Dead Mans Hand

6:00 A.M.

Jay opened his eyes and closed them again quickly. The light made his headache unbearable. The pounding behind his eyelids was like thunder, the left side of his face was a single dull mass of pain, and he could taste blood in his mouth. Somebody had yanked his hands behind his back and tied them together.

When he tried to get up, something ground together inside his chest, and the pain was excruciating. A feeble groan escaped his lips. He rolled back and tried to lie very still. Maybe he should just go back to sleep.

"I heard him," a deep voice muttered, somewhere far away. "He moaned. He's coming to."

"Bring him here, John," someone else said. The second voice was vaguely familiar.

Massive hands lifted him as easily as a grown man might lift a child, carried him across the room, and propped him up in a chair. The hands were not gentle. Jay had to stifle a scream.

"Open your eyes, Mr. Ackroyd," the second voice said. Reluctantly, Jay tried. His left eye was swollen almost shut.

The grim reaper sat staring at him across an antique desk.

"Dutton," Jay managed, through cracked, bloody lips. The reaper nodded.

A shadow fell across Jay. He forced himself to turn his head. It wasn't until you got really close to the Oddity that' you realized how big the fucker was. He could hear labored breathing from behind the fencing mask and feel the weight of eyes staring down implacably through the steel mesh. "You said you didn't know the Oddity," Jay said to Dutton.

"I lied," Dutton told him.

Jay tried to think of a wisecrack, but his mind wasn't in it. He closed his eyes again, forced them open. He felt like his head was going to explode. "I don't," he said, "don't suppose you got any aspirin you could let me have?"

"John," Dutton said, "there's a bottle of aspirin in my toilet. If you wouldn't mind?"

"Let him hurt," the Oddity rumbled. "He doesn't care how much we hurt, does he? Let him bleed for a while."

"I understand the sentiment," Dutton replied. "But we do want his cooperation, after all. Please. "

Grumbling, the Oddity shuffled through the bathroom door in the back of the office. Jay heard the medicine cabinet open with a bang, then the sound of water splashing into a sink.

"My apologies," Dutton said. "John's temper often'gets the better of him, and I'm afraid he does not like you." The Oddity returned with a handful of aspirin tablets in one hand and a glass of water in the other. With his hands still tied behind his back, Jay could only open his mouth. The Oddity stuffed in a half-dozen aspirin, then lifted the water to his lips. Jay swallowed until he began choking.

The Oddity grunted, stood up, and watched Jay sputter for breath. The joker's right hand, the one that held the water glass, was big and rough, coarse dark hair covering the knuckles. The left was much smaller, more delicate, a woman's hand, its fingernails long and pointed. Under the thick, dark clothing, Jay could see the swell of breasts. "Thanks," he managed.

"Fuck you," the Oddity snarled.

Jay turned back to Dutton. "You knew I was coming," he said. It wasn't a question.

"You or someone like you," Dutton replied. "How much is Barnett paying you to betray your own people?"

For a moment Jay didn't think he'd heard him right. "Barnett?" he said groggily. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Don't try my patience, Mr. Ackroyd," Dutton said wearily. "Why do aces insist on treating jokers as though we were retarded children? I didn't get where I am by being stupid."

"You may be the smartest guy in the world, for all I know," Jay said. "But you're still wrong."

"Am I?" Dutton said. "Then why are you here?"

Jay hesitated. "You know the jacket is the real McCoy?"

"Yes." Dutton regarded him from eyes deep sunk in that ghastly yellow face. "Chrysalis hinted as much when she gave it to me to incorporate into our diorama."

"The purloined letter," Jay said. "Hide the goods in plain sight, where hundreds of tourists will see it every day and assume it's just a replica of itself. Not bad at all. Only she didn't tell you why she wanted it hidden, did she?"

"No," Dutton admitted. "It did pique my curiosity, but I had learned not to press her. After her death, I got the whole story"

"From us," the Oddity put in. "We told him, after you left, that night you led us here. You aces think jokers have shit for brains, but this time the joke's on you."

"Then you know about Hartmann?" Jay asked Dutton. "That he's a wild card?" Dutton said. "What of it? He remains the last best hope we jokers have. Yes, he hides his condition. In the present political climate a sane man has no other choice. The public will never vote for a wild card, not even a latent like Hartmann, not when there's a chance the virus will express and turn him into one of us. That's why Leo Barnett wants the jacket."

"I'm not working for Leo Barnett-" Jay started.

"Liar," the Oddity snarled. "You're taking his goddamned nat money to help him destroy Gregg."

"You're wrong," Jay said. "Hartmann's a killer ace, he-" The Oddity moved faster than Jay would ever have guessed, grabbing him by the hair, slamming his head back against the chair, and slapping him hard enough to rattle teeth. "Shut up! Gregg's the only friend the jokers have!"

