagined Paul's throat torn out. It was the simplest solution to him. If something annoys you, kill it. Bagabond shook her head and rebuilt Paul's image.

The calico sent a scene of Bagabond, back in her normal dress, sitting on the floor of Jack's home and playing with the kittens. Bagabond stroked the calico, but blocked out the sight of the familiar group. The black snarled and placed his huge paws on Bagabond's knees. He stared into her eyes and she knew his anger and frustration.

Bagabond looked back at the mirror and saw a girl in a beaded leather headband and a tie-dyed T-shirt. The younger woman seemed to smile at her in encouragement. Bagabond reached out to touch the girl's hand, wondering if she could ever have been so young and happy. As she touched the glass, the image changed to herself, teal dress, mascara, and blush.

Examining herself again, Bagabond thought she saw something of the girl's eyes still in hers.

The shrill ring of the phone broke her reverie. Dumping the calico onto the floor, she wondered if this was more bad news for Jack. But the voice at the other end was Rosemary's. "Suzanne, did I wake you?"

"No." Bagabond sat down on the floor beside the phone. "Can you meet me at home? I mean, the penthouse?"

"Why? "

"I just feel as if…" Rosemary's voice grew thin for a moment. "I guess I want to tell my father what I'm doing. Maybe it's why I held on to the place. But I don't want to go there alone. Please, Suzanne."

"Why me?"

Rosemary hesitated. "Suzanne… I trust you. I can't trust anyone else. I need you."

"That's not new." Bagabond clenched her jaw and her hand tightened on the phone.

"Suzanne, I know you don't agree with what I've done, but I promise I'm going to change things."

"All right. But I have an appointment at seven." Bagabond closed her eyes in disgust at her need for Rosemary's approval. "Thanks. I'll meet you there." Rosemary hung up. Bagabond looked down at the cats.

"I don't think this night is ever going to end."

She pulled on the long, open, ankle-length black sweater Jack had insisted she get. The black and calico accompanied her to the door. Bagabond mentally told them both to stay. The cats responded with yowls of anger, but backed away from the door. Closing the door, Bagabond knew the black was using another exit to follow her.

At the subway station, she held the door of the car so the cat could enter. The black was not happy he had been spotted, but was glad he would not have to chase the train or find an other route. He panted as he lay at her feet. For him, now, it had been a long run.

She got off at 96th Street, abruptly aware of how few people had been on the subway. The crowds really had given up. She went upstairs to the street. Two blocks down Central Park West, Rosemary waited on a bus bench. Her eyes widened as she saw Bagabond's dress, but she did not comment.

"Let's go in." Bagabond was impatient to get this done. She suddenly felt the gray cat watching her from the park across the street. She looked up, but saw nothing in the trees.

"I suppose I'm ready." Rosemary hesitated before pulling open one of the heavy glass doors.

"Signorina, you'd better be." Trailed by the black, Bagabond followed her in.

The doorman was no longer a Gambione man. He was young, and Bagabond noticed he was studying a book on contract law. Rosemary showed him her key and signed in, as Rosa Maria Gambione, on the guest register.

In the elevator, she used another key to send the car to the penthouse.

"I haven't been here in five years." Rosemary looked up at the ceiling of the car.

"Are you sure you want Rosa-Maria to return?" Bagabond reached out to touch the other woman's shoulder. "You were desperate to leave all this behind. Your father, the Family, all of it. You wanted to atone for what he did. Now you want to be like him?"

"No!" Rosemary glared at Bagabond for an instant before she lowered her head. "Suzanne, I could do a lot of good, turn the Family around."

"Why?" Bagabond barely kept her balance in the high heels as the elevator jerked to a halt. "Let them be destroyed. They deserve it. They're criminals."

Rosemary stepped out into the hallway. "It looks wrong without the men. There were always guards here for my father."

"You want to live that way?"

Rosemary unlocked the double oak doors, then turned and was framed against the darkness behind. "Suzanne, don't you understand that I can make a difference? I can stop the violence and the killing."

