Fort Freak

Jim had still not seen a joker who had been turned into a purple cow, but he had now seen one who had been changed into a fuchsia stallion. He would still rather see than be either.

Jim didn’t bother taking a picture for his former psychologist. He just kept taking stock of the crowd and keeping an eye on the parade. The Jokertown Players float was next, with cavorting jokers singing “Willkommen,” promoting a remarkably staid revival ofCabaret.

Captain Mendelberg and Sergeant Tienyu followed. At least Jim took it to be Sergeant Tienyu. It looked like a 1931 Duesenberg convertible with Mendelberg waving cheerily from the passenger seat. But since there was no one behind the wheel and yet the car was still driving, Jim was fairly certain it was animated by Vivian Choy, one of the desk sergeants who had some ace that let her possess cars and other devices she tinkered with in the precinct garage.

They passed, and then came the main event, Michelle Pond the Grand Marshal as Glinda the Good with her ace providing her very own giant bubble to stand in. The theme of her float was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” complete with rainbows and bluebirds, and while no one was singing, an instrumental version was playing over the speakers. Adesina fluttered around Bubbles inside the bubble, a joker bluebird Dorothy, but actually seemed happy, if just for the moment.

The float’s banners declared the sponsor to be the United Nations Children’s Fund, which made sense since “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” was a long-standing charity and Michelle Pond was their new spokesperson, just returned from her work in Africa for a press junket. As frivolous as a parade float might be, the point was to raise awareness for the plight of war orphans and child soldiers in Africa, especially forced victims of the wild card like Adesina. And as the float stopped, Michelle Pond raised her wand-shaped microphone and started to talk about just that.

The crowd hushed in response but that was when Jim spotted her: the Magpie.

She wasn’t dressed as a magpie, of course, but still had the same black velvet cloak he’d spotted with the witch mask that morning. That was now in her shopping cart, along with a beaded black cat mask, a crystal bowl, a bong, a diving helmet, and a box of kittens still perched up at the top. The mask she was wearing now was that of an owl, a barn owl like Olivia’s face, but made of painstakingly glued feathers with an enameled beak. She was standing on the corner, up against one of the barricades and lamppost with her cart on the other side of her, walling her in but also keeping her from being too crowded. And Jim noted that like him, she was also not giving full attention to Bubbles’s speech. He thinned out on reflex so he’d not only be virtually invisible from the Magpie’s vantage point but also so he could slip through the crowd.

Like any good pickpocket, the Magpie waited until her marks were well and truly distracted by something—in this case Bubbles’s horrific but true tales of the plight of African child soldiers—and then made her move. Unlike regular pickpockets, she had an ace, and Jim watched as she looked across the street to the opposite corner where a scaled joker perched on a milk crate wore a belt of inverted crucifixes along with a red jacket emblazoned with inverted pentacles to underscore that he was a Demon Prince. Under the milk crate was a small box.

The next moment, there wasn’t. The Magpie didn’t bother to check her prize, just quickly stashed it in her cart underneath the kittens.

That was more than enough for Jim. He moved in for the collar.

Unfortunately, it was also enough for someone else: a shambling mass of multifaceted red eyes and thorny green tendrils, looking like nothing half so much as a possessed raspberry bush sporting a cheap Bauta. Unlike Tate’s and Dutton’s, Jim was certain this Bauta belonged to a Werewolf. The joker got in the way, then next moment, shoved the Magpie to the ground. She cried out as her cart was knocked over, kittens spilling into the crowd along with a crystal bowl that shattered. A mass of brambles snaked out, securing the Demon Prince’s sample case, then for good measure, another reached out and ripped off the Magpie’s mask. She screamed, covering her face with her black velvet gloves.

That was enough for Jim as well. “Freeze! Police!” He pulled his Colt, aiming it at the center of the mass of tendrils and what was hopefully a vital organ.

Thorny tendrils whipped inhumanly fast, knocking the revolver from his hands as another mass wrapped around his throat. “I’ll snap your scrawny neck, narc…” hissed a chorus of dulcet feminine voices from unseen orifices amid the brambles and glittering raspberry eyes.

It was instinct. It was fear. And while it was one thing to snap a scrawny neck, it was another to snap a scrawny double-edged razor blade. The chorus of voices shrieked as blood and ichor fountained from severed tendrils along with an aroma like fruity children’s breakfast cereal.

Bautas filed out of the crowd then, at least a dozen of them, squaring off against a gang of jokers dressed in heavy-metal T-shirts and assorted spiky accoutrements from Hot Topic. The Werewolves and the Demon Princes had chosen this street corner and this moment for their gang war and were brandishing chains and claws and even a couple pitchforks that did not look like props when there came the blast of a loud explosion followed by a voice on the microphone. “Are you people fucking nuts!?!?!?”

Bubbles’s bubble had burst. She stood there on the float, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” still playing in the background, protecting a terrified Adesina with one arm while holding her sparkly wand microphone in a hand that trembled with rage. “There are children dying in Africa in real wars with real armies and you assholes are going to fight over a few square blocks of Manhattan? How dare you! I’ll take you all on! I’ll take you all on right now!”

The Werewolves and the Demon Princes stared. There were probably a few minor joker-aces among them, but they were facing one of the world’s most powerful aces, looking like Glinda the Good at her most bad-ass, ready to level the Wicked Witch of the West.

The crunchberry triffid joker fainted either from terror or ichor-loss or some combination thereof. The Demon Prince’s sample case vanished from her brambles along with the owl mask.

Then chaos erupted, or to be more precise, a whole lot of people out to watch the parade decided there were many places they would rather be than audience to a three-way confrontation between two rival gangs of jokers and a pissed-off ace protecting a small child.

The crowd overturned the barricades, running down side streets in both directions. Someone also thought to smash a window, because what was a crazed Jokertown riot without some looting? Besides which, it was Holbrooks and it had good loot.

Jim stepped up, but being plainclothes meant being ignored, and he was unwilling to slice and dice the mob with his ace. Fortunately Franny and Tinkerbill were already there, in uniform, and Tinkerbill at least was more imposing and his deuce was less lethal. He snatched up one of the wands of misery from the window display and starting poking looters with it, who immediately fluoresced pink and sparkling as he scolded in his Betty Boop voice, “You put that crap back, you asswipes, or I’ll haul you in right now!”

Jim looked at him and then picked up a wand of misery himself. He didn’t want to pull his backup pistol just yet, and could still turn the wand into a razor if necessary. He took a Plague Doctor’s mask from a glowing pink looter, then, on impulse, tossed off the newspaper hat and put the mask on instead. The Magpie had already seen his face, and if he was going to track her, it would be better to be yet another Plague Doctor.

He then called Tenry. “Damn it. I had her.”

“The Magpie?” Tenry was smart but it was always good to ask for confirmation.

“The same.” Jim briefed him on the rest. By standard procedure he should look for his piece, but this was Jokertown, and he was certain it was now in someone’s plastic pumpkin bucket. The Werewolf would end up in the hospital. Hard to miss a possessed raspberry bush.

Finding someone in a black velvet cloak with a folding shopping cart? More difficult.

The three-way Mexican standoff between Bubbles and the Werewolves and Demon Princes continued. Jim saw Captain Mendelberg get out of Sergeant Tienyu’s haunted Duesenberg, marching forward purposefully with a megaphone in one hand.

He had every confidence in the captain’s negotiation skills so opted to hunt for the Magpie instead. The barricades lay scattered and the main portion of the crowd had fled down the west side of Broome Street. Jim followed, loping down, searching, until a block later he spotted her again. She was no longer wearing the owl mask, but still the same black cloak, the same cart, a cabbie helping both into the back, and Jim did not think there were that many Halloween revelers currently wearing 1940s diving helmets.

Jim was not Rikki but at the moment didn’t need to be. He spotted an unoccupied vintage Duesenberg puttering down Broome Street and vaulted in. “Tienyu! Follow that car!”

“Slim Jim?” Vivian Choy’s voice crackled from the nonvintage police radio.

“Yeah.” Jim didn’t know how she sensed things, but assumed she did, and the Plague Doctor’s wand of misery made a great pointer. “That cab right there.”

“Got it.” The Duesenberg revved up and Jim relayed the particulars, and a moment later Vivian’s voice was on the radio, doing the same. It was a low-profile thing. They’d spooked the Magpie once before and there was no sense is spooking her now.

There were obviously more subtle ways to tail someone than a Plague Doctor riding in a possessed roadster, but it was Halloween in New York City, and the Magpie didn’t know who they were. Tienyu kept a reasonable distance, tailing the cab up Lafayette and across the city, and once they’d entered the Gramercy Park district, it stopped in front of an old brownstone on Eighteenth Street. The cabbie helped his fare out, and Tienyu drove a little farther down to where there was a bar on the other side of the street, classier than anything there was in Jokertown.

The lettering on the edge of the awnings read PETE’S BAR—NEW YORK’S OLDEST ORIGINAL BAR—EST. 1884 and the party was in full swing. There was also valet parking.

Jim got out, watching as the Magpie went up the steps of the brownstone, opened a door, and disappeared inside. Jim pointed the wand of misery. “What’s that building over there?”

The parking valet was young, white, nat, and chosen to exude class. “That’s Stuyvesant’s Folly,” he said with the pride of a native. “Oldest apartments in the city.”

Jim raised an eyebrow but knew it didn’t show with the mask. “Thanks. Get the car whatever she wants.”

Jim felt a twinge of jealousy. Here he was, new to the city, looking at basement apartments that smelled of dead cheese joker. Meanwhile, an ace pickpocket was living in one of the city’s most desirable old addresses. What he got for walking the straight and narrow.

142 East Eighteenth Street was undeniably old, but Jim had seen which door the Magpie had gone in, and with his ace, he didn’t need to ring a bell. Straight and narrow were the operative words. A door crack was easily navigated, as were flights of stairs leading up and up.

It was a loft apartment, with the emphasis on loft, the vault of the place going up almost two stories into the mansard roof and the skylights. A life-size Styrofoam peregrine figure was suspended in the middle, an advertising figure from the eighties, dusty but still impressive. That seemed to be the theme of the place. A forest of curio cabinets and mirror-backed vitrines were set about the floor, illuminated by discreet track lighting and not-so-discreet chandeliers.

Jim glanced in the first one. It appeared to be a collection of Four Aces memorabilia, focusing on Golden Weenie, everything from a vintage action figure of him as Tarzan to a more recent Happy Meal toy from his turn as one of the villains on American Hero to a couple rather risqué black-and-white boudoir photographs of him and some attractive young brunette Jim did not recognize. Atop the vitrine there was even a Golden Boy snow globe, the Judas Ace posed with a tank over his head and drifts of gold glitter around his feet.

The next vitrine was topped with a Dr. Tachyon snow globe. In fact, several of them, and a couple of his sentient spaceship Baby for good measure. Inside was an ostrich-plumed hat the good doctor could have worn and, Jim suspected, had, a Captain Cathode lunch pail featuring a character obviously based on Dr. Tachyon and the infamous scene where he decides to “borrow” the Hope Diamond (supposedly based on an actual incident with the Prince of Takis, but denied in the press), and next to that, the actual Hope Diamond.

Jim did a double take. It looked like the one he’d seen when he was twelve on the class field trip to the Smithsonian. They’d said it was the real one, but Jim had had his doubts.

The next curio held a jar that was purported to hold John Dillinger’s penis. Jim didn’t think that was a fake either.

Jim glanced in a few more. Mixed with Depression glass, Venetian glass, Takisian Barbie and Madame Alexander dolls, bobblehead jokers, yet more snow globes, and unbelievable collections of oddments and collectible grot were Ming vases, Meissen porcelain, the Voynich Manuscript that had been missing for thirty years, priceless jewels and antiquities. It was like the contents of eBay and the Victoria and Albert had all been vomited into one room.

He then came to a gun case with an amazing display of historic firearms. They were all dusty except one off to one side, a Colt .44 Magnum revolver. Jim recognized it. It was his.

Jim picked it up and checked it. Still loaded. Then it vanished.

He heard the sound of the hammer being cocked.

Jim turned and looked. The Magpie was there, his gun in her hands. The diving helmet was off, revealing a very old woman with a shock of white curls. She would have looked like someone’s sweet old great-grandmother if she hadn’t been holding a gun.

“So, who are you?” she asked, and a moment later Jim realized this was a rhetorical question as she raised one hand away from the gun. The Plague Doctor’s mask vanished from his face, reappearing in her free hand. Jim was slightly dazzled then suddenly saw what he’d been missing—the vitrines were angled like a hall of mirrors. She’d been tracking him the whole time. “Oh, it’s you, sweetshanks! Don’t know what was up with that nasty Werewolf.…”

She took the mask over to one wall where there was a series of hooks and cubbies, adding it at the end, alongside a devil, an owl, a pussycat, a pea-green witch, and a copper diving helmet. She looked to Jim and gestured. His wand of misery appeared in her hand, and she pointed it a ways away where there was an antique settee. “Have a seat on the davenport. Don’t mind the kitties.” She paused. “You’re not one of those horrible kitten-eating jokers, are you?”

“Uh, no,” Jim said, trying not to remember the incident earlier with Otto’s chili.

“Good. I can’t abide those. Awful monsters wanting to eat my poor pussies.…”

It was like being at his great-grandmother’s house, if his great-grandmother were an ace.

Jim took a seat, amid a number of cats and a couple of kittens who looked familiar. They blinked at him blandly, the way only cats can. An old ginger tom deigned to sit in his lap.

The Magpie took his Magnum over to the gun rack and put it back in its place, and Jim came to a realization. “You’re the one in the photographs with Golden Weenie.”

She beamed. “I was a hottie back then.” She came over to the couch and sat on the other end. The bong was on the coffee table along with the Demon Prince’s sample case. “Let’s see what we got for trick-or-treats.” She opened it delightedly. “Do you partake?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well then, no sense in filling up a whole hookah.” She took a meerschaum pipe out of a drawer and tamped it full of hashish, lighting it and puffing on it expertly. “For my rheumatism,” she explained. “So,” she said, looking Jim up and down. “How did you get in?”

“I’m an ace.”

“Everyone’s an ace now. Throw a rock at a game show and you’ll hit twenty of them.” She rolled her eyes. “I meant, what’s your ace? Do you teleport?”

“No.”

“Good. Then you won’t be leaving immediately.” She looked at him slyly. “I used to teleport, a little, but it made me sick. Now I just teleport things. What do you do?”

“I, uh, get thin.” Jim held up a hand as demonstration.

“You’re wasting your talents,” she said with grandmotherly disapproval. “Look at everything I have here.” She waved the meerschaum at the room. “You could have the same.”

“You stole all this?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She exhaled hash smoke contentedly. “The skylights were open the first Wild Card Day. The owners melted and the place was just filthy with spores, so I got it for a song. Furnishings too. So many lovely things.” Dust rose as she patted the antique sofa. “Anything people thought was contaminated they were just throwing out on the street!”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Not then,” she said. “I was already an ace. Even before the Four Aces.”

“There were no aces before the Four Aces.”

She looked at him as if he were deeply stupid and took a toke. “I worked for Dr. Tod.”

It hit him like an elementary school history report: the test that had gone wrong at Dr. Tod’s lab. There were rumors of one other person there, someone who’d simply vanished. And while the conspiracy theories said that was Tod …

“You’re the first ace.…”

She nodded proudly and set down her pipe. “I mostly got coffee, but I was there.”

“So that’s why you took Dr. Tod’s helmet?”

