Dead Mans Hand

6:00 P.M.

"Jesus," Digger said. "What's wrong with your face?" Jay closed the office door behind him and looked down at the reporter. Digger was almost eight inches tall now. In a couple more days he might be able to pass for a dwarf. "I'm disguised as a guy who got the shit beat out of him," he said. He moved slowly across the office and sat down. The radio was babbling something about the convention. It made his head hurt even more. He turned it off.

"God, it hurts just to look at you," Digger said. "You realize that half your face is purple?"

"Good thing I don't wear a tie. The colors might clash."

"Don't worry about it, in a day or two the swelling will go down and the bruise'll turn green." Downs sounded like a man who had been there himself; sometimes the public didn't appreciate crusading journalists. "Where the hell you been?" Sleeping," Jay said. The painkillers made him groggy. "Sleeping? Jesus, Ackroyd. All hell is breaking loose down in Atlanta, Hartmann's something like three hundred votes from the nomination, and you decide to take a nap?"

"Downs," Jay warned, "I just woke up, my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton, I've got a concussion and a broken rib but I don't dare take any more painkillers because I can't think straight when I do, and I lost the goddamned jacket, so if you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'm going to pop you to the middle of the Holland Tunnel to play in traffic, okay?"

Digger made a noise like a man whose aged grandmother had just been run over by a semi. "You lost the jacket!" he screeched.

Jay sighed. "Dutton destroyed the damned thing before I could get to it," he said wearily.

"Jesus," Digger said, his irritating little voice in a panic. "Jesusjesusjesus, what are we gonna do?"

"We're running out of options," Jay admitted. "Not to mention time." He tried to think. It wasn't easy, the way his head was pounding. "Look, maybe Kahina had something else beside the jacket. Blood tests. Letters. Anything. I know, it's a long shot, but what else is there? How much do you know about her?"

"I did a little digging after… after she died," Digger said. "Very low key, y'know? I didn't want to stir nothing up. The chick was in the country illegally, I know that much. With her background, I didn't think it was likely she smuggled herself in, so she must have had help, but whoever did it was a pro, covered up her trail real nice."

"What about after she got here?"

Digger shrugged. "She was living in Jokertown under an assumed name. You shoulda seen where she was staying, a real dump. The girl had guts, I'll give her that, but it wasn't like she knew what she was doing. She couldn't of been more conspicuous if she tried. The day she arrived, she was even wearing one of them black Moslem things, you know, whatchacallit, a chador. She switched to American clothes pretty quick but it didn't help much, she was still the only nat in the hotel, and it was obvious she just loathed jokers."

"Then what the hell was she doing working with Gimli and Chrysalis?" Jay said bluntly.

"She wasn't working with Chrysalis," Digger said. "That was Gimli's idea, Kahina was against it all the way. They had some huge fight about it. They fought all the time. Religion, politics, strategy, they didn't agree on anything." He shrugged. "Hey, politics makes strange bedfellows, right?"

Jay frowned. "How do you know all this?"

"Chrysalis told me," Digger admitted. "Gimli had a leak in his little conspiracy, and you know how it was, if anything leaked anywhere in Jokertown, you could bet your sweet ass that Chrysalis would hear it."

"Yeah," said Jay thoughtfully. He got slowly to his feet.

"Where you going now?" Digger asked.

"Jokertown," Jay said. "I got an urge to see Kahina's last known address for myself."