Card Sharks

The Ashes of Memory

5

"Hannah, don't sit down! Let's movel"

"At least let me drink my coffee; traffic was hell coming from Washington. What's up, Arnold?"

"The call just came in from NYPD. You know that creep Ramblur we talked to the other day - Flashfire? He blew himself up."

"Jesus -"

They arrived to chaos. Ramblur had lived in the basement of his apartment building. A hole had been blown in the corner of the foundation, and half the windows in the building were gone. Black streaks showed where fire had gushed from the apartment, but there looked to be little actual fire damage. Hannah and Simpson, both now in slicks and helmets, walked over the thick snarl of firehoses and into the water-dripping stairwell. Chief Reiger greeted them at the door.

"Well, Ms. Davis! Arnold - how's those kids of yours? Came to see what's left of Flashfire? Come on in.... It ain't a pretty sight."

The chief was right about that, Hannah decided immediately. Ramblur had evidently been at a workbench set along the wall. Most of the damage to the room seemed to be from the initial explosion - there'd been a small fire, but the force of the blast had snuffed out most of the flames. There were shards of glass everywhere and a few unbroken containers of variously colored powders and granules; Hannah opened the screw top lid to one of them and sniffed. She sifted a little of the powder inside onto her palm. "Calcium hypochlorite," she said. "This guy had a regular chemist's shop here. Better tell your people to be careful in here, Chief, and you'd better keep the tenants out. If he has lithium or potassium around, all you have to do is get them wet and we'll have a real beauty of an explosion and fire here again. Where is he, by the way?"

Reiger snorted and pointed across the room. Hannah looked, then gasped involuntarily. Bamblur was unrecognizable. The entire front of the body was a charred mess. The right arm was missing; so was part of the torso on that side. The corpse was in two parts lying close together, severed just below the ribcage; bone poked whitely from the black and red tangle. He'd been flung across the room so viciously that the plasterboard above him was cracked and dented from where he'd hit. The entire mess still steamed. "Bet he didn't even have a chance to say 'Oops!'" Reiger said. Swallowing once, Hannah went over and looked more closely at the remains. She crouched down in front of Ramblur, studying the skeletal, charcoal-black face. The jaw hung open as if in eternal surprise.

"You'd think a pyro with his background and this kind of stockpile would have known What he was doing," she said.

"Maybe he flunked chemistry 101," Reiger said. "Or maybe something slipped."

"Maybe."

Simpson had gone into the bedroom of the apartment. Now he called out. "Hey, Hannah, better take a look over here."

"On my way." She rose, walked across the room, and then stopped at the door.

Simpson was holding an iron bar in one hand, a steel rod exactly like those which had held the doors at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker. At his feet were two canisters the size of small fire extinguishers. Both of them were a bright, telltale green. There were several gallon and a half drums near the bed. Hannah already knew what they would find in them: jet fuel.

"Congratulations, Ms. Davis," Chief Reiger said, peering into the bedroom behind Hannah. "Looks like you caught your torch."

***

The pool clerk congratulated her like everyone else in the department as he came into her cubicle. Hannah gave him the same tight-lipped smile she'd given the others. "Thanks, Ned. Listen, I have a meeting with Malcolm at three, and I need these tapes and transcripts copied before then. Think you can do it?"

"Sure. Plenty of time. Bet you get a commendation."

"Well see," Hannah said. "The earlier you can get that done ..."

Ned had them back to her at two. Hannah put the copies in a box, sealed it, and walked it down to the mailing department. Then she went and finished typing her report for Malcolm.

The director glanced through the report, riffling the pages without reading, then set it down in front of him. He folded his hands over it and looked up at her. He gave her his best imitation of a smile. "Very good work, Ms. Davis. I'll be drafting a letter for your personal file with my recommendation that you be considered for promotion."

"Malcolm -" Hannah started, then exhaled. "I don't want to close this case. I want to keep working on it."

"Whatever for?" Malcolm blinked. Hannah realized that it was the first time she'd ever seen him do that. "All the evidence is here, Ms. Davis. In fact, it's rare that we have such a clear-out case against a person."