“That wasn’t Dr. Tod’s helmet. That was Edward’s.” She pursed her lips. “Poor man. Did you know he lost a foot? But he was always sweet to me and I wanted something to remember him by. And it’s terribly disrespectful to put his helmet on Dr. Tod and say it was his.” She smiled then. “If they wanted something that belonged to Dr. Tod, they should have just asked me. He taught me how to fire a gun, you know.” Two .38 specials appeared in her hands. “I don’t know where I put the one he gave me, but these were Bonnie and Clyde’s.”

Jim thinned to nothingness, but angled on a couch, this was awkward. The tom leaped off his lap with a squall, giving just enough of a kick that 150 pounds of razor-thin joker-ace cut through the cushions. Then the guns went off, one then the other, multiple times. Snow globes exploded. Pussycats screamed and hissed, hiding under coffee tables and vitrines, and a bullet whizzed by where Jim’s ear would have been if he were still 3-D. The Magpie fell back, partly from the recoil, partly from the large orange tomcat sitting on her chest, his claws pulling her hood over her eyes, the whole of him getting larger and fatter, losing hair, until a fat naked red-haired Irishman was sitting on her, bawling, “Get the guns! Get the fuckin’ guns!”

Jim struggled to free his ass. Another round went off and there was a crash. Glass rained down and the next moment the Styrofoam peregrine swung through the air to decapitate herself on the wall. At last Jim freed himself, willing his hands 3-D enough that he didn’t lacerate the Magpie too badly as he pried the revolver from her right hand while Tabby sat on her left arm and chest and covered her face.

“Leghwoavme! Leghwoavme!” the Magpie protested through the velvet as Jim disarmed her other hand. He still had his cuffs, but they were taking no chances with a known teleporter.

Thankfully, it being Halloween in New York City, a fat naked Irishman hugging a black velvet ghost in the backseat of a 1931 Duesenberg convertible raised no eyebrows.

♥

With the ponytail, pegleg, and nineteenth-century knee breeches, the notorious Dr. Pretorius looked the very image of a pirate, far better than Shirley and Ted ever would. He’d taken off the tricorne hat and stuffed parrot, but Jim saw them on a chair in the corner of the briefing room behind the strange joker woman who looked like she was made out of blue ice. She had no nipples, no genitalia, and no clothes, but judging by her posture and the way she turned toward Dr. Pretorius, Jim guessed she was some sort of legal secretary.

Captain Mendelberg’s eyes looked redder than usual. Jim didn’t dare to ask what had happened with the parade. She spoke: “She would also need to wear a monitoring bracelet.”

“I’m certain that given my client’s advanced age and delicate condition, that will not be necessary.” Dr. Pretorius stroked his silvery goatee sagaciously.

“I’m certain that given Trudy Pirandello’s crimes and past associations, it will,” said Charles Habersham III, the new assistant D.A., who had strawberry-blond hair, a southern twang, and the attitude of the newest generation of old money.

“I object to those characterizations,” said Dr. Pretorius.

The judge’s face was a mass of wrinkles with no eyes, but apparently excellent hearing. “Objection sustained, but I must agree with the prosecution and the police: a monitoring bracelet is standard.” The judge looked like a man-sized gray worm wrapped in a Snuggie with a judicial robe over that. Jim was fairly certain the Snuggie was due to the hour.

“Thank you, Judge Burkhardt,” said the D.A.

Mendelberg nodded. “As I was saying, the department would also require a probation officer to aid Ms. Pirandello in cataloging her various ‘acquisitions’ over the years.”

“Again, I must stress, most of my client’s items were acquired via legitimate channels, and those few that may not have been are beyond the statute of limitations and only of interest to the insurers. And given the biohazard potential of a historically documented spore cache—”

“Historically documented?” the judge repeated.

“My client has told me—”

“She told me the same thing, Your Honor,” Jim put in. “Before the arrest.”

Judge Burkhardt’s wrinkles wrinkled. “Well, let’s just say ‘alleged’ spore cache. No one’s going to want to mess with that either, and testing will need to be done in any case.”

Mendelberg pursed her lips. “I’m certain at least the Hope Diamond can be sterilized.”

“Yes, yes, we have already agreed to that,” Dr. Pretorius continued, “but—”

“But I have a number of wild cards on staff,” Captain Mendelberg pointed out. “Officer Driscoll and Detective McTate have already been on the premises”—she gestured to Tabby, once again a cat, and Jim—“and I myself will be making an inspection.”

“Moving along,” said Judge Burkhardt. “I believe we were talking about having a probation officer in residence as part of the terms of Ms. Pirandello’s parole.”

Dr. Pretorius stroked his beard. “Now I do not believe that is strictly—”

“Let’s not mince word, Henk,” the judge snapped. “We’ve both known each other too long and it’s too late for this beating around the bush. Either your client is suffering from age and diminished capacity such that she warrants assistance, or else she’s competent enough to not need it in which case she’s competent enough to go to jail. Which is it?”

“Age and diminished capacity, Your Honor.”

The worm turned. “Is this acceptable to the prosecution?”

“Well, given the suspect’s recent activities and varied acquisitions—”

“A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Good,” said Judge Burkhardt. “From the description of the place, I doubt housing will be a problem. Do you have a parole officer in mind, Captain?”

Mendelberg smiled. “The department’s housing for Detective McTate expired about an hour ago—and from what I’ve heard, you haven’t found an apartment yet?”

Jim shook his head, then when he remembered the judge couldn’t see, added, “No.”

“Then it’s agreed,” said Captain Mendelberg. “Detective McTate gets a room or adjoining apartment or whatever seems most feasible, as a condition of Ms. Pirandello’s parole.” Her red currant eyes looked to Jim. “And you, tomorrow, will begin to help her catalogue her possessions.” She paused, then added, “Detective Fong has had an eventful night as well. But he is very good with paperwork, and he will be at no risk from spores from digital photographs.”

Captain Mendelberg was a master at understatement, but Jim was certain that Tenry would fill him in on what exactly his own “eventful night” had entailed.

“I believe I have a draft of a preliminary agreement that should be acceptable to all parties concerned,” said Dr. Pretorius.

“Good, Henk,” said Judge Burkhardt. “Please allow opposing counsel to examine it.”

The strange blue joker woman produced a sheet from a legal folder and handed it to the strawberry-blond D.A. He gave it studious attention as the blue woman handed a copy to Captain Mendelberg as well.

There was a long silence punctuated only by the tick of the wall clock. The judge was the first to break it: “Does everything appear to be in order, Mr. Habersham?”

“Yes…” the D.A. drawled slowly, “but if I could—”

“By all means, take your time”—Captain Mendelberg laid the document on the table—“but this is fine with the department.”

The clock ticked by as her red currant eyes attempted to bore a hole through the D.A.’s forehead, but either Mendelberg lacked an ace or else Habersham had one too. Either way, he eventually lowered the document and turned to the judge. “No objections, Your Honor.”

“Excellent,” said the worm. “Now, if we can get all the appropriate signatures…”

There was a light knock on the door, then Apsara came in. She was young, Asian, pretty, and worried-looking. “Captain, I hate to interrupt, but I’ve got Lucas Tate on the line. He’s heard that we caught the Magpie, is wondering how he gets his property back, and is also asking for an exclusive on the story. What do I tell him?”

Captain Mendelberg said something in Yiddish that Jim didn’t catch but caused Dr. Pretorius to suspend his pen and raise his eyebrows. “You can tell him that he may visit me during normal business hours, that I assume he’s already filed all the necessary paperwork with Detective Storgman, and that if he’s going to continue living in Manhattan for any length of time, that he should get renter’s insurance.” Her red eyes glittered. “You can also tell him that the department makes it a policy to not comment on ongoing investigations, and when we do talk to the press, we never give exclusives.”

Apsara nodded. “Of course, Captain.” She shut the door.

Captain Mendelberg looked to Jim and sighed. “Mazel tov, Detective McTate, on cracking your first case for the department. You were instrumental.” She smiled a small-toothed grin. “I’m looking forward to your full report.”

Jim nodded, steeling his fingers on the table and keeping himself from thinning. “Thank you, Captain Mendelberg.”

“Meowww,” added Officer Driscoll.

Jim didn’t speak cat, but he thought he knew the meaning: We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.

“Meow,” Jim agreed.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 11.

LEO WAS STANDING BEFORE the snack machine debating the merits of a bag of chips versus a packet of cookies when Tabby Driscoll slunk up to him, smelling of something strong enough to power a lawn mower. “Hey Tabs,” Leo said without meeting the undercover cop’s eyes; he settled on the cookies and riffled around in his pocket for some change.

“Ramshead.” He coughed into the back of his hand, then again into the crook of his elbow. “Been asking around. Been looking around,” he said quietly, and leaned against the wall beside the machine.

Leo spied a bottle neck poking like a turtle head out of Tabby’s lowest right jacket pocket, but he didn’t call attention to it. “Learn anything good?” He pressed the buttons, watched the snack spiral curl and drop the cookies into the tray. Retrieving them, he opened the package and took a sniff.

“Sleeper’s crashing on the west end of the neighborhood. Holing up with that limey. Had to follow her forever to find him.”

“You got an address for me?”

“Trade you for a cookie.”

“You got it.” Leo passed one over, and took the folded up piece of paper. “Thanks.”

“You owe me,” Tabby said restlessly.

“Close your pocket, Tabs. Your habits are showing.”

After work it was dark and cold, same as just about always these weeks; but Leo didn’t go home. He followed the address instead, tracking it down the streets and around the corners, past the alleys and off through the blocks of Jokertown until he found the building he needed.

He showed his badge to the doorman and slipped upstairs without incident, tracking down an elevator and finally, on the eighth floor, apartment number 833. It wasn’t a real nice building but it wasn’t bad, either. Leo knew the kind—a newer structure, with units that were clean but blank and smaller than the usual small. The door didn’t have as many locks as it ought to have.

He knocked. No one answered. He knocked again, to the same response.

A few minutes later he returned with the building manager, explaining that there’d been a call from a concerned family member, asking the police to do a quick check-in to make sure everything was okay. The manager let him inside, muttering about dead bodies and how they didn’t happen in his establishment.

Leo sent him away and started poking around.

The unit was furnished by Ikea. A queen-sized bed without a headboard was pushed against one wall, and a futon-style seater was pushed against the next. A large television faced the seater. Empty soda cans, take-out containers, and foil corn chip bags were shoved into corners.

The leftover sauce at the bottom of the nearest lo mein was still damp. The trash needed to be taken out, so the place smelled a little manky. But it didn’t smell stale.

The place was basically one big room, with a narrow kitchen offset to the right and a bathroom immediately inside the front door. But there was a closet. A big one, if he judged the layout right. One of those walk-ins that are advertised as a potential bedroom or office, but not for anybody over four feet tall.

He turned the knob and the door opened to darkness. A pull chain dangled above his head; he pulled it, and a yellow lightbulb clicked on revealing clothing—some men’s, some women’s; some on hangers, some in piles by the shoes—and a few boxes. He poked at the boxes and saw nothing to get excited about.

But in a corner there was a big old bathrobe slung over a suspicious shape. Leo watched it hard, waiting for it to breathe, sniffle, or gasp. It didn’t. Whatever was under there, it wasn’t alive. Leo gave the robe a yank and then leaped back from confusion and a touch of fright.

She—for it was definitely a “she”—glittered warmly in the low yellow light. A statue or, the detective thought as he recovered himself and reached forward to touch her head … something stranger. Life-sized and frozen, crystallized into absolute immobility. His fingernail tapped against her as if she were made of glass.

Unsure of what to do or how to feel about his discovery, Leo replaced the robe and retreated from the closet.

He then tried to make himself comfortable on the hard-packed futon. He thought about turning on the television, but he didn’t see the remote and he figured he didn’t need the extra noise. It was a good call. He heard them approach, outside in the hall through the door that wasn’t thick enough and didn’t have enough locks.

“Calm down, dear.” A woman. The blonde, he assumed.

“I need more pills.” Croyd.

“We’re almost home. You can take whatever you need,” she told him. She had an accent. British, but Leo couldn’t place it any closer than that.

Someone’s keys wiggled in the lock, and the door flung open with a snap as Croyd went banging through it. He moved like he was a little drunk or delirious, and the blonde came in behind him—then crashed into him when he stopped abruptly.

Seeing Leo. Sitting on the couch.

“What the…” the Sleeper began.

Leo stood up and flashed his badge. “Hey there, Croyd.”

The girl made a sharp gasp, but Croyd waved a hand behind himself. He said, “Stay back.”

“But—”

“Just stay back.” He was trying to hold steady and look strong, but Leo knew the signs. The Sleeper had been awake for a long time, sucking down pills like candy to stay awake—anything to stave off the terror of the next nap. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with bags, and the edge of his mouth quivered. When he held his hand out at Leo, as though he could hold the cop in place, his fingers shook too.

Croyd said, “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

“I only want to talk.”

“You could’ve called.”

“I tried an ad in the paper. Didn’t work,” Leo griped.

“I don’t read the paper much. Get all my news on the Internet like civilized people,” Croyd replied, but Leo hadn’t seen a computer anywhere in the shoe-box efficiency. “You going to arrest me?”

“Depends on how this plays. You want to sit down like a civilized person and have a talk, or does this get messy? It’s your call.”

Croyd slowly reached his far hand back, as if to comfort the blonde. He moved with caution, like Leo was pointing a gun at him—even though he wasn’t. But instead of telling the girl to shut the door and come inside, he touched Leo’s hand and barked, “Abigail, go!” He spun on his heel and began to chase her toward the door.

Leo started after him but a sharp, loud noise behind him nearly stopped his heart. He whirled to meet whatever was there and stared into his own eyes. His own face. Standing nose to nose with him. It would’ve taken his breath away except that he remembered what Tabby had said about duplicates. Of people. Of anyone.

The double matched him inch for inch. Same from the newsboy cap to the snow-damp loafers. It shocked him, spying his own whitened, blotchy skin and knobby-horned head. But it was only a duplicate, and it didn’t do anything but stare.

So Leo followed his instincts, turned, and ran away from it. He dashed to the door where Croyd and the blonde—Abigail—had escaped only seconds before.

“Stop it, Croyd! You’re making this a bigger mess than it needs to be!” he hollered, spying them in front of the elevator banks, waiting for divine providence in the form of a ping and an open pair of doors.

They didn’t get it.

Abigail stepped in front of Croyd. “No,” she begged. “Please, don’t. He’s only tired, he’s not—we’re not—”

But whatever else she meant to say was cut short when the Sleeper nudged her aside and said, “Just leave her out of this, you hear me?”

Leo’d had no plans to involve her, but he was too busy running to explain himself. He barreled down on them and Croyd misread it as an attack—when Leo was only catching up.

“Stop, God damn it!” the detective commanded.

Croyd took up a defensive stance, and as Leo approached, he took a swing. Leo ducked past it, and Abigail fumbled into the middle of things again, saying, “Please, just leave us alone!”

But Croyd pushed her now, trying to keep her back, and he readied himself to take another strike. He was off balance, though—that much was obvious. The exhaustion oozed out of his pores; it made him sweaty and too impulsive. It made him slow.

The old cop lowered his head and his hat slid to the side, and then to the ground. He braced himself, lining up his back and shoulders to give his frame the support he needed to take the hit, and to give one back. Just like his joker name, and just like his broad forehead and thick, curled horns implied he might, he backed himself to the nearest table. His arms crooked in a pugilist’s ready stance, but held low, over his chest. He took three steps forward.

Storgman’s head caught Croyd in the solar plexus and the bigger man bounced back, breathless. He ricocheted against a potted plant, slapping his arm against a decorative stone column. He rolled, and he clattered to the ground.

Leo stood up straight. Left to right he bent his neck and it cracked. He went to the place where his hat was lying on the floor; he picked it up and with a jamming motion he smashed it back over his bald spot.

Croyd’s head was lolling back and forth.

