Ace In The Hole

9:00 A.M.

The breakfast crowd was thinning out. The people who came here some black, some white, all working class-had to get to their jobs. Spector was a hell of a lot more comfortable eating here than at the Marriott. There were too many people he was tempted to kill there, and after last night's attack he was in a particularly foul mood. He'd been working his way through the morning newspaper, but so far hadn't seen anything about Tony getting sent to the hospital by a group of anti-joker thugs.

He'd let Shelly check Tony into the hospital. He didn't want to be around when the cops showed and started asking questions. No point in pushing his luck. Shelly had given him a strange look when he took off, but he knew she wouldn't talk. She was satisfied that he was on their side and that would be enough.

Spector finished the last of his hash browns and bacon.

The coffee was hot and they kept his cup filled, so he didn't feel like going anywhere just yet. He was beginning to lose his enthusiasm for this job, anyway. Maybe he should just pay Tony a visit and skip town.

He'd sort it out later. Right now he was going to relax and mind his own business.

The press were lined up six deep in the waiting room. Gregg caught a glimpse of them every time the doors opened: a wash of portable video lights, a flurry of electronic flashes, a babble of shouted questions. The news of Ellen's fall had spread rapidly. Before the ambulance had arrived at the hospital, they were waiting.

Billy Ray leaned against the wall, scowling. " I can have security move them if you want, Senator. They're like a flock of buzzards. Ghouls."

"It's okay, Billy. They're just doing their job. Don't worry about them."

"Senator, I was so close, I tell you." Billy clenched his hand in front of his face, his mouth twisted. "I should have got her. It's my damn fault."

"Billy, don't. It's not your fault. It's no one's fault." Gregg sat head in hands on a couch outside the surgical clinic. It was a careful pose: The Distraught Husband. Inside, Puppetman was exuberant. He rode Ellen's pain, relishing it. Even under the haze of the anesthetic, he could make her writhe inwardly. Her worry for the baby was a cold, primal dark blue; Puppetman made the emotion an achingly saturated sapphire, fading slowly into the orange-red of her injuries. But better-far, far better-was Gimli. The Gimli-thing that had fastened itself on his child was in torment, and there were no drugs to blunt that pain, nothing to stop Puppetman from doubling and redoubling it. Gregg could feel Gimli suffocating, choking, screaming inside Ellen's womb.

And Puppetman laughed. He laughed as the baby died because Gimli died with it. He laughed because at last the insanity was over.

The infant's slow, horrible death was tasty. It was good. Gregg felt it all numbly. He was being split in half.

The part of him that was Gregg hated this, was appalled and disgusted by Puppetman's exuberant response. That Gregg wanted to weep rather than laugh.

You shouldn't feel relief. It's your child dying, man, a part of you. You wanted it and you've lost it. And Ellen… She loves you, even without Puppetman, and you betrayed her. How can you not be sad, you son of a bitch?

But Puppetman only scoffed. Gimli had it. It wasn't your child, not any longer. It's better that it dies. It's better that it nourishes us.

In his head, Gregg could hear Gimli sobbing. It was an eerie sound. Puppetman chuckled at the anguish and desolation in it.

Gimli's cry turned abruptly to a rising, hopeless shriek. As his voice rose in pitch, it began to fade, as if Gimli were falling away into a deep, dark pit.

Then there was nothing. Puppetman groaned orgasmically.

The door to the surgery swung open. A doctor in sweaty scrub greens emerged. She nodded to Gregg and Ray, grimacing. She walked slowly toward them as Gregg rose.

"I'm Dr. Levin," she said. "Your wife is resting now, Senator. That was a terrible fall for a woman in her condition. We've stopped the internal bleeding and stitched up the scalp wound, but she's going to be badly bruised. I'll want to x-ray her hip later; the pelvis isn't broken, but I want to make sure there's no fracture. We'll need to keep her a day or two at least for observation, but I think-eventually-she'll be fine."

Levin paused, and Gregg knew she was waiting for a question. The question. "And the baby?" Gregg asked.

The doctor tightened her lips. "We couldn't do anything for him-a boy, by the way. We were dealing with a prolapsed umbilical and the placenta had torn away from the uterus wall."

"The child was without oxygen for several minutes. With that and the other injuries… " Another grimace. She rubbed at her hand; took a deep breath, and looked at him with sympathetic dark eyes. "It was probably better this way. I'm sorry."

Billy pounded the door with a fist, tearing a jagged splintery hole in the wood and gouging long scratches down his arm. Ray began cursing softly and continuously. Puppetman turned to feed on the guilt, but Gregg forced the power below the surface once more; for the first time in weeks, the power subsided docilely. Gregg faced the wall for a moment.

With Puppetman satisfied, the other part of him grieved.

He swallowed hard, choked it back. When he turned, the doctor wavered in a sheen of genuine tears.

"I'd like to see Ellen now," he said. His voice sounded wonderfully drained, superbly exhausted, and far too little of it was an act.

Dr. Levin gave him a wan smile of understanding. "Certainly, Senator. If you'll follow me-"