"That's exactly what bothers me, Malcolm. I ... I'm not saying that Ramblur didn't set the fire. He probably did. I already had the paperwork in motion to get a search warrant for his apartment. But it seems awfully convenient that he managed to blow himself to kingdom come just before we moved."

"And just what angle do you wish to pursue in this?"

Hannah hesitated. "I want to go to Saigon and see what I can find on Dr. Faneuil and his nurse. I have the Free Vietnam government's permission to go there, and they're willing to pay my way ..."

Hannah stopped. Malcolm sat behind his desk like a blue-suited statue, his eyes cold. "Let me get this straight," he said, and there was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. "We have an air-tight case against the arsonist. We have found not only the history of arson with him and a prejudice against jokers, but also the very materials that were used in the fire: the steel bars, the oxygen canisters, and the jet fuel. Yet you want to pursue a far-fetched conspiracy theory, one that not only takes you out of the city, out of the state, but across the entire Pacific Ocean toa country that half the civilized world has yet to recognize as legal. No, Ms. Davis. Absolutely and emphatically, no. Please do yourself a very large favor and accept the rewards your hard work on this case will undoubtedly garner."

"Malcolm, you have to trust me in this. After all, it's not costing us anything but my time. Not even the plane fare. All I'm asking for is another week or so. If I have to, let me take an unpaid leave. I just ... I just want to be sure."

"Ms. Davis, which is more likely: that a deranged pyromaniac with a grudge against jokers would burn down the church, or that the fire was a deliberate part of some decades-old conspiracy?"

"I know what it sounds like ..."

"Do you? Do you really? Ms. Davis, I am aware that you have gone to the World Health Organization, that you contacted the UN, that you spoke with Free Vietnam's delegation in Washington. I'm telling you now - enough. You will drop this investigation."

"Or?"

His expression didn't change. "I should think that someone with your imagination would be able to figure that out," he said.

Hannah stood. "I don't need to," she told him. "I quit."

She threw her identification and pass down on his desk.

***

David came in while she was packing. He stood in the doorway of their - his, she reminded herself - bedroom and watched her throwing clothes into her suitcases. "Malcolm Coan called me at the office," he said. "I thought I might find you here, but I really didn't think you'd be this crazy, Hannah. What is it with you? Can't you stand having success? You enjoy wrecking everything anyone's done for you?"

Hannah didn't answer him. She continued to fold her blouses, to cram pantyhose into the corners of the suitcase. "So this is it?" David said. "You've walked out on your job, now you're walking out on me, too."

"Yes," she said. "Very observant of you, David. Go to the head of your class."

"Where are you going?"

"To some friends."

"I didn't think you had any friends here. I thought they were all my friends," David suddenly laughed, bitterly. "Oh, I get it. Joker friends. Twisted freak friends. Infected friends. Is he good in bed, Hannah? Did the wild card give him two dicks, or maybe a prehensile tongue?"

Hannah slammed the suitcases shut, clicked the locks closed savagely. "You're sick, David. Listen to yourself." She swung the suitcases from the bed and started to push past him.

He blocked the door with his hand. "Move, David," Hannah said. "Please. I don't hate you; this just isn't working out, and I need to do this. Don't destroy my good memories of you with something we'll both regret."

David glared at her. Hannah thought that he might actually strike, but at last his hand dropped from the door jamb and she moved past him into the living room. He stayed where he was, staring at her as she moved to the door to the apartment and opened it.

"The jokers aren't worth this," he called after her. "Nothing touched by that damn virus is worth it -"

She shut the door. Quietly.

And she wondered.

***

"Father Squid? Quasiman?"

Hannah knocked again on the door of the apartment a few blocks from the ruins of the church - the address Father Squid had given them when he left the hospital. She heard footsteps beyond the door. A chain rattled, and the door opened to reveal the priest standing there. Quasiman was standing in the middle of the shabby living room behind him, looking like a mishappen statue. Hannah backed up a step. "Ms. Davis?" He looked at the suitcases.

"I ... I'm in the process of moving. I also need to talk with you. You're going to get a package in a day or two."

"Why don't you come in, Ms. Davis?" Father Squid said.

