Fort Freak

It turned out he knew it inside out. He read my cues to me, not acting them, but like a director. He gave me all kinds of aide memoires about where we were in the play, what everyone wanted, where my character was going.

“I’ve always loved it,” he said, when we took a break for coffee. Which he took insanely strong. Just this once, I did too. “It’s personal for me.”

“Really?” I said. And I confess, my mind went swiftly to what exactly that might mean, vis-à-vis human anatomy and thoraxes, mandibles, et cetera.

He heard the sound in my voice, and laughed. “I mean,” he said, “that I might wake up as … anything.” And he told me about how his own powers worked. About how he slept and awoke with randomness in his life, a new power every time. About why they called him the Sleeper. “I could wake up looking like anything.” And his face had that questioning look on it again.

“That’s okay,” I said, automatically. And then I thought about me screaming at Father Squid and what he’d said afterward. About what I’d said to Storgman. About all my nervy reactions. And my distaste for my own power, that certain distance I had from it, that I’d never quite gotten over. “Actually,” I said, “listen. I grew up somewhere where there were no jokers or aces. So I still … get it wrong a lot. I still blunder into doing terrible things. When these days, in this city, that rather means you’re doing them deliberately, meaning to hurt people’s feelings. But I don’t. I want to get it right. I promise that when you go to sleep, I mean, when you wake up, I mean, if I’m … if I’m there, or if I happen to see you, after … I mean, after you’ve changed … for some reason…”

He grinned, and thankfully interrupted me. “Maybe you should have played Anabeth from the start.”

“Oh, thanks!”

“I didn’t mean—” He saw I was laughing and stopped. “I meant that seriously, because you’re thinking about this stuff, and it’s in you, but you’re new to it.” His gaze was dancing all over my face, as if I were some part of nature that he was newly appreciating. And that was a great look, actually. It felt like something I’d been missing for the longest time, without knowing it. “I look forward to seeing you handle it all. ’Cause you’re going to. But there is … one thing I’ve got to say.”

And then he told me how old he was.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

And he looked wonderfully worried about how I might react.

I couldn’t find any modest way of saying that was okay. That that was fine by me. That I’d suddenly realized how much I liked older men. Much older men.

It would have been assuming so much to do so.

Because what had happened here, really? We’d had lunch and chatted. And seemed to be making grand decisions about each other. Which could be entirely mistaken.

Then Vita popped her head round the door and precisely yelled at me again, and hustled Croyd out of there.

“I’ll be out there,” he said.

And then it was time for makeup. And this half a romance and half a classic nightmare of extraordinary New York was actually going to happen.

♣

I’m tempted to say that if I’d known about who was going to be coming along that night, I wouldn’t have gone through with it. But that’s not the case. I don’t regret any of it really. Hideous, hideous hoo-ha that it turned out to be.

Vita stayed with me through makeup and costuming. She didn’t fuss. She led me through my cues, and was pleased by how far I’d got. “Everyone knows the circumstances,” she said. “Just look them in the eye, and go straight for a prompt if you need one. As long as you’re honest up there, they’ll love you.”

“What if the police arrive?”

“Mr. Dutton says he can hold them off until the end of the performance. And hey, you’ll have a very receptive audience out there tonight.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Miami Classics have booked the first three rows. They’re in the city to see the sights and take in a show. They’re a social club for, you know, mature guys who are also aces.”

I suddenly found that my mouth had gone very dry.

“Problem?”

I managed to shake my head. And perhaps make some sort of squeaking noise.

♠

Anabeth is the first onstage. In this production, she’s there, wandering about, as the house fills, before the stage lights go on. Vita had told me to ignore anyone in the audience who tried to communicate with me, to stay in the part. And I did, pacing, nervous, waiting in what was meant to be a big empty park for the man I’d just met.

And so I was looking out at the audience and saw the man I’d just met take his seat. He made quick eye contact, and smiled at me, in a way that somehow said he knew I couldn’t smile back and that was okay.

So that was good.

What was bad was the row of uniformed police who took their places right behind him. And they weren’t so careful with the meaningful eye contact. I got the feeling Mr. Dutton had struck a deal that lasted only until the end of the show. But at least they seemed to be looking right past Croyd. He was sunk kind of low in his seat.

What was worse still were the Miami Classics. They came in laughing and joking, and calling out things to me like “Hey, your boyfriend’s a bug!” until their organizers imposed some order. They were kindly looking silver-haired guys in leisurewear, some of them with wives, some of them displaying ace signifiers like glowing eyes.

The front row of them were sitting just far enough away so that if I really concentrated, if I wasn’t taken by surprise by it …

Or if I stayed at the rear of the stage …

I might just be able to fend their powers off.

But the worse thing of all was what was going on at the back of the theater, moments before the lights were due to go down. The Bowery Rep has always had a “gangs welcome” policy, which has kept it out of trouble. But tonight, marching in down different aisles, looking quickly round to see if they could find a certain someone in the audience …

There came the Werewolves and the Demon Princes. Many Freddies and much leather, with Ginger leading the latter pack. They’d obviously reached some sort of agreement that allowed them to do this together.

Thankfully, in the few seconds before everything went dark, they didn’t spot Croyd.

And then they had to quickly get into their seats. It seemed they’d all bought tickets. It’s amazing what the sheer ritual of theater can do.

Tonight, it was going to have to perform miracles.

“Hi,” whispered Klaus from the prompt box, stage left.

“Hi,” I mouthed to him, thinking that this was a bit daring of him.

He looked sighingly at me. And I realized.

I looked quickly to stage right, where James Clark Brotherton was waiting for his cue, with much the same expression on his face.

“Hi!” I called to him, waving.

And we were off.

♦

It’s a surprisingly happy play to start with. The sense of new romance, of spring, of the lovers remarking on the buzzing of fateful, ironic bees. It’s meant to remind the audience of a sort of innocence that’s meant to have existed before Wild Card Day. That’s how this version was costumed, so what happens to our tragic hero seems to come out of nowhere. I’ve heard that for survivors of that day, the play can be either a very intense or very depressing experience. Which was one reason, considering the guys in the first three rows, that I was determined to keep it serious. I found myself locating the lines, either in my head, or on the picnic basket, and I think I managed to stay in character, and I was damn well doing it for them. The reviews, up to this point, offer wildly differing verdicts on just how I was doing, by the way. I did find myself improvising a bit, because it felt so easy, because what I was playing so far was … how I was feeling that evening. And, weirdly, representing it onstage made it seem even more real.

But I soon realized that both Klaus and James Clark Brotherton got that look on their faces again whenever I wandered off piste. I grabbed a paper plate and read out that there was a chill in the air, and perhaps we could go for a drink … someplace warmer?

The lights went down, and we exited.

♥

Scene two involved the hero’s sister and her own spouse, who know about our hero’s circumstances, and fret for rather too long I personally think about whether or not to tell Anabeth.

James took me aside in the wings, and for a moment I thought he was going to slap me, but instead he took my hands in his. “Well done,” he said. “We’ll get through this. Just follow my lead.”

I nodded, rather than saying that actually I’d been doing fine without, or anything like that.

“Do you know who’s out there?” he said.

“Yeah, I saw!”

“Lucas Tate, the editor-in-chief of the Jokertown Cry. He didn’t just send his theater critic, he came down as well! Abigail, we have to show that great man something extraordinary.”

I could only manage a thin smile. I was rather hoping for the opposite.

♣

It’s act two where Grey Hearts really gets going. Anabeth starts to suspect her husband isn’t telling her everything, and she tries to figure out what the nature of his secret is, suspecting everything but the truth. There’s a scene where the two of them are caught in flashbulbs, just happening to be on the spot when Fortunato’s about to exit a club, and Anabeth sees, standing in the shadows round the stage, lit up only by the strobes (and hence there was a big warning on the posters about epilepsy, fainting, and the distant possibility of interdimensional travel for certain aces), all the different things her husband could be: gay; cheating on her; a criminal.

I just had to throw my hands up and strike poses, so I had a moment to see what was happening in the audience.

My gaze found Croyd.

And I saw that he was crying.

I guess he’d want me to say that it was in a very manly way. But it was what I wanted to see at that point. Because I’d been thinking, as we got into the scene … I knew so little about him. Except that he was a criminal. And an ace. A very variable ace. And so, after this was over, and I’d been … well, arrested … maybe I’d have to wait until I’d calmed down from this hyper-excited state I was in before embarking on any romance, especially with someone who my mum would regard as—

But then the tears. That moment of him being illuminated. The experience on his face.

There was a man used to being misunderstood. And somehow, stupid me with all my phobias and hurdles, I’d gotten straight to the real him.

♠

But emotional epiphanies apart, and heaven knows this play was becoming a bit of a roller coaster on that front, it was going rather well so far. The audience were watching an actual play rather than a media spectacle. And judging from their applause, they seemed to be enjoying it. The gangs were keeping quiet, even. Maybe because, like with everything the Rep did, this was very much about them. When James made his big speeches, in a Jokertown accent that was period-specific, even he got calls of support from the gang rows, and when they heard that was okay, from the elderly aces in the front rows too. I thought that just added to the atmosphere.

Most of all: in my state of teeth-grinding concentration, I was actually managing to keep all those powers out there at bay. The first time I’d had to do that for any length of time. And dealing with that stuff didn’t feel at all … tarty … but just like doing away with the sort of shyness an actor naturally has to shed to go onstage. So this was actually turning out to be an incredibly pivotal evening in my life, in all sorts of ways.

Which, I think was the thought in my head, that I was living in a tremendous moment … when actually I should have been thinking ahead.

We’d got to the point when James’s character, discovered in all his beelike glory, rips open his shirt to reveal a rather impressionistic version of a striped, furry thorax. Lost in the part, James shoved me as hard as he was used to shoving his regular leading lady, with whom he’d choreographed the move. Despite Vita telling him to take all the physical stuff down a couple of notches tonight.

He shoved me toward the front of the stage.

I staggered on the edge, my arms wheeling in midair, making the audience gasp, rather wonderfully actually, with that sensation of is it real or is it an act?

And I realized, horrified, a second before it happened—

“You don’t understand anything about what it’s like to be me!” he yelled.

At which point, overcome by one of the powers in the front row—

I burst into flame.

The audience gasped.

Then wildly applauded.

I heard, weeks later, that Lucas Tate, who, doubtless succumbing to long hours fighting for the rights of jokers, had fallen excusably asleep, woke up at the sound of my inflammation.

“Abigail Baker is on fire!” his theater critic gasped to him as, behind his ceramic white cat mask, he blinked his eyes open.

“That good, eh?” he replied.

“Fire!” yelled someone at the back of the crowded theater.

Nobody moved.

I was that good.

At being convincingly on fire in a theatrical, as opposed to a realistic, way.

I flapped my flaming arms violently, terrified, trying to somehow roll my center of gravity back onto the stage.

I failed. And plummeted, I thought, homicidally, into the front three rows.

But by then the Miami Classics had had time to get their act together. I found myself caught and held up by a giant rubbery (and I presume fireproof) hand.

I was held there long enough to illuminate the audience.

Long enough, I learned afterward, for the Werewolves, cops, and Demon Princes to look across the theater and see Croyd.

My flame cut out a second later.

The ace that had caught me heaved me upright.

I fell forward, all rubbery now, bounced back upright off my rubber nose, and pitched back helplessly into the audience again.

Where I was caught this time by a burst of warm (and rather stale) air.

Which again pitched me forward.

With air bursting from every orifice.

I bounced across the stage on my face. I slammed into James, fell at his feet, and started levitating slowly away on my back like an air hockey puck.

I realized that I was glowing a bright, sparkly pink. I looked into the audience again and saw that the gangs and Croyd were all doing the same. And that a hefty policeman was waving his nightstick round his head like it was a magic wand, throwing off the pink sparkles in waves, like he was the enforcement division of fairyland.

At least I remembered my line. I bellowed it at James. “I understand pretty well now!”

Which brought the house down.

Which was hardly the desired effect, and I believe a first for the play in question.

I grabbed the curtain at the back, and managed to scramble to my feet, slipping on the air under me, trying to see what was happening in the auditorium.

Silhouettes were climbing over seats. Pink glows were converging. People had started to shout and cry out as feet landed in faces, and scuffles began.

The gangs had used the confusion to leap up and go find Croyd. The cops had leaped after.

I wantonly grabbed hold of the pink glow power, and switched it off from where he was. Which caused a pleasingly sudden yell of exasperation from somewhere nearby.

Vita was yelling from stage left for us all to get off the stage, to get the safety curtain down.

“No,” I yelled. “The show must go—!”

James narrowly missed me as he sprinted off.

And looking out at the theater, I could see his point. The Werewolves and Demon Princes were fighting their way toward the middle rows, where I now couldn’t see Croyd. The police had waded in. And some of the more game Miami Classics had joined in, throwing ice bolts and doing rubbery-handed kung fu against the gang members with a kind of square-jawed glee. Where else but in this town can you see three Freddie Mercuries trying to escape an old man who’s throwing handfuls of explosive dandruff at them? Lucas Tate was standing up, his mask reflecting the pink glow, seemingly dictating an on-the-spot account to his frantically scribbling theater critic, who looked like he was considering alternative employment. Ginger was busy thumping a Werewolf as the two gangs contested over getting to Croyd, but one of his heads was looking over to me onstage. “Bravo!” it squeaked Scottishly. “I’ll be back for the next show!”

I sincerely hoped the other two heads agreed.

The violence, thank goodness, was very much one on one. Nobody had started to rip up the seating.

As I may have already indicated, none of this was my fault. So how was I feeling, as the air gradually drained out from under me, and I watched the Miami Classics move farther back into the auditorium, and thankfully out of range?

Complicated.

I looked at my hands. They were covered with the remains of ignition products, and still felt a bit rubbery. I thought about what my mum would say, about me having got so thoroughly involved with so many aspects of aces and jokers, in so many different ways, in such a short space of time.

To just start to be properly involved. To look at a riot in a theater and feel bad that these were … my people. Who I owed things to, and had responsibilities to, and was caught up with.

I felt a sort of triumph that had nothing to do with the production.

But this had been going to be my big debut, and I was going to be so blamed, and I felt selfish for even thinking about how it was going to look like I’d ruined something while just trying to do my best—

The safety curtain came hurtling downward and the house lights came up. And in the second I had to see the audience clearly before my view was blocked—

I still couldn’t see him.

At the sound of heavy boots, I looked to stage left. And saw a new group of uniformed policemen running at me. The twelve-year-old was leading them. I looked to stage right, and there came another bunch of them, led by his fat partner.

They definitely seemed to have got the idea that I was somehow responsible for this.

Entirely wrongly. Look, can I take it as read that you get that now?

Sorry. Anyway—

I was about to start arguing my case, and rather hoping the cop who could turn into a cat wasn’t among them, when suddenly I was falling—

Through a trapdoor that had opened underneath me.

Into the arms of Croyd Crenson.

Who had to hold me down to stop me bouncing right back up again with residual rubberiness.

“Hey,” he said. “You were great.” And he slammed down a lever to close the trapdoor, just as the cops above leaped for it. “But I got another role in mind for you.”

♦

I hear that Leo Storgman was mightily pleased to get the two of us back into custody. That he’d spent the rest of that day going over lines about “separating the sheep from the goats” and us not being able to “pull the wool over his eyes.” I got a lot of this from Lucas Tate, who took up our cause, rather, after he’d worked out what had been going on while he was asleep.

The riot at the theater came to a halt mostly because of the arrival of a truly huge number of uniformed police officers, who carted off everyone involved, including some of the Miami Classics, who’d gotten rather carried away, but were just as gleeful to be in the back of police vans and still mixing it up. So it’s good to know their night out wasn’t ruined, and they had, as they’d been seeking, an emotional time that reminded them of the good old days. But a contributing factor to the violence winding down was the appearance in one of the theater boxes of Croyd Crenson, with me beside him. Bows were taken, to even some applause from those in the fighting audience still minded to appreciate such gestures. Ginger’s little left head even shouted for an encore. Which I thought was pushing it, rather. Croyd called upon the police to arrest him, which would settle the matter for the gangs, and the police, affronted that they hadn’t already managed to do that without his permission, arrived moments later to do so.

♥

I heard that Leo Storgman took great pleasure in marching up and down in front of the separate jail cells, his two new prisoners put in different corridors so they couldn’t talk to each other. He interrogated Croyd about many matters entirely separate from anything to do with counterfeiting, about a murder case he was working on. He tried to discover from his female prisoner if she had powers herself, or if this was all something Crenson was doing, and how much she knew about the Sleeper, and whether or not she was willing to give him up in return for the charges being dropped over her “fleecing” that shopkeeper.

She simply told him that the powers were hers, that she was an ace.

He realized, after a while, that neither prisoner was stalling, exactly, or playing dumb. That their relative simplicity and dull straightforwardness extended to the way they talked to their legal representatives also.

The truth of what was going on suddenly came to Storgman as he was about to go home the next day and heard from a fellow officer that an entire stack of seized pirate DVDs had gone. He raced back to the cells, and discovered that they were suddenly—

Empty.

The copies of the two of us having vanished.

♣

By that time, the original versions, so to speak, had relocated to Croyd’s new safe house. On the way there, in the back of a cab, I’d read on my phone about all the arrests, and the first reports from people who’d said that the whole experience had summed something up for them, about how disparate and divided this community still was, that the riot had been, well, art. And among all that was Vita, saying that when the authorities stopped harassing me she hoped I’d come back and play a lead, and Mr. Dutton, saying that the theater would be open again for business the very next day, and that far from the incident putting people off, he was wondering how he’d be able to fit everyone in, considering the demand for tickets. And behind him in that news report, there was Shauna Montgomery, making an entrance on crutches, yelling that she was damned if she was going to let this grand old theater go under.

And yes, that last bit did look slightly planned, rather.

I looked up from the display vastly relieved. My debut hadn’t been a disaster after all.

Which was when I realized Croyd was looking seriously at me. “It’ll work out for you,” he said. “Dutton will get his lawyers on it. It’ll end up being the first line in your autobiography.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I have a terrible feeling that Mum may already have read about this.” I felt an angry text message in my hand, checked, and found that this was indeed so.

“Do you want me to drop you off somewhere?” he said.

“No,” I said, and switched off the phone.

“When I wake up with some new power—”

“I’ll have it too.”

“So let’s hope it’s not the power to explode the thing nearest to you.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“When I start needing sleep, when I start having to keep myself awake…” He sighed. “I’m pretty variable, Abigail.”

“Well,” I said, “aren’t we all?”

And I saved him the trouble of worrying about whether or not he could kiss me.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 8.

LEO SAT AT HIS desk, leaning forward on his elbows and forearms, swearing at the paperwork he didn’t want to do—and thinking about Croyd, and how he should’ve known. Hash had been making that preposterous stack of food when the Rathole murders went down; but all the customers and their meals had been accounted for. The smoke—the eggs, the burgers, the chicken fingers. All of it cooking down to greasy ash. All of it for Croyd, who had vanished from the scene.

He was a witness. He’d been there, inside, when the triggers were pulled. And he’d made it out alive.

The prospect made the detective downright itchy. And he suddenly thought about yanking Croyd’s file. It’d be a mile long; he’d been out there since 1946, and he wasn’t always the kind of guy who walked the straight and narrow. But it might be useful.

He muttered aloud, “December 1978. What were you doing then, Croyd?” Was he a joker or an ace? Enormous? Tiny? When the Sleeper awoke on that night and went out searching, hunting for food—any food, and lots of it—and he’d found the Rathole, what new power was he using?

It must’ve been something good, for him to get away so clean. In the years that followed the Rathole murders, Croyd sure as hell hadn’t been lying low. He hadn’t snuck off into hiding, fearing retribution. He knew he’d gotten out unseen.

“Invisiblity?” Leo guessed. When it came to Croyd, nothing was truly improbable.

Lieutenant Kant bustled by, carrying a folder as thick as his thumb. Leo reached out a hand to snag his attention, and said, “Hey, you got a second?”

