Dead Mans Hand

2:00 P.M.

Kant didn't look pleased to see him. "I thought we got rid of you yesterday," he said.

"The reptile ranch was closed, so I came here," Jay said. "Where's your partner?"

"Out to lunch," Kant snapped at him. "Like you. Only with you it's a permanent condition." He showed his teeth. They were still pointed.

"Is that a joke?" Jay asked. It was, he was almost sure of it. He turned to a passing uniform. "Kant just made a joke," he said. The cop ignored him. "I don't think he was real impressed."

"You keep playing games with me, I'm going to make you real sorry" Kant promised. His moment of levity had obviously passed. "What the fuck do you want?" he asked irritably, rubbing at a big green scab under his collar. The starch must chafe his scales.

"I want to talk to Elmo," Jay said.

Kant was so surprised he stopped scratching his scab. "Get the hell out of here before I throw you out."

"You again?" Maseryk said as he sauntered up to the desk. He was chewing on a toothpick. It must have been a good lunch.

"He wants to see Elmo," Kant told his partner, in a tone that suggested it was the funniest thing imaginable. Maseryk didn't laugh. "Why?"

Jay shrugged. "Might as well, can't dance."

"Elmo isn't talking," Maseryk said. "We told him he had the right to remain silent, and damned if he didn't take us up on it."

"He'll talk to me," Jay said.

Kant and Maseryk exchanged glances. "And you'll tell us what he said?" Maseryk suggested.

"Wouldn't be sporting," Jay said.

Kant gave him one of his sideways blinks. "Get out of here before I lose my temper. I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

"Uh-oh," Jay said. "You hear that, Maseryk? Your partner was threatening me with police brutality. Do all lizards have such nasty dispositions, or is it just him?"

Kant came around his desk. He towered over Jay, all teeth and scales. "That's it. C'mon, asshole. Let's dance." Jay ignored him. "I've got a proposition for you," he said to Maseryk. "Why don't you tell your partner to go sun himself on a rock while we talk privately?"

Maseryk looked at Kant. "Give us a moment, Harv"

"You're going to buy into this bullshit?" Kant said. Maseryk shrugged. "He might have something." They walked down to an empty interrogation room. Maseryk shut the door, swung a chair around, and sat down with his arms crossed on its back, studying Jay with those piercing violet eyes. "This better be good," he said.

"It's a modest little deal, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption," Jay said. "You give me ten minutes with Elmo, I'll give you the name of the ace-of-spades killer."

Stony Brook-or, as the note had said, Stoney Brookwas a small suburban town in Suffolk County, Long Island. Brennan stopped at a gas station in his rented Toyota to ask directions to Glenhollow-thank heavens his unknown informant had managed to spell that right Road. It ran nearly parallel to Long Island Sound, and in fact turned into a wandering county road through sparsely settled, heavily forested country soon after Brennan turned onto it. A few houses were directly on the road, more stood back out of sight on meandering dirt lanes.

Brennan kept looking for number 8800, but missed it the first time by. He stopped when he saw number 8880 on a mailbox next to a dirt lane; checked for nonexistent traffic, then did a careful three-point turn and headed back down the road, this time driving even slower. This time he passed number 8700 without finding the address he was looking for, but remembered going by an unnumbered lane that could have been the missing 8800.

Brennan pulled over to the side on a relatively wide section of the road. He parked, got out of the car, and went to the trunk where he had stashed his bow case. He glanced up and down the road. There was still no traffic. He opened the bow case and with practiced, assured ease, assembled his compound bow. He drew the string smoothly. His shoulder burned, but he decided he could handle the pain. He slipped his hood over his head and then faded into the trees crowding the roadside, the hunter returned to the forest.

The lockup in Fort Freak had special cells for special customers. Elmo rated a windowless cubicle with a reinforced steel door. There were unseemly bulges in the metal where some previous tenant had tried to punch his way out.

When they entered, Elmo was seated on the narrow bed, feet dangling a foot off the floor. His arms were locked in the most massive pair of handcuffs Jay had ever seen. "Custom design," Maseryk told him. "For perps with more muscles than mother nature intended." He was using his bad-cop voice, hard-edged and nasty. Maybe he and Kant really did swap roles with jokers.

"Take them off," Jay said.

"That wasn't part of our deal," Maseryk said. "You've got ten minutes." He locked the cell behind him. They listened as his footsteps receded down the corridor.

Elmo looked up for the first time. "Popinjay," the dwarf said. He was about four feet tall and almost as wide. His arms and legs were short but massive, thick with cords of muscle. "They tell me you're not talking."