"Hannah," she replied. "Please. Father ... I think I've just done something every crazy and very stupid."

"That hardly makes you unique," Father Squid said, and smiled under the forest of tentacles. He opened the door fully and stepped back. "Come on in. You'll be welcome, for as long as you need."

***

Father Squid and Quasiman saw Hannah off at Tomlin International two days later. Ambassador Ngu hadn't seemed to care that Hannah was no longer official; the paperwork and tickets arrived at Father Squid's apartment on schedule from the Free 'Nam delegation. Hannah's passport was still valid from a trip to Paris the summer before, and Belew had promised that all the necessary entry papers would it be waiting at Saigon International.

The flight was an interminable nineteen hours: New York to Dallas / Ft. Worth, Dallas to San Francisco, San Francisco to Honolulu, Honolulu to Tokyo, Tokyo to Saigon. Hannah arrived exhausted, desperately weary of planes and airline food, and bedraggled. The passengers on the flight in had been largely jokers of various descriptions, heading for this new Promised Land of joker freedom. Hannah, as a nat, had been the one out of place, and the jokers had made that abundantly clear to her. She'd been glad to escape the stares, the whispered comments, and the rudeness.

She told herself that she'd simply experienced what they had gone through every day. The rationalization didn't ease the hurt.

The tropical heat and humidity hit Hannah almost immediately, sucking the air from her lungs and causing her cotton blouse and bra to stick to her skin. Palm trees swayed in the hot wind; in the distant haze, the airport buildings shimmered. Inside the air-conditioned but still sweltering terminal, Hannah queued with everyone else for customs. A man approached her as she stood there. He was white, and looked normal enough until she noticed the tiger-like tail protruding from the rear of his jeans and the incisors that showed as he smiled. "You Hannah Davis?"

She nodded, unsure.

"Name's Croyd Crenson. Mark Meadows sent me to meet you." He held out his hand and she saw that the tips of his fingers were thick and rounded. The tips of retractable claws gleamed. She took the proffered hand tentatively, and the man grinned. "They're great for peeling oranges," he said. "And other things, too."

Hannah took her hand away quickly. Croyd continued to grin. His tail lashed and curled around her ankle. It tugged gently. "Come on," he said. "We'll get you past here and get your luggage."

The tail tugged again, much higher up the leg this time, past the hem of her long skirt. "Aahh, pantyhose," he said as Hannah brushed the tail angrily away. "Nobody wears real stockings anymore." Croyd chuckled. "The tail's great for other things, too," he said. When she didn't answer, he shrugged. "Come on."

He escorted her past the line, had a brief conversation in halting Vietnamese with the official at the gates, showed him a sheaf of official-looking papers which the man stamped dutifully, then they were waved on. The luggage turntables were close by, but as they approached, Hannah and Croyd both stopped.

"Quasiman?" The hunchhaek turned. Hannah's suitcases sat alongside him. "Hey, Hannah," the hunchback said, smiling apologetically. "I remember you, but I've forgotten where I am. Awfully hot here, isn't it? I knew where I was, a second ago ..."

"Saigon," Hannah told him. "In what used to be Vietnam."

"Oh." Quasiman accepted that placidly. She might as well have said Manhattan.

"How?" Hannah asked, "do you keep doing that? - showing up where I am."

Quasiman shrugged, but one shoulder refused to lift, suddenly hanging limp as if all the muscles had been cut. "I just think about a place, and I'm there. Didn't you know that? I thought I had told you, but I get confused with what I've done and what I'm going to do...."

Hannah gaped, wondering how in the world she could have been so stupid. All those times he'd snuck past or just showed up ... "Great. You teleport. What else haven't you told me?"

Quasiman grinned.

At least Croyd seemed to accept Quasiman's presence with equanimity. "Quas with you?"

"He seems to be. You know him?"

"Yeah. I know him and the priest both. He don't exactly need a passport to get by customs. Seems more coherent than normal, for him; you must be a good influence. Come on - I got a car waiting in front." At the car - a ten-year-old Renault whose trunk barely held Hannah's suitcases - Quasiman climbed in back. Croyd opened the passenger side front door for Hannah. "You can sit up front with me," he said. "You definitely got the best seat in the house." His tail lashed the ground. His gaze was not on her eyes.