Bagabond was skeptical. "You could destroy yourself instead. "

"It's worth the risk." Rosemary pushed the doors open wide and walked in. "I believe that."

Behind her, Bagabond watched the new head of the Gambione Family walk down the dark entry. She murmured to herself and the. black, "I know you do, God help you."

Rosemary showed Bagabond the apartment, telling her of the happy things that had happened there. There were some: the holidays, family gatherings, birthdays. The last room they entered was the library. Books lined the black walnut walls and heavy draperies seemed to absorb most of the light. Despite the oppressive atmosphere, Rosemary laughed.

At Bagabond's look, she explained. "It's awful. All these books? My father bought them by the yard. He didn't care what they were, so long as they had leather bindings and looked impressive. I used to sneak in and read some of them. There was Hawthorne and Poe and Emerson. It was fun." She looked at Bagabond defensively. "It wasn't always bad to live here."

Running her hand over the backs of the chairs that lined the central table, she walked to the chair at its head. For a moment she put her arms around the back as though she em braced a person. Then Rosemary pulled the chair out and sat down, contemplating Bagabond down the length of the table. "Can you find the door?" Rosemary leaned back and was dwarfed by the massive, carved back of the chair. "I just want to think for a while."

Bagabond walked out of the room feeling as though she had seen a ghost. Back in the elevator, she knelt and stroked the black until he purred at her. Then she stood and pulled the sweater more tightly around her.

Outside, the sun was up and traffic had increased on the streets until the horns and diesel fumes made it clear the day had begun. The gray still watched from the park. She was un able to pick up the animal's emotions without effort. She left him his privacy. Bagabond patted the black's head and sent him across to the park to see his son.

She stepped to the curb to hail a cab to take her downtown to the restaurant.

As the taxi wove through the thickening morning traffic, Bagabond started attempting to think of good conversational gambits. Nothing she remembered from the sixties somehow seemed appropriate.

Bagabond wondered if Paul liked cats. He had better.

"Okay, how did you track me to Jetboy's Tomb?" Brennan shrugged. Jennifer was carrying the book sack and he had two bags full of Chinese food that Jennifer had insisted on buying at a take-out place near her apartment.

"It was easy. I'd put a bug on the cloak I'd given you. That little fellow with Fatman teleported me to the middle of the Holland Tunnel, which, luckily enough, isn't far from Jetboy's Tomb. Though I must say I was worried that you'd do something foolish before I managed to reach you. And I was right."

"Humph. And then?"

"And then? Wyrm had planted lookouts to make sure they wouldn't be bothered while they were recovering the books. You must have come through while they were either still secur ing the perimeter or rousting someone else. At any rate, I took the place of one of them just as Wyrm and the others were dragging your unconscious body out of the tomb. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for my chance. I saw it, and jumped Wyrm."

"What did you do to him, anyway?"

Brennan held up his hand. The palm was still stained brown.

"Remember the mustard I brought from the street vendor?" She did. "Wyrm s tongue is an extremely sensitive sensory organ that doesn't take too well to spices. Besides dis comforting him, I'm sure the mustard also wiped away all traces of your scent. So you should be safe from him."

"Thanks. And thanks for saving my life."

"You did the same for me. I'd have never gotten that gun away from Kien."

Jennifer nodded. She'd never used her power that way before, and, even though it had been unintentional and Kien had, after all, tried to kill her, now that she had time to think about it, she felt nauseated. All that blood…

They walked on in silence for a while. She felt Brennan's eyes on her, but said nothing until they'd gone up the four flights of stairs to her apartment.

"Well, here we are."

Books were everywhere about the living room, giving it a comfortable, lived-in look. At least that's how Jennifer thought of it. Brennan put the bags containing the food on the counter that divided the kitchen nook from the rest of the room.

"Make yourself at home," she said as she turned to put the coffeepot on the stove and got two plates and utensils from the cupboard. She turned back to see Brennan standing in the middle of the apartment, an impatient expression on his face. "You want to see the book?"