“One or two,” Kant said, stopping in the aisle to stand over Leo’s desk.

“Anybody pulled the Sleeper’s file yet? Or would it still be in the back?” he asked. Croyd’d had his run-ins with the law over the years, and any arrest formalities would have made mention of his joker or ace traits at the time.

“I think it’s still in the back, but you’re talking about a hefty fucking volume.” Harvey Kant adjusted the folder in his scaly hand, and shifted his weight when he asked, “Hey, Leo, this isn’t about the doubles, is it?”

“What?”

“Is this about the Rathole again?” Kant asked point-blank.

And here we go again. “Yeah, so?”

Kant leaned forward, putting his hands on Leo’s desk and leaning in. “When you bring this shit up out of the office, like you’re dicking around with old cases on your own damn time, that’s one thing. But for God’s sake, man. Look around—we’ve got more pressing problems around here than a thirty-year-old murder that no one gives a shit about anymore.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not what? Burning tax dollars on shit that doesn’t matter? Look, I know you’ve only got a couple of months left, but if you’re not going to keep your eye on your job, you may as well hang it up now.”

Leo could feel the skin around his collar warming up. “Now listen, I’m not wasting anybody’s tax dollars or time. And I don’t think it’s fair to say that nobody gives a shit.”

“It isn’t on the docket anymore, and you’ve got gang feuds to sort out during your office hours. Leave thirty years ago back where it belongs, and do your goddamn job.”

Leo was probably imagining the threat he heard, but he didn’t like it anyway. “Yes sir,” he said in exactly the same tone he would’ve used to tell Kant to fuck right off.

If Kant heard it, he didn’t react to it. He only retreated with his folder, and when he was out of sight, Leo scowled down at his desk. The lieutenant was right about that much: the gangs weren’t kissing and making up, and things were looking nastier than ever. And the burglaries, Christ. What was going on out there?

Leo sighed and scooted the loose pages together, stacking them and tidying their edges like he was preparing to shuffle a deck of cards.

He looked over his shoulder and, not seeing Kant or anybody else, he set his paperwork down and picked up his desk phone. He thought about calling Lucas Tate directly, but figured it wasn’t strictly necessary to buzz all the way to the top, so he dialed the Cry and asked for the Classifieds department instead.

A woman answered with a greeting that might’ve been read off a screen.

Leo told her he wanted to place a personal ad. He asked, “How many words do I get for free?”

“Three lines,” she told him. “Or twenty-five words, whichever is less.”

“Okay. How about this: ‘Sleeper: 1978, a bird mask, and an all-night diner. I know you were there. I want to know what you saw.’ Will that work?”

“That’ll work just fine, sir.”

“When will it run?”

“Tomorrow’s edition,” she assured him.

He thanked her and hung up, then twiddled his thumbs for a few seconds before standing up and heading toward records in search of anything the force might have on the Sleeper. He didn’t find much he didn’t expect—and nothing that might give him a hint about what he looked like in 1978, or what he could do—or what ability he must’ve had that left him the only survivor of a massacre.

Or the perpetrator? Couldn’t rule anything out.

So Leo went back to his desk and he opened a drawer, pulling out a small brown notebook and flipping it open.

He picked up his phone again and began to dial. And in the next twenty minutes, he’d left messages for every old snitch and hustler he could think of—anyone who might have the faintest idea where Croyd was, and what he was up to now, never mind 1978.

He was on the verge of hanging up for the final time this afternoon when he felt very distinctly like he was being watched. He looked around. He checked over his shoulder. He lowered the phone slowly, wondering if Kant was peering out an office window and shooting daggers.

But he didn’t see Kant and he didn’t see Wanda, who’d promised to meet him after work. When she promised these things, she often showed up early—and he didn’t mind. Let the whole station see her arrive to meet him. It did his ego good.

No, not her.

However, at the edge of his peripheral vision, he thought he saw someone dart behind a column. It was a smallish someone with long brown hair and a blue streak, but that’s all he caught.

He watched the column for five minutes, all the while pretending not to—pretending to concentrate on the forms and figures that made up his inbox. And finally he was rewarded with the sight of a teenage girl slinking away, looking over her shoulder and darting into the hall.

Wanda appeared moments later, smiling and breathless. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, “slowest goddamned cab in the city.”

Leo stood up, pulling his jacket into his hand. “You’re right on time,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. I need a change of scenery.”

“Sure. You got anyplace in mind?”

“How about my place?” he asked. He reached into his top drawer and pulled out a notebook he’d been working on in private. It was cheap, blue, and well worn, with curly corners. It shed a spray of confetti from the spiral binding, where sheets had been torn out in haste.

“I finally get to see your place?”

“It’s about time, don’t you think? And I want to show you what I’ve been doing about the Rathole. Christ knows they won’t let me work on it here. I swear to God, it’s like they don’t want me fighting crime or something.”

On the way back to his apartment, Leo filled her in on the bitching-out by Kant. “But I’ve pulled together everything I’ve got,” he told her. “And you and me, we’re going to sift through it.”

When they stepped off the elevator into the hallway where Leo’s apartment waited, his phone rang in his pocket. He fished it out and checked the number, then made an apologetic face at Wanda. “Mellie,” he said. “If I don’t answer, she’ll just keep calling.”

“She worries about you,” Wanda said.

Leo didn’t answer that, because he wasn’t sure if she was right or if he’d accidentally raised a control freak; but he accepted the call and said, “Hey.”

“Hey, Dad. Is this a good time?”

“For what?”

“You left me a message—about your racket,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. Can you make it?” he asked, holding the phone with his shoulder while he rummaged around in his pants for his keys, then opened the door. She didn’t answer right away, and he had a feeling he knew what that meant, so he added, “Some friends of mine pulled strings. It’s going down at the High Hand, a real nice place.”

“I’m not sure. I’m tied up in some property problems down here, and I just don’t know. I’m going to try,” she amended quickly. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

He said, “Yeah, it does.” He opened the door, and dropped his keys into a small brass bowl atop a small table immediately inside.

“But this time of year—the weather’s going to be awful. I may have a hell of a time getting a flight.”

“You might,” he agreed, pointing at a coatrack where Wanda could unload her outerwear.

He tossed his own coat over the back of a recliner, drew back the living-room curtains, and flipped on a few lights—revealing the clean clutter of a man who’d lived alone for a while. An assortment of National Geographics, Consumer Reports, and Popular Mechanics teetered in unstraightened stacks. They accumulated in piles like leaves, alongside well-thumbed copies of John le Carré and James Rollins paperbacks, which toppled here and there to the floor, or gathered in the crevices of his couch and on the kitchen table. The walls were covered with framed postcards from Greece, artifacts of a long-ago honeymoon; beside them hung a smattering of photos—shots of Vicki and Melanie, and one of them as a family when she was yet an infant. Leo was wearing a butterfly collar, which Wanda pointed at with a smirk.

“Dad, I’m really sorry,” she said, and he knew that despite her waffling, she already knew she wasn’t coming. “But it’s a huge hunk of time—it’s a miserable trip—”

“If you’re not coming, you’re not coming. That’s fine. That’s up to you. You’re a grown woman, and you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and it sounded like a sign-off. To make it more official he said, “I have to go.”

“You always have to go. That’s how it always is.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, and he hung up.

Wanda stood over by the television, where a large white board was set up and stocked with red, blue, and green dry-erase markers. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything’s fine,” he said flatly. “Mellie’s not coming to the racket, but that’s her call. I uh…” He gazed around at his home, crowded with the accumulated things of a lifetime. “I should’ve cleaned up a bit. Didn’t think about it. I’ve really had my head up my ass.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” She smiled, picking up a red marker and popping the cap off, then putting it back on. “You’ve got a lot of stuff, but—” She craned her neck to see through the wall cutout that showed the kitchen. “It’s only … busy. Not dirty. No dishes in the sink, no food left out. It’s a nice little place.”

He joined her beside the white board and took the blue marker. “Thanks. Hasn’t had a woman’s touch for a while, but I can pick up after myself if I have to. Anyway, what we have here”—he tapped the marker’s tip against the board, leaving tiny blue rectangles where it touched—“is a murder.”

He opened the notebook and removed a few loose sheets, then handed it to Wanda. “I’m tired of taking shit about it at work, so I’m taking this home. It’s a dossier on the Rathole murders. I need to think about it without worrying some asshole brass is going to stare over my shoulder. And I’m … I’d be happy for your input,” he said, stuttering a little to find her suddenly so close.

Holding the notebook in one hand, she fiddled with the marker with the other. She appeared to be thinking, but what she was thinking about, Leo wasn’t detective enough to guess, or confident enough to speculate.

Wanda looked down to read the top sheet, covered in handwritten notes. “Stella Nichols,” she said. “The stripper.”

He cleared his throat, and uncapped the red marker. “Yeah,” he said, and he squeakily scrawled her name on the white board. “And everybody else—they’re all in there, everything I’ve got so far.” He began writing the rest of the names—Don Reynolds, Lizzie Wallace, Hash Crowder, Joel Arnold—all in a line. “It’s been driving me crazy, trying to figure out if any of the victims was connected to any of the other suspects.”

“You have other suspects?”

He wrote on the other end of the board: Esposito, Croyd, Deedle, and Boyfriend???

“Croyd and Deedle I know about,” Wanda noted. “But who are the other two?”

“Boyfriend”—he used the marker as a pointer—“was Lizzie Wallace’s partner. He was a gangbanger, but that’s about all I know. I have an innate distrust of gangbangers, and if I could figure out what his name was, I’d add him to the suspects list. Esposito is an old button man. Worked for Gambione back in the day. Admits he knew Hash, but”—he drew a dotted line between Raul’s name and Stella’s—“but he didn’t admit he knew Stella Nichols.”

“Do you know for sure that he did?”

“I’d be amazed if he didn’t. Freakers payroll says he worked the shadows at the strip joint at the same time Stella was dancing there. Listed him as security, but that could mean anything. Maybe he kept an eye on the door, or maybe he kept an eye on the girls—or their admirers. And,” he added, checking the sheet in his hand, “there’s Fred Winney. He was the one Stella accused of stalking her. Winney’s dead, by the way.” But this didn’t stop him from writing Fred’s name on the board, with a dotted line connecting him to Stella. “Died in a drunk driving accident in 2000.”

Wanda said, “Hmm.” And she leaned a little closer.

Leo could smell her, warmly and faintly. Pricey shampoo and musky perfume with an undercurrent of vanilla. Sweat from her scarf, dried on her neck when she took it off. After all this time, still familiar. Not the perfume—that was different. And not the shampoo either; but some essence of her that had lingered on him, all those years ago. Until he’d taken a shower and prayed that everything washed off, and his wife would never know.

“This is all very interesting,” Wanda said, the coolness of her words a stark contrast to the heat that beamed off her body. And she didn’t actually seem very interested in the white board. “But.”

She touched his arm, and gently took the loose sheets of paper from the notebook out of his hand. She set everything on the nearest surface, a round table with a landline phone atop it. Her marker went into the aluminum tray at the board’s bottom edge.

He handed over his own marker without complaint, though he made a point to cap it first.

She slipped her hands to his waist, and drew him incrementally forward as she said, “But here’s what I really want to know: am I going to have to do all the work, to get you to show me the bedroom?”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

… And All the Sinners Saints

Part 2.

CHARLIE HAD RUSHED HOME from a client meeting at his Jokertown office to make his scheduled 5:30 P.M. phone meeting with Vincent Marinelli. The phone started ringing while he was unlocking his front door. He managed to juggle his briefcase, keys, and a foam cup full of coffee and answer it without dropping any of them.

“Charlie,” Detective Marinelli’s voice said. “How’s tricks?”

“You got my report?” Charlie had been quietly asking his clients and the other petty criminals about the Joe Twitch shoot in general, and their run-ins with Officer Lu Long, aka Puff, in specific. He’d had his write-up sent to Marinelli’s office that morning.

“So Long’s a sadistic fuck,” Vince said. “Old news, kid. Give me something I can use.”

The air in the little bodega on the ground floor of Charlie’s building was redolent with cumin, allspice, and paprika, and the mouthwatering smell of whatever Mamma Maria was frying on her grill. The scents drifting up into his apartment were the only advertising Maria ever needed to use. Charlie glanced at his watch and wondered if he’d be able to get Vince off the line in time to buy some of whatever she was making before the rest of the block descended on it like jackals.

“All the jokers on the streets are afraid of him, Vince. He half burned one dude’s face off.”

“And you shoulda heard the jokes about how it improved his appearance. Even at IAB. Shit, even public defenders—uptown, not from your office. CCRB threw that beef back in our faces, even though it was classic excessive force.”

“No shit!”

“The victim was a bad actor. Paroled rapist, liked to hurt women. Plus New York loves its cops. They see all these movies where cops have to bend the law to catch the bad guys. All these TV shows. It’s hard enough to get more than harsh language for excessive force if the victim’s a fucking law professor. This scumbag? Fuggedaboutit.”

“You said ‘fuggedaboutit’? Really?”

“Hey, I had this accent before they put it on TV. Don’t bust my balls.”

Charlie swallowed. He felt inadequate enough without the joker detective mentioning his testicles. They were body-proportional for a hundred-pound male rat. “So you’re telling me I just wasted a couple weeks collecting information that doesn’t help in any way. This sort of thing seems a lot easier on TV. What about you?”

“Got the same as you. Dick. Long isn’t exactly popular with his brother officers, and maybe less with his sisters. But the blue wall stands firm for assholes. If it didn’t this job’d be a shitload more rewarding. I may’ve found some chinks, though. Even the Fort Freak cops admit Puff’s a dick.”

“And that helps us?”

“Being a dick? Naw. Bein’ a dick got you canned we’d lose ninety percent of the force. Starting with me. But Puff has a way with the ladies. The hard way. He even comes on strong to sister officers.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. So what I’m saying is, he’s got girlfriends on the street. He has trouble hearing ‘no’ from women, but he sure loves to hear ’em cry. Do the math. Forget all those forensic fantasy TV shows: after perps running their own heads, the greatest investigative tool is pissed-off exes. Or currents looking for the exit.”

“So I should track down Long’s girlfriends?”

“Smart boy. I can tell you went to college. I’ll send you a list of names. Being Lu Long’s girlfriend appears to be a short-term and high-cost proposition. Most of the names on the list are strung out or in jail. A lot of the rest have moved out of the state. This guy just leaves a trail of destruction behind him wherever he goes. One girl jumps out at me, though. Hooker named Minal. She was in a hassle with the Demon Princes last month, and seems to have vanished.”

“Why her?”

“Well, seems sweet Minal had filed an assault complaint four years ago against a cop she says roughed her up after a trick. Guess who’s the rougher upper?”

“Okay, I’ll ask around I guess.”

Vince said, “Oh, also I need a sworn statement from your snake boy.”

Like I can snap my fingers and summon him out of the air! Charlie whined in his mind. He didn’t do it aloud. He didn’t think Detective Marinelli had much patience with whiners. And he found he ludicrously craved the joker cop’s approval. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great. So long as what you do is get the goods. I’ll keep boring from within. It’s what rats do. Later.”

The connection died. Charlie slammed the phone into its cradle and rushed downstairs to buy some dinner.

♠

Charlie spent his morning working on a motion to exclude the gun in his Clyde Drummond case. While Clyde had in fact been found next to the gun when the police caught him carving up the dead Werewolf, there was no evidence that it was his gun. In a stroke of luck, Clyde hadn’t left any usable prints on it. So, while the police could testify that Clyde had been cutting up a dead rival gang member with a kitchen knife, the gun lying in the gutter nearby could not be connected to his client in any way.

It was a ridiculous long shot. He would be surprised if the judge didn’t laugh him out of the courtroom. Sometimes the necessity of providing a vigorous defense gave Charlie a deep sense of shame. Not because he defended awful people, but because he had to play the law like a game to do so.

Unfortunately, when he arrived at the Tombs to meet with Clyde, the desk sergeant told him that his client was currently being held in lockup back at Fort Freak, and was facing new assault charges.

Jessica Penniman, the sergeant in charge of the lockup at the 5th precinct, was a petite blue-eyed blonde who, under normal circumstances, would have been pretty enough to activate Charlie’s stutter reflex. Fortunately, she was soon angry enough to defuse his normal awkwardness. “Mr. Herriman,” she said, thrusting one slim finger at his chest. “I am about five seconds from squinching your client down to an inch tall and sticking him in a shoe box for the rest of his stay here.”

Charlie wasn’t sure what “squinching” meant, but the shoe box reference gave him an idea, and this was Jokertown. If someone claims they can stick you in a shoe box, safer not to force the issue. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I was told that Clyde had assaulted someone?”

“He attacked a fellow prisoner in the bus when they were both being returned from the courthouse to the Tombs.”

“Sergeant Penniman, you have my apologies for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have created. If I could meet with him, I’m sure we can straighten all of this out.”

“He tried to stab someone with his eye-horns. That’s not a misunderstanding.”

“I will be sure to impress on him the importance of not doing anything that could be interpreted as”—Charlie paused a moment so he could say it with a straight face—“attempting to stab people with his face.”

The sergeant gave him one last glare, then pointed him toward a cell at the rear of the basement lockup. “I separated him from the others in there. Yell if you need me,” she said, then headed off in the other direction.

Charlie walked down to the cell at the end of the row, and found Clyde pacing back and forth muttering and clicking up a storm. One side of his face was completely black and blue, as though he’d had a disagreement with a sledgehammer and lost.

“Clyde,” Charlie said with a sigh. “Picking fights on the bus from the courthouse is really not going to help your case.”

“It’s Nergal,” Clyde said. “And that motherfucker had it coming. He killed one of my brothers!”

“Your brother?” Clyde’s file hadn’t said anything about siblings.

“One of the Demon Princes! Goddamn gorilla punched one of the Princes to death! We can’t let that shit stand!”

“When did this happen? In here?”

“Naw. Last month. Couple days before Wild Card Day,” Clyde said, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one out. He stuck it in his mouth but didn’t light it. “You got a light, Counselor?”

“Don’t smoke. So where did this killing happen?”

“Eh, I dunno. Some whorehouse or something. That ho Minal will get what’s coming to her, but we don’t have anyone inside now but me, so when they put me on the same bus as the fucker Jimbo—”

“Wait? What?” Charlie interrupted. She’s vanished, Vince had said. Minal was not exactly a common name. How many hookers with that handle could there be?

“I gotta do Jimbo. I’m the only one who can as long as he’s in here.”

“Forget Jimbo. Leave him be. You said the hooker’s name is Minal?”

“Yeah, so? Who cares? You get me back with the other prisoners so I can finish Jimbo off. They’re talking about sending me to Rikers when Jimbo goes to the Tombs.”

“Clyde,” Charlie said, pausing a moment to press his fingers against his eyes. “You are aware that if you tell me you are about to commit a crime, I am required by law to inform the police?”

“But you’re my lawyer, you can’t tell stuff I say.”

“I can’t talk about crimes you’ve already committed. I can, and must, tell about crimes you are going to commit. So, to aid in your future defense, stop telling me you are going to commit crimes.”

“Fuck me.”

“You,” Charlie agreed with a nod. “Are certainly doing your best to try. I can probably get the assault charge waved by kissing ass, but you are definitely going to Rikers to keep you away from this other prisoner.”

Clyde sat down on the jail cot with a thump, and gave a few halfhearted clicks. “Shit,” he said.

Charlie turned to leave, then was struck by a sudden inspiration.

“Hey, Cly—I mean Nergal.”

Clyde seemed to perk up a bit when Charlie called him by his Demon Prince name. “Yeah?”

“So, that guy they caught you cutting up, that was over drugs, right?”

Clyde nodded. “Yeah, the Werewolves have been stealing our shit. We had to teach them a lesson.”

“Did you know a Joe Moritz? Called himself Joe Twitch?”

