Dead Mans Hand

10:00 P.M.

It was a cinch to follow the Oddity, no matter how crowded or how empty the streets. The joker didn't move very fast, and he certainly had a conspicuous silhouette.

Things got a little trickier when the Oddity took to the deserted back alleys where there were no other pedestrians to blend in with. But the alleys were also darker than the streets and allowed Brennan to move from shadow to shadow with the stealth of a stalking cat.

The Oddity finally stopped before a back service entrance of a dark brick building and let himself in with a key. Brennan followed him as closely as he dared. He stopped before the metal door, pausing to read the legend stenciled on it:

Brennan frowned, wondering what connection the Oddity could have with the wild card museum. He went to work on the door, knowing that he wouldn't find any answers out there in the alley.

Inside, the museum was dimly lit by security lights that threw the various exhibits into shadowy relief. Brennan felt a touch of strangeness as he moved by the silent, dimly lit replicas of aces and jokers and aliens. It was a relief finally to hear the sound of clumping feet that put him back on the Oddity's trail.

He caught up to the Oddity as the joker was disappearing down a flight of stairs that led to the bowels of the museum. Brennan followed him down the stairs and caught up with him again as he entered what looked like a basement workroom. The joker had flicked on all the lights, so Brennan cautiously hid behind a tarp-covered something that was being stored in the wide hallway. From his vantage point he could peer around the doorjamb and see into most of the room, which was largely filled with half-completed wax replicas.

The Oddity was pacing before one of the wax sculptures. Brennan leaned further into the light and saw that it was a nude study of Chrysalis. Her torso was just starting to take form with bones and organs gleaming under wispy musculature. Her head was still a formless blob.

The Oddity suddenly took off his fencing mask and hurled it across the room with an anguished howl. It made a loud clatter as it smashed into a pile of pots and pails that was sitting near the wall. The Oddity, now wearing the sensitive features of a handsome black man whose face was twisted by intense emotion, continued to pace before the sculpture.

Brennan was so engrossed in watching the joker that he almost didn't hear the footsteps on the stairs. He managed to jerk back into the darkness just as Charles Dutton came down the hallway and went into the workroom where the Oddity was pacing.

"I thought it was you," Brennan heard Dutton say. There was a long silence, then Dutton added, "There's no sense brooding over it, Evan."

Brennan heard the Oddity suck in a long, angry breath. "She's dead, Charles, beaten to a pulp by some lousy ace. I'll never finish it now" There was the sound of more angry pacing, then the Oddity-Evan-said, "I'd love to get my hands on the neck of the son of a bitch who did it to her. I would! I really would!"

"Now, Evan," Dutton said placatingly, "That's not like you at all. Sounds more like John. We have plenty of other things to worry about. The police are on the case, and so is Ackroyd. Someone will find the murderer. Let's concentrate on the files."

"I know, Charles," Evan said as Brennan silently backed away down the hall. "I know. But why Chrysalis? Who could have done such a thing?"

Brennan went back up the stairs, through the museum, and out into the alley by the back door.

There'd been no mistaking the pain and anguish in the Oddity's voice, though Brennan was unsure if he was more upset about Chrysalis's death or his unfinished waxwork. In any case, unless the Oddity was even more schizoid than Brennan figured, it was obvious that he hadn't killed Chrysalis. The Oddity was innocent, Brennan thought. So was Bludgeon. The Shadow Fists were looking better and better. He checked his wristwatch as he moved off into the night.

Time to call a man, he thought, about a visit to a graveyard.

This time Jay decided not to ring the doorbell. Just thinking of Ezili gave him a hard-on, but last visit things had gotten entirely too messy for his taste.

He pushed an empty dumpster down the alley and climbed on top. From there his fingers could brush the lowest rung of the ladder that hung down from the old cast-iron fire escape. He stretched, grabbed the metal with one hand, and tried to yank it down. It didn't want to come. Meanwhile the dumpster rolled out from under him, leaving him dangling from the ladder by one hand. Jay grunted, caught the rung with his other hand, chinned himself up, and began to climb. It was at times like this he wished he could teleport himself as easily as he did his targets. But no, he had to do it the hard way. He hunkered down on the fire escape to catch his breath, sniffing dubiously at the air. Something smelled bad.

All the lights were out in Sascha's loft. Jay moved stealthily along the fire escape toward the window. Climbing he could live without, but sneaking was his middle name. It was even easier when you didn't have to juggle a camera.

The window opened on a bedroom. Jay took a quick peek, saw no one. He took out a glass cutter, carefully removed a section of the upper pane, and reached through to open the lock. When the glass came out, the smell got stronger. Jay eased open the window and climbed in, avoiding a window box where odd-looking herbs and flowers fought for space with weeds. It smelled foul inside the room.

By then Jay was pretty sure that he wouldn't be finding either Sascha or Ezili at home. At least not alive. He moved quietly to the bedroom door, opened it a crack, listened for any sounds, heard none, and moved out into the hallway.

The subdivided loft was a lot bigger than he'd supposed. There was the living room, the lavish kitchen, two baths, and six bedrooms. The closer he got to the back, the worse it smelled. When he opened the door to the back bathroom, he gagged and retreated.

