Dead Mans Hand

3:00 A.M.

"Coffee, Jay?" Vi asked him.

He'd grabbed a booth by the window. The counter drew a lot of strange people during the graveyard shift, and Jay wasn't feeling real sociable. "Yeah, please," he said. "And give me a patty melt, too. Extra onions, side of fries."

"Gotcha." Vi poured his coffee and left to place his order. Someone had left a rumpled Daily News in the booth. Jay smoothed it out and read the lead story. The Democrats had started voting down in Atlanta. Hartmann had broken well in front, and he was gaining strength with each ballot. Leo Barnett was several hundred votes behind, followed by Jackson, Dukakis, and Gore. Much as he hated to admit it, Digger was right. He had to do something. But what?

He pushed aside the newspaper, took his list from his pocket, and looked at the names again. Wyrm, Quasiman, Bludgeon, the Oddity, and Doug Morkle. Yeoman swore it wasn't Bludgeon. If the mystery player was really Hartmann and not Barnett, that deep-sized Quasiman's motive. Jay hadn't turned up a damn thing pointing at the Shadow Fists, and the M.O. was all wrong for Wyrm anyway. He still didn't know who the fuck Doug Morkle was, but by now he didn't care. It had to be the Oddity. Didn't it?

Jay dug out the list of flight times he'd swiped off the scratch pad by Ezili's phone. He took a sip of coffee. "Fuck it," he said aloud. It didn't have to be the Oddity.

Atlanta was too damn close. It looked like the flight time averaged about two hours, nonstop. The earliest departure left at 6:55 in the morning, and got into Atlanta at 9:07. The killer could have caught the last plane out of Atlanta Sunday night, dropped by the Crystal Palace in the early hours of the morning to murder Chrysalis, and still made it back to Georgia in time for the opening of the convention. Which meant that some of the other names on the list deserved a second look.

If Downs was telling the truth, Chrysalis had sent her assassin after Gregg Hartmann. She hadn't told anyone, yet somehow Hartmann had found out. The leak had to be Sascha. Elmo had been hiring the assassin just about the same time Chrysalis was getting killed, which meant somebody had known what she was going to do before she did it. New York had too damn many telepaths as far as Jay was concerned, but Sascha was the only one who was close to Chrysalis.

Jay took a swallow of coffee, grimaced, and cursed himself for a fool. He should have seen it much earlier. Sascha had been there when Jay found the body; even without eyes, he'd sensed an intruder in the building. So why hadn't he sensed the killer?

Or had he?

Okay, so Sascha picks the assassination plot out of Chrysalis's mind and leaks it to Hartmann, who sends Mackie Messer to make sushi out of Digger Downs, and someone else, someone with superhuman strength, to take Chrysalis out of the game. The Oddity? Maybe…

But Jack Braun was a Hartmann supporter, and Billy Ray was the senator's bodyguard. The brutality of the murder seemed out of character for Braun. Carnifex had a nasty reputation… but maybe that didn't matter. According to Downs, the Syrian girl claimed Hartmann made her slit her brother's throat, so maybe he compelled Braun to do his dirty work the same way.

Vi came bustling up with his patty melt in one hand and a fresh pot of coffee in the other. She set down the plate and refilled Jay's cup. He folded up his papers and put them away. "Who you like for president, Vi?" he asked the waitress. She snorted. "They're all crooks," she said as she walked off. "I wouldn't vote for none of them."

Jay stared at his patty melt. The onions were grilled almost black, just the way he liked them. He tried a french fry. It needed ketchup. "Hey, Vi," he called out, but by then she was back behind the counter, waiting on a couple of hookers who'd just strolled in off Forty-second Street.

The Oddity was still a better candidate than Golden Boy or Carnifex, Jay decided. Hartmann would have had to have learned of the assassination the night before to get either Braun or Ray on a plane on time, but if he had known that far in advance, why the hell did it take him so long to send Mackie after Digger Downs? And why not have Mackie take care of Chrysalis, too? Why use two killers, either of whom could implicate him? And why dispatch someone from Atlanta when he had local talent on the scene? That is, assuming Mackie had been on the scene. Maybe he'd been in Atlanta, too. That would explain why it had taken him so long to make his try for Downs.

The hell of it was, if Hartmann was an ace, every name on the goddamned list would need a second look; Troll, Ernie the Lizard, Doughboy, hell, they were probably all Hartmann fans. None of them seemed to have any particular motive for killing Chrysalis, but maybe they didn't need one, maybe they were Hartmann's unwilling pawns, like Kahina. So where the fuck did that leave him? Jay took a bite of his patty melt and chewed thoughtfully.

Was Hartmann a secret ace? Digger said so, him and his goddamned nose. Some evidence; a smell that no one else could smell. The cops would just love that. The only way to prove Digger's story was to find that jacket. Jay tried to think where he might hide if he was a jacket, but the only thing that came to mind was a closet, and all the obvious closets had been checked pretty thoroughly.

The patty melt needed ketchup too. "Vi," Jay called loudly.

She came over with the coffeepot in hand and stopped when she saw his cup was still full. "Whatcha need, honey?"

"Ketchup," Jay said.

Vi looked disgusted. "Honest to Christ," she said. "What do you think that is?" She pointed.

Jay blinked. The ketchup bottle was right there on the table, over against the window between the napkin dispenser and the salt-and-pepper shakers. Vi gave a put-upon sigh and walked off. Jay picked up the bottle, unscrewed the top and poured a good-sized puddle on his plate. How stupid could he get, the damn thing was right there in front of him all the time.

Then it hit him.