He nodded. She took the bag off her shoulder and put it on the counter next to the food. She selected a box, ladled a portion of shrimp fried rice onto her plate, and reached for the box with the sweet-and-sour chicken.

"Well, go ahead."

If Brennan noticed the resignation in her voice he gave no sign. He strode forward eagerly, took the pouch, and looked inside. Jennifer kept her eyes on the food. She took a forkful of the chicken and somehow it didn't taste as good as she had thought it would.

"Is this a joke?" Brennan asked after a moment, his voice flat and emotionless.

He was holding up Kien's diary.

Jennifer swallowed. "No, no, I don't think so," she said in a small voice.

He thumbed through it, disbelief on his face.

"It's blank," he said, fanning the pages for Jennifer to see. "I know." She put her fork down and looked at Brennan for the first time.

"What the hell happened?" Brennan demanded, anger growing in his voice. She could see his jaw muscles jump as he clenched his jaw tighter and tighter.

"Well, the nearest I can figure is that the ink didn't translate when I ghosted the book. You see, it takes special effort to make dense material like lead, or gold, insubstantial, and he must have used something like that to write… with… you see…"

Her voice ran down as the storm gathered on Brennan's face.

"I. Went. Through. All that shit. For. A. Blank. Book." He said each word as if it were a sentence.

"I couldn't tell you," Jennifer said. "At first I didn't totally trust you. Then, when I saw how important it was to you, I just couldn't find a way."

Brennan stared at her silently, and she flinched, expecting him to scream, to throw the book, to strike at her, to do just about anything but what he did.

"A blank book," he repeated. The storm on his face broke and vanished as quickly as it had gathered. He sank down unseeingly into the large stufled chair near the bookcase, rose up slightly and picked up the hardcover copy of Scaramouche that was open, face down on the chair. He looked at it as if he'd never seen a book before and muttered, "Ishida, my roshi, if you could only have experienced the events of this day. What lessons could be learned. Tell me." He looked at Jennifer with serious, questioning eyes. "What lessons can one learn from a blank book?"

"I-I don't know," she faltered.

He shrugged. "I don't know either, yet. A new koan to meditate upon." Brennan thumbed through the diary again, a bemused expression on his face. "Of course," he said after a moment, "Kiev doesn't know the book is blank. Doesn't know that at all."

He smiled, the first real smile that Jennifer had ever seen on his face. He looked at Jennifer and his smile broadened, turned into laughter. It was joyful, cleansing laughter. Jennifer sensed he hadn't laughed out loud in a long time. She felt herself smiling as well out of relief and because of the recognizable, binding companionship that already lay between them.

Brennan stood, still laughing and shaking his head. He walked over to the counter. His eyes and Jennifer's were on the same level. If anything, he had to look up to see into hers.

She'd never seen him before with a true smile on his face, and she liked it. He told her, without saying anything, that he liked what he saw when he looked into hers.

He took his hood off and dropped it on the counter. Some of the tension had gone out of his face and he looked years younger than when Jennifer had first seen him.

"Did you get any egg rolls?" he asked.

She looked down at the little boxes filled with Chinese food, and felt a strange, unexpected, unanalyzable stab of joy.

When Jack finally managed to find Freakers, he understood why it wasn't the kind of all-night dive that advertised itself strenuously. Those who needed to know where it was, found out. Looking at the moving neon woman astraddle the door, Jack thought that maybe some people arrived here simply by following their darkest instincts.

The neon seared his retinas like a branding iron. This hour of the early morning, there was no one guarding the door. Presumably this was the time of day when only the most dedicated clientele showed up.

Ignoring the swooping, glowing lines above him, Jack pushed open the door and entered. Smoke, muted conversational noise, geometric patterns in neon primariesthese were what he noticed first.