Hannah got in the rear with Quasiman and curled in the corner.

The short drive into the city gave Hannah some small feel for the land. The area around Saigon was flat and heavily farmed. Rice paddies shimmered in the sun in precise, green rectangles. Workers in conical straw hats worked the fields, the pants rolled up to their knees as they moved through the standing water. Carts piled recklessly with furniture or produce or simply packed with families moved ponderously on the side of the road, pulled by oxen and urged on by children wielding long bamboo sticks.

Then, almost without warning, they were in the city itself: crowded, loud, and dirty. Even with the windows up and the air conditioner's fan roaring, she could hear the sounds of street merchants hawking their wares and the constant blaring of horns in the streets packed with a combination of cars, bicycles, and carts. The city seemed over-full and very foreign - she saw no caucasian faces at all. Whenever they stopped, people stared at their car, pointing and talking. Hannah, already uncomfortable sitting with Quasiman in the back, found herself pressing hard against the corner. Quasiman seemed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open. He swayed back and forth with the car's motion as if he were a test dummy. Hannah had to keep pushing him away from her every time they turned left.

They came out of the warren of small streets and made the turn onto the boulevard leading to the Presidential Palace. The line of cars in front of them pulled out slowly into the traffic. As Croyd turned the Wheel to follow them, a rusting green Corolla rushed out from the curb, wheeled around them, and stopped in the middle of the intersection directly in front of them. More horns blared, Croyd's among them, as the occupants of the car got out and began running.

"Go!" Quasiman awakened suddenly, shouting at Croyd and hammering on the back of the seat. His fists put permanent dents in the headrest. "Get past them!"

Hannah knew that if she'd been driving, she'd have hesitated. She would have turned back to Quasiman to see what in the world the hunchback was shouting about.

She would have been too late.

Not Croyd. He stamped his foot on the accelerator, down-shifted, and yanked the wheel right. The car hit the curb, slalomed across grass in the little park on the corner as pedestrians scattered out of their way. They went over the curb again, the suspension bottoming out with a screech, then fishtailed back onto the boulevard. "What -" Croyd yelled hack at Quasiman.

His question got no further. A sinister, low kah-RHUMMPP! behind them lifted the rear of the car sideways. They landed hard, throwing Hannah against the side with Quasiman on top of her. The car stalled.

Hannah found that she was looking back through the rear windshield. In the intersection, the car that had cut them off was a blazing inferno. She could see bodies in a street littered with broken glass and sheet metal. She felt schizophrenic. Part of her was busily deciphering the mess: thermite fuse, cheap electronic timer, make sure the tank's about half full so you have plenty of room for fumes. You'd need ten, fifteen seconds to get clear....

The other part of her wanted to scream.

"Jesus ..." Croyd muttered. He started the car again and jammed it into gear. They lurched away from the scene. "Car bomb. I'm getting you folks to the palace, fast. Hang on." Leaning on the horn, Croyd rushed them away.

Hannah looked at Quasiman. He was frowning. "You're hurt," he said, and reached for her forehead.

She let the stubby, wide fingers touch her, let him brush her hair back from the cut. "Just a scratch," he said, and the relief in his voice was open and gentle. "You'll be okay, Hannah."

"Thanks," she told him. The Word seemed so inadequate.

And then the shakes hit her.

***

"That's like an incredible bummer. Wow ... I mean, I'm just totally wiped out by this. I am really, really sorry. I feel like personally responsible, y'know. I'm just glad you had Quasiman along with you."