Abigail was pale, but Leo pointed at her boyfriend hard and ordered, “Don’t let him fall asleep. He stays awake until I get a chance to talk to him.”

The Sleeper mumbled, “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Leo pushed his arms under Croyd’s pits and hauled him upright, but Croyd fell and drooped. “Help me here,” the detective told Abigail. “Let’s get him back.”

“Back … back where? Are you arresting him?”

“Back to your apartment. And no. Not if he’s feeling cooperative.” Together they hauled the staggering Croyd back to the apartment, and dropped him down on the bed. “He must have coffee around here,” Leo said to Abigail. “See about making him some, will you?”

She gazed fretfully at her stunned partner before dashing over to the kitchen area and turning on the faucet.

Leo sat down on the edge of the bed and used one of its pillows to prop the Sleeper up. “Croyd,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever met. Not official-like.”

Croyd said, “I don’t know.” And he didn’t look up.

“I’m Detective Storgman. And before you conk out on me, I want to ask you some questions.”

“Where’s Abigail?” the Sleeper asked. “She okay?”

“She’s making coffee. She’s not in any trouble,” Leo added, since that’s what Croyd was really asking.

“Good. She’s a good kid.”

“Little young for you,” the detective said, but looking at Croyd now, up close, it was hard as hell to tell how old he really was. His abnormally young face was framed with dark curls; only his eyes gave anything away. They looked like the eyes of a man in his seventies—a man who’d seen too much, stayed awake too long, and changed too often. God only knew how long he’d lived like that, bouncing from power to power, joker to ace and back again. He could live to be a thousand. Or he could live until tomorrow. Every new draw risked a black queen, and no one knew it better than Croyd did.

The Sleeper said, “Yeah.” And he brought those old eyes up, and they were exhausted, but they made a game effort to stay focused on Leo. “So what is it? What do you want? I was there looking for something to stay awake, that’s all. Old story.”

“I want to talk about another old story,” the detective said.

“How old?”

“Nineteen seventy-eight.” Leo pushed. “There was a diner called the Rathole. An all-night joint. Bunch of people died there, maybe you heard about it.”

Those dark old eyes went sharp. His shoulders sharpened too. He was awake now. Real awake, if only for an instant. He pushed himself up on his elbows. “I heard about it.”

“Here it is, Crenson: I know you were there, and I’m not accusing you of anything. I don’t think you had anything to do with the killing, but I think you’re the guy who called in the tip. I think you’re the only surviving witness.”

Croyd was tense now, and wary. Leo didn’t like that look on him. “Why now?”

“Because thirty years ago I didn’t solve it, and I don’t have much more time.”

The Sleeper might’ve been sleep-deprived, but he wasn’t stupid. “Retiring?”

“It’s not up to me.”

He sighed, and the last half came out in a yawn. “I’d like to help you,” he said.

“Then give me something. Anything.” In the kitchen, the bubbling of the pot said Abigail had successfully navigated the coffeemaker, and caffeine was in the works.

Croyd leaned up, so their faces were only a foot apart. In a fierce whisper he told the cop, “Everything I ever knew about the Rathole I said into a pay phone down the street in ’78. There was … there was a guy. Some dude. He was wearing an owl mask—”

“An owl mask? I thought it was a…” Leo wished he had his notes handy, something to reference. “I thought it was a hawk, or an eagle, or something.”

“It was an owl, I think. It was kind of stylized, you know? And he comes in, and he’s freaking out—totally strung out—and he’s got a gun.”

“Keep talking.”

“He starts shouting about this car—”

“What car?” Leo demanded.

“I don’t know—a car, in the parking lot outside. A big black Mercedes, that’s what he kept shouting. Kept asking who it belonged to.”

“That car,” Leo said. The one with Don Reynolds’s stuff in it.

“Yeah. He just—he throws this shit-fit about the car. And the melty-looking guy at the bar, he pisses himself when the counter girl points him out. Then Hash came out from the kitchen, and he had that sawed-off, and then both of those assholes opened fire.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I hid.”

“Where?”

He said, “Back then, my skin and whatever I was wearing—I could change it. Practically made me invisible.”

“You had some kind of chameleon power?”

“Yeah, like that. Chameleon. I ducked down under the counter and did my best match of the background. Nobody saw me, I don’t think.”

“I guess not, since you’re still alive.”

“That’s one way to look at it. But I swear to God, that’s all I know. That’s all I’ve got, and I’m so … son of a bitch, I’m so tired. I need my pills!” He said the last part loudly, plaintively.

From the kitchen Abigail said, “Coffee’s coming, I promise! And I’ll get your pills.”

“All right. I’ll take your word for it, for now. And I appreciate it,” the cop said as he found the door to let himself out. “But don’t leave town, okay?”

The car. The black Mercedes. Had to be the one Deedle’d been driving when he was caught.

The shooter had wanted to know who it belonged to.

Now Leo did too.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

… And All the Sinners Saints

Part 3.

CHARLIE WAS IN MARIA’S bodega picking out vegetables for dinner after a particularly hard day in court. Clyde, aka Nergal, had decided that threatening the judge and the D.A. was a good way to win acquittal. Now he was not only facing his murder charge, but the D.A. had tacked on the assault charge for attacking Jimbo. Clyde seemed determined to spend the rest of eternity in prison, but only after making his attorney look like the biggest idiot in New York City, or at least Jokertown.

“Fuck my life,” Charlie muttered.

He was judging the comparative merits of two different bell peppers, and weighing whether or not this was the kind of day where you felt justified buying a six-pack of Rheingold to go with them, when Maria called out. “Charlie, somebody came in with a message for you. Little kid with three eyes. He’s not from the neighborhood. Said a black guy in a Dumpster gave him five bucks to come find you here. But he had to go, so I told him I’d pass the message along.”

“A black guy in a—what was the message?”

“He said all good Christians go to church on Sunday,” Maria said, then shrugged. “You don’t go to church, Charlie?”

“Uh … not as often as I should, Mamma Maria.” Charlie took his purchases to the counter to pay for them. On his way to the counter, he felt the trapdoor beneath his increasingly normal life pop open and drop him straight back into the shit.

Good Christians go to church on Sunday. Fuck my life twice.

They’d met at Father Squid’s church last time, so that’s probably what the message meant. Marcus would only meet at night when he could move around more freely. He probably meant Saturday night at midnight, when the day becomes Sunday. If he didn’t show up, Charlie could try again Sunday night. But something told him that the Infamous Black Tongue would be there the first night.

Saturday was still a couple days away. It would give Charlie plenty of time to work up a really good worry.

He briefly considered calling Vince and asking him to come along to the meet, but dropped that idea quickly. Vince might feel obligated to try and arrest the fugitive, and Marcus would almost certainly fight back. Plus, once Charlie had gotten Vince his information for him, the rat squad detective had acted like he’d forgotten all about him.

Maria took his money and made change. Charlie was trying to juggle his bags and put his money away when he turned around and ran right into a tall man with a wiry but solid build. His bags tumbled to the floor, spilling green peppers and cherry tomatoes across the tile. He was already apologizing as he bent down to pick up the mess.

Before he could pick anything up, the man he’d run into said, “Forget that shit,” then very deliberately stomped on one of the cherry tomatoes, crushing it and squirting juice across the floor.

Charlie’s head snapped up in anger, but it quickly switched to fear when he recognized the face. Sam Napperson. One of the cops at the 5th precinct. Vince had told him that Snap, as the other officers called him, had been Lu Long’s partner before Angel Grady. Snap had a smirk that told Charlie he’d enjoyed stomping on the tomato, and would like to move on to something a little bigger. Like maybe Charlie’s face.

“Why don’t we step outside,” Napperson said. “Let someone else clean up that mess.” Without waiting for Charlie’s answer, he turned and stomped out to the street. Charlie followed, whispering apologies to Maria as he went, telling her he’d be back to pick up the mess. Maria shook her head, a frightened look on her face, and came around the counter to do it herself.

Outside, Snap lit a cigarette, then spit on the sidewalk. He smiled at Charlie while blowing a cloud of smoke at him.

“Can I help you, officer?” Charlie said, trying to keep his nervous twitching to a minimum.

Snap didn’t answer right away, just kept smoking his cigarette. When he’d smoked it to the filter, he flicked the butt out into the street. With the least genuine smile Charlie had ever seen, he pointed around him, then up at the apartment building above the bodega. “This ain’t a great neighborhood, counselor.”

“It’s okay. I like the people here.”

“Lotta crime, neighborhood like this,” Snap said.

“I guess.” Where is this going?

“Guy in a neighborhood like this, people find out he’s a lawyer, think that means he has money. Maybe they might try to mug him. Maybe break into his place and steal stuff. Sometimes they’re hopped up on drugs and the victim gets hurt. That shit can happen, place like this.”

Charlie had no idea what reaction Napperson was looking for. He felt like he was in a play, and no one had bothered to give him his lines. So he just nodded and said, “I guess,” again.

“So I think to myself, why a guy.” Snap looked Charlie up and down, slowly. “A vulnerable guy. Crippled guy. Would try so hard to piss off the police that protect him from that unfortunate fate.”

Wow, thought Charlie. I’m actually being strong-armed. “I appreciate your concern, officer.”

“What I would do, if I were a guy like that,” Snap continued, as though Charlie had not spoken, “is I’d get myself some goodwill with the local police. Maybe let them know where my fugitive client was so he could be brought in. Turning in a guy who tried to kill a cop, that’d go a long way.”

Charlie didn’t say anything this time. Napperson was going through his script, and Charlie’s participation wasn’t necessary.

“So,” Snap said. “Maybe you know where a fugitive from justice might be hiding? Or if not now, where such a fugitive might be later. Say, on Sunday.”

Oh, shit. Charlie hadn’t heard Snap come into the bodega. How long had he been there? The whole time? Had he heard everything Maria had said? Most cops knew a little Spanish, at least enough to get by on the street. How much of Maria’s message to him had he understood?

“Officer Napperson, I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I appreciate your concern for my safety. I’ll make sure to let your lieutenant know about our conversation, and your worry about me getting mugged or robbed. That’s the kind of personal touch that seems to be missing in community police work.” Charlie smiled his own version of a fake smile, trying very hard not to let the pounding in his chest give him away.

Napperson nodded once, as though acknowledging the threat. He started to speak again, but before whatever threat he was planning to level got out of his mouth, Charlie’s cell phone started ringing. “Oh, sorry, officer, I need to take this,” he said, holding up one finger. While Napperson gaped at him, he ducked back into his building and closed the door. The caller offered him a great discount on satellite television if he chose to sign up for their exciting service. He kept the woman on the line until he got to his apartment and locked the door behind him.

♣

“Fuck my life,” Charlie muttered.

He walked head down along a run-down back street heading toward Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, pushing his way through driving sleet whose chill cut right through the woolen scarf wound around his neck and the gray houndstooth coat his dad had bought him … because, even if he lowered himself to the status of mere public defender, likely future New York Attorney General Eric Herriman’s son was by-God going to look like a lawyer. Charlie wore the coat because it was hip in an ironic-retro way. And also warm. Only not now.

Sparse streetlights cast funnels of lusterless flicker. The wet-pavement smell crowded out everything but the eternal inner-city diesel stink and a waterfront whiff of marine decay from the East River nearby. I’ll insist Marcus turn himself in this time, he told himself. I’ve done my duty. I’ve done more than any normal attorney would do for his client. I’ve gone above and beyond. His client needed to trust in the system.

But Puff and Angel are part of the system too, said the part of his mind in charge of making him uncomfortable. If his body got as much exercise as his insecurities did he could just throw over law and become a cage-fighter.

“Okay. Fuck. Okay. I’ll get Marcus’s statement for him.” He had a compact digital video camera in his pocket for just that purpose. “I’ll give it to Vince. And that’ll be that. With that and the Minal tape, plenty to go on. No, wait … I’ll tell Marcus I’ll go in with him. Make sure everything’s done by the book.”

And what a great idea that is, his bad brain jeered. What if Marcus and Minal and Ratboy are all right? What if it was a bad shoot? Puff and Angel can’t be the only ones involved. Somebody else at Fort Freak has to know. Any number of somebodies. Michael told Minal not to come forward. Napperson tried to threaten me. Who knows who else is in on this? Fort Freak had a bad reputation going back decades. He’d heard it said that Maseryk had cleaned the precinct up, but maybe that was just talk. What kind of target will you be painting on your forehead if you go in with the kid? “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” And fuck Marcus for picking the church for their rendezvous. We might as well meet in front of Jetboy’s Tomb.

At least not many tourists were going to be abroad on a night like this. Or anybody else who didn’t have to be. That was the good thing about shitty weather. But who wanted to find good things about shitty weather?

Anyway, it was all bullshit evasion and denial. If those were recognized athletic events Charlie’d be in contention for the championship. He had never thought of himself as possessing innocence. Virtue, blighted and doomed to go tragically unrecognized due to the turn of the wild card, sure. Not innocence.

He wasn’t sure how he was even walking. He felt as if all the cotter pins had been yanked from his joints. As if he should simply fall down right now into a pink bag of loose bones and gurgling mush. Some force he didn’t recognize was all that held him together. Habit, probably.

Three blocks from the church he saw something poke out of an alley half a block ahead. Some instinct, possibly a remnant of a childhood spent dodging bullies eager to torment a kid whose flipper arms rendered him near helpless to defend himself, made him slide aside into the recessed doorway of a long-shuttered milliner’s shop. It was a head, turned away from him. He saw a silhouette in the glow of a streetlight not yet shot out by the gangs.

The head vanished. A moment later Charlie saw it start to emerge again. This time it looked toward him. He had good reflexes, if not coordination; he managed to duck back before he was spotted. He pressed his back against chill glass, scared to breathe. It’s him, he thought. It’s Lu Long. The dragon. Oh, Christ. That meant that Napperson had heard everything Maria said, and had passed it along to his old pal.

Charlie risked another quick look. A dark figure with horns and a thick tail now ghosted along the sidewalk away from him. Toward the place where he was supposed to meet Marcus Morgan.

Thinking, This is a BAD idea, he followed.

Long didn’t look back. That surprised him. Puff was a veteran street cop. Shouldn’t they be more alert? Maybe he was that focused. Or just that arrogant. Ratboy had said everyone thought Lu Long was a prick.

Keeping to the shadows, which wasn’t hard, he followed. Lu Long was intent on something. Something that pinned all his attention straight ahead. Charlie dared edge away from the comfort of the building fronts into the gutter. Half a block beyond the figure he took for Lu Long, a vertical sliver of deeper shadow indicated an alcove cut in a brick wall. Suddenly he knew.

Without thinking he found himself picking up the pace. As he was asking himself, What the fuck am I doing? he saw the right shoulder of the shadowed figure ahead of him dip and the left elbow raise. As the right elbow began to pull out to the side he broke into a balls-out sprint.

He glimpsed the joker’s scaly dragon face in profile, expression set like concrete, and a handgun being thrust two-handed toward the alcove as Lu Long turned. Before he had time to think better of it, Charlie put his right shoulder down and slammed into Long from behind.

He didn’t have much experience with contact sports. He certainly didn’t have any experience with street fighting. But running into Lu Long from behind felt very much like running into a member of the New York Giants offensive line. Or a brick wall.

He bounced, and went down painfully on his knees. Long staggered away in front of him, then fell face-forward onto his elbows. He managed to hold on to his gun.

Charlie caught a flash of Marcus Morgan’s face, looking very startled beneath a watch cap pulled down over his ears. Then Marcus was out of the alcove and twining up a dead light pole beside it as if he had a rocket up his ass. Son of a bitch, he’s running off and leaving me! Despite the pain shooting out of his knees, Charlie jumped straight to his feet, turned, and ran back the way he’d come. He didn’t see my face, pounded in his head to the time of his frantic steps. He couldn’t see my face. He mustn’t see my face, he—oh, shit!