“Everyone knew him. He was kind of an asshole. Jittery freak.”

“You ever hear of him dealing?”

Clyde laughed. “You kidding me? Twitch wasn’t an idiot. He ran scams, small-time cons, I think he might have pimped some. Worked his hustles at a whorehouse anyway. But no drugs. That’s Demon Prince turf. Twitch gave our guys freebies with the tail. He knew who to take care of, and who not to fuck with.”

“Did he ever carry a gun?”

“Not that I ever saw. He had a little knife. Gotta give him props. He was quick, he could definitely cut you up if shit went down. But no guns.”

“That,” said Charlie, “is very interesting.”

Charlie walked back to Sergeant Penniman’s desk, dutifully informed her that his client would not be safe with the other prisoners, and had made additional threats against Jimbo. Penniman’s eyes narrowed at this news, and Charlie suspected Clyde might find out exactly what “squinching” was before the day was over.

“One last thing, Sergeant,” he said with what he hoped was an ingratiating smile. “I’d like to speak to the prisoner you say Clyde attacked.”

“Why, he your client too?”

“No, but I would like to apologize to him anyway. If that’s all right.”

Penniman shrugged. “I don’t care. He’s down at the opposite end of the row.”

Charlie smiled his thanks and hurried down to Jimbo’s cell before Penniman could change her mind.

Jimbo, as Clyde had called him, was an enormous joker with four long arms. Charlie had a pretty good idea where Clyde had gotten his mashed-in face now. The big joker looked up at him with vague disinterest and waited for Charlie to speak first.

“Mr., um, Jimbo is it?”

“Yeah,” said the joker in a gravelly voice. “Who wants to know?”

“Mr. Jimbo, my name is Charles Herriman. I’m an attorney with the public defender’s office.”

“Got a lawyer,” Jimbo said.

“I’m not here to represent you. I need to ask about someone you worked with.”

Charlie saw the joker’s face close up and the eyes narrow.

“No,” he said. “Don’t misunderstand. This is not in any way an investigation into your place of employment. I just need to ask a couple of questions about a man named Joe Moritz. There was a girl—”

“Minal,” Jimbo said. “She was with Joe the night he got whacked. Good luck finding her. She’s in the wind. Fucking Demon Princes are still sniffing after her, I hear. She won’t be sticking her head out anytime soon.”

“You don’t know where she’d go?”

“Not a clue. I’m kinda pissed too. She used to have cops as clients. Vice guys. I’d hoped she would get them to help me with this bullshit manslaughter charge.”

A cop’s house would be a good place to hide if bloodthirsty gangbangers have a contract out on you. “Thank you very much, Jimbo. If my office can do anything to help you in your defense, please don’t hesitate to call.” Charlie slid one of his cards onto the crossbar of the jail cell. Jimbo nodded, then put his head in two of his giant hands and leaned back onto the far too small cot in his cell.

♦

A phone call to Vince, and twenty minutes later a courier was delivering Minal Patel’s file to Charlie’s office. A number of police officers showed up in connection with Miss Patel, including the notorious Puff, Officer Lu Long. She’d filed an assault charge against him four years before. The officer who’d taken the report was named Michael Stevens, who was working vice at the time. Not the guy a hooker would bring an assault report to unless they knew each other. Stevens had appeared in court on Minal’s behalf in that assault case, and also in a couple of prostitution charges. He was the only police officer Miss Patel had ever interacted with who’d done so.

Officer Stevens was now working as a detective out of the 5th. A quick Internet search netted Charlie the detective’s home address and phone number. He was three numbers into dialing it when he hung the phone up. If Detective Stevens was protecting Minal in his home, there was a reason he wasn’t doing it through official channels. Which meant he’d never admit it on the phone or allow anyone to talk to her.

Before he could think better, Charlie threw his coat on and caught a cab to Michael Stevens’s apartment.

♥

The woman who opened the door after his second knock was not Minal. She was a slender and beautiful dark-haired woman. She looked at Charlie with the guarded politeness of someone who is waiting to be offered Watchtower magazines.

“Ma’am, my name is Charles Herriman. I’m an attorney with the public defender’s office.” He held out his card. Her eyes paused briefly on his prosthetic hand, but she made no comment. “I know this will sound like a strange question, but do you know a woman named Minal Patel?”

The guarded look disappeared and was replaced by outright fear and suspicion. “My boyfriend is a police officer. If you don’t leave right now, I will call him and have you arrested.”

Charlie smiled and tried to look nonthreatening, which was a first for him. He’d never actually felt threatening before. “Please, ma’am, I would happily wait for you to contact Detective Stevens if that would make you more comfortable. I’m working with Detective Marinelli in Internal Affairs. I could call him too.”

Her face fell, and Charlie felt like the world’s biggest creep for delivering the implied threat.

Before she could answer, another voice said from behind the door, “It’s okay, Kavitha. I’ll talk to him.”

Kavitha stared at Charlie a few seconds longer, then stepped aside and let the door swing open. As Charlie walked in, she turned to the other woman and said, “I will go check on Isai,” and walked down a hallway to another room.

Minal sat on a bar stool next to the apartment’s small kitchen. On the bar sat an open netbook. Her hair was pulled back from a face scrubbed of makeup. She wore baggy CSNY sweats and big round glasses. She was gorgeous. Better-looking than her call-girl poster shot. Much better than the mug shots in her police file.

Charlie’s mouth went Novocain numb. His breath started hitching. Reflexively he fumbled for his inhaler, then quelled it.

This wasn’t asthma. This was cowardice.

Fucking great, he thought. First, I’m talking and thinking like Vince. Second, I’m the one who can’t introduce myself to the nice woman who helps me pick up my stuff after I blunder into her. How am I supposed to talk to a gorgeous prostitute?

He cleared his throat. This wasn’t a hookup, he reminded himself sternly. This was … business? Something like it, at any rate. “Ms. Patel?” he asked, using his best interview voice and trying to ignore the tickle of sweat running down the back of his neck. “My name is Charles Herriman. I’m a lawyer with the public defender’s office, trying to help out a client of mine. Could I talk to you for a few minutes, please?”

He flashed his card at her. As she accepted and read it, frowning, he realized he’d mimicked the way Vince flashed his shield. I’m such a whore, he thought.

She looked at him over the tops of her glasses. “What does this concern, Mr. Herriman? I won’t do anything that endangers the people I’m staying with.”

“Dealings you might have had in the past with a police officer named Lu Long, out of the 5th Precinct.”

She recoiled. “Puff?”

I’m losing her! “Please,” he said. “Please, Ms. Patel. A man’s life depends on this. A fellow joker. I understand you were with Joe Moritz the night he was killed. My client is being implicated in that murder, and Puff … I mean, Officer Lu Long … is one of the men who shot Mr. Moritz.”

She eyed him like a rabbit eyeing a creature with a long snout, orange fur, and a black mask who’s just claimed to be a fellow bunny. She doesn’t trust me, Charlie realized. And why should she?

Charlie held up his right hand, letting gravity pull his cuff down to reveal the universal joint and the gleaming alloy rods that worked the hand so painstakingly tinted to match his own light olive complexion. “Not many nats work the Jokertown office,” he said. “They don’t last. My, uh, my joker name is Flipper.”

She looked at his eyes. He tried to stay professional, looking back at her huge, dark almond eyes. She nodded, shut her blue netbook with a decisive snap, and swiveled on the bar stool. “Either you’re sincere,” she said, “or the world’s greatest actor.”

He sighed. “I can’t deliver a line to save my life. But really, it seems shocking to me that no one has asked you about this already. I mean, you knew both men. You supposedly saw Joe the night he died.”

She laughed. It was a lovely laugh utterly lacking in humor. “You say you’re a lawyer. So tell me, what court would take the word of a whore over two decorated police officers? They wouldn’t even take my word over Puff’s four years ago.”

They wouldn’t take her word over Lu Long’s. That meant she’d told Michael Stevens something that contradicted Long’s version of events. Charlie tried very hard to keep a poker face. “Please understand, I need to ask some questions of a pretty personal nature. I can’t make you answer them. All I can do is remind you what’s at stake.”

Minal shrugged. “Ask away. Just understand that I won’t say anything that puts me or my friends in danger. Michael won’t get in trouble for telling me to stay quiet, will he? Because if he will, this conversation is over.”

“No, no. I’m working with the Internal Affairs officer in charge of this investigation, and I can guarantee that he is not interested in Detective Stevens. Only in finding the truth about Joe Twitch, and how he died.” Actually, Charlie couldn’t guarantee anything of the kind. But he was fairly certain Vince wouldn’t go after Minal’s benefactor over this, and in for a penny, in for a pound. “Now, I understand you were involved a couple years ago with Long on a, uh, professional basis.”

“That’s right,” she said, so softly he had to lean forward to hear.

“And you haven’t had contact with him since?”

“There’s no such thing as being finished with Puff, Mr. Herriman.” The bitter anger in her voice surprised him. When he first brought up Long she acted like prey. Now it was the rabbit showing long fangs. “I’m scared of him, Mr. Herriman. More scared than you can possibly imagine.”

You have no idea, he thought. He said nothing. The first skill of interviewing clients or witnesses, Dr. Pretorius had insisted, was let the person talk.

“Let me show you something.” She started to pull up her sweatshirt.

“No! Wait! Please.” A part of his mind yammered. What are you doing? Check out that rack!

Her breasts were impressive, although confined in a gray sports bra. By the time they came into view he’d forgotten all about them. Minal’s torso was covered with what his rapidly overheating mind could only describe as a shag carpet of long, flesh-colored nipples that moved gently, like wheat in a breeze.

“Um,” he said.

He realized they were actually small tentacles. “They’re my stock in trade,” Minal said. “I can make them do whatever I want. My clients were willing to pay highly for the experience. And … they’re very sensitive. Like normal nipples.”

For the first time in several days, a racing pulse and the sweat absolutely pouring down inside Charlie’s shirt had nothing to do with fear.

“See this?” Minal pointed under her left armpit.

Feeling nine kinds of self-conscious, Charlie leaned forward. He wasn’t sure at first what he was looking for; this was unfamiliar territory, at least in first person. Then he saw the ugly patch, like scars and shriveled skin tags.

“You know Puff’s flaming spit trick? He hocked a hot drop on me. Just to brand me, he said. Not damage the goods.” She let the shirt fall. Charlie felt a brief and shameful disappointment “That’s why I know Lu Long is capable of anything, Mr. Herriman. That and things I’ve heard and seen during the course of our … relationship. And that’s why, knowing the risks, I’m willing to tell you all about them.”

He fumbled the small oblong stick of his digital voice recorder out of a coat pocket. “You mind if I tape this, Ms. Patel?”

She smiled. “I insist.”

He clicked on the recorder. “What makes you sure the killing of Joe Twitch wasn’t just the righteous shoot the police claim it was?”

“You doubt it?” she said in surprise.

“No, Ms. Patel,” Charlie said, pointing at the tape recorder. “But I need to hear your reasons.”

“Joe died just a few hours after he left my place. When he was there, he didn’t have a gun or any dope on him. I’d never seen Joe carry a gun, ever. His ace was super speed. He carried a knife and said he could cut a man’s trigger finger off before they could fire a shot.” She glanced down, her face pained. “At least that’s what he claimed. Joe talked a lot.”

“He could have picked up a gun and the drugs in the hours after he left you,” said Charlie. “You don’t know where he went after that, do you?”

She shook her head. “No. But before he left, Joe told me he was up to something big. Something that he thought was going to be a big payday, but also scared him. It wasn’t drugs, though. I think he was blackmailing someone. Someone powerful. He said something about someone paying for ‘burning’ something. Paying Joe, I mean. I don’t know how to explain it; he wasn’t very coherent. Sometimes he talked so fast he left words out. But it wasn’t a drug deal like the cops say. Joe was a hustler, not a dealer. I think Joe went to go meet whoever he was putting the squeeze on, and those two cops shot him.”

Charlie glanced at his watch, started to ask about Joe’s history of hustling, then did a double take and said, “Shit! I have to go. But thank you so much for your help with this.”

Minal grabbed his upper arm as he started to turn. She grabbed high enough that her fingers were holding his upper flipper and not the prosthetic. Charlie felt an electric tingle shoot through him, and froze.

“If someone paid Puff to kill Joe, he’ll still have the money. That man considered actually paying for anything a moral failing. He’ll still have it.”

“We can look at his bank accounts,” Charlie said, doubtfully, “but…”

“He’s smarter than that. But not much.” Minal laughed again, this time with humor. “Puff has no imagination. He used to have an account under the name Peter Long, because he said it made him sound like a porn star. Look for dick related names. That’ll be Puffy.”

“Thank you, Ms. Patel.” Charlie started to turn toward the door.

“Anytime, Mr. Herriman,” she said with a wink and a smile.

Pulling his flipper out of her grasp was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

♣

Charlie flipped open his cell phone and dialed Ratboy as soon as he was outside of Minal’s apartment. “Vince, I’ve got a recording you need to listen to.”

“Give me the gist,” Vince said. Charlie could hear the rumble and clack-clack of a subway train in the background.

“Where are you?”

“Just on my way to Fort Freak, someone there I need to chat with. But I’ve got time for a quick meet. Cup of coffee somewhere?”

Charlie told him to meet at Squisher’s Basement in half an hour. On the way there, he listened to the recording several more times, almost afraid that Minal’s voice would fade away if he didn’t.

He ran down the steps into the below street level bar, and found a dark corner. Squisher’s old fish tank cast an eerie green glow across the faces at the bar, making even the jokers look ethereal and alien. Charlie had only just sat down when a well-built black man with prominent ears walked in and scanned the room. As he passed the glowing tank, Charlie could see the angry set of his features. When he got to Charlie’s booth, he slammed his hand down on the table. “You better be goddamned glad I know who you are, Flipper,” he said. “If you weren’t a damned cripple I’d drag you out of this place and kick the shit out of you.”

Charlie’s throat closed up, and his stomach went liquid. It was his usually panicked reaction to violent confrontation; that didn’t make it any less humiliating.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, Detective?”

Vince! If being terrified was humiliating, being relieved that someone had come to fight your battle for you was on some other dimension of self-loathing, but Charlie found himself incapable of resisting. “Vince, thank God. I don’t—”

Marinelli cut him off. “Detective Stevens,” he said as he pulled out a chair. “Why don’t we all just sit the fuck down, and I’ll try to figure out some way not to just arrest you right now for assault. How’s that sound?”

Detective Michael Stevens stood silently for a moment, clenching his fists. Finally he nodded and sat down.

Vince waved at a passing waitress and made coffee pouring motions to her. “So I ask myself,” he said. “Why a guy with a nice clean jacket and a recent promotion to detective wants to throw his career away by threatening, of all things, a lawyer with the public defender’s office.”

“I—” Michael started.

“No, let me tell you why. Some hooker you used to bang gets herself in hot with the Demon Princes. She goes on the run and comes to you for help. You take her in, keeping her off the radar. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s scared a dirty cop will sell her out. Maybe she doesn’t want Puff to find out where she’s hiding, though that raises more questions than it answers.”

“Maybe she was scared, and I wanted to make sure she stayed safe,” Michael said. He seemed to have traded his righteous fury in favor of a resigned weariness.

Charlie butted in. “She was with Joe Twitch right before he died.”

Vince’s whiskers twitched, but otherwise he didn’t react to this revelation. Charlie pulled out the little recorder and pushed it across the table. Ratboy made it vanish.

Charlie turned to Stevens, feeling bolder now that Vince had his back. “I have a hard time believing she didn’t tell you that, Detective.”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “So your old squeeze was with Twitch, then Joe gets himself offed by another cop who used to do the horizontal bop with that same former squeeze. Why would you keep that to yourself, Mikey?”

Stevens shook his head slowly. “It isn’t like that. She came to us beat half to death by the Princes. We took her in to keep her safe. Yeah, she told me about Twitch, and yeah, I told her that going up against Puff and Angel on that was not a smart idea. I didn’t have to convince very hard. Puff’s hurt her bad in the past.”

“I saw,” Charlie said. “And I believe she was frightened. But she was brave enough to give me some information that might help get Puff out of her life for good. She’s … special. I understand why you want to protect her.”

Stevens gave him a smile and a nod, then said, “What now, Marinelli? Am I going to take a rip for this?”

“Well,” Vince replied, absently scratching one large testicle with his paw. “I don’t see any reason to make a stink about this right now. But if we need your new roomie to come in, I don’t want to get the runaround.”

Michael nodded again, and stood up. “Minal told Flipper here everything she knows. Leave her out of it.”

“If I can,” said Vince, “but if I were you, Stevens, I’d have been doing some poking around of my own, on the quiet. Fort Freak’s a small place, don’t want to ruffle up the dragon’s scales. Just remember our numbers, if you turn up anything. We’re all friends now. And friends share. Otherwise we’ll have this talk again, capisce?”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Snake in the Hole

by David Anthony Durham

MARCUS EASED ONE CORNER of the manhole cover up, pressed his cheek against it, and scanned the narrow sliver of the alley. Quiet. Still. A bit brighter than he liked because of one glaring spotlight, but he chose the spot because it was hidden from the street. And for its proximity to Bippee’s Bagels.

Keep it quick, man, Marcus told himself.

He shoved the cover to the side as quietly as he could and thrust himself up into the chill night. The moving air prickled his skin, so different from the stale, rank air of the sewers. He tried to work the kinks out of his tail as he slid forward, wishing he was warmer and knowing the October chill would make him more and more sluggish the longer he was out.

Keep it quick.

The bagel shop backed on to the alley. There was a Dumpster a few strides from the door, but more often than not there were day-olds just tossed on the steps, as there were this evening. Marcus jammed a sesame in his mouth and grabbed up several more, clutching them to his chest. The dry bagel immediately felt like cardboard in his mouth. He needed a drink even more than food. But it had to be something clean. He’d already been a week wrapped around his roiling stomach after drinking sewer water. Felt like he was gonna die. He’d probably lost fifteen pounds and was still a bit light-headed because of it. Being a fugitive sucked. No doubt about it.

He decided to try the diner at the other end of the block. They put out their recycling daily. He didn’t much care what he’d find in them, or whose backwash he’d be sucking down. He knew the thought should sicken him, but he couldn’t help it. He craved liquid, sugar, syrup on his tongue and lips.

He had to slide through a narrow corridor beside the diner, just beneath the window and a little too near the street. He planned to only be in sight for a moment. Might’ve managed it too, except that his eyes darted up through the window and caught sight of a face on the late news, on a television hung from the ceiling of a diner.

His father? It couldn’t be! But there was his name, right there in yellow letters. Marcus pressed against the grubby glass to watch, thirst forgotten, bagels spilling onto the ground. He couldn’t hear their words, but he could read them crawling along the bottom of the screen.

ANCHOR: Our affiliate in Baltimore caught up with respected surgeon Jerome Morgan at his North Baltimore home.

REPORTER: Dr. Morgan, how does it feel to learn your son is wanted for murder and assault? He only left your home a few months ago, and now he’s a gang associate, a murder suspect, linked with prostitution and …

MORGAN: I am not taking questions. I have a statement to …

REPORTER: Are you surprised by your son’s actions?

The surgeon was trying to position the note to read, but couldn’t seem to find the right angle among the press of microphones thrust at him.

MORGAN: This … uh … has nothing to do with us.

REPORTER: You don’t dispute that the Infamous Black Tongue is your son, surely?

MORGAN: My son was Marcus Morgan. He died to me months ago. Now …

REPORTER: Have you had any contact with him? Has Infamous Black Tongue reached out to you? Some have speculated that he’s fled New York, perhaps with family aid.

The father met the woman’s gaze, his unease replaced by something more derisive.

MORGAN: Infamous Black Tongue? You people with your names … Look, he knows better than to contact us. Like I said, he’s dead to us. That’s what I came here to say. Please, leave us in peace.

He turned and moved away, waving the note at the reporters in dismissal.