Across the main room, an obviously tired stripper desultorily went through the motions on a cylindrical revolving stage. Bathed in a rose spotlight, she undulated to a slow beat Jack couldn't even hear. He squinted, trying to focus in the smoke. He realized the strippers abdomen was covered with what looked like pairs of vertical lips. She was down to her last Gstring.

Jack turned away, scanned the tables. He headed toward the cheap, plank-hewn bar. Then he saw the row of booths at the back. There was a girl in one of them-a young woman with black hair falling straight along the sides of her thin face. She was dressed in a startling, clingy blue dress. She stared directly at him.

There was a nondescript man in a brown suit standing over the booth, talking to the young woman. He straightened as Jack approached. Jack faltered, then walked up to them. Ignoring the man in brown, Jack looked down at the woman. She started to smile.

"Uncle Jack?" The malachite eye in the silver alligator hanging from her left earlobe flashed as it caught light from the follow-spot clicking off on the stage.

"Cordeia"

She was instantly out of the booth and holding onto him as though she were traveling steerage and he had the only life preserver on the Titanic. They stayed that way for long seconds.

The man who had been talking to Cordelia said, "Hey, you want that, maybe you should rent a room." It seemed to be spoken without real malice. Jack looked up across Cordelia's shoulder at him. The man's suit jacket was rumpled. He wore no tie. To Jack, he looked as one might imagine a cashiered, down-at-the heels FBI agent on the skids. The man offered a wry grin. "Hey, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. No offense."

"Do I know you?" said Jack.

"The name's Ackroyd;" said the man. "Jay Ackroyd, PI" He put out his hand.

Jack ignored it. The two men looked each other in the eye for a few seconds. Then Ackroyd smiled. "It's over, man. For now, at least. Everybody's dead-butt tired. Truce." He gestured around the bar. "Besides, nobody'd do anything while Billy Ray's nursing his beer." Jack followed the line of Ackroyd's finger. He saw a guy wearing a white stretch fighting suit sitting alone at a table. The man's features were mismatched, asymmetrical. His jaw looked inflamed and he was sipping his beer through a straw. "Pride of the Justice Department. Baddest of bad-asses," said Ackroyd. "Listen, cool out, have something to drink, visit with your niece." He stepped away from the booth. "I gotta get some fresh air anyway." Ackroyd headed for the door, weaving just a little in his scuffed brown loafers.

"Sit down, Uncle Jack." Cordelia tucked him onto the seat beside her in the booth.

"What are you drinking?" He touched the glass. "7-Up." She giggled. "I wanted RC, but they don't have any up here."

"We've got it," said Jack. "You can get anything in Manhattan. You're just in the wrong neighborhood."

A barmaid in satin top and shorts, her visible skin showing a stitchwork of granular tumors, came over to the booth. "Something to drink?" Jack ordered a beer. Iron City. That was the sort of imported brew you could order in a place like this. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said. "Bagabondmy friend-and I have been looking all day for you. I saw you at the Port Authority-you got away before I could get through the crowd. You were with someone who looked like a pimp."

"He was, I guess," said Cordelia. "There was a man named Demise

… He saved me." She hesitated. "'Course then he helped try to kill me. This is a confusing town, Uncle Jack. "

"I owe him," said Jack. "One way or the other." For a split second, his face started to alter and his jaw to deform. He took a deep breath, settled back, felt his teeth resume their human size. "Why are you here? Your folks are going crazy."

"Why are you here, Uncle Jack? I always heard things from Mama and the relatives about how you ran away and why you came to this place."

"Fair enough," said Jack. "But I could take care of myself."

"So can I," Cordelia said. "You'd be surprised." She hesitated. "You know what all's happened today?" The young woman didn't wait for Jack to shake his head. "I can't even tell you what all. But some of it is this: A slaver tried to kidnap me, I was rescued, I've met some really strange and some really fabulous people, I found the most fantastic man-FortunatoI almost got killed, and then…" She paused.

Jack shook his head. "And then what, for God's sake?" She leaned close to his face, looked him straight in the eyes, and said seriously, "Something incredible happened." Jack wanted to laugh, but didn't. He accepted her seriousness and said, "What's that, Cordelia?"