The last came in response to a yellow flash reflecting on the wet pavement in front of him, and the loudest crack he had ever heard. Current Internet wisdom held that gunshots aren’t really that loud. Which Charlie knew to be true—he lived and worked in Jokertown, after all. If you heard the shots from one block over.

The people who made that claim clearly hadn’t heard a gun fired directly at them from less than fifty feet away.

A new surge of adrenaline gave Charlie more speed than his slick lawyer shoes and the wet pavement could handle. He went down in a spinning crash that seemed to happen all at once, and came to a stop with all new pains in his knees and chin. The straps to his left arm had come loose, and the prosthetic dangled like a failed amputation from the end of his flipper. He rolled to his knees and looked back down the street, visualizing Lu Long lining him up in his gun sights.

Which was exactly what Lu Long was doing.

Charlie squeezed his eyes shut, which was a scared four-year-old’s reaction. I’m going to die on my knees, whimpering, with my eyes closed. Some part of his brain that hadn’t given over completely to panic wondered if he’d actually hear the shot that killed him. When the shot finally came Charlie flinched, but no pain accompanied it. Instead, there was a loud crash and a series of curses from Lu Long.

Charlie finally found the nerve to open his eyes, and saw Lu Long locked in mortal combat with a twenty-foot snake.

Marcus!

Charlie lurched to his feet, planning to rush over and help his client, but he was only able to remain upright for a few seconds before the pain in his legs knocked him back down. And, on second look, it didn’t look like the Infamous Black Tongue needed much help. The young joker was twisting his body like a giant anaconda, throwing loop after loop around the struggling cop, squeezing hard enough that Charlie could hear Lu Long’s joints popping.

Puff seemed to have lost his gun in the struggle. That didn’t mean, however, that he was unarmed. He hocked up a flaming spitball onto the snake that sizzled and burned like hot grease. Marcus screeched in pain and surprise and loosened his coils. Long pushed his way out of the loops and slammed his thick tail into Marcus’s chest, hurtling the young joker against a nearby building hard enough to shatter bricks.

The Tongue recovered quickly though. He ducked under Long’s second tail swipe and slithered out of range with a pit viper’s speed. Puff let him go, and began searching the ground for his gun. Marcus shot out his long black tongue, coated with its deadly venom, clearly hoping to end the fight with one quick strike. Lu Long snatched the lid off a nearby trash can and used it like a shield, deflecting the tongue. Then he slammed the lid against a wall, pinning Marcus’s tongue between them. “Not me, motherfucker,” the dragon said with a wicked grin, then spit another flaming loogie onto Marcus’s tongue.

Marcus screamed again, and his long serpentine body writhed in pain. He yanked his tongue back, scraping it badly on the brick wall and the garbage-can lid. When it had retracted, he turned to Charlie and yelled, “Run!”

Charlie didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed his loosely dangling prosthetic arm to keep it from falling off, and ran down the alley as though all the hounds of hell were at his heels.

Or maybe just one dragon.

♠

Charlie rolled and rocked in restless dreams. Masked men in bulky black uniforms kept kicking down his door and rushing into his bedroom, yelling and bristling with machine guns.

Once he’d reckoned he’d gotten clear of Lu Long, who didn’t seem to be chasing him, Charlie had sagged to his already raw knees and puked up whatever remained of everything he’d eaten in his entire life into a storm drain. He was every bit as terrified by the fact he’d bodychecked a cop as the fact he’d been fucking shot at.

Once home, he took a long hot shower. And then the adrenaline shock ebbed so suddenly he was barely able to pull on his usual T-shirt and boxers and shrug off his arms onto their handy rack before falling face-forward into darkness that swallowed him before he felt the sheets.

The latest dream door-bang was followed by a bright light that blasted through his eyelids as if they were flesh-tinted windows. He was just wondering whether he was dreaming about being killed and seeing the tunnel of white light when hard hands yanked him out of bed and upright. Before his sore and unprepared knees could buckle he was slammed sternum-first into a chest of drawers. Another hard hand between bony shoulder blades pinned him there.

Dark figures moved around him like demons tempting a cloistered saint. “Fuck,” said a voice muffled by a lower-face mask. “He’s got no fucking arms to cuff.”

“What am I being arrested for?” Charlie asked. He had a good idea. He also had presence of mind enough to play dumb.

A face leaned close to his ear, and a high-pitched voice said, “Just stay calm and don’t make a fuss. I’ll make sure you get to the station in one piece.”

The big Chinese guy. Bill Chen. Charlie forced himself to relax. “I’m cooperating,” was all he could squeak out before another body pushed into him, not so kind. “I’m not resisting. Not even a little bit.”

“Shut the fuck up,” this second person said. Napperson. Charlie hoped Bill Chen was as good as his word. He doubted Snap would make the same guarantees.

“Use the barrel,” a third voice said. Police departments these days carried special harnesses, basically quick-latching plastic sleeves, to shackle unconventionally shaped suspects. One of these was quickly clamped on him and yanked constrictor-tight with sizing straps.

Before his brain cleared he was hustled out into chill dark-thirty air, smelling of early-morning delivery and the grease of the all-night diner down the block. Someone he assumed was Bill Chen, only because the hands didn’t go out of their way to hurt him, pushed him into the back of a squad car.

♦

They didn’t bring his prosthetic arms. Nor did they bring his inhaler. When they marched him, shivering in an orange denim jumpsuit, down the corridor to lockup, breathing was like trying to pull open a deflated balloon with your fingers.

The cage door clanged open. “Fresh meat, boys,” called the nat night-duty cop.

The hard, mean faces that turned toward Charlie didn’t look altogether human. Whether they belonged to jokers or not.

♥

“Eat up, baby!” Mamma said, beaming. “I made you your own special. I know how you love tofu lasagna.”

I fucking hate tofu lasagna, Vince thought, with a purple fucking passion. But when you’re lactose intolerant and Italian, what you gonna do?

“The boy hates tofu,” said his father, Big Pete. He weighed three hundred pounds and had a mustache like a nineteenth-century Black Hand crime boss. His name tag on his blue shirt even said Big Pete. Though not as big as on the back, where it said, BIG PETE EXTERMINATORS.

Yes, the universe hated Vincent Marinelli. He’d learned to put up with it. If never accept it.

“He eats the tofu because he doesn’t want to disappoint you, Mamma,” said Vince’s younger brother Leo, who was named for some pope or another and somehow wound up in his mid-twenties without having to get a job.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said his mother, who worked in denial like Michelangelo in oils. “Now, Vinnie.”

“Ma, please. You know I hate being called that.”

“Vincent. Please chew with your mouth closed.”

“Ma, I got incisors the size of fence pickets. I can’t chew with my mouth closed!”

She had lovingly polished those very teeth with Pepsodent when he was a chubby rat baby, to combat their regrettable tendency to turn orange. It made no impression. In the movie of his life, Vince was played by DeNiro. In his mother’s movie, he was always Macaulay Culkin. At seven.

His phone rang. He took it from his belt and flipped it open.

“Vincent,” his father said, “it’s not respectful to your mother to talk on the phone at the dinner table.”

“Dad, it’s official. I got to take this.” Holding up a paw to fend off the usual familial debate that accompanied—well, anything—he said, “Yeah? Marinelli.”

Then he said, “He did what? Fuck me.”

He closed the phone to find himself the focus of an oblong of horrified faces.

“What?”

♣

“You got visitors, Flipper,” Sergeant Squinch said.

Sitting on a hard bench dozing, Charlie snapped his head up and his eyes open. He was immediately reminded of the old Far Side cartoon where one dude tells another to wake up because he’s having a nightmare: “Of course, we are still in hell.”

Charlie jumped up. “Dr. Pretorius!”

“Well, hell,” said the outsized brown rat who stood at Pretorius’s side. “Here I expected they’d have you bent over a bench, taking turns having their way with you.”

Charlie felt his cheeks flush hot. “No, nothing like that, Vin—Detective. Half these guys in here have been my clients at one time or another.”

“Evidently you’re doing a decent job,” Dr. Pretorius said, “notwithstanding the fact they’re here.” His deep barranca-running tan contrasted with his trademark white ponytail and beard. He wore a pin-striped lawyer suit and a prosthetic that looked like a normal foot in shoe and sock.

“What are you doing here?” Charlie said. “I mean, I’m glad to see you, but—”

“Springing your tender and fortuitously unviolated butt,” Ratboy said as a visibly disgruntled Sergeant Squinch swiped the key in the reader.

“Dad paid my bail?” Oh, holy shit, Charlie thought.

“No,” Pretorius said. “I did.”

“I can pay—” Charlie started.

Pretorius stopped him with a quick wave of one hand. “Young man, that is the very least of your problems,” he said, walking Charlie toward the clerk who would return his possessions. “You assaulted a police officer, aided and abetted a criminal fugitive, and probably committed a dozen other crimes the D.A. will charge you with, once he thinks of them.”

“But—” Charlie started to protest, and was summarily cut off again.

“Not here,” is all Dr. Pretorius would say.

♠

“They had a couple problems with Puff’s story upstairs,” Vince said as they exited the precinct. “Starting with, an officer discharged his weapon repeatedly without actually hitting a suspect. But don’t believe for a second that means they’ll drop the charges.”

A slim translucent blue figure stood at the bottom of the steps waiting, looking like an art deco sculpture of a woman carved in blue ice. When they reached her, she tipped her head slightly in Charlie’s direction.

“Hi, Sibyl. Thanks for coming by to spring me from the big house,” Charlie said with a grin he didn’t really feel. Sibyl didn’t reply. Her lips were, as they say, sealed.

They walked through a morning chill sharp as glass, down Elizabeth Street away from the white building with the powder-blue entryway, 1881 inscribed above it and old-time carriage lamps to either side, toward the Jokertown Ice Cream Factory and around the corner on Bayard near Mulberry.

It took Charlie a moment to respond to Vince. He was having trouble hearing, for how loudly he was saying, I’m alive. I’m free. I’m alive. I’m free, in his head. He didn’t take either of those things as so safe and guaranteed as he had twenty-four hours ago. “So what do I do now?” he said.

“Now,” Pretorius replied, sliding his arm through Ice Blue Sibyl’s and guiding her down the street, “we get some food in you and come up with a plan.”

♦

Dr. Pretorius’s tastefully decorated apartment smelled like a cheap diner. He had made good on his promise of food, and seconds after they’d arrived he began cooking using enough pans for four meals. The air was filled with the competing smells of butter, frying meat, and hot grease. To Charlie, it smelled like heaven, and when the food finally arrived, tasted even better. He was on his second plate of ham, two eggs over medium, and hash browns when he finally came up for air.

“You pack that in like somebody who puked his guts up last night and hasn’t eaten since,” Ratboy observed.

“Detective,” Pretorius said. He’d piled his own plate high with pancakes, over which he liberally poured real maple syrup. When you routinely ran fifty miles at a shot you didn’t have to count calories.

“Huh? Sorry. Rats suck at small talk. Let’s figure out what to do with our boy, here.”

“Let’s say, hypothetically,” Charlie said, “that I actually attacked Officer Long. Wouldn’t your zero-tolerance sense of law enforcement mean you want to see me hang for assaulting a police officer?”

“First off, ‘zero tolerance’ has bad connotations. Sending SWAT to bust kids having a food fight isn’t just prime dickery, it’s a fuck-stupid waste of resources. Anyway, if you hypothetically did something as butt-headed as knocking down Lu Long the fucking dragon with his SIG in his hand, I’m sure it was to prevent him committing a thoroughly illegal act. Such as murder of a witness. That’s a meritorious act of civic duty, not a crime. Hypothetically.”

“Well…” Charlie saw Pretorius nod encouragingly at his brief hesitation. He recalled his old law professor’s frequent words: Never wholly trust a cop. And Pretorius had examples of how fanatical true believers—like, say, Detective Vincent Marinelli—could be worse to deal with than the crooks. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I was supposed to meet a certain client. In order to urge him once more to turn himself in. And purely by accident I happened on Officer Long in the act of drawing his piece and pointing it at my client. And who sure didn’t look like he was about to order my client to surrender. Hypothetically.”

“That’s one fuck-storm of a hypothetical, Charlie.” Vince mopped runny egg from his plate with his last scrap of bread and popped it in his big, toothy mouth. “You got any witnesses?”

“Just Marcus. My client. He saw the whole thing. Sadly, he’s more of a fugitive than I am. Even if there were other witnesses, who’s to say they’d talk? Everyone’s scared of Puff and most of them think Angel walks on water. And now that Puff has shot at him, who knows how deep a hole Marcus will crawl into.” He turned to Ratboy. “I haven’t heard two words from you since I gave you Minal’s tape.”

“Hey, when I have something to tell you, I will,” Vince replied. “I helped get your ungrateful ass out of jail, remember.”

“What sort of information did this Minal have?” Pretorius asked.

“She told me about Joe Twitch not carrying a gun or drugs the night he was killed, and about some other stuff possibly involving blackmail. Oh, and she told me what alias Lu Long likes to use when hiding his money. She only blew the whole case wide open. That’s all. Which, by the way, was corroborated by one of my clients, a Demon Prince enforcer who said pretty much the same thing about Twitch.”

“Yeah,” Vince said, “I admit it was solid stuff. But these things proceed slowly. You have any idea how many banks there are in New York? Not to mention the Jersey, Connecticut, the fucking Cayman Islands. And ‘look for dick names’ doesn’t exactly narrow it down. Puff gets even a whiff we’re looking for his ill-gotten goods, they’ll disappear forever, and maybe him along with them.”

Charlie had had enough. “I quit.”

“What?” The other two said it simultaneously. Then Vince ceremoniously said, “Shakespeare, kick in the rear.”

Charlie and Pretorius looked at him. “Sorry. Brooklyn.”

“What do you mean, Charles?” Dr. Pretorius asked. “You’ve been passionate about fighting police injustice in the past.”

“That was before it started kicking in my door. Also before somebody shot at me. A dragon man shot at me. Jesus! I can’t believe I’ve been shot at.”

“Don’t forget he missed,” Vince said. “Hypothetically.”

“What if he hypothetically hit me?” Charlie shook his head. As usual it made his bangs flop in his eyes. “I’m not cut out for this. I’m no fighter. I lost every fight I ever had in my life. And those were only the ones I couldn’t run from or weasel out of. Face it: I’m a total coward.”

“Taking down a three-hundred-pound dragon man with fiery spit and rage issues,” said Ratboy, “that’s the kinda shit they give medals for.”

“I’d thought about it for a nanosecond I never would’ve done it! They’re on to us. Watching us.”

“No shit,” Vince said. “They got that stugats Tabby ghosting me.”

“Who?”

“Officer Thomas Driscoll,” Pretorius said. He knew the Fort Freak roster as well as Captain Maseryk did. Maybe better, given the CO’s notoriously reclusive nature.

“It’s not bad enough I got to deal with a giant-ass snake,” Vince said, gulping black coffee. He’d been visibly annoyed when Pretorius didn’t have any nondairy creamer. Something to do with lactose intolerance. “But the assholes set a fucking cat to spy on me. I could run his furry orange ass in for obstruction, but he’d be out quicker than a Republican senator in a public pisser.”

Charlie was confused. “What’s your problem with Marcus? You’re both jokers.”

“Take a look at my face,” Vince said, leaning forward. “I’m a fucking rat. He’s a snake.” He reached out to rap Charlie’s forehead. “Hello. Anybody in there?”