Marcus slid down the wall and stayed huddled a long time on the filthy concrete there, amazed that after all he’d been through he still half hoped that his father would say he loved him, was proud of him, still believed in him. He had dreamed just the night before about returning to him, weaving all the way south to Baltimore. But that was stupid. It would never happen. “I’m dead to him,” he said.

“Maybe to him,” a voice said, “but not to us.”

Marcus snapped his head around. A big, muscled Chinese cop stood a few feet away, baton in hand.

“Don’t do anything stupid, kid,” the cop said. “We got the drop on you. Both of us.”

Another cop cleared his throat, this one standing in the alley that Marcus had just come out of. Slim white guy, with the latch on his holster up, his hand resting on his handgun.

“We already called it in,” the first cop said. “Take it easy and this’ll be no worse than it has to be.”

Marcus’s eyes darted around, checking the alley, gauging the space, looking for a way out. “Screw that. I’m not going to jail.”

“You gotta get this behind you, kid. One way or another. You’ve been, what, hiding in the sewers? You look like shit. You’re eating left bagels? Man…” He reached around and unclipped his handcuffs. “Come on. Man up and deal with what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Marcus looked up. The lowest platform of the fire escape looked a little too high to reach, but his coils flexed instinctively.

The Chinese cop said, “No you don’t!” He pointed his baton at Marcus and sang in a high-pitched, girly voice. It was the weirdest thing. Until a pink, sparkly light bloomed around Marcus; then that became the weirdest thing. It freaked him out. He shot up and grabbed a gutter he thought had been out of his reach. He hauled himself away, expecting the other cop to open fire on him at any moment.

He didn’t, but once on the rooftop Marcus realized why. He hadn’t escaped anything. He shone like a half-snake lightning bug stuck in the glow mode, which made him a beacon, announcing himself to the police helicopters that came skimming toward him over the cityscape.

Marcus took off, slithering across the rooftops at whip-fast speed. He shot over the openings between buildings without looking down, rose and fell as the buildings did. But it didn’t do him any good. The helicopters closed in, each movement of his clearer than if they had him spotlighted. In fact, they didn’t even use their spotlights. They just followed his shimmering progress.

He gave up on the roof. He careened down a fire escape at freefall speed and hit the ground hard enough that he had to lie there breathless for a moment. But not long. The helicopters hovered above and squad cars screeched in to one end of the alley, sirens screaming. He hurtled the opposite direction, frantic now, not really thinking, just squirming as fast as he could, nothing mattering but escape.

He didn’t plan to end up on the Williamsburg Bridge. He just did. Halfway out he realized how bad a choice it was. Squad cars followed him. The bridge traffic slowed them, but squirming through the cars and pushing past panicked pedestrians didn’t help him either. He heard sirens coming from the far side of the bridge. Above him the helicopters circled—not just cop ones anymore either, the press had joined the pursuit. A voice from a loudspeaker shouted that he was trapped. They ordered him to surrender. To lie down face on the ground, arms out to either side, tail straight out along the concrete.

He looked over the edge. The East River stretched below him. Black as the night and yet shimmering with the city’s lights also. Would the fall kill him? Maybe, but what did it matter? He dove, his tail snapping out behind him as he fell. He heard an audible gasp from the crowd. At least he gave them a show. At least his father would know exactly how he went out, on the evening news, even.

Instead of death, though, the impact with the surface only hurt like fuck. Then he figured the water would kill him, but his tail swam better than his two legs ever had. Squirming, he dove deep and stayed down as long as his breath held, getting as far away as he could, only coming up once he was under the docks and hidden.

♠

Father Squid set a steaming teacup down on the table gently. The suction cups on his fingers made light popping sounds as they released the porcelain. Marcus might not even have heard the sound if he hadn’t been watching the motion of the man’s hands, so large and powerful, in contrast to the delicate china.

“Do you take milk?” the priest asked.

“Milk?” Marcus asked.

“Yes,” Father Squid said, “in your tea? Would you like milk mixed in?”

“Oh, no.” Marcus picked the cup up by its dainty handle. “No thanks.” He slurped the brown liquid, felt the sudden heat of it fill his mouth and had to force himself not to spit it out. He swallowed. “I never really drank tea much.”

The priest of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery took a seat across from him, the two them alone in the quiet church office. He tented his hands on the table and studied Marcus. Father Squid had always been a solid, broad joker. The years had not diminished him much. Enclosed within his priestly cassock, he was still a formidable bulk of a man. With his gray-skinned face, large eyes, and the cluster of tentacles that hung down over his mouth, twitching, he could easily have been frightening. Marcus had almost bolted on first sight of him, before the man’s gentle gestures and kindly voice won him over.

“I don’t suppose you get much opportunity to drink tea these days,” the priest said. “I can see by looking at you life as a fugitive has been hard. Hard. You may not believe me, but I’ve been following your story very carefully.”

Marcus smirked. “Yeah, you and everybody else in the city.”

“The people like a story. You’ve given them that.”

“Infamous Black Tongue,” Marcus said. “How stupid is that?”

The priest shrugged his massive shoulders noncommittally.

“You know the weird thing is that yesterday I picked up a copy of the Cry,” Marcus said. “I sat there reading about Infamous Black Tongue, and it was like … like I’d forgotten that they were talking about me. Like I was reading about some other guy. It was almost … fun. And then I remembered.” Marcus set his cup down, and then picked it up. And then set it down again. “And then I felt sick all over again.”

“I’m sorry, son,” Father Squid said. “Yours is a difficult situation. A fugitive. Murder pinned on you. Injured cops. Police mug shots blazing across the newspapers and television screens. Oddity bent on destroying you. They know not what they do, Marcus. Please understand that.”

Marcus didn’t want to talk about Oddity. “The cops know what they’re doing. They’re all crooked.”

“No, not all.”

“And the newspapers too!” Marcus couldn’t help raising his voice. “That editor is always writing about me. Lies. All lies! It’s like he hates me.”

“No, Marcus, no. Lucas Tate is a good man. You must see things from his perspective.…”

“Why? They’re not seeing things from mine!”

“No, they’re not,” Father Squid agreed. He blinked, nictitating membranes sliding back and forth across his eyes slowly. “But you are the one in trouble, Marcus. Not they. You are the one that must be careful. Thoughtful. Sage in how you act.”

“Tell me you’ll help me. Keep me hidden.”

“I cannot do that, son.”

“What? I thought that’s what your church was all about—protecting jokers!”

“Our Lady of Perpetual Misery is a place of refuge, yes. And I believe there is more to your story than the police have admitted. I even believe you’ve been wronged. But hiding and running will not solve this for you. You cannot possibly hope to hide forever, not in the sewers of Jokertown, not elsewhere, either. No, the only way through this is to face it.”

Marcus suddenly felt like crying. To keep from giving in to that, he said, “Don’t tell me you want me to turn myself in.”

“That is an option to pray on. You could tell…”

“Bullshit!” Marcus tossed his teacup down, too hard. The bottom chipped as it skittered across the tray and tipped onto its side. It rolled in a sharp crescent before the handle caught and stilled it. “Forget I even came here,” he said, rising up on his coils, preparing to depart.

The priest rose, surprisingly fast, and set a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. The motion brought with it a salt tinge, a scent like the sea. Marcus found it strangely calming.

“Marcus,” the joker said, “if you won’t go to the police, go to Lucas Tate. You may think he’s your enemy, but in many ways he’s been a champion for jokers and an enemy to corrupt cops. He may well listen to you. If he writes your side of the story the police will have to deal fairly with you. You must promise me you will do him no harm, though. If you can promise that, I can tell you where to find him.”

Marcus crossed his arms. “I don’t know,” he said grudgingly. “Maybe. I’m not promising anything.” And then, aware of how ungrateful he sounded, he added, “Sorry about the teacup.”

♦

Marcus returned to his subterranean world. It wasn’t easy scrounging food and clean water, but the subway lines helped him move around under the city in ways he couldn’t above it. He learned to hear oncoming trains from far off, to recognize when they were on his line or not. He learned to anticipate the distance between side tunnels and maintenance areas. He could usually bypass station stops, and the work crews were easy to avoid. He felt signs of other things living down here, even sensed the movements of giants at times. He kept well clear of them. At some instinctual level he understood that he’d staked out a section of the underworld and marked it with his scent, like an animal communicating with other animals. Maybe that’s what he was becoming. An animal.

Unlike an animal, though, he knew music when he heard it. It was music that drew him to the theater. He’d never heard anything like it. From a distance he found it discordant, like it had too many notes and too many of them worked against each other, but he couldn’t help wanting to hear more, perhaps just to be near whoever was creating it. The notes came to him muffled by distance, echoing in the subterranean chambers. As he worked his way nearer, he found a sensuous rhythm in the way the plucked notes of the string instrument entwined with the beating hearts of several drums and tinkling of bell-like instruments.

He squirmed up close to the gap in the wall and poked his head through. The music was louder here, clearer. He slipped through the opening, pushed through the stage machinery that hid it, and crept closer. The music grew louder still.

A theater! He was in a theater, beneath the seating. He felt the heat and hum of the audience just above him. There were openings through which he could see the backs of people’s legs. He hung back for a time, but before long he needed to see whatever it was they were seeing. Finding a clear area, he peered through. That’s how he saw her.

God, she’s beautiful.

In the center of the stage a single figure swayed at the hips, her feet stepping delicately and her arms like serpents as they twisted in time with the music. Slim and dark brown, with large eyes elongated with black pen, her cheeks powered with gold flecks, lips full and sensuous: she was indeed beautiful. Her black hair trailed down her back in one hawser-heavy braid. It moved and flexed like another muscled appendage. Around her torso ribbons of light writhed like the coils of a serpent.

Marcus leaned forward, transfixed.

Energy rippled in the air around her, filling the chamber as if with an extension of herself that was somehow physical and auditory and seismic. The serpent coils slipped around her hips, gaining tangible form, sliding over themselves. Marcus felt parts low in his tail stir to life, throb and press against his scales. There was lust in the feeling, but that was just part of it. It was pure excitement also, a feeling of joy that seemed to pass from the dancing woman right into his deepest regions.

The feeling grew as the serpent shapes became ribbons that stretched out into larger orbits above her. The woman climbed up on to the ribbons and danced atop them, leaping from one to another. At times she stepped right off into empty air, only to be caught as she began to fall. For a while the shimmering energy fields became ghostly human forms, a troop of dancers mimicking her moves like stylized light-energy versions of herself.

At the conclusion, the music and visuals faded and the woman stood alone on the stage as the audience erupted in applause. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said. She spoke for a moment in a language Marcus didn’t understand, and then said, “I am Natya.” She entwined her hands, wrapping them around each other like two snakes in a mating dance. A moment later she stilled, the fingers of both hands stretching out like the delicate flower that bloomed above her.

Natya. Marcus never saw her leave the stage. He just realized she had as the flower faded and the energy fields dissolved and the stage lights dimmed. He sat there for a long time after the theater cleared out above him, stunned, thinking, I’ve found a reason to live.

♥

If he was going to live he had to clear his name. That’s why he slipped inside an unlocked window of an apartment late the next night. He had to test a few, stretched up as far as he could reach, but he found one. He’d staked out the place enough to know that Tate was alone, no spouse, no kids, no dog. He hoped Father Squid was right. He wasn’t at all sure, but he had to do something.

Once inside, Marcus stood coiled, listening, taking in the place. Even in the dim light he could feel the expense of the decor. He could almost smell it. Antique furniture, an intricate Asian rug, a piano the size of a tank, lined with slim-limbed statuettes. African, Marcus guessed. Masks of all shapes and sizes hung displayed on one long wall, a United Nations of masks. Some looked menacing, with monstrous, elongated features, wide-mouthed grimaces. Others were intricately beautiful, delicate and finely crafted. Still others appeared to be plastic or cheap cloth, like costumes kids would wear at Halloween.

A fucking mask museum, Marcus thought as he slid beneath them. Everybody needs a hobby. He moved down the hallway toward the snoring in the master bedroom.

The guy lay on his back. For a moment Marcus thought a sheet covered him, but then he realized it was a black hood. People are getting weirder and weirder, he thought. He moved quickly to the bed and clamped a hand down at the base of where he thought the man’s throat should be. His other hand he cocked into a fist, and he brought his coils flowing up onto the bed to press the man down. The hood’s eyeholes showed the man’s eyes snap open. Marcus wanted to yank the cloth off, but something held him back.

“Are you Tate? Lucas Tate?”

The man nodded.

“I’m not here to hurt you. I just need someone to listen. The cops won’t.” Marcus stared at the formless black satin a moment. He’d expected a bit of groggy protest. Instead, the eyes just barely visible through the fabric stared at him. “What are you hiding behind the mask?”

The answering voice was unnervingly calm. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m at home in bed, easily found, obviously. I’ve nothing to explain. You, however … you think laws don’t apply to you or something?”

Releasing him and drawing back a little, Marcus asked, “You know who I am?”

Tate gathered himself up, tugging his pajamas in order to solidify his dignity. “If you’re not Infamous Black Tongue I’ll step down as the Cry’s editor.” He let his eyes drift over Marcus’s coils. “I trust my job is secure. What do you want?”

“I want you to stop writing lies about me.”

“I get at the truth as best I can and put it out there. Always have.” Tate scooted away slightly. He pressed his back against the elaborate metal headrest. “So you’re here to bully me? Good luck, but you’re not the first thug to try.”

“I’m not bullying anyone,” Marcus said. “Just listen. I didn’t kill anyone! I tried to stop Twitch from being killed. The cops did it. Those cops are dirty, man! Every word out of Lu Long’s mouth is a lie. You can see that, right? You know about police corruption and all that, don’t you? I heard … I mean, someone told me that you used to fight corruption.”

The hooded eyes seemed to be considering, sizing him up. At least he was listening; that was an improvement. Marcus kept talking. Tate, as far as he could tell, kept listening. When he’d talked himself silent, Tate said, “Sounds like a difficult situation.”

“Seriously screwed up.”

The fabric of the mask billowed near the nose as Tate exhaled a laugh. “No matter what else it is—it’s that. Best you can do may be to play by the rules. Turn yourself in. Get your lawyer in the loop. Talk it through with the police. They’re not all—”

“No way. Why’s everyone keep saying that? I’ll never trust a cop again! They’d say they caught me. They’d shoot me dead and say I was trying to escape or something and everyone would believe them. Think like a reporter, man! You know things go down that way.”

Tate was silent for a moment. “You’ve got a point there,” he finally said, his voice softening. “Listen, I’m not saying I buy your entire story, but it deserves looking into.”

“Yeah? You’ll look into it?”

“Sure. I’m a reporter at heart.” He kicked his legs over the edge of the bed and reached down for his slippers. “Let me get a pad and pen. I’ll make some notes. I’ll ask some questions. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Don’t you worry. Hey, you hungry? I’ve got some leftovers from a dinner party last night. I make a mean bigoli con salsa, you know.”

Marcus had no idea what that was, but still he felt the tension drain out of him, right down the long length of his tail. “Yeah, I could do with a bite to eat.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 9.

MICHAEL’S EYES GLITTERED IN the light of the votives on the altar. He looked at them like he wanted to touch them, to run his fingers through the flames in a quick, warm pass that would leave them sooty. But he didn’t. He asked Father Squid, “So the Infamous Black Tongue came here, and you told him what?”

“I told him that this is a safe place,” replied the priest carefully. “And I thought perhaps he’d rest here a bit. But he changed his mind—I don’t know why. He’s terribly afraid.”

Leo snorted. “Yeah, well. He ought to be.”

Father Squid shook his head slowly. “The whole city wants him. His jitters are understandable.”

“Is he injured?” Leo thought to ask, knowing that would be too easy.

“I don’t believe so. He was exhausted from running, but I don’t think he was hurt. And he’s quite young. He recovered quickly.”

Michael’s cell phone rang, but he didn’t want to take the call in the sanctuary. He said, “Excuse me,” and left through the nearest side door.

“Hey, Father,” Leo said in a tone that implied a change of subject. “I wanted to ask you something. Something you said the other night. You said you knew Lizzie Wallace, the counter girl who died at the Rathole.”

Father Squid turned to tend to the candles, or to stall. “I knew her, yes. Lovely woman.”

“Were you a regular there, back then?”

His back still turned, his body cast in shadows from the brightness before him at the front of the church, Squid said, “I suppose.”

“Do you know anything about her boyfriend?”

The priest turned, just enough to show his profile, backlit by the small flames. “I beg your pardon?”

“She had a boyfriend. Some slimeball, is all I know. Gangbanger. No one wants to give me a name on him, but that only makes me think he was actually dangerous.” Leo pulled out his notepad and clicked open a pen, just in case he was about to hear something worth writing down.

“Ah,” Squid said, and he faced Leo once more, leaning back on his hands against the table. “It’s been a long time, but I knew of him, yes. He became rather notorious; it doesn’t surprise me that no one wants to talk about him, even now.”

“But you will?”

“His name was Peter, but I believe you may know of him as Warlock. He was in the Werewolves, years ago. Ran the club, eventually. I think.”

Leo’s pen froze, leaving a wet blue daub on the notebook’s thin-lined page. “Wait a minute. Warlock?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Warlock,” Leo repeated under his breath, and once again the pen nub moved in a swift scribble. Behind him, the side aisle door opened and Michael came back inside, slipping his cell phone back into a pocket.

Father Squid continued. “I don’t know where he is these days. I’m not sure how you’d go about finding him.”

“I do.” Leo quit scribbling and slapped the notepad shut. “He’s in lockup on Governor’s Island. Got himself convicted of manslaughter a couple years ago.”

“But he might not want to talk.”

Leo grunted. “He likes to talk. He’s his own worst enemy.”

Michael waited out the tail end of this conversation and said, “Leo, I’ve got something waiting for me back at the station. We done here?”

“I think so.”

“Then thanks for your time, Father,” Michael said, and after a round of handshakes, the two cops were on their way. As they walked the return blocks, they tightened their coats and shivered, adjusting hands into pockets and stomping feet to keep them full of feeling.

“Hey, Leo,” Michael said with a little reluctance.

“Hey what?”

“You were doing it again, just now. Weren’t you?”

“Doing what?” Leo asked.

“Digging around in the Rathole stuff. While I was on the phone.”

Leo said, “So what? What shit do you give if I ask a couple extra questions?”

“I don’t,” he said, too fast. “I really don’t, but other people, you know. And we’ve got all these open cases, waiting around, stinking up the place. Maybe you should—”

“Maybe I should what?” Leo interrupted.

Michael backed down. “Maybe you should be more careful, is all I’m saying. You don’t have much time left with the badge, and there’s no sense in screwing it all up at the last minute. Hey,” he said suddenly, brightly. “Maybe after New Year’s you could go get your private license, and do some detecting that way. That way nobody would yell at you about it.”

“Mind your own business,” he groused. And then his own phone rang. He answered it, and without any preamble or pleasantry, he was treated to the shouted declaration, “Leo, I’ve been robbed!”

“Tate, is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Same as the rest of the thefts in the papers—just like that, gone! This is getting ridiculous—I won’t stand for it!”

Leo wanted to tell him to “get in line” if he wanted to register a complaint with the department’s handling of the burglaries, but he didn’t. He asked, “Did you file a report?”

“Of course I filed a report. But no one there would tell me a goddamned thing, so—”

“What makes you think I’ll tell you any different?”

“I’d like to think we’re friends.”

“Sure, we’re friends. But the force ain’t holding out on you, Lucas. We’re stumped, and we’re working on it. I swear to God, that’s all I’ve got. That’s all anybody’s got over here.” He folded his notebook shut and stuck the pen to its cover. “What’d you lose?”

Lucas swore softly, and said something to someone else. It was muffled, like his hand was over the receiver. Then he said to Leo, “A few things that aren’t worth a damn, and a few things that are irreplaceable. Mostly, I’m upset about the masks.”

“Ah.” Those precious, ridiculous, ubiquitous masks of Tate’s. “I see.”