Even in the neon-lit dimness, he could see that she was blushing. "It was like when I started my periods," she finally said. "You know? You probably don't. Anyhow, it was when I was up there in this penthouse and this old guy was about to kill me? Something just changed. It's hard to describe."

"I think I know," said Jack.

She nodded soberly. "I think you do. It's why you left the parish all those years ago, isn't it?"

"I expect so. You-" It was his turn almost to stammer. "You changed, didn't you? Now you're not the same person you were."

Cordelia nodded vehemently. "I still don't know what it is I'm becoming. All I know is that when that Imp guy tried to grab me-he was going to help the old guy rip out my heart or something like that-there was this feeling inside like things were really tight and then…" She shrugged expressively. "I killed him. I killed him, Uncle Jack. What really happened was it felt like I could use something down deep in my brain I didn't know how to use before. I could do things to the men who were trying to hurt me. I could make them stop breathing, keep their hearts from beating-I don't know what all. Anyhow, it was enough. So I'm here." She put her arms around his neck again. "I'm really glad."

"You've got a way of understating things," Jack said, grinning. "Listen, are you ready to come home?"

"Home?" She sounded puzzled.

"My place. You can stay with me. We'll get things settled. Your folks are sweating toad spit."

She drew back. "I'm not going back, Uncle Jack. Not never."

"You've got to talk to your folks."

She shook her head. "And the next thing, you'll be putting me on a bus. I'll get off at the next stop. I'll run away. I swear it." She turned away from him.

"What's the matter, Cordelia?" He felt confused.

"If I go back, there's Uncle Jake. Granduncle Jake."

"Snake Jake?" Jack started to understand. "Did he-?"

"I can't go back," she said.

"Okay. You don't go back. But you've still got to talk with Robert and Elouette." To his amazement, she was crying. "No."

"Cordelia…"

She wiped away the tears. There was something hard now in the fragile features of her face, a toughness in her voice. "Uncle Jack, you've got to understand. Things have happened today. Maybe I'm going to be one of Fortunato's geishas, or serve drinks in a place like this, or go to Columbia University and be a nuclear scientist, or something. Anything. I don't know. I'm not who I was. I don't know what I am-who I am now. I'm going to find out."

"I can help you," he said quietly.

"Can you?" She was staring at him hard. "Do you know who you are, really?"

Jack didn't say anything.

"Yeah." She moved her head slowly. "I love you very much, Uncle Jack. I think we're very much alike. But I'm willing to find out who I am. I've got to." She hesitated. "I don't think you admit much to yourself or to the folks around you." It was as if she were looking inside him, shining a searchlight around inside his head and his mind. He was uncomfortable with both the uncompromising glare and the shadows.

"Hey!" The shout came from Ackroyd, ducking his head past the front door. "You gotta see this! All of you." He retreated back outside.

Cordelia and Jack looked at each other. The young woman joined the others heading for the door. Jack hesitated, then followed.

Outside, the night retreated. Dawn was breaking over the East River. Ackroyd stood out in the street and pointed toward the sky. "Will you look at that?"

They all looked. Jack squinted and at first didn't realize what he was staring at. Then the details coalesced.

It was Jetboy's plane. After forty years, the JB-1 soared again above the Manhattan skyline. High-winged and trouttailed, it was indisputably Jetboy's pioneering craft. The red fuselage seemed to glow in the first rays of morning.

There was something wrong with the image. Then Jack realized what it was. Jetboy's plane had speed lines trailing back from the wings and tail. What the hell? he thought. But for the moment, he was as transfixed by the vision as everyone else around him. It was as though they were all collectively holding one breath.

Then things came apart.

One wing of the JB-1 started to fold back and tear away from the fuselage. The plane was breaking up. "Jesus-fucking-jumping-joker-Christ," someone said. It was almost a prayer.

