Dead Mans Hand

3:00 P.M.

ACE-OF-SPADES KILLER SLAYS JOKERTOWN BARKEEP, the Post screamed.

The Jokertown Cry was less generic. CHRYSALIS MURDERED, it said beside a two-column picture. The Cry was the only paper in the city that regularly ran photographs of jokers.

JOKERS DESCEND ON ATLANTA AS DEMOCRATS CONVENE, said the front page of the Times. Thousands of them had headed south in support of Senator Gregg Hartmann, the presidential frontrunner. But in this year's crowded Democratic field, nobody was even close to a majority, and a brokered convention was being predicted. There were widespread fears of violence should Hartmann be denied the nomination. Already there were reports of ugly clashes between Hartmann's jokers and the fundamentalist supporters of Reverend Leo Barnett.

Jay usually ranked politicians right alongside used-car salesmen, pimps, and the guy who invented pay toilets, but Hartmann did seem to be a breed apart. He'd met the candidate a few times at the fundraisers Hiram had hosted at Aces High. Hiram was a big Hartmann supporter, and Jay never could resist the lure of free food and drink. Senator Gregg seemed intelligent, effective, and compassionate. If somebody had to be president, it might as well be him. He probably didn't stand a joker's chance of getting anywhere near the nomination.

The political bullshit took up the whole front page; he couldn't find any mention of Chrysalis anywhere. Knowing the Times, Jay figured tomorrow's edition would have a brief obit and that'd be it. Brutal joker murders weren't the kind of news that's fit to print. That made Jay angriest of all. "How do you know when a joker's been dead about three days?" the news vendor asked him. His voice was flat and lifeless, the voice of a man grimly going through a ritual that had lost its meaning. Jay looked up from the headlines. Jube Benson had been a fixture on the corners of Hester Street and the Bowery for as long as there had been a Jokertown. Walrus, they called him. He was a joker himself, three hundred pounds of greasy blue-black flesh, big curved tusks at the corners of his mouth, a broad domed skull covered with tufts of stiff red hair. Jube's wardrobe seemed to consist exclusively of Hawaiian shirts. This afternoon he was wearing a magenta item in a tasteful pineapple-and-banana print. Jay wondered what Hiram would say.

Jube knew more joker jokes than anyone else in Jokertown, but this time Jay had the punch line. "He smells a lot better," he said wearily. "That one's older than your hat, Walrus." Jube took the battered porkpie hat off his head and turned it over self-consciously in his thick, three-fingered hands. "I never made her laugh," he said. "All those years, I came by the Palace every night, always with a new joke. I never got a single laugh out of her."

"She didn't think being a joker was very funny," said Jay. "You got to laugh," Jube said. "What else is there?" He put his hat back on. "I hear you were the one that found her."

"Word gets around quick," Jay said.

"It gets around quick," Jube agreed.

"She phoned me last night," Jay told him. "She wanted to take me on as a bodyguard. I asked her how long and she couldn't tell me. Maybe she wouldn't tell me. I asked her what she was scared of. She laughed it off and said I'd found her out, it was just a ruse, she was really hot for my body. That was when I realized how shaky she was. She was trying her damnedest to sound wry and cool and British, like nothing was wrong, but her accent kept slipping. Something had frightened her badly. I want to know what, Jube."

"All I know is what I read in the papers," Jube said. Jay just gave him a look. As long as Chrysalis had been brokering information, the Walrus had been one of her chief snitches. All day long Jube stood in his kiosk, watching and listening, joking and gossiping with everyone who stopped to buy a paper. "C'mon," Jay said impatiently.

Jube glanced nervously up and down the street. No one was near them. "Not here," the fat joker said. "Let me close up. We'll go to my place."

Brennan watched with wry amusement as the armless joker pickpocket worked the gawkers who had gathered around the Crystal Palace. The dipper was dressed in threadbare, but carefully patched clothes. His pants were specially tailored to fit his third, centrally located leg that ended in an oddly configured foot whose toes were more dexterous than most peoples fingers. He was using this limb to pick the pockets of his unsuspecting victims.

A bright yellow crime-scene ribbon roped off the Palace's canopied entrance. The crowd gathered before it was gossipingmostly wildly and inaccurately-about the Crystal Palace and its mysterious proprietress. Newsies and street merchants were working the crowd along with the pickpocket, who suddenly turned with the sixth sense of the often-hunted and looked right at Brennan.'