"Nothing to say. I still got my phone call coming. Know any lawyers?"

"Try Dr. Pretorius," Jay said. "He any good?"

"He's a pain in the ass, but yeah, he's good. And he's had lots of practice defending scapegoats."

"You don't think I did it?"

Jay sat down on the toilet. "She was scared. No offense, Elmo, but I can't imagine her being scared of you. She hired me as extra security, told me I'd start the next day. That make any sense if the guy you're scared of lives downstairs?"

The dwarfs normally stolid features twisted in pain. "I was her bodyguard," he said. "For years. I never let nothing happen to her. This is my fault. I should have been there."

"Why weren't you?"

Elmo studied his hands. His fingers were blunt and stubby, ridged with calluses. "She sent me on an errand."

"Then it's not your fault. You did what she told you to do. What kind of errand?"

Elmo shook his head. "Can't say. Her business."

"She's dead," Jay pointed out, "and you're going to take the fall for killing her. You think Jokertown is bad? You ought to see how jokers get treated up in Attica. Talk to me, Elmo. Give me something to work with."

Elmo looked around the cell. "I delivered a sealed envelope and an airline ticket to a man in a warehouse," he said after a while. "The meeting went off without a hitch, but when I got back to the Palace, there were cop cars out front. I didn't like the looks of that, so I figured I'd lay low until I found out what was going on. When I heard over the radio, I decided it'd be healthier to leave town. I didn't have nothing to go back for anyway."

"Who was the man?" Jay asked.

Elmo closed his hand into a fist. "Don't know"

"What did he look like?"

Elmo opened his fingers again. "It was dark, and he wore a mask. A bear mask. Black, with big teeth."

Jay scowled. "He look strong?"

Elmo laughed. "We didn't do any arm wrestling. I delivered an envelope, that's all." Then he fell silent, staring at his fingers as he opened and closed his hand.

"What else?" Jay prompted. He got no reply. "C'mon, Elmo, we've only got ten minutes. Help me."

The dwarfs face was expressionless for a moment, his eyes locked on Jay's. Then he nodded slowly and looked away. "Yeah," he said. "Okay. It's hard. She…" Elmo groped for words. "She didn't tell me not to say nothing, but she never had to. I knew when to keep my mouth shut. If you didn't, you didn't stay around the Palace for long. But now it don't matter, does it? She's gone."

"Tell me about the meeting."

"The envelope was full of money. A lot of money. She was buying a hit. I knew it. She knew I knew. We both pretended otherwise. That was the way she liked to do things." He looked up at Jay. "He must have hit her first, that's all I can figure."

Chrysalis had never been a model citizen, Jay knew. She made her own rules. Murder, though… that didn't sound like the woman he'd known. "Who did she want dead?"

"In the envelope with the money was a folded-up piece of paper with a name on it," Elmo told him. "I never saw it, but when the guy in the bear mask read it, he made a crack."

"He said, 'Shit. Never ask for anything small.' Then I knew. The money in the envelope was way more than the going price for a hit, and that was only part of the payment. And that airline ticket? Round-trip to Atlanta."

"Atlanta?" Jay said. For a moment he wondered who the hell Chrysalis could possibly know in Atlanta. Then he got it, and a cold sick feeling spread over him. "Oh shit," he said.

"She was never interested in politics until last year," Elmo confided. "Then she got real interested. I figured, I don't know, maybe some of the stuff she'd seen on the tour."

"She wasn't like old Des or some of those other joker politicos, but she was a joker."

"Leo Barnett?" Jay said. Elmo nodded. "Gotta be."

"Great," Jay said. "Just fucking greatl" For a moment he couldn't think. "Tell me about the hit man," he said.

"Tall, skinny. Wore gloves. Cheap suit, didn't fit too well. On the ticket, the name was George Kerby, but that was just something Chrysalis made up."

"George Kerby," Jay repeated. The name sounded vaguely familiar. "When was this flight?"

"Today," Elmo said.

"Shit," Jay said. "Shit shit shit." He glanced at his watch. His time was almost up. "Maseryk will be here in a minute to chase me out, we need to hurry. Tell me about Yeoman."

"Yeoman? He's history," Elmo said bluntly. "He's been gone for, what, a year now? Nobody knew where, not even Chrysalis. She tried like hell to find him. I think she was afraid the Fists had iced him. There was bad blood between Yeoman and the Fists. But it couldn't have been him. He was only a nat."

"The Oddity?" Jay asked.

Elmo shrugged. "If they had dealings, it wasn't anything she told me about."

"Who else?" Jay asked. "Enemies, rejected lovers, greedy heirs, anyone who had a reason to want her dead?"