“Oh.” Charlie shook his head. “This is getting off-topic. I just can’t take this stress. I’m pretty sure Napperson told Puff about my meeting with Marcus. I can’t fight the whole precinct. Oh, and I’m just about to be disbarred and thrown in prison. Just in case it needed to be worse. I got you the information from Minal. You have the tape. But I’m done. People calling me names and laughing at me is one thing. That’s happened my whole life. It’s going to prison I can’t handle. Or death.”

“Kid, kid. You’re really gonna do this?” Vince asked, barely disguised disgust in his voice. “Fuck your client in his ass? If coral snakes have asses?”

“There’s nothing I can do for him, except tell him to turn himself in. Which I’ve done before. He won’t.” Charlie held up his artificial hands. “I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like to be me. It’s hard enough always being the outcast. The wimp. The dirty joker. I’m just—I’m just beat down. I can’t fight this.”

“Poor poor you, huh,” Vince snorted, causing his long whiskers to vibrate. “They oughta make a parable out of you, Charlie. ‘I wept because I had no hands. Then I met a man who was a fucking giant rat.’”

Blinking furiously, Charlie sat back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be—”

“Put a sock in it! I don’t want your pity, either.” Ratboy stood up suddenly. “Next time you go in your pockets, see if you find anything down there but change. You do, you know my number.” He nodded to Sibyl, who was sitting in the living room with a number of cats draped across her lap. Her face was, as always, enigmatic. “Ma’am,” he said, then stalked to the door and slammed it shut behind him.

“Perhaps,” said Dr. Pretorius, “it is time for you to go as well, Charles. Give some thought to what you want to do next. I’ll talk to some people about getting you a good defense attorney.”

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 12.

WANDA MORETTI LEANED AGAINST a file cabinet and said, “I think I’ve got it. Look, honey. Over here.” She handed him a clipping from a folder with the date “December 4, 1978.”

He took it from her and said, “Nice job.” At first he didn’t see it, the tiny mention down at the bottom of the page, but there it was. He skimmed, and summarized aloud. “Ramona Holt struck by a black car. Late-model Mercedes,” he said with a grim smile of satisfaction. “A partial plate was reported; I dug it out of the archives at the station, but it’s not mentioned here.”

“You said it belonged to the archdiocese.”

“No, I said it’d been stolen from the archdiocese, or that’s what the old case file said when I finally scared it up. The Mercedes we found in front of the Rathole was reported stolen”—he held up the folder and pointed at it—“on the fourth. That morning. Middle of the night, anyway. A week and a half before the killings.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. The church didn’t supply any particulars.” He leaned his backside against the table, sitting on its edge while he processed this new information.

Wanda left the filing cabinet to sit beside him. She took the folder from him, flipped through its contents a little, and said, “Who reported the partial plate?”

Leo made a frown that turned into a gleam of possibility. “I don’t know, but I bet we can find out.”

Wanda took a deep, measured breath and closed the folder again. “I guess you’ve got some work to do, then.”

“I guess I do. And I need to find my way back to the precinct, anyway. It’s already been a long lunch break.”

“But worth it.”

“Definitely worth it,” he said, and he kissed her.

When she was finished kissing back, she said, “Go on then. Get out of here, and I’ll see you tonight.”

On the way back, something was bugging him but he couldn’t put his finger on it. While he dug through the old records looking for info on Ramona Holt, something kept on bugging him; and when he double-checked to make sure that no, no one at the archdiocese was interested in talking about the car, that same unknown thing continued to bug him. It itched under his cap, two pieces of one thought that couldn’t find their way to a meeting place.

And then he saw the signature closing the file.

The two pieces met. They clicked together like magnets.

♥

He went to the hospital with the folder under his arm and Ralph Pleasant’s room number at the front of his mind. The door was ajar and the machines were beeping, and Ralph was lying back, not asleep.

But he said, “What, no flowers? No booze this time?”

And Leo said, “Hey.”

“What are you doing back here?”

The detective pulled out a different folder, one with police paperwork and not newspaper paperwork, and he opened it. Silently, he read a few lines as he stepped to the path between Ralph’s bed and the window. “It’d been driving me nuts, Ralph. I couldn’t figure out what you were doing here—”

He interrupted with a cough. “Dying.”

“I was wondering how you could afford it. I know my insurance wouldn’t cover a suite like this. I know the church hospitals take charity cases, but they don’t put ’em up in style.” Leo glanced to the large window with the bright, clean curtains and the phone on the freshly dusted nightstand.

“What are you getting at?”

“At first I thought it was ridiculous, spending this kind of hush money to keep an old man comfortable; but then I figured it wouldn’t be such a big thing, not for a big church with big pockets. You’ve only been here, what—a year? Less than that?”

Ralph glared in response, but otherwise didn’t answer.

“Then I thought about the money the church spends keeping kiddie-diddling priests out of the news, and I wasn’t so sure. Bad press is bad press, ain’t it?”

In the folds of his bedding, Ralph burrowed down like an angry grub. He opened his mouth to reply, but hacked up a glob of something nasty instead.

Leo continued. “Nobody likes bad press. It must’ve been pretty bad, if you sat on it all this time and they still let you cash it in.”

Ralph didn’t make any objections, or swear ignorance, or lie outright. He only said, “Bad enough.”

“The hit-and-run,” Leo prompted. Matter-of-fact. Not even asking, anymore. “The black Mercedes parked at the Rathole that night in 1978, it belonged to the archdiocese.”

Ralph gave a nod so slight that he might’ve only been swallowing another gob.

“And somebody reported it stolen, conveniently enough, right after a hit-and-run that killed a girl down in the Bowery.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Who was driving it that night, when the girl was killed? And don’t give me some line about how nobody knows, since it was stolen. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Someone from the church killed that girl and ditched that car.” He looked down into the folder again, as if it were a crystal ball and could tell him something new. It wasn’t, and it couldn’t. “Don Reynolds had been driving the car for a week. His ex-wife said she had no idea where he got it from—he told her he’d found it. We thought he stole it, but maybe we were wrong.”

“Maybe he hit the girl.”

“And maybe I’m your mother,” Leo countered. “Who was the man behind the wheel? Who ditched that car, and got away with murder?”

“Vehicular homicide?” Ralph asked, his mouth moving around more of the thick slime that came up with every clearing of his throat. “Leaving the scene of an accident?”

“Oh, don’t dick me around about this,” Leo grumbled. “I just want to know who was driving.”

Ralph thought about this. He gazed briefly past Leo’s head, to the window and its lovely view. Then he said, “He’s been dead for years.”

“If it doesn’t matter, just spill it. I’ll keep it to myself, I promise you that.”

“You promise, eh?”

“You heard me.”

He gagged again, a garbled noise of gumdrops and oil. He said, “His name was Contarini. He was just a little collared shit, back then, but ended up being a bigwig in the church.”

“Never heard of him. What was he doing here?”

Ralph shifted his shoulders, a horizontal shrug. “Visiting from Rome. He was Italian.”

“But he killed a kid, and you let it go. You didn’t even look into it.”

Ralph looked like he wanted to sit up and fight, but there wasn’t enough fight left in him for that. He blustered weakly, “Course I looked into it. That’s how I knew he did it. But what was I supposed to do? The guy had diplomatic immunity.”

Leo had to admit, the situation would’ve been tricky. “But you just signed off on it.”

Ralph didn’t respond and Leo didn’t know what else to say.

Of course Ralph had just let it go. Back then, especially—you didn’t fight the church, not in those days before the public knew about the pedophile priests, and the lawsuits. You didn’t fight the church, and you sure as hell didn’t fight with anybody’s embassy, and if the two doubled up, well. Even if Ralph hadn’t been Ralph … even if he hadn’t been an essentially lazy son of a bitch with an opportunistic streak a mile wide … it shouldn’t have surprised Leo to see it swept under the rug.

Ralph watched him, looking up, examining his old partner’s face. “I don’t think he even knew he’d hit her. Not at first.”

“What makes you say that?”

Ralph hacked more goop and followed it up with, “That’s how I heard it. He was all wound up about something, running away from something. Driving like a bat out of hell, in case that’s funny.”

“Yeah, Ralph. Real funny.”

“I’m just sayin’. When he figured out he hadn’t clipped a dog or a trash can, he panicked. Dropped the car, filed a report. Caught the next flight home.”

“Got away with it.”

“Sometimes, they do.”

Leo agreed with a nod, and the wheels were turning again, dredging up questions Ralph probably couldn’t answer. But he tried a few anyway. “What about the girl who got killed? Who gave a damn about her?”

“She ran with the Demon Princes. Gang might’ve cared. Like they do, sometimes.”

Ralph had a point. Leo gave it to him. “Maybe. And that just brings me back around to the gangs. But shit, Ralph. It never looked like a gang hit. You thought it was Deedle, you said so yourself. You let the neighborhood kill him for it, just to close it down.”

“I been wrong before.”

A new thought occurred to Leo. He asked, “Hey, you ever hear of a button man called Raul Esposito? He was in town, back then.”

Ralph’s eyes clouded over with thought. He said, “Sure. Worked for Don Gambione … yeah. I heard about him. Big ol’ nat who liked doing business in Jokertown. Gave him an excuse to wear a mask.”

Leo’s ears pricked, and the back of his neck went warm. “He used to work in Jokertown? And wear masks?”

“Yeah. You ought to talk to him. He knew Hash. He knew the Princes.”

“He knew more than he was saying,” Leo said under his breath.

“I heard he was slicker than whale shit through an ice floe.”

Leo thought about the tall, elderly man with the very nice clothes and the teenage whatever-she-was. So things changed. Sometimes things changed a lot. “I’ll have a word with him.”

Ralph looked like he wanted to say more, but he was seized with a fit of gagging convulsions, as if the drainage had finally won out. He waved at Leo, and Leo took that as his cue to leave—before any doctors or nurses accused him of upsetting the old cancer patient.

He bailed out the door, leaving it ajar as he’d found it, and was nearly to the stairs when he heard an alarm go out—calling doctors and crash carts and crying ominous codes to a room. He didn’t catch the number but he was afraid it might’ve been Ralph’s.

Leo turned on his heel, and dashed back the way he’d come.

Around the corner he collided headfirst with a girl who had thin arms and legs, and a blue streak in her hair, and lots of black spandex under a fake leather jacket. Rattled, they bounced back away from each other—Leo’s nose smarting and starting to bleed from the way it’d connected with her skull.

Speak of the devil. Or think of her, anyway.

Leo held a hand up to his face and he looked at her, somehow knowing who she was before his eyes quit watering enough to see her clearly. “You,” he said.

She froze, and looked both ways—desperately casting for an out.

He blocked his end of the hallway and tried to tune out the frantic beeping and flustered conversation down the corner, in the next corridor. “You’ve been following me,” he said. He asked, “It’s Maggie, isn’t it? Why are you chasing me around?”

But she was silent, and her wild eyes did calculations, measuring how fast she could move and how old the cop in her way was.

She bolted, fast as a deer dodging out of traffic.

The medical call went out over the intercom again, and this time Leo heard the room number. Not Ralph’s, which was a relief, he guessed.

Released of that particular concern, he lashed out and caught her by the upper arm, pulling her back and drawing her up under his face. She was almost as tall as him, but not quite. And not half so heavy. “Did Esposito send you?”

She whipped off her glove and grasped him in return. Suddenly the room was moving, fogging. Dimming.

Tiny and strong as nails, the bones in her hand dug into his as she grasped it.

Suddenly he understood. Not everything, but something.

He understood that she was hurting him—just by touching him. He could feel his body constricting against her, surging to get away from her; and some primal instinct overrode his cop inclination to hold her in place.

He let her go. She let him go.

She ran.

He staggered, and put his hands on top of his knees, and waited for the room to stop spinning.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Hope We Die Before We Get Old

Part 2.

TODAY, ODDITY’S HANDS WERE mostly Evan’s. When that happened, they always went to Dutton’s Dime Museum.

Some time ago, Dutton had asked Evan to create figures for a committee diorama: Drummer Boy, Curveball, John Fortune, Rustbelt, Lohengrin, Bubbles, Earth Witch, the Righteous Djinn … Over the last year and a half, Evan had worked on them as often as he could. Evan had set up his sculpture bench in the space where the diorama would eventually be set, curtained off from the rest of the Dime Museum during operating hours … but now, with no customers wandering through the museum, they’d moved the heavy curtains back. He was working on Drummer Boy’s head, inking the rock star’s tattoos into the waxen, bare skull, copying them from a set of publicity stills that Dutton had acquired for him. It was slow, tedious work, and Evan was already exhausted. The other figures crowded around them in various stages of assembly. He’d spent a lot of time here in the last few months, working the wax over the head forms into their proper shape, trying to get the details so perfect that someone viewing the sculpture would feel as if they were looking into the person’s own face. His fingers were slick with the wax, the sharp scent of it filled his nostrils, and he was having trouble keeping their eyes focused on the work. Both eyes seemed to be Patty’s, and her vision wasn’t as good as his own.

[Hang in there,] he heard Patty say. [We’re both tired. Work while you can and I’ll take Dominant when you’re finished.]

[Are we doing the right thing, keeping John in Passive all the time?] he asked.

[Do we have a choice?]

Oddity shook their head. No, John couldn’t be trusted with the body. Not anymore. Since Wild Card Day, his symptoms had only accelerated.

[… you don’t know me you’re both keeping me prisoner here let me out I can handle it I can …]

Beyond the diorama, the main hall of the Dime Museum loomed. The bright multicolored gleam of the Fresnel spotlights was gone, replaced by the distant, dull glow of the after-hour fluorescents high against the black-painted ceiling. In the pale bluish light, they could see one of the Turtle’s old shells hanging on wires from the ceiling, or across the hall the Rox diorama, with the massive figure of Bloat dominating the scene, his immense body seeming to be cut off by the very walls. To the right there was Carnifex in his white fighting suit; to the left the Four Aces.

Ancient history, most of it. Evan remembered it all too well, but he wondered how many of those who wandered through the museum did.

[I do,] Patty whispered above the constant muttering of John. Oddity’s body shivered and twisted as she spoke, as if John were shaking Oddity’s rib cage like the bars of a cell. [I remember …]

Evan sighed. He set down the tools, groaning as he lifted Oddity’s body from the stool on which they’d been sitting for too long. He walked out into the hall, glancing around at the various display pieces, many of which he’d made himself—those that Dutton hadn’t bought or acquired in other ways.

Oddity’s body twisted under the cloak. The pain stabbed at them like a sword’s slash, and Evan half moaned, half shrieked in response. The pain was white-hot and it blinded them; he felt Oddity sink to their knees. Something tore loose inside and seemed to rip through their mingled organs, their knotted and snarled muscles and tendons. Oddity doubled over, forehead to the floor. Patty and Evan both howled in pain.

Evan couldn’t hold against the agony. The pain flung him from the summit of Dominant, sent him hurtling down through their mingled consciousness. He felt Patty try to take control of the body, but John pushed upward at the same moment. Protected from Oddity’s eternal pain by the mental distance of being Passive, well rested for having been there for so long, he was stronger than either of them. They felt him tear loose of the prison of Passive and rise, rise, hurtling past Patty’s presence and clawing at Evan, casting him down, down, down …

♣

It felt momentarily wonderful to be in control of Oddity’s body again.

Momentarily.

Then the pain hit John, and he could also feel Patty clawing at him inside, trying to toss him back down and take Dominant, and he/Oddity roared in mingled agony and defiance, their hands fisted so tightly that the nails dug bloody crescent moons in their palms and dripped blood on the tiles of the museum. John glanced around through the fencing mask; he saw Bloat with several young people gathered around him, and he recoiled. “Jumpers!” He remembered them, the jumpers. They’d taken Patty away to the Rox and Bloat was playing judge and jury with the bastards and Patty, and he couldn’t allow that.