Brennan nodded back and the three-legged joker cut through the crowd and headed toward him, lurching in a peculiar rocking gait, sometimes placing his third "foot" on the ground to balance himself.

"Hello, Mr. Y," he murmured.

Brennan nodded again. The joker's name was Tripod. He was a hustler, a small-time grifter who lived on the edge of the law. During Brennan's last stay in the city he'd been one of his best sources of information. He was dependable for a snitch. He didn't have a drug habit and he was loyal. When he was bought, he stayed bought.

"Pretty awful, what happened, Mr. Y," he offered in his quiet, deferential manner. If he wondered about Brennan s sudden reappearance after a year's absence, he said nothing.

Brennan nodded. "You hear the police think I killed her?"

Tripod shrugged. It was a peculiar gesture for a man who had no arms.

"Maybe, Mr. Y, but it wasn't done in your style."

"How do you know how she was killed?"

"Man over there," Tripod said, gesturing at a derelict who sat on the curb by a hotdog cart, "said he saw her body when they brung her out to the coroners wagon."

Brennan glanced at the cart. SAUERKRAUT SAM THE HOTDOG MAN was lettered on its side. It was manned by a joker who was continuously dispensing dogs, making change, and slapping mustard, catsup, sauerkraut, and relish on waiting buns with his extra sets of arms. The derelict sitting on the curb was bloated and alcoholic, but seemed to be a nat. He'd stationed himself next to the cart to cadge coins while endlessly repeating his story to all who would listen. Brennan nodded at Tripod and they joined the gawkers who were munching hot dogs and listening to the old man.

"I was in the back when they brung her out. I was there all right. I got a nice place to sleep right by the dumpster and t the ambulance woke me up. I was scared. I didn't know what all the fuss was about, but pretty soon they brung her out. I could see it was Chrysalis. I seen her a lot of times and it was her. She was dead, all right." He lowered his voice and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially to his two dozen or so listeners. "Her head was squashed. Just squashed. If it weren't for her invisible skin, you couldn't tell who it was. Squashed, just like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building." He nodded with some satisfaction at his simile. "I was there all right. I saw her when they brung her out…"

Brennan, impotent anger knotting his stomach, turned away from the cart as a cop came up and hassled the vendor about his license. Sauerkraut Sam complained in a loud voice with angry gesticulations of all his arms, but it didn't seem to get him anywhere.

Brennan and Tripod stood silently for a moment, watching the cop run off the hotdog vendor, who was wheeling his cart with four arms and still angrily gesturing with the others.

Chrysalis had been killed by someone-an ace strong enough to smash her utterly. That was at least a place to start an investigation. But Brennan knew he could use more information. A lot more information.

"You seen Elmo or Sascha around?" Brennan asked Tripod, after the crowd that'd been munching hot dogs and listening to the derelict had dispersed.

The joker shook his head. "They're gone, Mr. Y Ain't seen 'em, ain't heard of 'em all day."

Brennan sighed to himself. He knew, right away, that this was not going to be easy. He took two twenties out of his pocket and surreptitiously dropped them on the sidewalk.

Tripod's bare foot closed over them. His nimble toes picked them up and stuffed them in one of the pockets he'd sewn on the bottom of his pant leg.

"Keep an eye out for them. For anything about the killing. You can get in touch with me at the Victoria. I'm registered as Archer."

"Yessir." Tripod watched Brennan for a moment. "Good to see you again, Mr. Y"

"I wish I could say it was good to be back."

Tripod nodded once, then started down the street with his peculiar lurching gait. Brennan watched him go, then turned back to the Palace. The crowd of gawkers was still there. He wanted to get a good look at the crime scene, but now obviously wasn't the time for that. He'd come back when it was quiet and dark.

Now he had other avenues to explore. He wasn't convinced that Kien was actually behind Chrysalis's death, but it was as good a place as any to start his investigation. Kien, of course, wouldn't have done the killing himself, but the Shadow Fists had plenty of hired muscle capable of doing the job. Wyrm, for example, Kien's extraordinarily strong bodyguard, whom Brennan had witnessed threaten Chrysalis two Wild Card Days ago.

Of course, he'd been out of touch a long time. Things had probably changed, but there were people he could talk to, people who would be willing to pass on the latest information. Brennan hefted his bow case and started down the street.

The hunter had returned to the city.