"She had a silent partner," Elmo told him. "A joker named Charles Dutton. He helped her buy the Palace, way back when she started. I guess the joint is his now"

"I'll talk to him," Jay promised. "Anything else?" Elmo hesitated.

"C'mon," Jay urged. "Spill it."

"I don't know what it means," Elmo said, "but last year, in the spring, I had to get rid of a body."

"A body?" Jay said.

Elmo nodded. "A woman. Young, dark-skinned, might have been pretty once, before, but not when I saw her. She'd been butchered, cut all to hell. Her breasts cut off, her face sliced to ribbons, one arm flayed, it made me sick. I'd never seen Chrysalis so scared as she was that night. It was my night Off, but she found me, called me back. When I got there, Digger Downs was dry-heaving in the men's room, and Chrysalis was in her office, just sitting there smoking and staring at that body. Her hand was trembling, but she couldn't seem to look away until I covered it up with a sheet. She told me to clean it all up. So I did. I didn't ask no questions and she didn't tell me nothing. After, she never spoke about it."

"What did you do with the body?" Jay asked.

"Put it in a garbage bag and left it in the basement. The next morning it was gone. The neighbors-"

They both heard the footsteps at the same time. "The neighbors?" Jay prompted.

"Next door," Elmo started to say as a key turned in the lock. "Any bodies we left for them. They were good at stuff like that." He shut up and looked sullenly at the floor.

The cell door swung open. Next to Maseryk was Captain Ellis herself, puffing on a cigarette and bouncing from heel to heel. "Get the hell out of there."

"I was just leaving," Jay said. He gave Elmo a reassuring pat on the arm as he walked past. The dwarf didn't even look up.

"I want you to know that Maseryk made this little arrangement without my permission," Ellis snapped. "But now that it's done, you damn well better deliver that name, and it damn well better pan out, or you and your friend Elmo could be sharing a cell."

Jay couldn't even work up the energy to sass her. "Daniel Brennan," he said.

Maseryk shot him a look like someone had just slipped an ice cube down his pants. Ellis just snorted, and wrote down the name. "Have a nice day," Jay told them, walking out.

There were no walls, fences, or other barriers to keep Brennan off the grounds of 8800 Glenhollow Road. A few trees had posted signs on them, prohibiting hunting, fishing, or any other trespass under the full extent of the law, but Brennan didn't let them stop him. He moved cautiously through the trees, as quietly and carefully as if he were back in Vietnam and the forest was crawling with the enemy.

He finally broke through the screen of trees and found himself facing a rolling lawn that was as smooth as a putting green. Past the beautifully manicured lawn was an extensive flower garden. Past the flower garden was a high hedge. Past the hedge was a house, two stories. The first floor was hidden by the hedge, but four windows on the second floor looked directly upon the lawn.

Brennan took a deep breath and sprinted across the open lawn, feeling completely naked and vulnerable to anyone who might be watching from the house. He hurtled the first row of flowers, landing lightly in a crouched position, and caught his breath and listened. Nothing. He looked around. Nothing but flowers.

He scuttled into the garden in a crouch, keeping out of sight of the second-story windows, recognizing many of the flowers as he moved through the garden. There were roses and chrysanthemums, snapdragons and sunflowers, but planted side by side with them were poppies, like those he had seen growing in plantations in Vietnam and Thailand, and datura, which he recognized from his boyhood days in the Southwest, and, in cool, deep-shaded bowers, mushrooms of a dozen colors and shapes, none of which looked suitable for sauteing and eating with steak.

The innocent-looking flower garden, Brennan realized, was a drug chemist's dream with enough raw material to concoct almost any kind of stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogen. But, Brennan noted with a professional landscaper's eye, it was also a place of beautiful serenity, laid out with an eye toward the perfect blending of colors, shapes, and textures. Even the occasional ornaments interspersed between the rows of plants were pleasing and harmonious, if at times a little outre.

Like the four-foot-high concrete mushroom and the hookahsmoking caterpillar curled up on it. Not your typical garden ornament, certainly, but it fit the theme of this one.

Brennan smiled, and then the caterpillar turned and looked at him. Its cheeks puffed out and blew a hazy cloud of smoke, which engulfed Brennan before he could shut his mouth. He sucked in a deep lungful of sweet-tasting smoke, turned, and managed to stagger three steps. His head was swimming in unstoppable circles and his eyes were rolling up in back of his head as he fell heavily on the thick grass. It felt cool on his cheek as the caterpillar spoke in a naggingly familiar voice through mechanical lips.

"Welcome to the magic kingdom," it said as Brennan's eyes closed.