Dead Mans Hand

BRAUN, JACK GOLDEN BOY*

"How does it look?" Crash asked him.

"Like a start," he said. He showed her the list. "Any of these people ever threaten to rearrange Digger's features?" She looked over the names carefully. "Well," she said, "Billy Ray was pretty upset with him once. Digger wrote a piece on the strongest men in the world, and he said that Billy Ray was minor league compared to Golden Boy and the Harlem Hammer. Ray took it the wrong way." She turned off the computer. "But he's in Atlanta, too, isn't he?"

"He better be," Jay said, "he's Senator Hartmann's bodyguard." He folded up the list and slid it into his breast pocket. "Two more things. Digger's address." He smiled. And your phone number.

Well, he thought afterward, one out of two wasn't bad.

Brennan woke to the jangling of the phone that sat on the nightstand beside the hotel room's lumpy, sagging bed. He sat up and winced as pain lanced through his stiff shoulder and sore back where the Oddity had slammed him against the wall. "Hello."

"Morning, Mr. Y" It was Tripod. "I've found someone you may want to have a word with. Name's Bludgeon."

"You're right," Brennan said grimly. "Where are you?"

"Uncle Chowder's Clam Bar," Tripod said.

"Right." Brennan hung up. He sat for a moment on the edge of the bed. He was still tired and he ached from the beating he'd taken the night before. Worse, he missed Jennifer more than he had ever missed anyone or anything. Perhaps, he thought, he had lost too many friends and lovers down through the years and he was getting too old and weary to bear the losses anymore.

He stood carefully and stretched his sore back and shoulder cautiously.

To hell with it, he told himself. He had never given in before. He wouldn't start now. He needed rest, but there was no time. He needed food, but he could take care of that easily enough. He needed Jennifer above everything, but there was nothing he could do about that.

As he dressed he decided to leave his bow behind. There was no way he could pull it properly the way his shoulder felt. He'd lost his other weapon, his Browning, the night before, during his tussle with the Oddity.

Great, Brennan thought, just great. He had to face Bludgeon empty-handed. What a way to start the day.

Tripod was lounging against a building whose grimy brick facade was in desperate need of a sand blasting. A flashing neon sign proclaimed the ground-floor restaurant UNCLE CHOWDERS CLAM BAR while a mollusk with a top hat and cane and pink neon smile did a fluttering dance on stick-thin legs. A picket fence of rusty iron bars screened off a stairway that led to the basement. The battered sign bolted to the fence had a pointing six-fingered hand painted on it, a sure sign that they were in Jokertown.

"Squisher's Basement," Brennan read. "Charming." He turned to Tripod. "You're sure Bludgeon's still in there?"

"I been watching," the joker said, "and he ain't come out."

Brennan nodded and pulled out a sheaf of bills from his jeans' pocket. He peeled off two twenties and gave them to Tripod.

"They don't much like nats in Squisher's," the joker said. Brennan smiled underneath his mask. "Thanks for the warning." He went down the stairs.

Squisher's was already crowded with jokers who felt compelled to drink their breakfasts. It stank of infrequently washed bodies, spilled beer, and indifferently sopped vomit.

It was dimly lit, but Brennan could see the heads of the patrons swivel to stare at him as he entered. Conversations stopped as he approached and picked up again when he passed by. Tripod had been right. This was strictly a joker hangout and it looked as if they liked it that way.

The biggest aquarium Brennan had ever seen was set behind the bar over the shelves of liquor bottles. Something floating in the dark and oily water suddenly surged against the glass and poked his head over the side, blowing water from a hole in the top of his skull. He stared at Brennan with cold, unblinking eyes.

"Don't get many of your kind in here," the joker finally said. His ghastly face was set in a hairless round head, his fish mouth was filled with rows of pointy teeth. "Nats, I mean. You are a nat, right?"

"I have business with one of your customers."

Squisher gave him the fish eye. "What kind of business?"

"It's none of yours."

Brennan could hear the jokers seated along the bar mutter among themselves.

"This is my place," Squisher said. "Whatever happens in it is my business." He glanced down into the water, reached out a long boneless arm, and caught something. Brennan saw orange scales flash as Squisher dropped a small fish into his mouth, gulped twice and swallowed, then looked back at Brennan.