Mark Meadows didn't exactly fit Hannah's mental image of a Prime Minister, or for that matter, of a Federal fugitive from justice. Father Squid had explained to Hannah how - with the help of some ace friends - Mark had reclaimed his retarded daughter Sprout from the custody of the state after he'd lost the custody battle in the courts. Hannah had a difficult time picturing the man angry. At first impression, she would have called him - like some of her parents' friends - an "old hippie." He was tall and thin, his thinning hair shoulder-length and pulled back in a pony tail. A scraggly goatee hung like spanish moss from his chin. And his clothing ... the only word Hannah had for it was "bright": loose Vietnamese pants cut from a garish paisley cloth, a strident blue and orange striped tunic, and a green silk scarf. He wore open-toed, leather sandals. He looked out across the lawn of the Presidential Palace to where a smudge of distant smoke still burned beyond the walls, shaking his head. "Some heavy shit has gone down out there over the years," he said. "There's still lots of bad karma floating around. But were putting things together again. Weird political shit like this still happens every once in a while - like a flashback on a bad trip. You shouldn't have had to see it, but the violence is there, part of the total scene. It's getting rarer and rarer, though."

Mark turned back into the room. He smiled at Hannah. The man had what could only be described as a radiant smile, Hannah decided. Almost beatific, like the picture of the saints she remembered from parochial school. Hannah touched the gauze bandage on her forehead, grimacing slightly as she probed the throbbing lump there. An unbidden shiver ran through her. "Prime Minister -"

"Mark. I don't really do anything here. This is Moonchild's place, hers and the people's. White folks like us are just guests."

"Then I'm Hannah," she replied. "That bomb. I have to think it was meant for ..." Hannah swallowed. She couldn't finish the thought.

Mark had. "I know," he said sadly. "But you gotta believe that it also wasn't meant to be, y'know, like fate had a hand in things and made sure you were safe." Mark patted her on the shoulder, like a brother might. "My friend Moonchild'll make sure that you stay that Way, too. Nothing else will happen to you while you're here. I promise. Moonchild's going to make Free Vietnam a Land of Peace. Man, so much evil has come from here. I figure that the cosmic balance has got to be restored. When a place has been this fucked up for so long, imagine what it's going to be like when it turns around. When that happens, this will be like a paradise."

He was so earnest that Hannah could only smile back at him. He seemed to be one of those people who had an eternal innocence in their souls - despite all that life had dealt Meadows, he'd kept that.

"So why don't you tell me about everything's that's going down?" he said.

"I'm not sure where to start, but I'll try." For the next half hour, Hannah gave Meadows a synopsis of what she had learned. He was a good listener, interrupting only to ask a few questions or to clarify something, otherwise nodding sympathetically and shaking his head.

"Far out," he said afterward. "It's like a downer, y'know - all that energy wasted on hating. Fucked up, just totally fucked up." He gave a deep, ponderous sigh. "I can help you, sure. I'll arrange for you to go anywhere and do anything you need to do here. You can go to Xuan Loc yourself and dig around - you know what you're looking for, and that's as safe a place as any. You want to find out about this Faneuil dude, no problem; I'll ask Ai Quoc's staff - he's the Interior Secretary - to look up all the records we have on him. I know Pan at WHO - he's at good guy. I'll give him a call and prod him."

"I'd appreciate it."

"Hey, here's your guardian angel now," Mark said. Quasiman had entered the room, hand in hand with a lovely, dark-haired child - a girl on the verge of womanhood. "I want you to meet my daughter, Sprout...."

***

"How did Faneuil die?" Hannah asked.

Ngo Dinh Yie, one of the elders of the village, pursed his lips and nodded as Croyd translated, then closed his eyes as if remembering. "He was old," Ngo said. "His heart burst. That is what the nurse told us."

"Margaret Durand?"

"Yes. She was with my son, Bui, who also lived in the doctor's house, and said that they had found him dead in his bed. He had died in his sleep, peacefully."

"Did you see the body?"

The old man frowned, pressing his lips together again. Ngo's face looked like a crumpled brown paper sack. "No ... The nurse, she and Bui took care of the body, wrapping it in a sheet and putting it in the coffin the village woodcarver brought for them." Ngo shook his head. "Western customs. Wasteful."

"Then. how did you know it was Faneuil?"

Ngo looked at her as if she were crazy. "I saw his hand, outside the sheet. The doctor always wore a ring, a big gold one with a blue stone and little diamonds set around it. I saw his hand, the doctor's hand, and I saw the ring. We buried the doctor that evening. There -" The elder pointed to the field where a green mound swelled just before the jungle claimed the land. "Everyone grieved. Everyone loved the doctor. I would do anything he asked me to do. Anything."