The dressing table in the adjoining bedroom offered a dozen different perfumes. Jay found a lace handkerchief in a drawer, doused it liberally, and held it over his mouth and nose. Then he went back to the bathroom to see who'd died. Streetlight poured wanly through a small frosted-glass window onto the tiled floor. Jay could see the tiny pale shapes of the maggots swarming over the corpse. Even through the handkerchief, the smell was overwhelming. Jay forced himself to turn on the lights.

It was a child. A boy, he guessed, though there was barely enough left to tell. Bigger than the weird little monkey thing he'd chased through the Dime Museum, but way too small to be Sascha or Ezili. Jay remembered seeing someone small and somehow misshapen run for the bedroom when Sascha had burst in on him and Ezili. Maybe it was her kid… But would a mother just go off and leave her dead child's corpse to rot on the bathroom floor?

The body was too far gone in putrefaction for close inspection, and the maggots reminded him unpleasantly of the white cone-faced thing in his dream. But he made himself stare at the decaying flesh. Definitely a joker. He was naked, and at first he seemed to have too many limbs, but Jay finally decided that the long swollen thing between his legs was a tail. The body lay facedown, and Jay couldn't make out his features, but there was a huge open sore on the side of his neck, writhing with maggots.

Jay had seen enough. He turned off the light, shut the door, and stood in the darkened hallway, considering his options. He could call the cops. Only this time he wasn't there by invitation. This time he'd done a little breaking and entering. Jay decided he'd let somebody else claim the prize for once. He jammed the handkerchief back into his pocket and began to search the apartment.

No one was home. No one had been home for some time. Except for the dead boy in the john, the tenants had cleared out in a hurry. Jay found open drawers where clothing had been pulled out and packed in a big rush. The furniture had been left behind, along with the strange Haitian shit that he'd noticed on his last visit, but most of the personal effects had been removed.

But not all. Enough remained to make Jay pretty damn certain that Ezili, Sascha, and the dead kid hadn't lived here alone. In one bedroom, he found a stack of weight-lifting magazines beside the bare mattress on the floor, along with a set of barbells that showed signs of hard use. Somehow he couldn't imagine Sascha pumping iron.

Another room had been sealed, its windows bricked shut, then fixed up like some kind of medieval torture chamber. Iron manacles hung from soundproofed walls, and a long dissection table stood in the center of the room, with deep grooves for the runoff of blood. Behind the closet doors, Jay found a rolling instrument cart, carefully hung with knives, pliers, thumbscrews, and other toys, even an antique dentist's drill, its bit still crusted with dried blood.

There were used syringes and scattered pills on the floor of a third bedroom, among bean-bag chairs and throw pillows that reminded him of a hippie crash pad in the sixties. The linen closet had been turned into a wine cellar. Even Jay knew enough about wine to realize that Chateau Lafitte Rothschild cost a few bucks, and some of the other labels looked kind of pricey, too.

In the fridge Jay found bottles of Dom Perignon, a can of beluga caviar, and other imported delicacies. Everything looked scumptious, but somehow he wasn't very hungry.

The hall closet was full of winter clothing that the tenants had forgotten in their haste. A linen jacket dangled from a hook inside the door, and the rack was crammed. There were women's coats in mink and Russian sable and something spotted that was probably an endangered species, plus a leather aviator's jacket and some very expensivelooking items in cashmere, suede, and camel's hair, mixed right in with denim and polyester, men's stuff and women's stuff together, in a range of sizes that went all the way to the extremes. No gray-checked sport jackets with bullet tears in the shoulder, though; Jay looked. He was standing there contemplating the coats when the phone rang.

A chill went through him. He remembered the funeral home, the strange call from the woman who spoke with Chrysalis's voice. No, he thought, not this time. No one knows I'm here. Wrapping the damp, perfumed handkerchief around his hand, he picked up the receiver and held it to hisf ear.

"I been calling all day, where the hell you been?" a man's voice said. "I got to have the kiss, you hear me? I need it. You don't know the kind of pressure I'm under here." It all came out in one long breathless rush; only then did the speaker seem to realize that he hadn't heard a hello yet. "Ezili, is it you?"

Jay spoke through the handkerchief and tried to disguise his voice. "She's not here," he said. "Who's this?"

There was a moment of silence. "Who am I talking to?" the caller asked, in a sharp voice that was eerily familiar. "Sascha," Jay said, trying to talk like Sascha.

"You're not Sascha," the man said.

So much for that plan. Jay decided his best policy was to shut up and listen.

"Who is this?" the caller demanded. "You play games with me, you're in big trouble."

That did it. He knew the voice. And all of a sudden Jay was deeply grateful that he hadn't phoned the police. He dropped the receiver back into its cradle and got up fast.

Kant could have a cruiser here in minutes. Jay had to move. He'd taken two steps when he noticed the message pad beside the phone. He went back. The top sheet had been ripped off, but he could still see the impressions on the sheet below. Two columns of numbers marched down the sheet in parallel. Times.

Jay pocketed the pad and retreated back to the fire escape. You didn't need to graduate with honors from detective school to figure this one out. Flight times. Sascha wasn't going to be coming to work anytime soon, and Jay had a funny hunch he knew what city the bartender had fled to.

Thursday July 21, 1988