Jay had a mouthful of blood from his split lip. He spat it feebly at the fencing mask and called out to Dutton. "You just going to sit there and watch the Holy Trinity here beat me into ground chuck, or you want to hear me out?"

"Let him alone, John," Dutton said. "I want to hear what he has to say." Reluctantly, the Oddity let go of Jay's hair and stepped back away from the chair. The joker's massive body shuddered. The fingers of its left hand seemed to be thickening and its breasts were shrinking visibly.

"I don't even know Leo Barnett," Jay began.

"You're an ace who sells his services for money. I doubt that Barnett hired you personally. Nonetheless, you're working in his interests. Why else would you want the jacket?"

"That jacket got Chrysalis murdered," Jay said. "And h hate to mention this, especially when I'm sitting here trussed up like a Christmas goose, but this great joker hero of yours is looking more and more like the one who did the trick."

"That's not true," the Oddity said. The voice was softer than before, gentler, unmistakably a woman's voice. And now the left hand was the one that was blunt and callused. The fingers of the right had grown longer and lost their hair, and the skin had turned a deep chocolate brown. "Why should we want to hurt Chrysalis?"

"Because Gregg Hartmann told you to, and you just love Senator Gregg, don't you?" Jay snapped.

"Gregg is a good man," the Oddity said. Jay thought the joker sounded a little defensive.

"The Oddity couldn't possibly have killed Chrysalis," Dutton said patiently. "If you were a patron of the arts, Ackroyd, you'd know that Evan is a sculptor. Once he worked in clay, bronze, marble. These days, he sculpts in wax. But Patti and John lack the talent, so Evan can only work during the brief times when his mind and at least one of his hands emerge from the Oddity. He seizes those moments when they come, day or night." Dutton sounded almost sad as he dropped the other shoe. "Evan was right here during the murder, working on a new Mistral for our Gallery of Beauty. What does that do to your theory?"

Jay was suddenly aware of the blinding pain behind his eyes again, and all he wanted to do was go home and be sick. "Shit," he managed. "Then Hartmann must have sent some one else. Carnifex maybe, or Braun. Or maybe this guy Doug Morkle, I don't know"

"You're reaching, Ackroyd," Dutton said. He looked over at the Oddity. "Why don't you tell us what really happened, Patti?"

The Oddity turned toward Jay. Even the way the joker moved seemed different now, subtly feminine. "No joker would have hurt Chrysalis. She was one of us. The killer had to be working for Barnett, looking for the jacket. Maybe he was only trying to beat the secret out of Chrysalis, but he went too far." The Oddity sounded utterly sincere.

"That so?" Jay said. "Mind telling me the guy's name?"

"There's no way to be certain," the Oddity said, the woman's voice somehow eerie and frightening coming from the huge, misshapen body. "Perhaps Quasiman. He's a poor simple-minded thing who does as he is told, and he owes his life to Reverend Barnett." The Oddity's right hand gestured daintily in the air. It was a man's hand, the nails bitten right down to the quick. "Or perhaps some ace who sells himself for money, the way you do."

"You're telling me Chrysalis died to protect Hartmann, 'cause he's such a great friend of the jokers, right?" Jay looked first at Dutton, then over at the Oddity. "Then answer me this. If she was so fucking concerned about keeping Hartmann's little secrets, why didn't she destroy the jacket a year ago?" The perpetual grin on Dutton's yellowed face pulled into a momentary grimace. "That question troubled me as well," he said, "but my partner's plans were often subtle, and her motives were sometimes obscure. No doubt she was playing some game."

"That jacket was her life insurance," Jay said. "Now that she's dead, it's time to cash in the policy."

"Do you have any idea what's going on down in Atlanta?" Dutton asked him patiently. "Thousands of jokers have gone south to peacefully demonstrate in support of Hartmann. They've been welcomed with arrests, street brawls, attacks by the Klan. Yesterday there was a near riot when a hundred men in Confederate uniforms fired on the crowd. Barnett has already managed to pull the teeth out of our jokers' rights plank, and if he's elected, the good reverend will put us all in camps. Many people believe that Gregg Hartmann is the only thing that stands between this country and joker genocide." `A lot of people believed in Hitler, too,' Jay said.

Dutton sighed. "This conversation is as pointless as your quest, I'm afraid. You see, it really doesn't matter who you're working for, Mr. Ackroyd. You're too late. Much as I hated to damage a genuine historic artifact, too much was at stake to take any chances. Go back to your employers and tell them it's over. We burnt the jacket."

"Ashes to ashes," the Oddity said. "You can't hurt Gregg now"

"The tainted blood is gone," Dutton told Jay, "and if God is merciful, Gregg Hartmann is going to be the next president of the United States."