John bellowed in fury, rising from the crouch in which he found Oddity’s body. “No!” he shouted to Bloat. “Don’t you dare hurt her!” Bloat didn’t move, didn’t even react as Oddity slammed into him, as they tore at the sewage pipes that impaled the joker’s horrid sluglike body and ripped them out. There was a shriek of metal, and plaster was falling around them in a solid, white rain. One of the pipes groaned and slammed into Oddity’s head, denting the fencing mask and thrusting the steel mesh back into their face. They screamed, lashing out blindly with their fists. “No!” John screamed. He saw a flash of white cloth, and realized that Carnifex must have arrived. John struck out at the ace before Carnifex could respond, knocking over the man. It seemed like many of the aces had come, and John was confused, not certain who was there and why they were helping Bloat.

None of it made sense. But they were there, and they had attacked him. He knew only one response to that.

[John! Calm down. I’m here.] It sounded like Patty’s voice but it couldn’t be her; she wasn’t here, wasn’t inside with them. It was that bastard jumper David trying to fool him, and he knew it.

[John!]

[… I’m sorry Patty I couldn’t hold him I couldn’t stay in control too weak too tired sorry …] Evan’s voice was an exhausted whisper, but John couldn’t figure out why he was talking to Patty.

None of the aces were there to help Oddity. None of them ever were. The aces were always out for themselves. Oddity was alone against those who threatened the residents of Jokertown. The lone vigilante dispensing true justice—sometimes final justice, if it must be. Oddity roared and wailed, spinning and lashing out at those around him. Alarms were shrilling now, and he thought he smelled acrid smoke. He didn’t know how long he’d been fighting, but there was blood in their eyes and everywhere he looked, he saw people. He gathered Oddity’s strength and continued to fight, using anything he could find, ripping down pipes to use as weapons, tossing any wreckage he could find …

[John, please! You have to stop! You’re destroying everything …]

There was movement to his right: he saw that new ace with the rusted metallic body—what was his name? John couldn’t remember—but John charged at him with both arms wide, growling and bearing him down. His powerful fists pounded at the ace. Like the others, he crumpled, and Oddity laughed. They were so much weaker than he was.

“Oddity! John!”

Oddity whirled around. John squinted through the dented mask and the blood smears toward a cadaverous figure. He looked vaguely familiar, but John couldn’t remember the name. Patty was screaming a name over and over—[It’s Charles, John. Charles Dutton …]—but the words meant nothing to John and he shut out her voice, refusing to listen to it. It wasn’t Patty, couldn’t be Patty.

He blinked; there were other figures gathering around the thin, skeletal old man wearing a mask: cops. He saw uniforms, badges, the guns they held. He roared again in defiance and pain and rage, grabbing the corpse of the rusted metal ace and hurling it toward them. He saw the skeleton man go down, saw the cops duck, and he began to throw anything he could grab. The skinny guy tried to get up again, and Oddity lifted a fist, beating him back down; the mask slipped off, exposing a face like a dead skull.

He saw a metallic sphere drifting in the air. Something hit them in the side, sending a searing jolt of electricity through their body; John heard the chatter of the current, smelled the ozone, and he reached to pluck out the electrode darts, tossing them back toward the cluster of officers. “Shit, that just made it mad,” he heard someone say. “Hit him again, Sarge.”

The flying machine dipped in the dark air under the fluorescents and another pair of silver darts flew toward Oddity, trailing coiled wires. This time they struck him directly in the chest, and John roared with the pain. Oddity’s body shuddered with the voltage, but again he yanked them out, still screaming, and pulled hard—the flying machine struck one of the supporting pillars and fell.

A monster yelled, and a huge, furry form leaped at Oddity. He roared and met it. They collided, and John—the rage now a red mist that overlay everything in his sight—used Oddity’s strength to power them backward. They slammed into a display of large glass bottles, which toppled and shattered around them. The smell of formaldehyde rose around them, and they were covered with grotesque and deformed bodies. “Fuck!” John heard the furry cop say. He pushed again, and the beast’s hands fell away from him. Oddity staggered through the broken glass and bodies back toward the knot of blue-clad attackers, roaring.

John saw one of the cops pointing his nightstick at him as if it were a gun. He grabbed the nearest uniform and tossed it toward the cop as the man whistled; a pink aura bloomed around the officer in the air as his body slammed into the group.

[Get out! Gotta get out!]

Oddity ran, plowing through a wall into an open space. He heard people yelling behind him, and he continued to grab whatever he could and throw it behind him as he moved, moving quickly through the dark space with their powerful legs. He saw a door, went through it, and found himself outside. There were blue and red lights flaring from down the street. Oddity grabbed a trash can, crumpled it, and jammed the door shut by closing it on the can. He heard someone pounding on the other side and shouting.

Then John turned their body and ran away from the sirens and the lights and the commotion, sliding quickly into the darkness of Jokertown, wondering how he got here and snarling at any movement he saw.

♠

It was perhaps an hour or two later when Patty managed to wrest control from an exhausted, raving, and manic John. She tore him from Dominant and took Oddity’s body herself, and Evan—despite his exhaustion—threw John all the way down back to Passive.

[… don’t you see they were attacking us I did it to save Patty I had to they were going to kill her …]

They were near the docks of the East River, at the very edge of Jokertown—John had been waiting for Charon to ferry them across to the Rox, only no one had seen Charon in decades and the Rox had gone to wherever Bloat had taken it. The oily water slid past them, heading toward the tip of Manhattan and the sea on the tidal flow. A tourist boat passed, a spotlight flickering over them for a moment before Patty had Oddity slide back behind a stack of packing crates. “I think that might have been the Oddity, folks,” a distant, tinny voice said. “A rare glimpse…”

[… see they’re still hunting us still want to hurt us …]

[I’m so sorry,] Evan said to Patty. [The pain came so fast and hard. I couldn’t hold on, couldn’t keep John down.]

[It’s okay,] she told him. [I couldn’t hold him either. It’s no one’s fault. But my God, Evan, what he—we—did. I think we hurt Charles pretty badly, and who knows what we did to Beastie, Tinkerbill, Black, and the others.]

[You want to find out?]

They both felt Oddity nod their head. The tourist boat, the running lights on it a wave of shimmering red and white reflections, had continued upriver, diesel engines thrumming. Oddity turned and faced west. They moved back into the city.

Half an hour later, they entered the emergency room of the Jokertown Clinic through a side door, stopping the first nurse they saw, a joker whose left arm branched at the elbow into a quartet of forearms. She was smoking a cigarette, which she dropped as she noticed them. “Charles Dutton,” they grated out, their voice a ruined baritone. “Where is he?”

The nurse stared. “You’re not allowed to be here. I can’t tell you.”

“We’re not here to hurt him. We want to apologize. Or do you want us to just open up all the rooms and find him ourselves? That would be far more disruptive.”

All five hands pointed. “Third room down,” the nurse said. “But I’m calling security. You understand?”

Oddity nodded. “Do whatever you need to do.”

The nurse ran inside, stopping at the first desk and speaking frantically into a microphone. “Security, Code Red Emergency. Code Red,” they heard the PA announce. Oddity walked down the hall, uncaring.

Troll’s huge form came rushing toward them from around a corner, two burly attendants behind him. “Hey,” Troll boomed. “You can’t be here.”

“It’s Patty, Troll,” she said, holding up a hand—it was mostly hers, with Evan’s thumb. “John’s in Passive. It’s okay.”

Troll looked uncertain. “You need to leave,” he repeated, frowning.

Oddity’s head shook. “I gotta know,” she told him. “Dutton is our friend, and I’ve hurt him.” She could hear their voice breaking; Troll heard it also. She saw him take a long breath.

“I’m calling the precinct,” Troll said. “And I’m staying with you. If you do anything…” He let the warning trail off.

“We’ll behave,” she said. “I promise.”

Troll grunted. One of the attendants rushed away—to call the cops, she figured—while the other stayed with Troll.

Oddity pulled aside the plastic curtain screening off the third room and slid into the wash of light there. Dutton lay on the bed: his right arm was casted, and both legs. An IV dripped saline and painkillers into his left arm. His skeletal face looked even more white than usual and his eyes were closed. Father Squid was there also, a chair pulled up next to the bed. Leaning against one wall was a joker wearing a simple black full-face mask with the mouth set in an eternal frown, but the fleshy dreadlocks pulled back and held in a bright blue scrunchy behind the mask told Oddity that it was Lucas Tate, the editor for the Cry; as Oddity entered, Tate pushed off from the wall, the eyes behind the mask glinting as if suddenly eager.

“Oddity,” the joker breathed; yes, that was Tate’s voice.

Dutton’s eyes opened, and it hurt Patty to see the open fear there. “Charles,” she said. “I’m so sorry, so sorry…”

“Patty?” Dutton’s voice was a pained whisper.

Oddity nodded. “John … John managed to take over, and he was terribly confused. He thought we were back in the Rox, that all the wax figures were people attacking us…” Oddity gave a great heave and a moan as their body shifted under the cloak. Troll growled low under his breath and moved closer to them, putting a hand on their arm. Patty ignored it. “I’m so, so sorry,” she repeated to Charles. “I don’t know how we can make it up to you. Evan says to tell you that as soon as he can, he’ll get the figures back together.”

Dutton nodded, but his eyes went quickly unfocused and closed again. Father Squid patted the man’s left hand on the bedsheet. “Patty,” he said, the tentacles that served him for facial hair wriggling, “this wasn’t your fault, or Evan’s. Charles knows that, and you must know it too. God has sent you a burden I can only imagine. It’s getting worse, then?”

Oddity nodded solemnly.

“I’ll keep all of you in my prayers, and if there’s anything I can do, please let me know. You should pray too, Patty—for forgiveness. For this, and for…”

“I know,” Patty told him. “And I do pray. Believe me.”

Father Squid looked uncertain, but a smile lifted a corner of his lips under the tentacles. “Good,” he said. “Maybe, if you would come to confession, Patty. You’re a member of the faith.”

“I was once, long ago,” she told him.

[If we need to pray for forgiveness, it’s mostly thanks to John,] Evan said inside. [We’ve beat down lots of good-for-nothings. Let’s confess how we beat Deedle to death right in back of his church. I’m sure the good Father remembers how that asshole looked after John was through with him.]

Father Squid was still smiling his gentle smile. “I know that you don’t come to church very often, but if you, Patty, or Evan or John need to talk…” He stopped. Down in Passive, John railed: [… he knows, he knows what we did to Deedle and we can’t let him tell, can’t let him …] They felt John rising from Passive, trying to take Sub-Dominant, but Evan pushed him back down again. Patty shivered—if Father Squid had been telepathic, she might have worried. But his smile was genuine and unforced. [He doesn’t know, John,] she said. [Be quiet, and don’t worry.]

[… are you sure Patty he may know and he could tell Captain Black or Chrysalis or Hartmann …]

[John …] Her sigh matched that of Evan. [They’re all long gone or dead. That was decades ago.] He wasn’t listening; he still raved on, and she realized that the priest was waiting for her to speak. “Thanks, Father,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

Father Squid patted Dutton’s hand again, shifting in his seat. “You’ve talked to Dr. Finn? There’s nothing he can do for you medically?”

Oddity shrugged, though under the cloak it looked as if three shoulders lifted, and bone scraped against bone, making them moan again. “He suggested some drugs. We tried a few, but they affect the wrong one of us more often than they affect John, or we all feel the effects, and usually not in good ways. We couldn’t control John at all then.”

“I’m sorry,” Father Squid said, shaking his head so that the tentacles moved sluggishly again. They heard Tate take a step forward into the room, close to their right side, though he stayed a careful few steps away.

“Finn has the trump,” Tate said. “Did he suggest that?”

Oddity turned toward the masked joker. “Yeah,” Patty said flatly. “He did.”

Tate nodded. “I hate to say this so bluntly, but it really might be your best option,” he continued. “John’s not going to get better. I had an uncle with Alzheimer’s, and I watched what happened to him. Your situation will deteriorate. John’s going to be less and less coherent, living more in the past than in the present. He’s going to get increasingly angry, confused, and—”

“We know what’s happening to him, believe me,” Patty said abruptly, cutting off the man. “Finn’s given us the lecture and as much literature as we could carry. We know.”

If Tate was irritated by their interruption, his eyes didn’t show it and the mask hid the rest. “Then the trump…”

“Lucas,” Father Squid interrupted, “that’s not a decision you or I can make for them. I’m not sure it’s a good solution at all.”

This time, they did see the eyes narrow behind the mask’s eyeholes. “Maybe not,” he said. “But John running amok in Oddity’s body isn’t something anyone in Jokertown wants, either. Next time, he may kill innocent people.” He gestured toward the bed and Dutton. “Ask Charles when he wakes up. Or ask the cops a few rooms down.”

“Still,” Father Squid began, but the curtain to the room parted suddenly to reveal what looked like a red-haired and plush Sesame Street monster crammed into a police vest and pants, more than seven feet tall and still hunched over; if he stood up, his wolf-snouted and horned head would have gone through the drop-in tiles of the ceiling. Behind him, Oddity could see an Asian woman in police uniform, her gun drawn and pointed directly at Oddity’s chest: Officer Chey Moleka. [Beastie.… Good, we didn’t hurt him badly.] The furry creature spoke in a gravelly bass voice; Patty thought that he still smelled of formaldehyde. “Oddity, you’re under arrest for assault and resisting arrest. Put your hands on your head and turn around. Slowly…”

Oddity paused. They could have pushed the massive joker back into his nat partner and maybe have reached the turn in the corridor before they had a chance to recover, but Moleka might have fired off a few rounds and hit someone. John would have done it. Maybe even Evan. But not Patty. They’d hurt too many people already this night. She turned Oddity’s body, put their massive, tricolored hands on top of the cloak’s hood and the fencing mask underneath. Father Squid, Tate, and Troll were staring at them; in the bed, Charles opened his eyes momentarily and then closed them again. She heard the jingle of metal and let the joker cop pull their hands behind their back and handcuff them.

“Tell Charles, Father,” Patty said. “Please tell him how sorry we are, that we all are sorry.” Father Squid nodded.

A furry, meaty hand clapped their shoulder. “This way,” Beastie’s deep voice said, and they allowed themselves to be directed out of the hospital toward the waiting police wagon.

♦

Sergeant Jennifer “Squinch” Penniman’s special talent was the ability to shrink living animals. “Do it,” Patty had told the sergeant. “Shrink us and put us in your dungeon.” She waved toward the fairy-tale castle of iron sitting on a long table in the cell. On the turrets, tiny flags sagged in the windless air of Fort Freak’s lockup.

“Pretorius will just have you out tomorrow,” Squinch protested, tousling her short blond hair into Patty’s burgeoning protest, her blue eyes wide. “The captain said to put you in normal lockup.”

“Make us little,” she told Squinch. “I’ll tell Pretorius that it was my request. We can’t hurt anyone if we’re a few inches tall.”

“It takes time to wear off,” Squinch continued to protest. “It’ll be weeks before you’re back to your regular size.”

“We don’t care. Do it.”

Sergeant Squinch had shrugged. She’d touched Oddity’s shoulder and for a moment the world went strange around them, like a video lens zooming in on reality. Squinch’s face looming over them was huge, with pores the size of saucers (though Patty thought it best not to mention that) and hair strands like bridge cables. She put her hand on the floor. “Step on and hold on to my thumb,” she told them, then lifted them up to the table where the wooden castle sat. She opened the ornate building—the entire side was hinged, so it swung open like the two halves of a book—and gestured to one of the open doors on the table level. She locked it behind them with a key that was massive to Oddity, but only a tiny sliver in her gigantic hand. Then she swung the castle shut again; they heard the sound of the clasps being locked—the sound reverberated, shaking the entire structure.