"I'm sure you would," Hannah answered. She nodded to Croyd, and he dismissed Ngo. Hannah stopped the tape recorder and leaned hack against the rough wooden railing of the pub.

Ngo's story matched everyone else's. Three days of interviews and searching the few existing records had yielded nothing more. The recent war had destroyed most of the paper trail pertaining to Faneuil. The conflict had swept over Xuan Loc also, inflicting heavy casualties on the inhabitants. The survivors spoke almost universally with affection for the doctor. Faneuil had set up a small clinic in the village, offering medical care for the surrounding area. Hannah could find nothing overtly malicious in Faneuil's care of the people - but then there weren't a great number of jokers in the area, either. On the surface, Faneuil had been a benign and beneficent presence in the jungle, healing as best he could with extremely limited funding and supplies.

"Everyone told her that Faneuil had died of a heart attack, even though no one she spoke with had actually seen the body. The two who had - Ngo Dinh Yie's son Bui and Durand - vanished within a week of the doctor's burial. Supposedly they had gone to Saigon, but Meadows's people had found no trace of them there. And that seemed to he where the trail ended.

The best thing that could be said for their time here was that it had allowed her to begin to deal with the paralyzing fear that had come in the wake of the bomb attack. The first night, in the palace, Hannah couldn't sleep. She relived the explosion in her nightmares, and sometimes she was one of the broken bodies strewn on the street. The constant fear was only now beginning to recede. She didn't think she would ever like Saigon now, no matter how well Moonchild, Mark, and his friends succeeded in their vision of a Land of Peace.

In a way, Hannah found it amusing. For years she'd been prowling through the aftermath of fires and explosions, reveling in the messy work of finding the cause. She'd learned to look at the victims as just pieces of the puzzle. She'd felt sorry for them, yes, but she'd never really given much thought to the pain and terror they'd felt. She'd never really put herself in their place and imagined what they must have experienced, how it affected them. The fires, the explosions - they'd never reached out for her.

Now she knew. She wondered if she'd ever he able to see a fire the old way again.

She wasn't looking at anything the old way any more.

"Might as well go inside," Hannah said to Croyd. "Too hot out here."

The one-room building had been Xuan Loc's bar, evidently of Vietnam War vintage, built in a quasi-American style with an old Wooden bar running the width. Quasiman was sitting at one of the tables, staring into space - he'd been that way for an hour, and Hannah was beginning to wonder if he'd come back. Croyd went behind the bar and pulled a bottle of beer from the styrofoam cooler - Croyd had brought cooler, ice, and what seemed to Hannah to be an inordinate supply of beer from Saigon. The ice was long gone, but Croyd didn't seem to mind. "Want one?" Hannah shook her head. Croyd extended a claw from his forefinger and pried off the cap. "Real useful," he said. He went to sit with Hannah and the vacant-eyed Quasiman. Croyd prodded Quasiman's shoulder with a finger. There was no reaction from the joker. "Nobody home," Croyd said, then looked at Hannah. "What's next? You want me to round up some more of the locals?"

"I guess," Hannah said.

"You're not getting What you want, huh?"

"No. Dead ends and more dead ends. No one actually saw Faneuil dead, but everyone's sure he is. Everyone loved him. He's a frigging saint." Hannah sighed. "I'm not surprised that Dr. Rudo couldn't find out anything either."

Croyd didn't say anything. He swas looking at her strangely. He took a long, slow swallow of the beer and set the bottle down again with an undisguised belch. Hannah could feel his tail brushing her feet under the table. "Rudo," Croyd said. "Dr. Pan Rudo?"

"Yes," Hannah said. "He's one of the directors of WHO."

"And he's been helping you with this?"

"Yes, among others," she said again. "Why?"

Croyd sniffed. He took another pull at the bottle. The tail swished around her knees, poking tentatively between them. "Damn it, Croyd -"

"Sorry. Pan Rudo, huh? He sent you here? He knew Faneuil?"

Hannah didn't answer. "You know Dr. Rudo?"

"Knew him." Croyd said. "A long while back." He let the tips of his claws rap sharply against the glass bottle. "But I won't ever forget him...."