“Some of them were vintage pieces—absolutely irreplaceable. I lost a genuine Venetian carnival mask, a painted leather Jetboy mask that I practically stole at an estate sale, a vintage owl mask, a Holbrook’s limited edition … and never mind the Monroe mask signed by Marilyn herself! If you don’t recover it, I’ll never be able to replace it. Never!”

“Masks. Okay. I’ll…” He wasn’t sure what to promise, so he said, “I’ll keep my eyes open for them. I assume you gave a more precise description when you filed your report.”

“Yes, I did.” He sounded impatient and none too pleasant, but Leo let it slide.

“All right then. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“Then I’ll let you know if we learn anything.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it,” Lucas Tate said before hanging up.

Leo sighed, glanced at the time on his phone, and said, “Fuck it.”

“Fuck what?” Michael asked. “Lucas got his stuff lifted?”

“Yeah. I’m going to go talk him off a ledge,” he lied. “I’ll catch you back at the station.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Faith

Part 2.

OCTOBER, 2010

FATHER SQUID WASN’T MUCH of a drinker even in his wild days, and now, he thought, it was too late to turn for solace in that direction.

He sat alone in the small, comfortably furnished living room of his rectory, the only light in the room the soft glow of his television set, tuned to a Knicks game with the sound off. He watched the patterns made by the players as they ran back and forth, up and down the court, without comprehension. His mind was still occupied with the conversation he’d had with Storgman who was, unwittingly perhaps, dogging the ghosts of his past with the determination of a bloodhound on the scent.

DECEMBER, 1978

Dorian Wilde leaped to his feet, threw his hands up in the air, and let out an exasperated cry that sounded something like “Hnnngghhh!” He clutched at his flowing, greasy hair with his right hand. The tentacles that made up his left just twitched animatedly and dripped a foul-smelling goo over the sleeve of his Edwardian jacket.

“No! No! NO!” he yelled up at the actors on the makeshift stage. He wasn’t happy. “I know,” he said to the batrachian joker playing Balthasar, “that you’re a simple bouncer in a common bar, but you are supposed to be one of the Wise Men, not a wise guy. If you cannot speak the lines I have written with eloquence and passion, at least try to remove those atrocious Brooklyn accents from your voice. Again!”

The joker cleared his throat and said, “Hark! We gotta follo yonda star to da manager—”

Dorian tore at his hair again and groaned, “Manger! Manger! Manger!” He glared at Father Squid. “George Bernard Shaw never had to put up with this!”

“I’m sure he had his problems too,” Father Squid said mildly.

“You simply must get me better quality actors—for the important roles, anyway,” Wilde complained. “These hacks simply are not believable as Wise Men.”

Father Squid sighed. Never in a million years would he have believed when he’d decided to take the cloth that one of his duties would be that of casting director. But there it was.

“It’s hopeless,” a pessimistic Wilde commented.

“Nonsense,” Father Squid said. “It’s going splendidly. They just need a little more practice.”

Wilde grunted gloomily.

“It’s late and I could use some coffee, and a bite to eat,” Father Squid said. “What say we break for the night? Tomorrow will be a better day.”

“What makes you think that?” Wilde said.

“Faith, my son,” Father Squid asserted. “We must have faith.”

“I put my faith in drink,” Wilde said, “and I could use a strong one. How about that new place—the Crystal Palace. I hear that it’s quite the venue—and the proprietress is supposed to be something to see.”

“Hmm, yes,” Father Squid said. Wilde was right about Chrysalis, the owner of the Palace. But it was Lizzie whom the priest really wanted to see. “The Rathole is near at hand. Their portions are certainly bigger and their prices cheaper.”

“Ah, yes,” Wilde said with a puckered mouth. “My favorite. Cheap, abundant slop.” He waved his tentacles at the stage. “Dismissed. Go home, and for God’s sake, rehearse.”

The Rathole was quiet when the priest and the poet walked in. A few drowsy patrons sat nursing mugs of coffee, one plainly asleep, his heads on the table and snoring in unmelodic counterpoint. The dive looked just about what a place in Jokertown called the Rathole would look like. Mismatched tables and chairs. A cracked linoleum floor. An old-fashioned counter with torn and scarred Naugahyde seats. Dim lighting—which was probably for the best. Although it was surprisingly clean and potted plants were scattered around the countertop and tables and in window boxes, providing an element of surprising color in an otherwise dull and lackluster setting. Lizzie’s doing, Father Squid thought. She was unrelentingly cheerful no matter her surroundings.

She was working the night shift alone again, except for Hash, the short-order cook. Father Squid worried about that, but Lizzie laughed off his concerns, telling him that the Rathole was safe as anywhere in Jokertown … besides, Hash kept a sawed-off shotgun in case a customer got squirrelly. That did little to ease Father Squid’s mind. He knew that Hash dealt drugs out the back door as a sideline, and mixing drugs, cash, and guns was always a recipe for disaster.

Father Squid and Wilde took seats at the counter behind which Lizzie floated a few inches off the floor. It was a minor power, but useful for a waitress who worked long shifts. She was a small girl, plump and smiling, with large dark eyes and short dark curly hair. She was on the cute side of plain though to Father Squid her smile was one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Her jokerhood was as minor as her power. Her skin glowed an iridescent green, which to Father Squid’s eyes was rather pleasing. But it was her smile that had taken his heart.

“Glad you could come by,” she said to them. “How was your day?”

“Fabulous,” Wilde said. “I always enjoy—” He stopped when he realized that Lizzie was paying him no attention whatsoever.

“Excellent,” Father Squid said. “The pageant rehearsals go well.”

“Wonderful!” Lizzie leaned closer to Father Squid. “I’m making something for you, for the pageant. I’ll show it to you—later.”

Dorian Wilde coughed discreetly. “Can I trouble you for some coffee? If I’m not interrupting, that is?”

“Of course not,” Lizzie said, turning her smile on him. “The Pie Lady was just here,” she added, “and she dropped off some yummies. Apple. Key lime. Chocolate—”

The Pie Lady was a fixture around Jokertown. She hawked her homemade comestibles on the street and to eateries like the Rathole. As opposed to Hash, she could actually cook.

“Apple,” Father Squid said.

“That sounds good,” Wilde said.

“You got it, boys.” She floated off into the back and soon returned balancing a tray loaded with a slice of apple pie on a plate, the rest of the pie on a bigger plate, a pot of coffee, two large mugs, spoons, and forks. She slid the single piece in front of Wilde and the rest of the pie in front of Father Squid.

“Hey,” Wilde said, “how come he gets the whole…” But his voice trailed off as he saw the expression on Lizzie’s face as a new customer entered the diner. His features were hidden by a cheap plastic Marilyn Monroe mask, a poor match with his tall, strongly built frame and his black leather jacket with silver chains dangling from his shoulders. “Who’s the rough trade?” the poet asked.

From the look on Lizzie’s face, Father Squid thought he knew who he was.

“I told you not to come around here, Peter,” Lizzie said in a voice that tried to be brave.

“Since when do I listen to crap from women?” The mask muffled his voice only a little. “Especially my woman.”

“I don’t belong to you, Peter.”

The mask jiggled as he frowned underneath it. “You belong to me until I say you don’t. And don’t you ever forget it, bitch.”

“See here—” Wilde began.

Peter glanced in his direction. “Shut up, faggot.” He turned his gaze at Father Squid, who was rising ponderously from his stool. “And you sit your fat ass down.”

Father Squid rose, somewhat resembling an island emerging from the sea.

“Bob—” Lizzie began in a warning voice.

“It’s all right, Lizzie,” Father Squid said pleasantly.

The man she called Peter looked past Father Squid. “This lard-ass the new boyfriend? A priest? Jesus, he’s one ugly motherfucker. I always knew you was kind of simple, Lizzie, but I never knew you were stupid enough to leave me for an ass-face like this.”

“I didn’t—”

“That’s right,” Peter said. “You didn’t leave me. You went on a little vacation. Sure. I understand. You just get your shit together and come on back.” Father Squid could hear anger behind his deceptively mild words. “It’ll be just like before. It’ll be good times, baby. Things are coming together. You’ll see.”

Lizzie shook her head, her lips compressed in a thin line.

“She doesn’t want to go back to you,” Father Squid said reasonably. “Why don’t you—”

Peter turned on him. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, lard-ass?”

Any second now, Father Squid thought. “Son—”

He knew that word would do it.

Peter hurled himself at the priest, reaching for a length of chain that dangled off his shoulder. He was taller than Father Squid, though the priest was broader by far. He probably also believed himself faster and meaner.

But in another life, under another name, Father Squid had killed from close at hand and from far away, and once you’ve done that you never forget how. His body moved ponderously, but his curious-looking hands were fast and strong. His long, attenuated fingers caught Peter’s right wrist, stopping him from swinging the chain, and his throat. Father Squid squeezed and Peter’s cry of rage turned into a gasp for breath.

“Let’s be reasonable,” Father Squid suggested. “All right?”

Peter’s head bobbed up and down, and Father Squid released him. Peter put his hands to his throat, gasping for breath.

Father Squid counted slowly to himself. One … two … three …

Peter hurled himself at the priest again, this time with a raspy scream of rage. Father Squid slapped him once, hard enough to send him spinning to the floor and knock the mask off his face. He crouched there for a moment, blood spraying from his nose and running over the hands covering his face. If he was a joker, his abnormality wasn’t apparent. His face, what the priest could see of it, was plain, with undistinguished features. Except for his eyes. They were crazy.

“My mask! You took off my mask!” Peter pushed to his feet, but Father Squid, the veteran of countless fights, knew that he was finished. “I’ll get you for that, you fat fuck!” He looked straight at Lizzie. “And don’t think I’ll forget you either, bitch.” He lurched to the door and out into the night. Most of the Rathole’s scattered patrons didn’t even seem to notice.

Wilde looked at the priest speculatively. “What was your rank?”

“You’re very clever,” Father Squid said.

“I am,” Wilde said. “But it doesn’t take a high degree of perspicacity to figure out who’s the punk and who’s the soldier.”

“Sergeant,” Father Squid said ruefully. “Four times.”

“Vietnam?”

“‘Last to go,’” Father Squid quoted, “‘first to die.’”

“Motto of the Joker Brigade.” Wilde looked at Father Squid’s impassive face. “We’ll get drunk some night and you’ll tell me all about it. I could get a sonnet cycle out of it.”

Father Squid shook his head. “Some things I have no wish to relive.”

OCTOBER, 2010

If I hadn’t humiliated him so thoroughly, the priest thought again, as he had thought so many, many times over the years. If I had shown some grace, instead—

Another hand had pulled the trigger, Father Squid knew, Warlock’s or Deedle’s or someone else, but deep inside he was still convinced that his own actions had made the killer pick up the gun. He couldn’t think of that without wanting to die himself.

Leo Storgman was peeling away the layers one by one. But there was still so much that Ramshead did not know. About Lizzie, about Deedle, about Father Squid himself. All my sins return to haunt me. Father Squid wondered how long it would take the detective to uncover all the rest of it. And what he would do when that day came.…

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 10.

A UNIFORMED GUARD LED the prisoner into the row where all the little orange phones were lined up in the narrow, privacy-free booths. Leo wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he was surprised anyway.

Much like Lucas Tate and any number of other jokers of a certain age, Warlock had lived a lifetime without appearing in public unmasked. His devil’s mask had once been a symbol of intimidation on the streets—a fierce warning and a mean reminder that the gangs ruled and everyone else could play along or die.

But as the big man in the blue jumpsuit settled onto the stool and picked up the orange phone, Leo racked his brain trying to recall having ever set eyes on the convict’s face before. It must’ve been made public at some point. During a trial, or during booking. But he couldn’t place it.

He gazed at the face of a large white man now well into his fifties. There was nothing remarkable about it, except it was flat—like it’d been pushed into a wall one time too many. His nose was crushed down until it pointed at his upper lip. His eyes were small and dark, and squinted like maybe he was nearsighted and didn’t want to wear glasses.

He said, “What do you want?” into the phone as if he wanted to strangle it.

“I want to talk about Elizabeth Wallace.”

For a split second, a puzzled frown bloomed on the joker’s face—then it faded into realization. “I remember her. But that was a long time ago. What do you care, anyway? And who are you?” He eyed the detective hard, looking to infer something useful. “Some old cop from Fort Freak.”

“Yeah, that’s me. The boys call me Ramshead.” Leo pointed at his horns, using the joker name on the off chance it might give him something in common with the convict. Something to remind Nance that kind of, in a certain way, they were the same breed.

The sneer on Warlock’s face didn’t tighten, but it didn’t ease. “Good for them, or good for you—whatever. So you want to talk about Lizzie, huh?”

“Her, and the Rathole. What happened there, back in ’78?”

“Bunch of people died.”

Leo nodded. “Including Lizzie. You have anything to do with it?”

The dark, deep-set eyes went even narrower. “What’s it matter now? Nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do to me.”

“That’s true,” Leo let him think it. “But rumor had it, she was stepping out on you. Any truth to that?”

Warlock leaned back, forgetting he was on a stool and there was nothing to support him. He came forward again, toying with the receiver. “Might’ve been. Might not’ve been. But I didn’t like hearing about it, either way.”

“You do something about it?” Leo asked.

Whatever Warlock had been weighing, he made a decision and said, “Sure I did. Not that you could prove it.” Warlock was talking about his “death curse.” “I cursed her,” the convict said, as if he were afraid he hadn’t spelled it out clearly enough.

But Leo had never believed in death curses—from aces, jokers, or anybody else. “That curse thing. It always works?”

“Always.” The sneer was smug now, and even less pretty than before. “And I didn’t like what I heard about Lizzie, so I put her on the list. You know how it was, back then. Me on top. Couldn’t have that kind of thing floating around.”

“Sure. So when she turned up pregnant with some other guy’s kid—”

Warlock jerked—a little spasm of honest surprise.

The detective said, “You didn’t know.”

Nance sniffed. “Wouldn’t have changed anything. And if she was pregnant, it was mine. You can bet the farm on that.”

This gave Leo an idea. “You want to put your DNA where your mouth is? I bet I can chase up some tissue samples to prove for sure.”

“Yeah, I don’t care. I know what I know,” he said, but the sneer was slipping.

“Okay. I’ll hold you to that,” Leo vowed. “Anyway, you killed her. That’s what you’re telling me. With your death curse. How’s that work?”

“I curse people and they die.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I know your record. Last I heard you’d been batting a thousand since the sixties. That’s one hell of a success rate. You ever decide a curse is taking too long, or that karma needs a helping hand? Or a helping .45?”

“No! I don’t! Because I don’t have to. When I curse somebody, that’s it,” he asserted with a chop of his hand, left to right. “I just sit back and wait. And I never wait long.”

“That’s a big claim.”

“I’ve got a big power.”

“I hear you’ve got a big phobia too, just like a little kid,” Leo said, fishing for something in his pocket. He found it.

Warlock said, “I’m not afraid of anything. I’m sure as hell not afraid of some stubby old cop with curly little horns that aren’t even pointy or nothing. Some useless little old joker cop. That’s all you are. And you ain’t got nothing.”

“I got a mirror,” Leo said. He lifted it up—a small compact, the kind that goes in a lady’s purse. In fact, one that had come from Wanda’s purse. She’d left it at his house, and he’d tossed it into a pocket, intending to return it.

The mirror was no bigger than two inches square. But it elicited a high squeak from Warlock, who threw himself off the stool in an effort to look away. The receiver fell from his hand and dangled from its cord, slapping back and forth against the reinforced glass and the wall. “That’s not fair! Put it away!”

“Oh, I’ll put it away. As soon as you tell me—”

“I’m not telling you dick. Guard!” he called. “Hey, guard! Get me away from this fucking lunatic! Get me away from him!” he demanded. He begged. And he never once looked back toward the tiny reflective square that Leo pressed up against the window, right at face level.

The guard opened the door and Warlock would’ve fallen through it if another guard hadn’t caught him.

Leo hung up the receiver and stuffed the mirror back into his pocket.

He made a mental note to hit up the lab for a swab kit; and when he got home that evening, he added “Peter Nance” to his list of suspects on the white board.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Straight Man

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

THE APARTMENT LOOKED LIKE it had once been a basement laundry room that had at some point been converted into an illegal bathhouse. A discolored hot tub stood empty in one corner, and Jim had no idea how it had been fit down the stairs. Teleportation? Shrinking? Maybe someone had turned it two-dimensional then rolled it up like a large rug?

That’s how Jim would have managed it, assuming he could do something as big as a hot tub, but the thought made him wince. It had been hard enough just working up to his clothes. And it still didn’t explain why the place reeked of rancid fondue. But given Jokertown, there were a dozen explanations, each equally improbable but equally possible.

The wild card virus had shattered Occam’s Razor over sixty years ago.

“So what’s that smell?” asked one of the other prospective tenants. He appeared to be an ordinary college student, at least if you overlooked the thin green-lipped mouths that puckered his skin like scars. But this was hard when they all moved in unison when he talked. “The guy who lived here before or what he ate?”

“A little bit of both.” The landlady was dressed in an orange-and-black pinafore printed with pumpkins and candy corn. It looked like something you’d see on a small child or very large doll, but in this case was appropriate: she looked like a five-foot Kewpie doll, with an oversized head, tiny body, vestigial wings, and wobbly little legs. “Mr. Cheesy was very fond of cheese.…” She’d left her scooter at the top of the stairs and had come down clutching the handrail.

The last prospective tenant, a pygmy hippopotamus dressed like a bank clerk, glanced in the hot tub. “Did he die here?” Only the neat gray pantsuit gave a clue as to her gender. That and the dangly light-up jack-o’-lantern earrings she was also wearing in honor of the day.

“No, he died at the clinic.” The landlady shrugged her stunted wings and handed the applications to both of them, and a significant moment later to Jim, who the wild card had just made beanpole tall and rail thin. He knew he wouldn’t be getting this apartment either, even if he wanted a basement that smelled like dead cheese joker. Which at this point he did.

The department’s temporary housing expired today, and tomorrow, he would have to grovel to Inspector Maseryk or, worse, to Captain Mendelberg. Anything was preferable.

Jim glanced over the application. Two months of hunting had got him over sticker shock. While ruinous compared to Phoenix, the price was reasonable for Manhattan, if a bit steep for Jokertown. He printed his name, along with the name of his employer—New York’s 5th precinct, aka Fort Freak, the scarlet letter that confirmed him as a joker for all the apartments he’d tried to rent outside of Jokertown, rather than just an unusually tall, absurdly slim nat. Discrimination was illegal, of course, not that that stopped anything except coming out and admitting it.

The landlady looked at the form. “Oh, you’re with the precinct.…”

Jim felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket, the tug of the department’s leash. “Just transferred last August.”

“Well, thank you, Detective McTate. I’ll be giving this my careful consideration.”

The look in the huge Kewpie-doll eyes said it all. She went off to chat with the other two applicants as Jim checked his phone. The text from Tenry, his new partner, was succinct: POSSIBLE MAGPIE THEFT AT DIME MUSEUM: CAN YOU CHECK?

Jim glanced at the back of the landlady’s enormous head and texted back: SURE. The hippo would probably get the place anyway, due to actually needing the hot tub, even if it did smell like cheese. That was the way things worked in Jokertown: if you could pass as a nat, then you were treated as a nat. And if you were an ace …

Jim ducked out of the apartment, literally. The department psychologist back in Phoenix had suggested the transfer: in Manhattan, he might find acceptance, maybe even salvage his career, rather than being treated as the department’s token joker-ace freak. Fat lot she knew.

There was a lot to get used to with his new body. For one, ducking for doorways. For another, looking down at the top of everyone’s head. In Phoenix, while freaky enough, this had just consisted of getting an aerial view of hairstyles, noticing bald spots, and suddenly being unable to make eye contact with anyone wearing a hat. In Jokertown? Horns were as common as bald spots, cloaks were more common than hats, and eye contact with short people and hats were suddenly no longer mutually exclusive when someone’s yarmulke winked.