In the darkness, they could hear the sound of tiny, shrill voices, calling to them from the other cells in the fortress. They ignored them, focusing on their own interior conversation. Oddity moaned as their body shifted again, the pain lancing from abdomen to chest, making their breath catch. Patty fisted their hands against the torment until it passed.

[… why are we here why did Squinch do that to us we need to talk to Snap or to Pretorius we don’t need to be here I’m fine I’m fine and I’m sorry …]

[He almost sounds lucid,] Evan said to Patty. [He knows where we are, knows the names.]

[And an hour from now, he’ll be lost in the past again and angry,] Patty said. In the past few months, they more and more spoke of John as if he wasn’t actually there, as if he couldn’t hear their voices. [God, I’m so tired. Let’s just rest and try to get some sleep.] They both knew the fallacy of that; Oddity had to sleep as did any person, and if they didn’t then the person in Dominant would become exhausted from the pain of holding the body and fall away into Passive. But their dreams—there was no true rest even in sleep, not when their dreams were as fused as their bodies, nor when John’s increasing paranoia and fury dredged up horrible images that plagued them all.

[… no no I’m fine and I’m so sorry I won’t do it again I won’t …]

[Did we kill an innocent man?] Evan persisted. [Maybe they’re right. Maybe Deedle didn’t kill Lizzie? He kept denying it, all the way to the end, but we were so sure …]

They remembered that night all too well.

♥

John had been in Dominant, but it didn’t matter—Lizzie Wallace had been a good friend, and the killings at the Rathole had shocked all of them. They’d waited in the alley that night … they’d been told to go there …

Not long after they’d settled in, they saw Deedle hurrying up the street and ducking away along the side of the church toward the rear. Oddity sniffed in satisfaction and moved after him. Toward the rear of the building, they paused again, glancing around the corner. Deedle knelt down in front of the tiny flower garden at the base of a statue’s pedestal.

“Deedle,” they’d said as they stepped from the deep shadow in which they were hidden, and the ugly joker nearly jumped a foot in the air, the coarse red hair covering his body lifting visibly.

“Shit!” he said. “You damn near scared the piss out of me, Oddity.” His gaze darted past Oddity toward the freedom of the side yard and the street. He rubbed his good hand over the bandaged one missing its thumb. The handcuffs were gone; he must have found a hacksaw somewhere. “Look, man, I gotta—”

“You killed Lizzie and the others,” Oddity said.

“No, man. It wasn’t me. Honest.”

“They found you with their things, Deedle. There was blood on your clothes.”

Deedle started to try to dash around Oddity, but one huge hand threw him back against the stone wall of the alcove. The joker crumpled there. “Yeah, I stole some wallets and stuff,” Deedle said, “but they were already dead when I got there. I swear, man. That’s the truth.”

“Right. And you bit off your own thumb to escape, because that’s what any innocent man would do.” Oddity moaned and laughed at the same time. Their fist drew back and Deedle shielded his face from it, but it did him no good. The first blow broke Deedle’s hand as well as his nose and shattered bones in his face. The next drove his teeth down his throat. The one that followed sent blood spattering over the statue of Our Lady. She didn’t flinch, but only stared sadly down at the beating as it continued, and at the broken husk of a corpse they eventually left behind.

It was the first time they’d actually killed someone. They’d administered dozens of beatings before, but had always stopped short of taking a life. They felt as they’d done something good, as though they’d avenged Lizzie and the others, who could rest easily now.…

♣

[Maybe he wasn’t lying,] Evan said again.

[… who cares who cares he stole from them he was the one he had to be the one we would do it again if we had to …]

[Like we nearly killed Charles?] Patty sent down to Passive, but John didn’t respond, though he went silent for a few moments. [We’ll kill more innocents if we’re not careful,] she said: to herself, to all of them. [We won’t be able to avoid it.]

Oddity moaned, slumped against the wall of the fortress. They lifted the fencing mask from their face, and the cold air of Fort Freak bit at their mingled, distorted features like frozen knives. They drew in a searing, frigid breath, and they tried not to think at all.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 13.

“GODDAMN, CHARLIE,” LUCAS TATE said to Dutton, bound like a mummy on the hospital bed. Then to Father Squid he added, “Begging your pardon, Father. But I mean, Jesus, look at him!” he pointed.

Father Squid patted Dutton’s hand. It was one of the only parts that wasn’t bruised, busted, or bandaged. He said, “Oh, come on now. It’s not that bad.”

“The hell you say,” muttered Dutton through a split lip and a cracked tooth. The ass-beating he’d taken would’ve been hard enough on a young man; on a guy his age, it had laid him flat.

Leo contrived a chuckle and said, “You do look like death warmed over. But then again, you always have.”

“Very funny,” said the injured party, but his swollen mouth drew tight in a grin. “At least some of you Velvets thought to come and see me.” He wasn’t quite slurring but his words were thick on his tongue. Might’ve been the swelling. Might’ve been the painkillers.

“What’s this about the Velvets?” Dr. Pretorius leaned into the room. He waved jauntily with one hand and held out some flowers with the other, then followed them both inside.

Sibyl trailed behind him, so silently she didn’t even leave footsteps on the cold, pristine floor. Father Squid nodded at her, and she nodded back, then went to Dutton’s side. She put out a hand and touched his forehead, but did not smile or offer sympathy, or make any other emotional gesture. Her lovely, unreadable face remained just so. And having paid her respects or shared her concern, she retreated to a corner by the window. There, and out of the way, she watched the men chatter and fuss—doing their level best to cheer up their old friend.

Before long, visiting hours were up. Lucas Tate, Dr. Pretorius, and Sibyl took their leave before the nurse could usher them on their way; Father Squid and Leo were the last to go, and when they left, they left together.

Leo had planned it that way. He had more questions, but he wanted to keep them quiet and private. “Hey, Squid,” he said as they walked together. The hall was not crowded but it was occupied with nurses, assistants, and the occasional gurney awaiting a patient to tote. No one paid the two jokers any attention. So he went on. “I want to talk to you about the Rathole. I’m not finished with it yet.”

The priest didn’t express any surprise. If anything, his posture settled into resignation, as if the weight of the conversation was expected. He fidgeted with a paper cup of hospital coffee; it steamed itself cool while he didn’t drink it. “You’re nearly out of time.”

“I’ve still got another month before they give me the boot. And I still want to know what happened. I’ve got a new name, and I want to run it by you. What can you tell me about Romulus Contarini?”

“Contarini? He was a high-ranking Vatican representative. He hated jokers above few other things in this world. He’s dead now, though. Has been for years.”

Leo had looked up that much, after he’d gotten the name out of Ralph. “But before that. He was here in town, wasn’t he? December third, 1978. He was visiting from Rome.”

“Yes, Father Contarini came to me. I believe he called it a ‘fact-finding mission.’”

“If he hated jokers so much, I can guess how he felt about the facts he found.”

“Yes, you can.” Father Squid sighed heavily. “I realize that he had not found what he expected—and I expected philosophical differences. But, you must understand—” He took his eyes off the cup and turned to Leo. “He was horrified—by the church, by us. By what we became, and who we were.” He was noodling with the rim of the paper cup—rolling and unrolling its edge between his fingers. “Contarini went home to Italy and declared us heretical. He excommunicated me.”

“But while he was here,” Leo stressed, bringing it back around to 1978. “What happened in the church, between you two?”

“He … he became violent. He broke things. He picked up candles and threw them, trying to burn the place down. So I threw him out. I had no choice.”

Leo Storgman looked at the slope of the priest’s big shoulders, and the meaty cut of his back. Squid was not a small man, and not a weak one. Even now, old enough to claim a senior discount at the coffee shop, he was not the kind of fellow who often got mugged or harassed—collar and cassock aside. “When you say you threw him out…” he said.

“We were both young then, but I was stronger.”

“Jesus, Squid. What did you do for a living before you … before you did this?” Leo gestured at the cassock, the collar.

Father Squid did not immediately reply. He glanced to the emergency exit, as if he wouldn’t mind running for it, but he only kept walking slowly down the hall at Leo’s side. “I was a soldier,” he said.

But Leo guessed that it wasn’t as simple as that. “What kind?”

“Did you know that there was a joker brigade in Vietnam?”

“I knew. Were you in it?”

“I was a sergeant. Four times over. And four times over, busted back down.”

“Problems with authority?” the detective guessed.

“With authority. With my temper. Take your pick. I left it, anyway. Years ago. Years before the Rathole, even, and years before Contarini paid me that visit in ’78. And the last I saw of him, he was driving off in that shiny black car. I’ll never forget it, or forget the sound of the tires as he fled, as fast as that car would take him.”

A moment of silence fell between them, pocked only by the paging of a doctor over a tinny intercom.

Leo said, “That car.” Because he couldn’t think of anything else. He couldn’t say it—that Contarini, in all his fear and dread and hatred, had fled the scene and run over a girl, killing her. He couldn’t add that to the pile of whatever Squid was carrying. So he asked instead, “Did you ever know a girl named Ramona Holt?”

Squid frowned and looked Leo in the eye. “I don’t recognize the name.”

“She died a long time ago. I just wondered if she’d ever been a parishioner here. She was a teenager, ran with the Demon Princes. She didn’t see too good, and she didn’t get around too good either. I thought you might have known her, coming or going, looking for charity.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember her. That’s not to say she was never here, but … did she have something to do with what happened at the Rathole?”

“She might have,” Leo conceded.

Father Squid sighed, and slowed. He stopped in an eddy of the hallway’s flow and set the coffee cup on top of the trash can he found there. “I still think it must’ve had something to do with the gangs.”

“Warlock?”

He nodded. “It had to be him. He had motive, means, opportunity—”

“Well, he had the means,” Leo said. “And I could assume an opportunity, but what I don’t have is a motive for him. And anyway, he never killed with bullets, he killed with his curses.” Though Sergeant Squid was surely handy with bullets. Leo pushed that thought out of his mind. Then he changed his approach. “What about Deedle?”

To the priest’s credit, he didn’t ask, “Who?” He only said, “Ah.”

“Well?”

“Well, what about him?” Father Squid asked.

Leo knew a dodge when he heard it, so he pressed harder. “Kid’s real name was Bernard Augustus. He might’ve been a member of your congregation; or even if he wasn’t, I think he did the same as the Infamous Black Tongue—he came to you for help. What’d you tell him? What’d you give him?”

“Now we’re getting into tricky territory, Leo,” Father Squid said firmly.

“How’s that?”

“Confidence between a priest and a—”

“Damn it, I’m not asking you to tell me about his confession. I’m asking you why he was found dead behind your church!”

A shift in the priest’s shoulders betrayed a small stiffening, as if he’d made a decision and was steeling himself to hold it up. “I can’t talk about Deedle. I can’t talk about the Rathole anymore, Leo.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“It’s up to you. But my promises to God outweigh your professional curiosity. Go home, Leo. Let the dead rest, and don’t ask me to compromise my vows.”

“Squid—”

“We’re done here,” he said, and he walked away.

Leo watched him go, and when the priest had rounded the corner and proceeded out of sight, the detective picked up the paper coffee cup off the trash can lid. He didn’t throw it away. He took it with him.

And that night he added Father Squid’s name to the white board’s list of suspects.

He wiped it out with the back of his hand. He looked at the smudge left behind, capped the marker, and walked away.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Faith

Part 3.

NOVEMBER, 2010

BENEATH THE CATACOMBS, THERE was a lower level, a dank subbasement devoted to storage of less sacrosanct items. The rooms down here had not even been electrified yet. There was so little money and so many things that had to be done. Sometime, soon maybe, Father Squid told himself, as he pulled up the trapdoor and went slowly down another metal-runged ladder.

It would not be long now, he sensed. Leo knew about Contarini. He was a good detective, old Ramshead. Soon enough he would learn the rest. All my sins will be uncovered.

This second level smelled more earthy than the one above. Old furniture was tossed about in all sorts of disorder along with battered church vessels, outworn habiliments, and useless artifacts of every sort that Father Squid really should have gotten rid of. He sneezed once explosively as the dust he stirred up tickled his tentacles, then went right to a battered footlocker on an old wooden table by one wall.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to bend over it. His knees were getting creaky too. The priest selected a key from the ring he kept in a cassock pocket and unlocked the chest. He lifted the lid and it fell back with a hollow thooom, stirring up more dust. Father Squid caught his breath and looked inside, overwhelmed as he was every time he came.

He was overwhelmed by memories that were three decades old, but felt as fresh as yesterday. That brought back old griefs and joys that never, he knew, never would fade no matter how many times he opened the locker. Never. Never. Never.

DECEMBER, 1978

A pack of mothers with their babies in tow descended on the storefront community center on the day they held auditions for baby Jesus. Father Squid knew it would be bad. He didn’t know that it would be this bad.

“Steady,” he said in an aside to Dorian Wilde, who was nervously clutching at his flowing, greasy hair with his normal right hand. He looked about ready to bolt. The collection of twitching tentacles that was his left hand simply wiggled with more verve than usual, a stream of ichor dripping from them onto the stained lace cuff of his dubiously laundered white silk shirt.

“I’m not getting paid enough to put up with this,” Wilde muttered.

“You’re not getting paid anything for this,” Father Squid reminded him.

“Remind me, then, why I’m doing this.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart?” Father Squid suggested.

“Right.” Wilde was going to say more, but Father Squid put a long-fingered hand on his sleeve—the clean one—stopping him.

“Forgive me, Dorian,” the priest said, “but it looks as if something has arisen that I must deal with. You organize the mothers and pick out a Jesus.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Wilde said as Father Squid hustled over to a newcomer who was standing just inside the community center’s front door, a frozen expression on his handsomely patrician features. Father Squid couldn’t say exactly what his expression conveyed, but it seemed to be caught somewhere between suspicious and outright hostile.

Father Squid had never seen him around the neighborhood before; he was much too elegant for Jokertown. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties, but his thick wavy hair had already gone silver at his temples. Although he wore a clerical collar, his suit was not off the rack. Even Father Squid, not exactly a fashionista, could see that. It was cut from rich, smooth cloth that draped his lean form with an almost imperial elegance. It was probably worth more than the community center’s quarterly operating budget.

The man, who had been dividing his attention between the mothers and infants whom Wilde was attempting to chivvy into some semblance of order and Gary Giamatto, a joker artist who was sketching out some murals for the community center’s walls, turned to look at him, frowning. “I am Monsignor Contarini,” he said, “of the Vatican’s Office of Theological Purity.” He spoke excellent English with a slight Italian accent. His voice was deep, powerful, and completely disapproving. “Are you in charge of this…” His voice dwindled as he gestured vaguely at the church and surrounding grounds.

Father Squid cleared his throat. “Actually, Father Coughlan—”

“Yes, yes,” Contarini interrupted with the wave of an elegantly manicured hand. “I know all about him. He sent me here. It’s you whom I’ve come to see. If you’re Father … Squid.”

“I am,” Father Squid said mildly. Only the twitching of his facial tentacles betrayed the sudden tension running through him.

Contarini’s lips twitched. “Yes. Of course. Who else would you be.”

Giamatto had turned and was frowning at Contarini. The joker artist was small but brawny. He had four arms. His four hands had six fingers each. His two left hands were holding sticks of colored chalk. “And who is this?” Contarini asked.

“Ah, yes,” Father Squid said. “This is Gary Giamatto. A very talented artist. He is preparing a decorative mural for the community center. Gary, show the monsignor your sketches.”

Giamatto silently handed Contarini a well-used drawing pad. Contarini’s eyes grew wide as he thumbed through the pages. “What … is … this?”

“Roughs for a wall mural. Some iconic images that our parishioners can relate to. That”—he struggled to find the proper words for a moment—“that have some relevance to their lives, their situation as jokers.”