Jack suddenly realized what he was seeing. It wasn't the JB-1, not really. He watched bits of aircraft rip loose that were not aluminum or steel. They were fashioned of bright flowers and twisted paper napkins, two-by-fours and sheets of chicken wire. It was the plane from the Jetboy float in yesterday's parade.

Debris began to fall slowly down toward the streets of Manhattan, just as it had four decades before.

Jack saw what had been masked within the replica of Jetboy's plane. He could make out the steel shell, the unmistakable outline of a modified Volkswagen Beetle.

"God bless!" Someone said it for all of them. "It's the Turtle!"

Jack could hear cheering from the next block, and the block beyond that. As the last bits of the JB-1 replica sifted down toward the city, the Turtle snapped into a victory roll.

Then he swept around in a graceful are and seemed to vanish in the east, occulted by the sun now edging above the tops of the office towers.

"Can. you beat that?" said one of the refugees from Freakers. "The Turtle's alive. Fuckin' terrific." The grin on his face echoed in his voice.

Jack realized Cordelia was no longer standing beside him. He looked around in confusion. From just behind his shoulder, Ackroyd said, "She said to tell you she had things to do. She'll let you know how things work out."

Jack spread his hands helplessly. "How will I find her?" Ackroyd shrugged. "You found her this morning, didn't you?" The man hesitated. "Oh yeah, she also said to tell you she loves you." He put his hand on Jack's shoulder. "Come on, I'll buy you a brew." He turned toward the neon woman. She had paled now in the breaking daylight. Back over his shoulder, the detective said, "i'll give you my card. Worst comes to worst, you can hire me."

Jack hesitated.

Ackroyd said, "Also I'll introduce you around. I heard you started to change in there. I don't know you, but I've got a feeling there are quite a few of our colleagues you don't know either. It's about time you made their acquaintance."

Billy Ray had overheard. "Fuck you, Ackroyd," he said. Ackroyd grinned. "Those justice boys have a thing about us gumshoes."

Before Jack followed him into Freakers, he looked one more time into the east. In the sun-glare, he couldn't see the Turtle.

It was a new morning. But then they were all new mornings.

It had taken Spector the better part of an hour to track down a cab in Jokertown. He sat in the back seat, thumbing through the early edition of the Times. Except for the Astronomer, all the dead aces had their pictures on the front page, surrounded by a black border. There was a question mark next to the Turtle, but he was obviously still alive and kicking. Specfor was almost glad. But he couldn't figure out why he wasn't dead too. He'd always managed to survive. Most losers did. "Yesterday was a hell of a day, I'll tell you," the cabbie said.

"Yesterday?" Spector shook his head. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It was like a long, bad dream.

"Yeah. It would suit me fine if all those aces killed each other off I got no use for them."

Spector ignored him and pulled out the sports section. He wondered if the Nets would be any better this year.

"What about you?"

"Huh?"

"What do you think about aces?"

"I don't. Why don't you just shut your mouth and drive." It was several minutes before the cabbie spoke again. "Here we are. What the hell do you want down here?" Spector opened the door and got out, then handed the cabbie a hundred-dollar bill. "Wait here."

"Fine. But I can't sit around all morning."

Spector walked down to the chain-link fence. It was time to visit Ralph again. Maybe he'd be too tired to kill. The king of the garbage dump really didn't deserve it.

A young black man wearing a green windbreaker and red cap met him at the fence. "You need something?"

"Yeah, there was a bunch of barges full of garbage here last night, and a guy named Ralph. Where are they?"

The man turned around and pointed out to the river. "They're halfway to Fresh Kills by now. Just garbage, though."

"Right. Thanks." Spector watched the man walk away, then looked out across the water. "You get to live, Ralphie. Unless you say something stupid."

The cabbie honked his horn. One thing Ralph had been right about. There's no substitute for being your own boss. Doing work for the Astronomer and Latham had gotten him shot, broken, bitten, and zapped to the top of the scoreboard in Yankee Stadium. He was sick of it. No more being a loaded gun who some big wheel pointed at someone else. From now on he'd decide who he killed and when.