Jim looked away from the giant eyeball that made up the crown of the joker’s skull, walked faster, and shivered. Halloween in New York was also a heck of a lot colder than it was in Phoenix, and Jim now had no body fat and a hell of a lot more surface area relative to his mass index. He loped past an obvious pink wig, pink hair that was obviously not a wig, and a long rubbery green nose poking out of the hood of a black velvet cloak. The individual with the witch nose was pulling a collapsible shopping cart with a box with three bright-eyed kittens perched on top. Jim stole a glance back once he passed: the witch nose belonged to a green-faced witch mask. He hoped the kittens were just pets and costume accessories, but when a good portion of Jokertown’s residents viewed the neighborhood pet shop and grooming salon as a combination beauty parlor and sushi bar, he knew he couldn’t take that for granted.

Jim was glad the wild card had not given him a taste for kittens.

He was also glad that New Yorkers heated their lobbies, since while the Famous Jokertown Dime Museum was not yet open for viewing, it was open for ticket sales. Admission was now thirty-five dollars. But to be fair, the exhibits had gone more upscale as well. In place of the infamous “hideous joker babies” in formaldehyde (now rumored to be relegated to some embarrassing back corner), the Dime Museum now showcased historic curios and waxworks. A particularly attractive example was mounted on a rotating platform: international supermodel and heroine, Michelle Pond, who was indestructible and could go from fat to thin in an instant. With her hands upraised, the improbably gorgeous platinum blonde looked like she was conjuring the bubbles coming out of a discreetly placed bubble machine.

Despite the fact that Bubbles was out of his league in the ace scale of things, known to be in at least one relationship, moreover lesbian, and had recently been the size and density of a lead zeppelin crashed into New Orlean’s Jackson Square, Jim would still rather look at her than the joker behind the counter. He looked like another waxwork, but one that a thousand chain smokers had stubbed out their cigarettes in, flesh dripping from his face in frozen rivulets.

Instead of making eye contact, Jim read the joker’s name tag: JASON. He leaned down and flashed his badge. “You reported a theft?”

The joker nodded, then put out a BACK IN 15 MINUTES sign. “Let me show you.” He led Jim through an archway labeled Hall of Villains. “We caught it on the Turtle’s cameras.”

Jim wondered since when the Great and Powerful Turtle, the world’s most powerful telekinetic, was classed as a villain, but once they had passed waxworks of a blond hunchback kissing a severed head, an old man embedded in a section of brick wall, the horrible doughy bulk of an alien swarmling, and the even more horrible, more doughy, and more bulky immensity of the monstrous Bloat, chief villain of the Rox War, he saw the diorama and it was self-explanatory.

A car hung suspended from wires just below the skylight, the make and model obscured by a battleship plate and the spot where a license plate would go replaced with a battery of cameras. It was one of the Turtle’s shells and it was pointed at a section of the original Brooklyn Bridge, infamously shattered by the Turtle in the Rox War. Beside one of the Victorian lampposts stood the reason the mysterious ace had broken it and an even greater villain: Herne the Huntsman.

The antlered porn star turned international terrorist held a battle spear upraised, sitting astride a rearing and anatomically correct black stallion. Whether Herne matched or exceeded the stallion was unanswered due to the angle and position of the terrorist’s stag haunches and the artfully styled mane. There was a button on the explanatory plaque below the figures and Jim pressed it. Herne raised a great golden horn and an eerie call filled the vault, the echo of a primeval hunting cry as his and the horse’s eyes glowed green. The Turtle’s shell blazed alight in response and a quadrophonic version of the Mighty Mouse theme song thundered out of the speakers placed in the wheel wells.

Jim looked to Jason who simply pointed mutely to the next diorama, suspended in the vault at the same level as the Turtle and now spotlighted by one of the Turtle’s floodlamps. Standing in an exposed portion of the gondola of a blimp that appeared patched together from weather balloons was a snarling man in an old-fashioned diving suit missing the helmet along with half his face. Not a joker but a scarred nat, the left half of his face replaced by a featureless metal prosthetic. The rest was a mask of rage and he had a .45 in one hand, the other on a swirled glass sphere glowing with its own light, a Chihuly sculpture from hell. It was a replica of the Takisian canister that had first brought xenovirus Takis-A to Earth and the disfigured nat could be none other than Dr. Tod, the career criminal who’d found it. He’d created the first black queens in his lab, along with the first jokers—if you believed in conspiracy theories, maybe even the first ace—then tried to blackmail Manhattan with an alien plague. He was the man who’d killed Jetboy, the first and greatest villain of the wild cards era.

Jim had an urge to shiv the waxwork with a two-dimensional hand, but it was at least fifteen feet up, and tall as he was now, his jump shot was not that good.

“Don’t you see?” said Jason. “We put it up there because we were having vandalism problems, but now somebody took the helmet. And it’s authentic!”

“Authentic?” Jim said incredulously. “Are you saying Dr. Tod survived the explosion? He’s the first ace? Maybe he’s been sharing a condo in Buenos Aires with Hitler’s brain?”

“We’re a history museum.” Jason rolled his eyes. “Dr. Tod blew up with the blimp. But that suit didn’t. It’s from one of his henchmen, Smooth Eddy Shiloh. He jumped just before.”

Jim thought back to his elementary school history reports. “The last man to see Jetboy alive. But no one pays to see a second-rate criminal, so you used the suit for Dr. Tod.”

Jason nodded. “It’s physically identical. Or at least it was until the helmet vanished.” He went over to a display under the Turtle’s shell. There were a number of old televisions, a bucket seat from a car, and the words SEE WHAT THE TURTLE SEES! “I got the feed hooked up so people can check it out from the website. Someone e-mailed and told me it was gone. Look.”

He punched a few buttons and Jim watched as the view in the TV screens changed. One moment, Dr. Tod’s waxwork wore a copper diving helmet like you saw in old movies and cartoons. Then the camera panned dramatically to the glowing swirled menace of the virus canister and evil spiky letters Jim assumed were Takisian hazmat warnings. When it panned back, the helmet was gone. The time stamps read between 8:48 and 8:49.

“We open at ten,” Jason explained. “I’m the only person here right now. Mr. Dutton’s going to flip when he finds out.”

“Does that skylight open? Could someone have rappelled down?”

“Not unless they could phase through glass. That’s been there since they cut a hole for the Turtle’s shells.”

“So how do you get up to the exhibit? Have someone on staff who levitates?”

“We use a ladder,” Jason said. “It’s in the back.”

Jim had him get it so he could take direct photos of the crime scene. It was more a mobile staircase, but wasn’t something that could have dodged the Turtle’s other camera angles. He had to admit it was an ingenious way to hide security cameras. It was also going to make extra paperwork, but Jason was able to e-mail him a copy of the relevant footage, which would help.

“We’ll be on it,” Jim promised, leaving Jason to contend with the horde of tourists now lined up with discount coupons in their hands and claws and assorted other appendages ready to pay thirty-five dollars or somewhat less to see the Dime Museum as a Halloween tradition.

Jim crossed Elizabeth Street, dodging the twelve-foot-tall guy with stilt legs who pulled a rickshaw around Jokertown. Jim looked, considering. Stilt Guy or whatever he called himself could have reached the diving helmet, but he’d also need to be able to walk through walls and turn invisible to get it, and while not impossible, it was unlikely. Jim shrugged it off.

Mostly, he was just glad the wild card had not made him that tall. Tall as he was, he was still in the nat realm of possibility, and not even the tallest guy on the force. That place was currently held by Beastie, aka Officer Bester, one of the rookies, who was the size of a grizzly and with his horns and snout looked like one of Sendak’s Wild Things.

He was in the break room and Jim did a double take: Beastie’s red fur now had large purple patches. But this looked not so much a case of a renewed wild card affliction as a case of Manic Panic hair dye. Bester was also wearing a huge purple tie-dyed T-shirt that he proudly displayed, silk-screened with a fin de siècle silhouette of a horrified nat, a prancing googly-eyed cow with its tail tied in an elaborate knot, and a verse Jim should have seen coming:

I never saw a purple cow

I hope to never see one

But I can tell you anyhow

I’d rather see than be one

—Gelett Burgess

Jim gave a weak smile. After all, if the wild card had turned you into an eight-foot-tall horned monstrosity, what else were you supposed to go as for Halloween?

Beastie was sitting in front of his chessboard, as usual, opposite Franny, the department’s newest rookie, who was just wearing a paper crown. Except Francis Black was a nat, middling height, darker haired than Jim, but otherwise looking somewhat like what Jim remembered his body being last year. Last year before he’d eaten one too many donuts cramming for his detective exam, passed, and then stressed out trying to lose enough weight to pass his yearly physical.

The wild card had helped. It had stretched him out and slimmed him down till he was almost seven feet tall without an ounce of fat. Then, like a senile genie, it took it farther, letting him compress his molecules side to side until the phrase “thinner than a razor” literally applied.

“Hey, Slim Jim!” Razor Joan called from over by the coffeemaker. “Dr. Dildo brought dim sum. Come and get some before they’re all gone!”

Razor Joan, aka Detective Lonnegan, was one of the department’s other nats. She was First Grade Detective-Investigator to his Third Grade, and the one who’d hung him with an ace nickname that made people think of lock picks and jerky sticks. She had already reserved the name Razor for herself. But since she’d taken it off a joker serial killer with a Sweeney Todd fetish, she’d also saved Jim from possibly the greatest faux pas an ace could make in New York. He might as well move to London, call himself The Ripper, and expect that to go over well.

But just as there were worse jokers than just being extremely tall and thin, there were far more embarrassing ace names than Slim Jim. Case in point: Dr. Dildo, aka Officer Tranh, the vibrating ace. The dim sum he’d brought didn’t look like any that Jim had ever seen. “Is it … Vietnamese?”

Dr. Dildo shook his head, making the chartreuse ostrich plume on his cavalier hat quiver. “No, it’s Takisian.” He picked up some strange thing wrapped in translucent pastry and popped it in his mouth, chewing delightedly.

Was it made with real Takisians? No one had seen Dr. Tachyon in years, so that was a distinct possibility. But given what Jim had seen on Asian menus around the city—jellyfish, sea cucumber, stuffed pig uterus—he had even less urge to sample exotic Takisian delicacies.

He sidled over to the next potluck table and looked for something safer. In the back was a brushed steel crock pot with a neatly printed label taped to the front: OTTO’S SECRET RECIPE CHILI. Jim didn’t know “Otto,” but he lifted the lid and sighed in relief. It was a meat chili, not some abomination with beans. He dished up a bowl, then looked for an eating utensil. “Hand me a spork, could you?” he asked, spying a cup the other side of some guy with a flat top.

“Of course…” said a deep voice from below the retro haircut, “but the … implement … is more properly termed a runcible spoon.” Jim accepted one from a hand almost as long and nearly as thin as his own, if far paler. “They are not part of the standard surgical kit, but I find them uniquely suited for removing eyeballs.…” Jim found himself looking down into a pair of these, hugely magnified but not by the wild card. Rather, this was accomplished by the thick Coke-bottle-bottom lenses of Dr. Gordon, the precinct pathologist. Gordon was tall, if still shorter than Jim’s ludicrous height, and almost as thin, but dressed far more expensively. Usually. Today he’d traded the Armani for a lab coat marked MAD SCIENTISTS UNION #901H. He was also a hunchback, and this, combined with a habit of oversharing clinical details and talking as if he were narrating some personal melodrama, led to him being known as Gordon the Ghoul. But since the wild card had stretched both of them out in a similar fashion, for Jim’s first couple weeks at the precinct—before Razor Joan’s “Slim Jim” moniker had thankfully taken hold—people had been describing him as Gordon the Ghoul’s tall, tanned cousin Spike.

Jim could have lived with being called Spike. Not so much with being related to Gordon.

“Uh, thanks.…” Jim grabbed a random soda and, as often happened when he became nervous, uncomfortable, or just plain creeped out, started to thin. He let it go all the way and ducked out of the break room, literally again, but also two-dimensionally, narrow enough to step through the crack between the door hinges. He didn’t go 3-D again until he had safely slotted himself through the crack to his office.

Tenry Fong, Jim’s partner, was fifty-four—twice Jim’s age—and like Razor Joan, also a nat. He jumped, causing an avalanche of papers to spill off his desk. “Would you not do that?”

“Do what?” Jim asked, three-dimensional again, or at least as three-dimensional as he got. “I had my hands full, and Maseryk told me he wanted me to practice.…” He held up the drink and the chili, again 3-D. “Didn’t spill a drop.”

“Well, I suppose it is an improvement over last month’s soda geyser.” Tenry scooped up the spilled files and proceeded to straighten them. “Mendelberg wants to see some progress on the Magpie Burglaries, but all I’m seeing is a bunch of random thefts and no fingerprints.” He shuffled through a few files. “If we don’t have anything solid to investigate, she has suggested that we might assist with parade security this evening.” Jim’s partner had an excellent poker face, but Jim could tell how little he relished that option—Mendelberg’s “suggestions” were legendary. She had “suggested” that Tenry’s previous partner take early retirement, and while that had freed up a desk and detective shield for Jim, his own status was still very much probationary. The Magpie Burglaries were now technically their case, insomuch as he and Tenry were the lowest-ranking detective team and Mendelberg had “suggested” they look into them.

Tenry closed the top file and sighed. “Any luck at the Dime Museum?”

Jim shrugged. “Sort of. Mostly another Magpie theft. But there was security footage.”

“Oh?” Tenry asked.

Jim handed him his phone, letting the loop replay and briefing his partner.

Tenry handed the phone back and sighed. “Did the apartment hunt go better?”

Jim shook his head and leaned against the wall.

“Apartments in New York can be difficult. I moved in with my grandparents in the seventies, and after they passed on, their apartment belonged to myself and my wife—with the same rent,” Tenry added significantly and smiled. “My two eldest daughters are in college now, and they’ve moved in with my parents, who are fortunately in good health, but…”

Jim popped the soda and began to tune out as Tenry waxed rhapsodic about his family’s wonderful cheap rent-controlled apartments and the legal ways to game the system. Jim was from suburban Scottsdale and was probably the first in his family in generations to set foot in New York. He took a sip. The soda was berry-flavored, some store brand from a chain Jim had never heard of, but inoffensive enough. He then used the runcible spork to sample the chili. Not bad. A little wimpy on the peppers, but what was he supposed to expect from New Yorkers? But overall, not bad. He tried to place the meat. Beef? Chicken? Maybe venison?

It didn’t matter. He was going to have to grovel to Maseryk or Mendelberg, and if he was going to do that, he’d need to solve a bigger mystery than what meats went into Otto’s chili.

Jim picked up the phone and dialed the precinct clerk. “Apsara? Anything new? Gang stuff with the Werewolves and Demon Princes? Burglaries? Theft? Anything need handling?”

“Hi Jim. Tony’s Pets called. Special on kittens today. Someone’s been eating them.”

“What, again?” Jim was really starting to hate Jokertown. “Same guy?”

“Maybe,” Apsara said, “but this time it’s eating without paying.”

Jim remembered that case. Lupo the Wolf-Headed Wino, supposedly once a well-regarded Jokertown bartender but now just a sad middle-aged alcoholic who was so drunk he started to eat the kittens he bought before he left the shop. “Could you get Beastie to handle that? He’s better on these neighborhood cases.”

“Sure thing,” Apsara said. “I was meaning to call him anyway.”

“Thanks.” Jim sighed. “Any case that doesn’t involve kittens?”

“What about cats?” Apsara laughed lightly. “There’s some crank on line three who keeps calling back. Says a giant black cat stole her Halloween candy. Want to deal with that?”

Jim put the soda can against his forehead to cool it. “Sure, whatever.”

“Thanks, Jim. You’re a sweetheart.”

Part of being in any precinct was dealing with crank calls and other frequent fliers. Half were paranoid delusionals and the other half were lonely senior citizens. But since there was some overlap with both groups, there was a small percentage that were actual crimes. And given that this was Jokertown, even the ridiculous calls often bore investigation, since that was the only way to separate the delusions from bona fide reports of wild card powers at work.

Apsara patched the call through. “Fifth precinct, Detective James McTate. I understand you’ve had a theft?” Jim listened as a hysterical woman (or at least a feminine voice) described what Apsara had said: the theft of a bowl of candy, magically stolen by a giant black cat.

In Phoenix, Jim would have dismissed the call as a crank, since the suspect appeared to be Mr. Mistoffelees, the Original Conjuring Cat. But in Jokertown? Since Jim himself could now creep through tiny cracks and walk on narrow railings, as per the song from Cats, he’d be a poor detective were he to dismiss the possibility that someone had turned their card in the middle of a production and was currently conjuring candy. The person on the line was also ranting about it being worth hundreds of dollars—which seemed a little pricey for chocolate, even in Manhattan—but even if the caller were certifiably insane, it at least warranted a welfare check.

And this could be a break. With the Magpie thefts, the items taken ranged from the costly to the lame, and a bowl of candy certainly went on the lame side. But unlike the others, here there was a witness. And while the Jokertown Cry had dubbed them the Magpie Burglaries, it would be ironic—though hardly impossible, given Jokertown—if instead of a metaphorical magpie, their cat burglar were an actual cat. Certainly it would explain the lack of prints.

“A lead?” Tenry asked, looking up from his desk.

Jim held out a hand, thinned it down to credit-card thickness, and waffled it. “Maybe. Keep looking for patterns. I’ll tell you if it pans out.” He went 2-D and ducked back through the door crack. It was only a couple blocks, and Jim had long legs now anyway.

♣

Despite the Jokertown address straight across from the Dime Museum, a nat woman cracked the door, one blue eye peering out past the chain. The slice of her Jim could see was blondish and pretty if a bit on the chubby side, and not quite fitting the cheap pirate wench costume she was wearing. Jim flashed his badge. “This the place with the missing candy?”

“My, you’re tall.…” The woman stared up at him. “Do you play basketball?”

“In college.” Jim didn’t mention that was just with friends, when he was a foot shorter. But as most college teams didn’t allow jokers, the subtext was that he was just an amazingly skinny nat.

She seemed to relax a bit. “Please, come inside.” She fumbled with the chain, then held the door open. Jim ducked inside and took the place in. The apartment was neatly furnished, with white walls, brown bookcases, and a thick layer of dust on top of all of them. It was gross, but a sight Jim was getting used to and useful for gauging length of occupancy.

He took out a notepad and pen. “Could I get your name again?”

“Shirley,” the woman said. “Shirley Litt. Litt with a double T.”

“This your apartment?”

“No,” Shirley said. “It belongs to my fiancé’s brother. We’re subletting.” She bit her lip. “Oh, this is going to sound terribly shallow of me, but I was afraid you were going to be a joker. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. I just have a little phobia.…”

Jim raised an eyebrow, glancing to the window and the neighborhood below.

Shirley nodded. “I know. When Ted asked me to come to New York, I never thought … He never told me his brother was a joker. Then last week, he told me he used to be one too.…”

This case was becoming uglier but more interesting by the moment. “Used to be?”

“He grew up here,” she explained. “He was born a joker. He showed me his childhood photos, and he looked hideous, but he said he was happy. But then that awful virus started killing him, and he said the doctors said the only way to save him was to give him the trump. So they did. And he turned into this absolutely gorgeous man who was always tripping over his own feet.” Her lower lip quavered as she wrung her pudgy hands around a huge diamond engagement ring. “He used to have tentacles.…”

Part of being a detective was letting people talk when they were in a mood to, and Jim saw no reason to make her stop.

“But now we’re here, and I’d never even seen a live joker before college—I mean, I’m from Pocatello! And I just want to go home. But Ted said this apartment has the best view of the Halloween parade, and if we stayed for that, I’d get over my phobia and see jokers as people just like everyone else. And while I think I can get used to jokers—I mean, Jesus was okay with lepers, and it’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? They’re just diseased cripples, and Ted was cured anyway.… But how can I cope with those satanic aces and their awful alien powers!?”

