Ace In The Hole

George R R Martin
CHAPTER ONE

Monday July 18, 1988

Spector pulled down on the padlock with a gloved hand. The lock snapped open. He unlatched the corrugated tin door and put his weight against it, pushing it up and sideways, trying to make as little noise as possible. He slid his thin body through and shut the door behind him. So far it was going just like they said.

The place smelled of dust and fresh paint. The light was dim, coming from a single overhead lamp in the center of the warehouse. He paused to let his eyes adjust. There were boxes of masks all around. Clowns, politicians, animals, some just normal human faces. He picked up a bear mask and put it on; might as well be safe if someone flipped on the lights. The plastic pinched his nose and the eveholes were smaller than he would have liked. His peripheral vision was shot. Spector moved slowly toward the light, turning his head back and forth to make sure no one was closing in on him.

He was a few minutes early. He figured it was the smart thing to do. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble tracking him down and arranging this meeting. They were either desperate, or they were setting him up. It could mean trouble either way. Dust irritated his eyes, but he couldn't do anything about it with the mask on. He stopped a dozen or so feet from the light and waited. The only sound was the moths pinging against the metal light fixture.

"Are you there?" The voice was muffled, but definitely male, and came from the other side of the lighted area. Spector cleared his throat. "Yeah, it's me. Why don't you move into the light so I can see you?"

"I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am. Let's keep it that way." There was a pause. Paper crinkled in the darkness.

"So. Let's hear it." Spector took a long, easy breath. This didn't feel like a setup, and he had the upper hand.

An arm reached forward into the light. The person was short enough to be a kid, but the arm was thick with heavy muscle. The fingers on the hand were short. The edge of a plastic glove peeked out from under the leather one. This guy was obviously being very careful. The hand held a manilla envelope. "Everything you need to know is in here."

"Toss it over." The arm threw it toward him. The envelope landed heavily and skidded to the edge of the lighted area, stirring up dust and paint flecks. "Like the sound of that. "' Spector walked over to the envelope. Hell, let the guy see him in the bear mask. It wouldn't matter. He picked the envelope up and popped it open with a thumb. There were several carefully hatched stacks of hundred dollar bills, a round-trip ticket to Atlanta in the name of George Kerby, and a piece of paper that had been folded over twice. Spector figured there was over fifty thousand.

"Half now. The rest when the job's finished." The voice had moved, and was now between Spector and the door. Spector opened the slip of paper and held it up to the light to read. He took a sharp breath. "Shit. Never ask for anything small. And Atlanta, too. What a mess that'll be. Why not wait until he's back in town and get a refund on George Kerby's plane ticket?"

"I want it taken care of in the next week. Tomorrow wouldn't be too soon. We got a deal?"

"Yeah, okay," Spector said, bending the envelope over and tucking it into his shirt. "You must hate this guy something fierce."

The door opened. Spector got a glimpse of the man before he pulled it closed again. Four feet tall and built like a linebacker-a dwarf. Not many of those around. And only one who had it in for the guy he'd been hired to nail.

"I heard you were dead, Gimli." No answer. But he couldn't expect any from someone who was supposedly stuffed and mounted in the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum. Still, Spector knew better than anyone that just because a person was supposed to be a stiff didn't necessarily make it SO.

It was Rat's Alley, where the dead men lost their bones. Where Jokers Wild was, was Rat's Alley.

It was probably a good alley for rats.

The last of the customers stumbled out through the door, set like a scream into a blank brick imbecile face of wall. The doorway was normal height, but most of them kept heads ducked low into collars wilted with the sweat of fear, anticipation, and sweet release, kept them that way as they picked their way through mother-of-pearl puddles, the faded glory of plastic food wrappers, stale city smell of tired proteins and complex hydrocarbons aging without grace.

An insignificant figure loitered next to the doorway, James Dean with a hunchback, his black Ked propped against the wall behind him, his white one down in the muck, nodding and humming low in his throat to make sure the night's clientele kept heading in the right direction. It was no sweat. The ones still inside were leaving to put the rubbery, giggling menace of Moon Goon behind them, and once outside the right direction was away from him.

On the other side of the door a bulky figure, bagged in black cloak and pantaloons, nodded and murmured floorwalker endearments through a seamless clown's mask: "Thankyou. Please come again. Thank you. Always a pleasure." At most they nodded back.

Last out were a handful of Beautiful Youths, late teens who still managed to look fresh and scrubbed beneath their flattops and floppy nouveaux dos, the jokers Wild wait staff.

James Dean manque watched them walk. His pupils dilated when his eyes fixed the boys, jocks as clean limbed and muscled as fledgling Howard heroes. He wasn't aware. They were probably queers anyway. There were queers everywhere; you never could tell. Mackie's scrotum and fingertips itched at the thought; there were things he liked to do to queers. Not that he got much chance. The Gatekeeper and the Man were always on him to be careful where he used his powers. And whom on.

When the last were gone from Rat's Alley, the man with the clown face shut the door. Its outside was enameled a chipped green. He took hold of the frame with white-gloved fingers, pulled it away from the wall. What lay behind was brick. He folded door and frame into a bundle, like a collapsed artist's easel, and tucked it into the billow of one armpit.

"Be good, Mackie," he said, reaching up to pet the thin cheek, just showing a scum of downy whiskers. Mackie didn't pull away. Gatekeeper wasn't queer, he knew that. He liked it when the masked man touched him. He liked approval. A skinny teenage expatriate hunchback didn't get much of that. Especially when Interpol wanted to talk to him.

"I will, Gatekeeper," he said, grinning lopsidedly and bobbing his head. "You know I'm always good." His words had a broad loopy north German lilt to them.

Gatekeeper regarded him a moment longer. His eyes were only visible sometimes. Right now they were just hooded blacknesses in his mask.

His gloved fingertips slid down Mackie's face, rasping softly. He turned and walked away, down the alley with a slight waddle, carrying his bundle beneath his arm.

Mackie went the other direction, picking his way carefully around the puddles. He hated to get his feet wet. Tonight, Rat's Alley would be somewhere else. He'd find it, no worry. He'd feel the call, the siren's song of jokers Wild, like the rest of those who belonged, the victims and the audience, whose thrills sprang in part from the knowledge that their roles were interchangeable.

Not Mackie, though. In Jokers Wild, Mackie was untouchable. Nobody fucked with him in the nightclub of the damned.

He emerged on Ninth into a breeze full of Hudson River and diesel fumes. Motile features contorted in a brief twitch of nostalgia and loathing: it was just like the Hamburg docks where he'd grown up.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned his higherright-shoulder to the wind. He had to check a message drop in a Bowery flop. The Man was doing something big down in Atlanta. He might need Mackie at any time. Mackie Messer couldn't bear to miss a moment of being needed.

He started to hum his song, his ballad. Ignoring a tortured rabbit squeal of bus air brakes, he walked.