Another honk. "One more time, shithead," Spector muttered. "Just one more time."

The sky was beginning to brighten, but the light brought no warmth. The docks were already alive. Most people were waking up or downing their first cup of coffee. Spector was going to go to bed and sleep for a week. The talk about this Wild Card Day probably wouldn't die down for a week or even a month.

"Yessir, Ralph, you showed me the way. From now on, I look out for number one. No more cleaning up after other people's shit."

There was a third long honk. Spector turned slowly. "You asked for it moron." The endless pain hummed through him like a fresh papercut.

It was going to be hell finding another cab.

Even in that darkest hour that comes before the dawn, Manhattan never truly sleeps, but Riverside Drive was motionless and empty as Hiram Worchester climbed from his cab.

It was almost eerie. He tipped the driver, found his keys, and climbed the stoop to his own front door. Nothing had ever looked as welcoming.

Inside, Hiram climbed the stairs wearily, without bothering to turn on the lights. He undressed while he trudged upward, hanging his jacket on the wooden acorn at the foot of the polished banister, dropping his tie and shirt on the steps, abandoning his shoes on the first landing and his trousers on the second. The maid could pick them up tomorrow, he thought. Except that it was already tomorrow, wasn't it? No, he decided. No, no matter what the calendar might say, this was still Wild Card Day, and it would be until he got to sleep.

His third-floor bedroom looked out over the Hudson. Hiram went to the window and opened it wide, taking a deep breath of the chill night air. The western sky was black satin, and over in Jersey the lights were beginning to come back on. But the most beautiful sight in the room was his king-size water bed, its pillows plumped and ready, its covers turned back on clean flannel sheets. It looked so warm and comfortable. Hiram lay down with a sigh of gratitude, feeling the water slosh gently beneath him. He slid under the blankets and closed his eyes.

Somewhere the Howler laughed, and Hiram's dreams shattered into crystal shards. Kid Dinosaur swooped through Aces High, dropping pieces of his body onto the dinner plates.

A maniac with a bow aimed an arrow at his eye, but Popinjay sent it away with an off-color quip. Faces turned toward him, bruised and bleeding, eyes full of pain: Tachyon, Gills, an old joker woman who walked like a snail. Water Lily smiled, the moisture running off her naked skin as if she had stepped fresh from a shower, her hair gleaming in the soft light of the chandelier, and she walked outside to look at the stars, climbing up on the edge of the parapet, straining toward them, reaching, reaching. Hiram tried to warn her, shouted that she needed to be careful, but her foot slipped, and as she began to fall he saw that it was not Jane after all, it was Eileen, Eileen who reached out her hand for help, but Hiram was not there, and she fell away from him screaming. In dreams you fall forever.

Then he was in his kitchen, cooking, stirring a great pot, and in the pot was a thick liquid that bubbled slowly and looked like blood, and he stirred frantically, because they would be here soon, the diners would be here soon, but the food wasn't ready, it wasn't any good, they wouldn't like it, they wouldn't like him, he had to get it ready, had to make sure everything was perfect. He stirred faster, and now he heard footsteps, growing louder and louder, heavy pounding footsteps on the stairs, someone coming closer and closer…

Hiram jerked upright, scattering pillows and bedclothes, just as a fist the size and color of a smoked Virginia ham crashed through the closed bedroom door. The door was kicked, once, twice, and on the third kick it few apart, and Bludgeon stepped through. Hiram gasped.

He was seven feet tall, dressed in tight-fitting leather. His head was square and brutal, seamed with callous and twisted horn, eyes set beneath a heavy ridge of bone, one a clear bright blue, the other a vivid red. The right side of his mouth was closed by the slick, shiny scar tissue that had grown over it, and his flesh was mottled by a huge greenish bruise. His ears were veined leathery things like the wings of bats, his scalp covered by boils instead of hair. "Fucker," he screamed in a voice that whistled out of half his mouth like scalding steam. "Fucking cuntface ace," he shrieked. The fingers of his right hand were closed permanently in a fist, rough calloused skin grown over fingers and knuckles in great ridges. When he made a fist of his left hand, his muscles bulged, and the seams of his leather jacket split open. "I'm gonna kill you, you fucking cuntface asshole fatboy."