Jim stifled an urge to turn two-dimensional, since, gratifying as it might be, horrified screams weren’t useful when taking a witness statement. “About that. You said there was an ace used in the robbery? So where was the candy taken? And how? And you said something about it being worth hundreds of dollars? What sort of candies are we talking here?”

“Not the candy. The bowl. It was Tiffany. Tiffany crystal.” Shirley fluttered her hands in agitation. “Oh, Ted’s going to kill me! He said it was a family heirloom!”

If Ted did kill her, it might be justifiable homicide, but Jim didn’t think the marriage would get that far. “Could you just give me the events of today, as they happened?”

Shirley bit her lip, but nodded. “Okay. The bowl was here, on the table by the window. I’d filled it up, but I’d eaten a few Snickers, so I went to the kitchen to get another bag. Then I came back and I saw it!”

Jim raised his pen. “It?”

“The giant black cat! It was there, hissing at me!” She pointed to the window.

Jim went over and looked down. It was a picture window, recently cleaned, and there was a small ledge outside with no obvious paw prints or claw marks, just a bunch of pigeon droppings and a five-story drop to the ground. He could even look across the way to the Dime Museum and see the tops of the Turtle’s shells through the skylights. Jim raised an eyebrow and turned back to Shirley. “Okay, when you’re saying ‘giant,’ what do you mean? My height? Taller than me? Smaller than me but bigger than a regular black cat? How tall are we talking?”

Shirley looked perturbed, her indescribable horror now being put into quantifiable units. “Um, it was maybe a little bit shorter than me, but then it got taller. You know, how cats puff themselves up when they hiss?”

“But still shorter than me?”

She craned her neck up. “Yes, shorter than you.”

“And how did it get the candy?”

“It was there on the table, then it vanished and suddenly it appeared in the cat’s paws.”

Jim jotted that down. “So we’re talking bipedal cat joker? One that stands on two legs?”

Shirley nodded.

“And how did it leave? Did it teleport? Jump?”

“I, uh, didn’t see. I screamed and turned away, and when I looked back, it was gone.”

Jim nodded. “And the time on this?”

“Uh, about a couple hours ago? Just before I called the station.”

Jim nodded. He could get the time of the first call from Apsara, but already had a suspicion of when it would be. “Anything else?”

Shirley shook her head.

Jim handed her his card. “If you think of anything else, or see the cat again, just call. Or you can stop by at the precinct. Ask for Slim Jim.”

“Slim Jim?”

“Ace nickname,” Jim explained, then winked. He went 2-D and stepped out through the door crack. There was a scream from the other side. “Happy Halloween!” Jim called.

He knew he should not have done that, but Tenry could handle all further questioning of Shirley Litt. The important thing was, they finally had a lead on the Magpie Burglaries.

♠

Tenry was not in their office, but was in the break room, along with Gordon the Ghoul, Rikki, Tabby Driscoll, K-10, and the rat from Internal Affairs.

Rikki ran over to him, wearing a pair of pink gauze fairy wings with her uniform. It made her look a little more odd than usual. Miranda Michaelson was the only officer on the force with a smaller waist than Jim’s, which was saying something, but she made up for that in chest capacity with a rib cage the wild card had redesigned for running. Add in tiny fangs and she looked a bit like a humanoid whippet. Now with pink fairy wings.

She followed Jim’s glance and explained, “Tinkerbill gave them to me. People kept giving them to him, but there’s no way he’s going to wear them.” Jim understood: Bill Chen was almost as tall as Jim, but massed at least three times as much, most of that muscle. Unfortunately, along with a deuce that let him surround people with a sparkly pink glow, the wild card had also cursed him with a voice that sounded like Betty Boop. Rikki clutched Jim’s arm but he had to bend down before she could whisper, “Tell me you did not eat the chili.”

“What’s wrong with the chili?” Jim asked, looking over to the crock pot.

“Nothing … is wrong … with the chili…” said Gordon the Ghoul. “Did … you like it?”

“It could have used some chipotles…” Jim said, realizing that everyone was looking at him. “What’s in the chili?”

“That is … for me—to know—and you to … find out!” cackled Gordon the Ghoul, aka Dr. Gordon, aka Dr. Otto Gordon as Jim remembered from an old pathology report.

“I’ll tell you what’s in the chili,” said the rat from Internal Affairs. Detective Vincent Marinelli, aka Ratboy, was so named not so much for his position as the fact that the wild card had turned him into a four-foot-tall giant rat. “He made the chili out of rats!”

“Rats?” echoed K-10, aka Officer Dina Quattore. She was Jim’s age and exactly his type, at least before he’d spontaneously grown a foot taller: small, buxom, with curly black hair and curves in all the right places. She was also a telepath, but thankfully not the creepy sort; she only read the minds of dogs. “You made the chili out of rats?”

“Well in that case I’ll definitely have to try some,” said Tabby Driscoll, the department’s undercover officer, a shapeshifting ace who could change from a large battle-scarred ginger-haired Irishman to a large battle-scarred ginger tomcat. “I like a good rat every now and again.”

“It also has cat in it,” Marinelli declared, tapping a humanoid finger to the side of his long pointed muzzle. “Trust the nose.”

Tabby turned green, and he hadn’t even eaten the chili.

“A little dog too,” Marinelli said, causing K-10’s olive complexion to turn sallow as she looked at Otto Gordon with even more horror. Ratboy’s rat nose sniffed the air, whiskers twitching. “And something else.…”

“Yes! Yes.…” Gordon the Ghoul cackled with delight. “Something … else? I scraped it—out of—a wheel well! But I could not … identify it … either.…”

Half of Jim wanted to throw up and the other half wanted to call up his old department’s psychologist and give her a piece of his mind. Or maybe combine the two, but his ace unfortunately did not include cross-country projectile vomiting. Instead he just sat down.

Tenry came over next to him. “If it’s any consolation, they eat stranger things in China.”

“It is so not a consolation,” Rikki said for Jim, patting him on the shoulder.

Jim glanced to Tabby, who with Ratboy and K-10 were converging on Gordon the Ghoul, then looked to Tenry and swallowed. “We’ve got a definite lead on the Magpie Burglaries. Do you know any jokers who look like large black cats or aces who can turn into them?”

Tenry paused, then nodded.

“Good. Then excuse me for a moment while I go vomit.”

♦

The sign read THE LAND WHERE THE BONG-TREE GROWS and the façade was painted with a mural of nautical charts and an islet with an anthropomorphic owl, an anthropomorphic cat, and an anthropomorphic pig joker wearing nothing but a loincloth and an amazing collection of tattoos and piercings, including the requisite ring on the end of his nose.

The fantastical geography theme was picked up on the walls inside the shop. Jim spotted Nowhereland, Wonderland, The Rox, and The Torrible Torriby Zone being almost overcome by a mixture of mint and patchouli oil and the realization that he’d just stepped into Jokertown’s head shop. Bongs and hookahs lined one wall, arrayed in order of size like pipes in an extremely fanciful calliope. Psychedelic posters were displayed on another, illuminated with black light, showing a range of rock idols from Joker Plague’s six-armed Drummer Boy all the way back to the Lizard King from Destiny. And there were cases and racks filled with patches, stickers, rolling papers and drug paraphernalia, books, CDs, chachkas of all description, and tie-died T-shirts silk-screened with classic illustrations and literary quotations. A three-headed mannequin modeled one with the image of a clown doing a headstand and a verse:

“My lady fair,

Why do you stare

At poor old Mr. Joker?

You’re quite as stiff

And prim as if

You’d eaten up a poker!”

—L. Frank Baum

The next had Alice and the Cheshire Cat, with the following:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

—Lewis Carroll

Again, Jim had the urge to call the psychologist back in Phoenix and bitch her out.

“Hoo hoo hoo!” cried a voice that sounded like nothing half so much as an owl. “Have I got the shirt for you!” A chunky young woman in a gypsy skirt and peasant blouse fluttered over, figuratively at least, and began going through the rack of T-shirts. She had the head of a black cat, but Jim realized a second later it was just a flat paper mask. Behind that was the actual head of a barn owl. “Ta-da!” she announced, holding up a shirt that was long and thin and sized for Jim. It had a cartoon of a nineteenth-century joker coiled up like a cinnamon roll along with a limerick:

There was an old person of Pinner,

As thin as a lath, if not thinner;

They dressed him in white, and roll’d him up tight,

That elastic old person of Pinner.

—Edward Lear

What was even more troubling was that it looked like it would fit Jim perfectly, without needing to be taken in or altered in any way.

“We’ve got a changing room in the back,” said the owl-headed joker.

“Actually, I’m here on a case.” Jim looked for Tenry, and fortunately with his height it was easy to see over the racks to where his partner was talking with the shop’s other proprietor.

The Pussycat was a three-foot-tall black cat joker, dressed like a Rastafarian Puss in Boots, except that he had a flat paper owl mask pushed up atop his knit Rasta beanie so he could talk more easily. “Man, you can’t bust me for anything,” he told Tenry. He had a bong in one paw and his green cat eyes were slightly bloodshot. “Catnip’s totally legal!” He waved to a hydroponic garden display filled with some lush member of the mint family.

“We’re not here about the catnip,” Tenry said. “This is my new partner, Detective McTate. Jim, I see you’ve already met Olivia. This is Javier.”

“Call me Javi,” said the cat. “Or Pussycat.” He grinned like the cat that ate the canary, or something else, and leered in the direction of the Owl’s skirts.

She hooted coquettishly and hung the long Jim-size T-shirt back on a rack.

“We’ve had some reports of thefts.” Jim went down on one knee so he could look at the Pussycat at something closer to eye level. “Do you by any chance have Cheshire Cat powers? Appearing, disappearing? Maybe conjuring stuff, like, say, bowls of candy?”

“That would be totally sweet!” The Pussycat lost his grin. “But no. Wish I could.”

“Can you make yourself bigger?”

His hackles went up slightly. “Are you making fun of me, man?”

“No, no, just trying to solve a case,” Jim said, realizing the Pussycat’s paws holding the bong did look pretty catlike, and he could see the tips of claws sticking out.

“Man, the only perk the wild card gave me is the ability to get totally baked on catnip. But like I was telling your partner, it’s completely legal. So unless the feds just made catnip a controlled substance, you can’t bust me for anything.”

“No trouble. Just checking reports.” Jim thought a stoned cat joker with the munchies would more than adequately explain the missing candy bowl, but suspicion was not the same thing as proof. “Do you have an alibi for where you were between eight and nine this morning?”

“Sure, man, I was here the whole time. Olivia can vouch for that.”

The Owl nodded, making her paper cat mask bob.

Jim stood back up and rubbed his neck. It looked like this was a dead end.

The Owl cocked her head behind the cat mask. “So this is about those thefts in the paper?” She turned to the Pussycat. “Javi, did you sell the fancy water pipe in the front window? Because I didn’t see it in the receipts and it’s gone.”

The Pussycat looked up at her. “Oh, crap. The Magpie hit us too?”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “You’re missing a bong?”

The Owl shook her head and pointed to a sign: The items you see for sale here are pipes and water pipes and are only meant for use with tobacco, catnip, and other legal substances. If you refer to them by any other name, we must ask you to leave the premises.

“So The Land Where the Bong-Tree Grows only sells water pipes?”

The Owl nodded her paper cat mask. “We consulted with Dr. Pretorius before choosing the name. If you check our Yellow Page listing, you’ll see we’re a bookstore that specializes in nineteenth and early twentieth-century children’s literature with a special appeal to the Jokertown population, along with related novelty items.” She gestured to a display under an American Library Association READ poster with Drummer Boy smoking a hookah facing some blonde in a blue gothic Lolita number. Jim realized a moment later DB had been posed as the Caterpillar, and the particularly mature Alice was Pop Tart from American Hero sans her black wig. There were several editions of Alice on the shelves below along with various Oz books, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, The Walrus and The Carpenter, and other assorted books of nonsense verse. Jim picked one up and opened it to something called “The Mad Gardener’s Song.”

He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk

Descending from the bus:

He looked again, and found it was

A Hippopotamus.

“If this should stay to dine,” he said,

“There won’t be much for us!”

Jim shut the book and put it back on the shelf. He’d seen that just this morning, and it didn’t do his sanity much good to find that his current life could be summarized by the demented ramblings of Victorian children’s poets. Finding that hookahs had been shoe-horned in under “related novelty items” for children’s literature by the notorious Dr. Pretorius was less surprising, given the stories he’d heard around the station of Jokertown’s answer to Melvin Belli.

He thought back then to confusion about hippos and bank clerks, yarmulkes and eyeballs, and then looked at Olivia’s cat-shaped mask covering her owl-shaped face.

Jim turned to Tenry. “Wasn’t one of the other Magpie thefts a cat mask? And the owner a ‘Mr. Dutton’?”

Tenry met Jim’s gaze and nodded. “From Holbrooks. I’ll set up an appointment.”

♥

Gilded Victorian capitals in the window proudly and genteelly proclaimed HOLBROOKS, with smaller script below that reading since 1954. Jim had heard laments from older Jokertown residents that the neighborhood was becoming gentrified, but judging by the shop inside, this had been the case for quite some time.

With the gleaming brass and polished mahogany, Holbrooks had the appearance of a high-class milliners or haberdashery, but instead of hats displayed on the mannequin heads and metal stands, there were masks. Very expensive masks, with hand-tooled leather and feathers or fur.

It being Halloween, it was also busy. “One moment,” a joker with a crane head told two customers, then came over to Jim and Tenry, and Jim realized what he’d taken for a crane-faced joker was in fact an individual of uncertain wild card status wearing a mask with an oversized beak. Mixed with round smoked spectacles, it gave the appearance of a gas mask. Worn beneath a flat-brimmed black hat, along with a long black oilcloth robe and gloves, it completely concealed the wearer, like a medieval hazmat suit. The whole thing made Jim a little nervous.

“The Plague Doctor’s costume,” explained the individual in a lilting voice of indeterminate age, gender, and sexual preference, gesturing with a stick in one hand, like a headmaster’s pointer. “Our wands of misery are turned in Williamsburg, but the masks are fashioned in Venice from the traditional molds. But I believe you are here to see Mr. Dutton.”

It nodded to another clerk, garbed in a silvery moon mask, and ushered them into the back room. Some podgy paleolithic goddess recast in sequins and rhinestones sat at a table busily adding same to a number of masks, but before Jim could figure out whether she was a joker, a costume, or something else, their guide tapped on a door and they were let into Dutton’s office.

Like the shop outside, it was all lavish mahogany and brass elegance, with masks displayed in lawyer-style glass-fronted bookcases and a gleaming tantalus off to one side of the desk, the liquor bottles mostly full, but a cigar box distinctly absent. Dutton rose, a wiry old man in a yellowed, skull-faced mask with ruby eyes. “Thank you, Shelley,” he told the clerk in the Plague Doctor’s costume as it shut the door, and Jim realized that the yellow skull with the red eyes was not in fact Dutton’s mask but his face. It turned to Tenry, then looked up at Jim. “Ah, you would be the new detective. My employee Jason described your visit to the Dime Museum this morning. Welcome to Jokertown. Would that this were under better circumstances. Have you recovered my diving helmet?”

“Uh, no,” Jim said.

“Pity,” said the skull, turning. “But Detective Fong, I’m to understand that you may have located another piece of my property? A valuable cat mask?”

“May have,” stressed Tenry. “It may have been used in the commission of a crime.”

“Or crimes,” Jim added. “One of which might be the theft of your diving helmet this morning. And that’s an odd coincidence, so we were wondering if you might have any enemies, or information about who the Magpie might be.”

The talking skeleton placed one liver-spotted yellow hand to his chest. “Young man, one does not become a personage of stature in any community without making a good number of friends, a greater number of acquaintances, and, I’m sad to say, inevitably a few enemies, if just by association. I am no different. But I have no insights as to the Magpie’s identity.”

Jim’s partner had an excellent poker face, but Jim could tell Tenry’s bullshit detector was going off the scale, and that he’d had many past dealings with Charles Dutton over the years, some of which he might enlighten Jim about later. But he only said, “Well, about the cat mask. The photo in the original report was a bit grainy. We were hoping you might have a better one.”

Dutton dimpled, or at least that’s what Jim took the wrinkling of the sallow skin around the perpetual death rictus to be. “I can do one better,” said the talking skull. He was more skin and bones than Jim would ever be—he hoped—but moved spryly enough, unlocking a case. He reached to the back, taking out a black silk box that he opened to reveal a mask, stitched with thousands of iridescent black glass beads, stylized but unmistakably a hissing black cat.

“The report said the mask was the only one of its kind,” Tenry said.

“For sale,” Dutton qualified. “This is my personal copy.” He lifted it from the box and placed it over his skull. “A Gatto, one of the traditional masks of Carnevale, honoring the cats who protected Venice from the rats of the plague. Though as you can see, Erté also drew inspiration from the fierce witch’s grimalkin of our American Halloween,” the angry black cat lectured mildly. “He made a series often, some larger, some smaller, but the majority in this medium size. Aside from numbering, this mask is twin to the one taken from my window.”

Jim took out his cell phone and snapped a few pictures as Dutton modeled. “And you value it at fifteen thousand dollars?” Jim asked, a little incredulous.

“It’s an Erté original, young man.” The black cat snarled up at Jim, Dutton’s red eyes looking out of its beaded sockets. “Hardly the most valuable Holbrooks has for sale, but one of our finer pieces.” Dutton looked Jim up and up. “I take it you’re rather new to being a joker.”

Jim kept himself from thinning by an act of will. “What makes you think I’m a joker?”

“A certain … bearing.” An emaciated yellow hand made an elegant gesture. “As a shopkeeper, it’s something you learn to spot. Also, those born as jokers, or who have had time to grow accustomed to their new skin, are generally more familiar with the virtues of masks.” Dutton removed his and the yellow skull grinned at Jim. “A mask can make others more comfortable. But more than that, it allows one to be someone else for a time. A joker may be a nat, a nat may be an ace, and even an ace may relax into the anonymity of a joker.” He placed the black cat’s visage back in its silken sepulcher and replaced it on the shelf. “Masking is older than the wild card, but not older than disease. The Plague Doctor was born of the Black Death, and his attendant Zannis and Scaramouches, Columbines and Harlequins, followed soon after.” He gestured about the room, from a pair of masks with grotesquely exaggerated noses to a feminine half mask to a simple oval of exquisite natlike perfection, a single black teardrop stark against the white cheek. “The beauty marks of the court of the Sun King were first devised to cover the sores of syphilis,” Dutton remarked conversationally. “It was only later that the charms of the patch box were discovered by the unafflicted.”

Jim was more used to seeing teardrops tattooed on the faces of Mexican-American gangbangers. There was a certain irony to find they had originated with syphilitic French courtiers.

Dutton pointed to a ghost-white mask with normal enough eyes and nose, but no mouth, and a chin pointed like a locomotive’s cow-catcher. “Even the monstrous babau, the bad-bogey of the nursery tales, was pressed into service, creating the blank-faced Bauta, the mask of anonymity from the time of Casanova.” He took the Bauta from its case and placed it over his skull, adding a black tricorne hat with a matching head drape in the back, hiding him completely. The cultured voice continued beyond the mouthless face. “And even without disease, a mask has other virtues: the old may be viewed as young, and the young may gain the respect of age. With a mask, all one can judge you by are your words and deeds.”

Jim was fairly certain Dutton had used variations of this speech many times before, just before closing the deal on an overpriced mask.

It continued: “You should really consider getting a mask, officer. Every joker should own at least one, and a Holbrooks mask is a thing to be treasured for generations. Each and every mask we sell comes with a lifetime warranty, with complimentary service for minor repairs or alterations, and free inscription for all those special occasions in a joker’s life: graduations, weddings, anniversaries. And we keep impeccable sales records, so if a mask is lost or stolen…”

“About that,” Jim said. “The report said yours disappeared from a locked shop window?”