Brennan removed an ace of spades from his hip pocket and held it out toward the joker.

Squisher squinted, then reached out a long sinuous arm that ended in a collection of twitching tentacles and took the card from Brennan. He brought the pasteboard close to his face, looked from it to Brennan, then silently slid under the water of his aquarium.

Brennan turned to face the room where everyone was suddenly very interested in their drinks, and spotted Bludgeon sitting alone at a table in a far, dark corner.

He recognized the joker instantly. He'd only seen him once before during a crazy, confused brawl in Times Square almost two years ago, but Bludgeon didn't have the kind of face you could easily forget.

He was seven feet of ugly, with a puckered, scarred face and a right hand that was a twisted club of muscle and bone. He was thinner than the first time Brennan had seen him, so thin that his filthy clothes hung loosely on his frame. His skin was blotchy, his hair long and greasy. He sat alone, staring at nothing and mumbling to himself as Brennan approached. The whites of his eyes were a clouded yellow shot through with scarlet veins. Brennan stared at him, unsure whether to feel pity or disgust.

"Whadda fuck you want?" Bludgeon asked after a long moment.

"Talk on the street is that you killed Chrysalis," Brennan said lowly.

A spark of animation kindled in Bludgeon's sick eyes. "Yeah," he rumbled. "It was me. I offed the cocksucking bitch. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it."

"First tell me how you killed her."

Bludgeon held up his clubbed right fist. "I beat the fucking whore's brains out with my hand. It's all I ever needed. Never needed a fucking gun, never needed no goddamn knife. Just my hand."

The twitch of disgust in Brennan's face, the loathing in his eyes, went unnoticed by the drunken joker. "Where?" Brennan said softly.

"Where what?"

"Where'd you kill her?"

"In that shithole saloon of hers, man," Bludgeon mumbled. "I threw her on the bar and stuck my dick in her and fucked the living shit out of her." He laughed and a mad light shone in his sick eyes. "Then just to make sure she was dead I beat her fucking head in. Just to make sure."

"You scum," Brennan said through clenched teeth. "You shit-eating scum. I'd kill you where you sit if I didn't know that you're lying."

Bludgeon blinked, his porcine eyes staring at Brennan without comprehension. He stood up when Brennan's words finally soaked into his clouded brain, and screamed a stream of obscenities. He pushed the table at Brennan, but it only scraped slowly across the floor and Brennan sidestepped it easily.

Bludgeon howled and swung his clubbed arm. Brennan avoided the slow-motion punch and grabbed Bludgeon by his wrist and shoulder and threw him against the bar, scattering jokers right and left.

Squisher rose agitatedly from the depths of his aquarium as Brennan picked up a chair.

"My tank!" the joker screamed. "Don't break the glass!" Bludgeon, pinned against the bar and breathing hard, looked at Brennan with fear and pain in his eyes. Brennan swung the chair, smashing him across the gut, and Bludgeon gasped like a fish out of water. Brennan swung again, catching Bludgeon on the side and slamming him down across three bar stools. Bludgeon made a feeble attempt to stand, but his slack muscles wouldn't work. He sighed, bubbling the bloody froth on his lips, and made weak swimming motions with his arms.

Brennan checked his third blow when he saw that Bludgeon had nothing left in him. He dropped the chair, the tubular metal of its back and legs twisted into an ornate abstract sculpture.

"You didn't kill her," Brennan said in a low voice. "Why say you did?"

"I need a fucking job," Bludgeon panted. "No one will touch me. No one will give me a fucking chance. I figured… I just figured Fadeout or somebody in the Fists would give me a chance, you know just give me a fucking chance…"

"You pathetic lying shit," Brennan said in a low voice. He had known it wouldn't be this easy. Partly out of frustration, partly because he wanted Chrysalis's killer to know that he was on his trail, he turned to face the room and said, "I was Chrysalis's friend and I'm going to find her killer. Bet on it."

He dropped an ace of spades on Bludgeon and stalked out of the bar. Before he got out the door one of the bar's bolder patrons was stripping the leather jacket off Bludgeon's back, slapping him in the face when he protested in a sad, tremulous whine.