"You're only a nightmare," Hiram said. "I'm still asleep." Bludgeon screamed and kicked the bed. The wooden frame shattered, the plastic burst, and water began spraying out from underneath the blankets. It looked like a sprinkler. Hiram sat there numbly, the water soaking through his underwear, blinking in shock. This wasn't a dream, he told himself as he got wetter and wetter. Bludgeon reached through the spray and grabbed the front of his undershirt with his left hand, lifting him bodily in the air. "You fucker," the giant was screaming over and over. "I'm out, you cuntface bastard, you stinkin' piece of lard, they cut me fuckin' out and it's all because of you, I'm going to fuckin' kill you, you shitface cunt-lapping fatboy, you're fuckin' dead, you hear that, you fuckin' hear that?"

His right hand waved under Hiram's nose, a misshapen ball of bone and scar tissue and horny callus cocked into an eternal fist. "I can dent fuckin' tanks with this, you cuntface fucker, so just imagine what it's going to do to your pussy-eating face. You see it? Do you see it, fucker!"

Dangling at the end of Bludgeon's arm, Hiram Worchester managed to nod. "Yes," he said. He raised his own hand. "Do you see this one?" he asked, and made a fist.

As Bludgeon bobbed off the floor, his clubfist came around and caught Hiram on the cheek. It smarted quite a bit and left a red welt. By then Bludgeon was floating, hanging onto Hiram for dear life, his feet scraping against the ceiling. He began to scream threats. "Oh, keep quiet," Hiram told him. He tried to disentangle Bludgeon's fingers from his undershirt, but the joker was too strong.

Frowning, Hiram restored himself to full weight. Then he doubled it.

Then he doubled that.

Instead of trying to push Bludgeon away, he pulled him nearer, hugged him tightly to his ample stomach, and did a bellyflop onto the hardwood floor. It was the second time that day he heard bones crack.

Hiram climbed to his feet, panting, his heart trip-hammering away in his chest. He lightened himself and stood frowning down at Bludgeon, who was hugging his ribs and screaming. As he drifted up off the floor again, Hiram caught him by wrist and ankle and heaved him right out the open window.

He fell up. Hiram went to the window and watched him rise. The wind was from the west. It ought to blow him over the city, toward the East River, Long Island, and eventually the Atlantic. He wondered if Bludgeon could swim.

The bed was ruined. Hiram went to the linen closet. He paused with the sheets in his hand, shook his head, stacked them neatly back in the closet. What was the use? The night was almost gone, and he had so much to do-Aces High was supposed to be open for lunch, someone would have to supervise the repairs, and in a few minutes the dawn would be coming up, the start of a whole new day. He was too tired to sleep anyway.

Sighing deeply, Hiram Worchester went downstairs and began to cook. He made himself a cheese omelet and a triple rasher of bacon, fried up some small red potatoes with onions and peppers, and washed it all down with a large orange juice and a fresh-brewed pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain. Afterward, he was almost certain that he would live.

Around her the city was coming alive. Several million people performing the routine little actions that give form to a life. A litany of the ordinary, the mundane, the comfortable. And Roulette felt a stir of interest, a flare of anticipation. So humdrum when compared to the obsession that had ruled her life. But so restful in its simplicity. She thought she would start by brewing a cup of coffee. And after that? The possibilities were limitless.

There were still merchant ships headed for the Far East. It was still possible to get a cabin on one, though with this short a notice it had been expensive.

But it was done. Fortunato stood at the rail as they steamed out past Governor's Island and into Upper New York Bay.

The sun was coming up over Brooklyn. Underneath him the sea moved at its own pace, vast, balanced, fluid yet unchanging. It was the first of Fortunato's new teachers.