“Indeed”—the Bauta nodded in assent—“and I have the sole key.”

“And that window would be on the ground floor?”

“Holbrooks has only one floor. The ones above us are apartments.”

Jim nodded slowly, glancing to Tenry. “Could we see this case?”

“Of course,” said Dutton. Jim inspected it. There were no obvious signs of forced entry, and the lock was something reasonably secure, difficult to pick, and only used during regular business hours, same as a jewelry shop. He took some photos anyway while Tenry asked if some long-dead business associate of Dutton’s had left any files and Dutton repeated ritual denials that he had them or, indeed, had any idea where they might be.

Jim didn’t believe that for a minute, since one rule of the detective business was that people always lie, and you didn’t get to be as old or as wealthy as Dutton without having an awful lot to lie about. But one of the benefits of having an older partner was having someone who could explain things to you later.

“We’ll let you know as soon as we learn anything more, Mr. Dutton,” Tenry finished.

♣

Tenry went back to the precinct to check another lead, but Jim had a hunch, and not the type your back got from the wild card. The cat face appeared to be a mask, and since that pointed away from a cat joker physically scaling the building, Occam’s razor might not be completely broken, just severely bent. While there were world-class aces with multiple powers, most aces were like Jim: one power, possibly useful but still limited in scope. Meaning most aces used mundane means for everything else.

For example, the window-washing rig outside Shirley Litt’s building.

Jim waited for it to touch down, then hailed the operator by flashing his badge. “Yeah, officer?” The man cringed.

“Just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

The man continued to cringe as Jim looked him over. “I didn’t do nothin’. Honest.”

He appeared to be a perfectly ordinary young African-American man except he already had his hands in the air. If they could be called hands: his forearms were elongated and broomstick thin while the palms and fingers were warped and splayed out, the nails fused into long cartilaginous ridges. They looked like nothing half so much as two giant squeejees.

“Have any ID?”

The joker nodded. “’Round my neck.”

Jim looked and yes indeed, he was wearing a chain that bore a city window washer’s permit and a New York State identification card for one Purcell Aloysius Jones, age twenty-three.

“You don’t by any chance own a cat mask, do you, Mr. Jones?”

“You think I’d cover up the only human thing I got left?”

Jim didn’t think that he would, and Shirley Litt had described the cat as having “paws” as opposed to “giant squeegees.”

“Don’t bust me, man. Please.” The joker cowered. “It weren’t my fault.”

As always, letting people talk when they were inclined to was part of the detective’s job. “So what happened?”

“It’s Halloween, man. I went to take a leak, and when I got back, some damn punk had grabbed my rig and was joyridin’. I yelled, and when he came down, I chased ’im off.”

“Did you make a report?”

“Fuck no! I could lose my job. I’m not allowed to let anyone unlicensed up.”

“And this individual was wearing a cat mask?”

“Yeah, damn Halloween cat and was playin’ it up. Laughed like an old lady then was all ‘meow-meow-meow-meow’ like a bunch of kittens from a damn cat food commercial!”

Jim looked at the window-washing rig. Come to think of it, he’d always wanted to go up in one himself. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a break on one condition.…”

♠

The view from a window washer’s perspective was a lot like what a detective usually saw: a messy apartment, a clean apartment, a cluttered apartment, a tasteful apartment with a number of paintings and objets d’art, an apartment with numerous bookcases as well as Shirley Litt and a handsome man in a cheap pirate costume who Jim presumed was her formerly tentacled fiancé Ted. Jim used his cell phone to snap a few pics of the first four, waved hello and snapped a picture of Shirley and the presumed Ted as well, then turned and had Purcell Jones take them down slowly. From just outside the third-floor apartment there was a perfect view across the street of Dr. Tod’s head, now missing one diving helmet, but clearly visible through the Dime Museum’s skylight. Jim snapped a few pictures, then went to the first four apartments from the inside. There was no answer at any, so he turned a hand 2-D and slipped in his card with notes to call if the occupants had witnessed anything or noticed something missing.

Relatively pleased with himself, Jim went back to the precinct where he found Tenry in their office even more self-satisfied. “Guess what I have here.”

“It looks like an antiquated VCR.”

“Right. But that’s exactly what we need for what Midtown just sent.” Tenry pulled an old videocassette tape out of an interdepartmental mailer and popped it in the VCR. A bit of rewinding later, Jim was watching a surveillance tape of a jewelry store window with a prominent display of bling including what looked like a Fabergé egg. A minute in, someone in an Easter bunny costume hopped up, basket of eggs and all. A second later, the Fabergé egg vanished from the case, reappearing in the Easter bunny’s fluffy white mittens. The bunny then deposited it in the basket, placed a stuffed toy goose atop it, and hopped off, jaunty as you please.

Jim turned to Tenry. “So our Magpie Burglar is also the Easter Bunny Bandit?”

“They called him Peter Cottontail, but yes.” Tenry grinned. “This is from 1988.”

Jim nodded, then rewatched the tape, then handed his phone to Tenry, showing him the pictures and outlining his own findings. The profile was coming together. Someone with a fondness for masks, short to middling height, at least late thirties by this point and likely older, and judging by the mittens and the movement, Jim was leaning toward female rather than male.

There was a cursory knock, then the door opened. “We found her,” Tabby said.

“Who?” asked Tenry.

Tabby grinned like a ginger-haired Cheshire Cat. “Your Magpie.”

“Ahem,” said K-10, pushing past the department’s other undercover specialist and her chief rival. “I found her. Tabby was just along for the ride.” Dina held a sheet of paper close to her ample chest. “I looked into the minds of the puppies in the window at Tony’s Pets.”

“No one’s eating kittens on my watch,” Tabby declared fiercely.

“But here’s the kicker,” Dina added. “They weren’t eaten. Guess what happened?”

“They were teleported,” Jim supplied.

Dina looked slightly crestfallen, but then Tenry rewound the tape and showed them the footage of Peter Cottontail and the Fabergé egg. “Okay,” Dina said. “That’s good. But I had Eddy do a sketch, and look, I got her without her mask.”

She showed off Eddie’s sketch. It was black-and-white but showed an old woman with warts and an extremely long nose. Either a very mild joker or a very ugly nat. Or something else.

“What color was this woman’s skin?” Jim asked.

Dina gave him one of those looks. “I don’t know. Dogs are color-blind.”

Jim took the sketch, clipped it up to the top of the white board, then popped a dry-erase marker. “Hey!” Dina protested as he scribbled across it quickly.

Jim handed her the sketch, now green. “I saw Witchiepoo this morning. It’s another mask. But the black velvet cloak is the same. And the red shopping basket.”

“The puppies didn’t see ‘red’ but did it have two wheels?”

Jim nodded. “And a box with three kittens on top.”

“That’s enough to make the perp,” said Tabby. “I’m on it. No one’s kidnapping kittens on my watch either.” He started shrinking then, going from a big beefy Irishman to a short hairy Irishman to a fat furry orange-faced joker midget sprouting a tail until finally there was nothing except a large orange tabby tomcat crawling out of a pile of clothes. “Meowwww!!!” he stated declaratively then stalked out of the office.

“Don’t look at me,” Dina said. “I don’t speak cat.”

“Didn’t say you did,” Jim said.

There was an awkward silence, then Dina asked conversationally, “So, any luck with the apartment hunt? I know the deadline’s…”

“Don’t ask.”

She sighed. “That’s rough. I’d offer my couch, but my apartment’s upstairs from my parents and their pizzeria, and they’re kind of traditional Catholic and…”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Even if we were dating…”

They exchanged glances, then Dina looked to Tenry, but Tenry said, “I’m afraid my wife is very particular. Traditional Chinese family, you understand.” He nodded sympathetically to Jim. “I’m afraid you will really just have to speak with Captain Mendelberg…”

It was a speak of the devil moment. After three more beats of awkward silence, a figure appeared in the doorway and a pair of small evil red eyes looked down at the pile of clothes, lingering for a moment on a distinct set of hash marks. “I see I just missed Officer Driscoll,” Captain Mendelberg remarked, then smiled up at Jim. “But at least you’re here, Detective McTate.” It was not a nice smile, and it made the veins in her strangely vaned ears dilate. “I just had a most interesting phone conversation with a Ms. Litt, and while I must commend you on finding a lead in your Magpie investigation, it would make my job far easier if you didn’t flaunt your ace in front of those with professed phobias. Would that be a problem?”

Jim felt himself thinning and clenched his jaw to make it stop. “No, Captain.”

“Excellent.” She glanced to Tenry and Dina. “I wanted to let you know that I’ll be needing everyone on the street tonight, even and especially our detectives and undercover officers. So even if you’re about to break a case, we need extra security for the parade. Any worries with this?”

“No, Captain,” said Tenry. “We have a physical description of the Magpie, but we can look for her on the parade route as well as anywhere else. Tabby’s already on it.”

“Mazel tov. And word to the wise, unlike last Halloween where they wore Playboy bunny ears, this year the Werewolves are being classy and wearing those white carnival masks—Bautas. Don’t ask how we found out, but they are.”

“There are going to be a lot of people wearing Bautas who aren’t Werewolves,” Tenry pointed out.

“And?” said Captain Mendelberg. “There are going to be people in heavy-metal T-shirts and satanic jewelry who aren’t Demon Princes. Use your common sense. Now, if you could tidy up Officer Driscoll’s schmatta.” She glanced to Jim and gestured to the soiled underwear. “I have someone I would like you to meet. Let me introduce the Grand Marshal for this year’s Halloween parade.”

Jim was glad he had not been tasked with worse shit duties than just picking up Tabby’s cat-fuzz infested clothes when he saw who it was. He’d first seen her ten years ago when he was sixteen, she was sixteen, and she was his favorite swimsuit model to spank off to. Before he was an ace, she was an ace, and she was the waxwork figure he’d seen that morning in the Dime Museum lobby. But now she was wearing this impossible gown of pink taffeta and a matching crown, like something a fairy princess would wear to the Oscars. Any lesser woman could not have pulled it off, but being who she was, she did. It was Michelle Pond, aka Bubbles, famous Committee ace, hero of New Orleans and Africa, and star of his teenage wet dreams.

His body wanted to thin, but he instead channeled the nervous energy into wadding Tabby’s clothes up two-dimensionally and shoving them through the crack of the filing cabinet. There was a brief bang of a drawer derailing once he pulled his hands out and put them behind his back, acting as if nothing had happened.

Michelle Pond was slightly more zaftig than her waxwork, but that only made her more beautiful, more out of his league, and didn’t change the fact that she was still a lesbian, which made her even hotter in the fantasizing-about-unobtainable-women way. He was also glad that she was not a telepath, because she might have killed him for his thoughts. She was also looking at him and the filing cabinet as if she were trying to figure out what was going on.

“Ms. Pond,” said Captain Mendelberg, “let me introduce Detective McTate, our newest addition to the force, his partner Detective Fong, and one of our undercover officers and aces, Officer Dina Quattore.” She paused then added, “You just missed Officer Driscoll.”

“You can call me K-10,” said Dina. “It’s like K-9 but better.”

“You can call me Bubbles.” She smiled radiantly. “But let me introduce Adesina. Come on out, honey. It’s all right.” She leaned down, moving aside the extremely full skirts of her gown, revealing the frightened face of a young girl hiding behind them. The girl was African, with large eyes and classic features, her hair done into two braids tied with blue ribbons, but her head was too close to the ground. Jim thought for a second she was crouching or crawling until he saw that the girl’s head was attached to the body of an insect the size of a small dog. It had wings and was holding a basket in one set of chitinous legs. There had been an attempt to dress the insect body in a child’s blue gingham dress, but it wasn’t working, and the sequined red shoes that went with the outfit were just tied on to one of the apron strings as an afterthought.

The girl gazed up at him wide-eyed, and Jim hated the wild card, not just for the awful thing it had done to her, but for the fact that it made him loom and frightening children was about the last thing he wanted. He crouched down. “Hey, honey,” he said. “You’re Dorothy, right?”

She beamed, and one insectlike claw reached up and caught Bubbles’s hand. “Yes,” she said in oddly accented English, then a worried expression came over her face. “Are you a joker?”

Jim paused, uncertain. “I’m more of a straight man,” he said and grinned weakly.

She look confused, so he held out one hand. “Here. Watch. Magic trick.” He thinned his hand down to paper thickness and tilted it back and forth. “Now you see it, now you don’t.”

She smiled then and laughed, squeezing Bubbles’s hand. “Mama gets fat.”

Michelle Pond smiled at him, and Jim realized that she was coutured as an extremely glamorous Glinda and there were few things that could make her wear that dress apart from money or making a child happy. He also realized that Adesina had to be one of the African children who had been deliberately infected with the wild card, then used as soldiers when they weren’t just killed or left for dead. She had to be one of the latter and had probably seen worse horrors in her short life than he had in his time as a cop.

Jim popped his hand back three-dimensional and straightened back up. “I think Tenry keeps some candy in his desk.”

The joker girl beamed, then scuttled forward with her basket. “Trick or Treat!”

Tenry may have been a nat, but he was also a father and he opened the drawer.

Michelle Pond touched Jim’s forearm. “Thank you,” she breathed sotto voce, then looked worriedly after the joker girl.

“Don’t mention it.” Jim touched his arm where she’d touched him. “You can call me Jim. Or Slim Jim.”

She glanced at him. “Okay.”

“Well,” said Captain Mendelberg, “there are a few more people to meet before the parade, and we should leave these officers to their business.”

Michelle Pond gave him a wry smile and beckoned to Adesina. The insect girl actually flew after her as she left with Captain Mendelberg.

Jim exchanged looks with Tenry and K-10. “Well, then I guess it’s the parade route. Together or separately?”

“Separately,” said Tenry with the decisiveness of a senior partner. “You two get started and I’ll brief the rest of the force so we’ll have some more eyes on the lookout.”

“Sounds good,” said K-10.

♦

The crowds were already starting up on Bowery, though thankfully as a detective Jim could just patrol, rather than be responsible for the barricades. He also got to go plainclothes, or at least as plainclothes as his height and weight made him.

Though it was uncomfortable to admit, Dutton’s suggestion of a mask did have some merit. He passed Plague Doctors and Scaramouches, Zannis and Bautas, even one Columbine wearing a Utilikilt to better display her three green-scaled chicken legs, before realizing he was violating another unwritten rule of Jokertown: Halloween was not Wild Card Day.

Wild Card Day was the day to wave your freak flag and for jokers to hassle nats or even other jokers who didn’t or couldn’t wave that flag hard enough. Jim had found the best way to get around the neighborhood on Wild Card Day was to stay two-dimensional. But it seemed Jokertown’s Halloween festivities were more egalitarian: nats could dress as jokers, jokers could dress as nats, and everyone could dress as aces, even if they possibly shouldn’t. On one corner, posing for pictures, was a nat transvestite in a long brown wig, blue sequined gown, and brown feathered angel wings posing alongside an apelike joker in a blond wig and Dodgers cap along with a baseball glove and jersey that read Curveball.

Wearing either of those outfits on Wild Card Day could get you stabbed: the first for impersonating a joker, the second for idolizing an ace.

Jim snapped a pic with his cell, forwarding to his former psychologist without comment, then noticed the looks he was getting and realized exactly what he was doing wrong: it wasn’t a case of could but should. It was Halloween and he did not have a costume.

He paused at a newsstand where the walrus joker who ran it had accessorized his usual Hawaiian shirt with a red wig and Takisan plumed hat. It looked equal parts ridiculous and festive, but that was the point. When in Wonderland …

Jim tossed a few quarters on the counter, picked up a copy of the Jokertown Cry, and proceeded to fold a hat. Fine. He was the Man in White Paper. It was an extremely minor character from Through the Looking Glass, but worked as well as anything, and let him have the headline MAGPIE STRIKES AGAIN! along one brim for extra irony points.

“Detective McTate?” asked a voice at his shoulder once he’d put it on.

Jim looked down, seeing a black tricorne over another creepy mouthless white Bauta mask, a rather old and expensive-looking one. About the only other distinguishing feature apart from a height of about six feet was a few tangles of matted flesh that fell out the drape at the back like scab-encrusted dreadlocks. “Yes?”

“How goes the investigation?” When Jim didn’t answer, the figure raised a gloved hand to his chest and made a polite little half bow, made awkward by wearing a hat while looking up at someone almost a foot taller. “Lucas Tate, editor of the paper you’re wearing on your head.”

Jim had an urge to take it off and read what that was but instead just glanced over at the stack on the newsstand. “Ah, the Cry.” He was fairly certain, despite Tate’s current choice in masks, that the editor of the paper was not a member of the Werewolves, the same as he was pretty certain Charles Dutton was not one either. But he was also from the southwest and believed in handshakes. “A pleasure,” he said, catching Tate’s. It was firm and human, but also strong. Jim’s was less so on all counts, thinning on instinct until Tate’s glove was wrapped in an exceptionally robust paper sculpture.

“I can see where you get your ace name.” Tate released it. “So, any progress?”

“On what?”

“The Magpie investigation.” When Jim didn’t respond, Tate continued. “I’m not just the person who coined the name, I’m also one of the Magpie’s victims. Seven rather valuable masks were recently stolen from my apartment. Ramshead was looking into it for me.”

Jim translated: Ramshead was Leo Storgman, the oldest detective at the precinct, and another joker. “Why aren’t you asking Ramshead?”

“Because he’s not available at the moment, and when I asked, Apsara told me that you and Detective Fong had taken lead on this case. And you are more physically distinctive.”

Translation: even in Jokertown, he stuck out in a crowd.

“So,” Tate asked conversationally, “do you think the Magpie is currently in the area?”

Keeping the cards close to the vest was standard operating procedure, but making nice to the press was also sometimes useful. “There’ve been a few thefts today, so she may be.”

“‘She’?” Tate asked interestedly. “You’re suspecting a woman?”

Jim kicked himself mentally. “I can’t give official comment on an ongoing investigation, but we’ve worked out a profile and we have our suspicions. Have you heard anything?”

“Nothing today,” Tate said slowly, “but a reporter does have his sources.”

Making nice with the press was one thing, but involving civilians in an investigation was another. Then again, Tate knew the neighborhood, and another pair of eyes was always useful. Tate’s were brown and natlike enough. “Okay, this needs to stay out of the paper for the moment, but there’ve been quite a few more thefts.” Jim skipped over the bit about teleporting and simply sketched out the list of items the perp was likely to have with her today.

“Dr. Tod’s diving helmet, a bong, and the three little kittens?” Tate repeated incredulously. “What, is she on a scavenger hunt?”

“You tell me. But like I was saying, this needs to stay out of the paper for the moment.”

“My lips are sealed,” Tate voice said from behind the Bauta’s mouthless visage.

Jim nodded, looking away to another face without a mouth, but this wasn’t a mask. The owner made up for this lack via interpretive dance and six breasts without a bra.

He turned away again, but Tate had stepped away. He was standing by himself, his pallid mask cocked at an angle that made Jim suspect he had a Bluetooth headset underneath.

Jim sighed and set off, shivering slightly. The reporter could catch up, but the crowds were neatly lined up, easy to search from his vantage point as the parade started.

The Jokertown High School marching band was first, relatively normal compared to what he was expecting. A lot of the high school kids had not turned their card yet, or were fortunate enough to have a nat parent, or had simply drawn jokers that were adequately disguised by green and gold marching band uniforms vaguely reminiscent of the green-whiskered gatekeeper from the Emerald City. They were also playing the triumphal march from The Wizard of Oz, probably a conscious choice, since in the middle of the band was a fuchsia-colored stallion. The joker kid switched his tail, swinging up a drumstick attached with green and gold athletic tape, and hit a bass drum on his back with the legend MIGHTY CHIMERAS. A girl with a flügelhorn for a head danced past, waving a drum majorette’s baton, and the rest of the band followed, mostly marching, but also hopping, or flopping, or skittering along in motorized wheelchairs.