Contarini had stopped on a page depicting a slight figure with burnished red hair who was dressed like a Renaissance fop and was two-faced like the Roman god Janus. His right face was angelically serene, the other leered like a bestial demon. He held an unburning sun in his right hand, a bolt of lightning in his left. “That is the creator,” Father Squid explained, “who blesses with one hand and damns with the other.” Silently, Contarini turned a page. A handsome, golden-skinned man whose face had a look of sorrow and shame was juggling an arc of thirty silver coins. “Ah,” Father Squid observed, “the handsome betrayer who regrets his sin.” Contarini turned another page to reveal a smiling Madonna with beautiful brown and white wings cuddling a two-headed babe at her breasts. “Of course,” Father Squid said, “this is—”

Contarini closed the pad and handed it back to Giamatto. “You don’t have to tell me what it is,” he said, frowning. He looked around the center. “And what’s going on here?” the monsignor said, focusing on a desperate-looking Wilde, who had been surrounded by a knot of impassioned mothers who were all holding their infants up for him to see.

Father Squid smiled. “Casting for our Christmas pageant.”

“Good to know that you celebrate the day of Our Lord’s birth.”

“Of course,” the priest observed mildly.

“All right,” Wilde said suddenly, loudly. “All right.” He glanced around himself with the look of a trapped animal. “You!” He pointed with his ichor-dripping tentacular hand. “You, madame, what’s your name.”

“Dockstedder. Mimi Dockstedder.”

“Your child will be the baby Jesus!”

A dissatisfied cry arose from the dozen disappointed mothers as Mimi Dockstedder held her child up in triumph over her head. Both heads wailed like lost souls. Father Squid smiled indulgently. He turned to look at Contarini and was startled at the look of black rage on the monsignor’s face. “You dare to engage in such revolting blasphemy!”

Father Squid shrugged his massive shoulders. “We are simply utilizing a strategy the Church has used over the centuries, over the millennia, to relate to indigenous communities around the world. The Virgin of Guadalupe. The legend of Noah and the Ark. Why the very placement of important events of the liturgical calendar as Christmas and Easter on commemorative days sacred to the prior pagan beliefs of the people—”

“You dare!” Contarini shouted.

Suddenly the mothers stopped complaining and turned to stare at them. Wilde took the opportunity to scurry for the back door as the mothers looked on, their expressions divided between curiosity and anger that they readily turned from one target to another.

“What’s the matter, mister?” Mrs. Dockstedder asked. “My Rick and Mick ain’t good enough to be baby Jesus?”

Contarini sputtered in incoherent rage. He shouted in Italian, which, perhaps fortunately, no one understood. He grabbed a nearby bank of votive candles and, to assuage his fury, swung in the direction of the knot of women. They gave a collective gasp compounded by fear and their own outrage. “Watchit, mister,” Mrs. Dockstedder warned, clutching Rick and Mick to her bosom. “We got kids here!”

“They’re not children,” Contarini spat, “they’re demon spawn! Devils! Vermin—”

Father Squid had had enough. He grabbed Contarini by one well-tailored sleeve and spun him about. “They are children,” he said, “formed in the shape of Our Savior, Jesus Christ—”

“You dare,” Contarini hissed between his teeth, “to spout liturgy at me!”

“I dare to demand recognition as a human being. For myself, and my people.”

“You are nothing more than heretics,” Contarini said severely. “And will be dealt with as such. I will report back to Rome. I will see this parish closed. I will see you, personally, excommunicated—”

“And I will see you removed from my parish.” Father Squid turned to Giamatto, who was observing the proceedings with a jaw slack with astonishment. “Gary—open the door.”

As the artist sprang into action, so did Father Squid. His hands closed on Contarini’s collar. The monsignor flinched as the vastly heavier joker gave him the bum’s rush through the open door and onto the street beyond, where Contarini slammed up against a big black Mercedes.

“You will pay,” Contarini said in a shaking voice. “You will pay for your heresy and blasphemy, for laying your disgusting hands on me, you, you—” Words failed him then, so he yanked open the car door, slid behind the wheel, and sped off into traffic without even bothering to glance around, leaving a bevy of honking horns and indignant cries in his wake.

Father Squid sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily. The anger had drained out of him as quickly as it had come.

They cheered him when he came back into the center, crowding him happily and congratulating him. “That’s showing the bas—I mean, bum,” Mrs. Dockstedder said.

Father Squid shook his head. “I’m afraid that I showed very poor judgment,” the priest said. He held up his hands at the chorus of “no’s.” “And I’m afraid also that that’s enough excitement for now. I—I have to go meditate upon my actions.”

“Sure, Father,” Mrs. Dockstedder said. “You do that.”

“You take it easy and don’t worry,” another mother called out. “We’re with you. We got your back.”

Father Squid nodded and left the community center, grasping Giamatto’s hand and exchanging nods as he went out the door. He was tired. He was pushing himself too hard. There was so much to be done. There always would be. And now he had Rome to worry about. He desperately wanted to continue in his position in Jokertown. He genuinely loved his people. He felt, finally, as if he’d found a home, a place in the world, a mission to perform, a people to help. If he had to battle Rome to do so, so be it. He’d worry about that later. Time enough for that, he thought, in the future. He had more immediate things to worry about.

He turned off Orchard Street and went down a shortcut through an alley that took him to the side entrance of an apartment building, a six-story walk-up. He shuffled his way up the stairs to apartment 2-C, took the key ring from his cassock’s ample pocket, and opened the door. The apartment was tiny. Though furnished with second- and thirdhand furniture, it was as neat as a dollhouse that was home to especially tidy dolls. The small living room was colorful and comfortable with brightly hued throws and rugs abounding. Though he had warned Lizzie a thousand times, the window leading out to the fire escape was slightly open, leaving it chilly even by Father Squid’s thick-skinned standards. He crossed the small room and closed and locked the window, reaching over the plant box filled to bursting with still-blooming pansies to do so.

He bypassed the tiny kitchen that shared a hallway with an equally tiny bathroom. The bedroom door was ajar. Lizzie was at work in the small niche in the corner of the bedroom that was her sewing nook. She looked up as Father Squid stood in the doorway, a momentary frown quirking her normally smiling features. “Darn it, Bobby, you caught me. I wasn’t finished yet.”

“You should still be sleeping—”

“Couldn’t,” she informed him. “Too much on my mind. Plus, I wanted to finish this before the pageant.”

Her mouth curved in her usual smile. To Father Squid she was magic. She was one of the sweetest, kindest people he’d ever met during a hard life fraught with violence. And despite his hideous looks, despite the blood that stained his hands and haunted his dreams, she loved him. She was a miracle.

“What is it?” he asked, mystified. All he could see was that it was red.

“Oh,” she said, quickly stashing it aside, “you’ll see it when I’m done.”

“Can’t be a wedding dress,” he said, coming into the room and sitting facing her on the edge of their bed. “It’s the wrong color.”

“Yes.” For a moment her smile faltered. “We have to talk.”

“About a wedding?” he asked. “I know that you’re just out of a bad relationship. I know you’re still feeling, well, concerned about, about things—”

“Bobby, I’m—”

“Just a second,” he said quickly. “Let me say this. Of course, I’m a priest. I feel, well, not guilty, exactly. I’ve broken my vow of celibacy for our Church, but, really, I wouldn’t call it living in sin because what we have—”

“Bobby, I—”

“Just a second. You know that I love you. That I regret nothing we’ve done. A priest must experience all aspects of life if he’s to properly guide his flock—”

“Bobby, will you just shut up for one second,” Lizzie said, exasperation showing in her tone.

“All right,” Father Squid said in a small voice, suddenly nervous beyond all reason.

“Bobby, I’m pregnant.”

For a moment the words lay between them like an unexploded bomb. The fear and nervousness only expanded in Father Squid’s mind.

“But we used birth control,” he said in that same small voice.

“Well, it didn’t work,” Lizzie said. “The question we have to face now is what do we do.”

She didn’t have to spell it out for them. His initial thought was of awful, incoherent fear. Had a vengeful God taken action against him because of all the sins of his life? But that was nonsense. His faith wouldn’t allow him to believe it for even a moment. He had sinned, certainly, and God may indeed be a vengeful deity, but why would he take a man’s sins out on an innocent babe?

Both he and Lizzie carried the wild card. It was one hundred percent certain that their child would as well. The only question was the nature of the card their child would draw. An impossibly rare ace? The somewhat more probable joker? Perhaps, most horrible of all, the fatal black queen? Virtually everyone who carried the mark of the wild card knew the odds, though they were too terrible to contemplate. One to nine to ninety.

His guilt was his own. His child had no part in it. But whether the fate of their child rested on cold, rational science or the will of a possibly vengeful God, it was something they had to deal with, consider carefully, and plan for.

“Well,” Father Squid said. It was a statement rather than a question. He looked into her eyes. They were hooded with concern that trembled on her lips and quirked her mouth in a twist that threatened to break into tears. “What do you want to do?” he finally asked.

“Oh, Bobby!” Her expression shattered like glass and she started to cry, hurling her into his arms. He caught her, absorbing her tiny form into his great, thick body as she wept aloud. “Oh, Bobby,” she said again, “thank you, thank you for asking me. Thank you. You don’t know what it means to me.”

I guess I don’t, Father Squid thought, but he was smart enough not to say that.

“All my life,” she said through her sobs, “someone has always told me what I should do, what I think, how I had to live. No one has ever asked me what I wanted, what I thought was right, what I should do.”

“What,” Father Squid said, “should we do?”

She pulled away from him a little, no longer sobbing, and looked seriously into his eyes. “I think we should keep the baby,” she said. “I mean, I know the odds are against us. I know, I know it could be terrible. But look, Bobby, the odds were already against us, but here we are. The both of us. We survived the wild card. We survived life as jokers and we met and we fell in love. Maybe it’s too much to ask for another miracle, but what have our lives been other than a series of miracles, leading up to this?”

Father Squid nodded ponderously. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. We must have faith. Down through the centuries people have faced lives as hard, harder even than ours. They faced cold, privation, starvation, rampaging armies, and disease. Locusts and storm and drought and famine. They stood together, brought their children into the world, and fought to keep them alive against impossible odds. Can we do any less? Is our love any less? Our faith?”

Lizzie shook her head. “No, Bobby. We can face anything, together.”

“Together,” he said, and they held each other as if they’d never let go.

NOVEMBER, 2010

Of course, fate had stepped in … using Warlock and Deedle as its dread instruments … and resolved the problem of their child’s genetic heritage for them.

Father Squid had been a hollow man afterward. He went about his daily business with a brusqueness bordering on coldness that was not like him. He had no one to talk to, no one to unburden himself to. There was nothing that anyone could do, anyway. At night he dreamed of Lizzie, and the poor souls who had died with her in the Rathole, slain for his pride. He found himself wishing that he had been there too. If only he had set out half an hour earlier.…

The horror of the Rathole had tested his faith severely. Even his very belief in God had wavered. How could the loving God he believed in have let such monstrous things happen? he had asked himself. Had his sins been so terrible as to bring down such savage wrath?

Perhaps it had. There is blood on my hands, he reminded himself when he knelt to pray. The blood of innocents.

And Contarini had been as good as his word. He had seen Father Squid excommunicated from the Church, the Jokertown parish closed, the faithful abandoned. But that had just opened another path that had proved better suited for all the needs of his parishioners. From that dark time Our Lady of Perpetual Misery had arisen.

I have tried to atone, O Lord, he prayed. For Lizzie and our unborn child, for Deedle, for the innocents. I have ministered to my people, I have done good works, I have done penance and begged for your forgiveness.

Yet the sins endured. And soon the truth must out.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

The Rat Race

Part 14.

“WELL, OLD MAN, WHAT do you think?” Dr. Pretorius asked with a sweep of his arm, indicating the dining area of the High Hand. “Plenty of room, excellent food and service … and best of all, you won’t have to pay for it. It was Michael’s idea, but me and Tate pulled a few strings, and Dutton’s offered to open his wallet.”

Sibyl stood beside him, taking in the scenery too. She padded over to the nearest table and ran her glassy blue fingers over the silverware, as if she approved. Not that Leo could tell. He never had any idea what she was thinking, but that didn’t set him apart from very many people. Probably just Dr. Pretorius.

Leo told him, “It’s amazing, and I can’t believe you’re going to pull it off. It’ll beat the hell out of the New Big Wang, where Ralph had his racket.”

“Excellent!” The lawyer slapped him on the back. “We’ve got the date pinned down and everything; I give the go-ahead, and the night’s all yours.”

“Thanks,” Leo said, shaking his hand. “You’re all right, Pretorius. I don’t care what everyone else says about you.”

“Nor I you.” He winked back.

It was early yet, but the restaurant would be opening in a few minutes and the staff members were coming and going, moving place settings and arranging pitchers of water on tables, and sorting out centerpieces, lighting candles despite the hour. The lawyer said, “I’ve got to get going. Have some notes to sort through before a hearing tomorrow, and I have a feeling I’ll be up half the night with it. Sibyl?” he said without looking for her, knowing she’d find his side easily enough.

“Thanks again,” Leo said, and they saw themselves out.

The detective stood there a few minutes longer, in the near quiet before the patrons arrived and things began to hum. He liked the venue—it’d be hard not to. The place was gorgeous, spacious, and generally outside his price range but hey, like the song says, “With a little help from my friends,” he mumbled with a smile.

It was good of them, real good. Above and beyond.

His smile dimmed. Of course, they were mostly work friends, weren’t they? Michael, obviously—and even the lawyer with his sleek cerulean assistant. All the cops, all the courthouse guys … almost everyone he knew. And work was going away.

“Detective Storgman, wasn’t it?”

Startled out of his brief, glum reverie, Leo turned to see Raul Esposito standing beside the kitchen doors with their fogged round portals; he was likewise watching the first-gear windup of the extravagant restaurant.

“Esposito.” Leo met the mobster’s eyes. Actually, Esposito didn’t look much like a mobster, not today. He was dressed up sharp, and all his accent points—buttons, cuff links, shoe tips—were shining. He looked like someone’s rich old uncle. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh,” he made a little gesture with his hand that said, “nothing important.” But then he replied, “Making some deliveries. For whatever you may think of me and my past, I’m in a new business now.”

“Out of the guns, and into the gumbo, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“Hey listen, since you’re here, can I ask you something?” He approached Raul and stood to the side, lest he get smacked when the next door opened and the next server or cook exited the food prep area.

“By all means.”

“Your little friend. Your ward, you called her.”

“Maggie.” He nodded.

“She’s been following me around,” Leo said.

Esposito looked honestly surprised, but long years of working with crooks told the detective that it didn’t really mean anything. “Whatever for?” he asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me. Ever since I first came up to your place, I keep seeing her everywhere. She’s hard to miss, and she’s a terrible sneak.”

“Detective,” he said with his earnest frown and buckled eyebrows, “I can assure you I haven’t sent her on any such mission to tail you.”

Leo didn’t figure he had, and he said so. “I didn’t really see you sending a teenager after me.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said, but the pensive frown didn’t quite leave. “But I’ll absolutely have a word with her, when I see her this evening. The poor dear, she’s had such a difficult time of things. Sometimes her behavior is a bit … erratic.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you know. Joker, card turned, ran away. It’s an old story and a common one, but nonetheless painful for those who live it,” he said vaguely.

Leo wanted to say that if the girl was a joker, she was a lucky one; at least she looked normal enough. But that wasn’t always true, and he’d felt the world turn and flop when she’d touched him. So he went ahead and asked, “What does she do? Now that her card’s turned?”

“She…” He considered his wording. “… ages things. Rapidly.”

“Things?”

“Anything organic,” he clarified. “Poor dear can’t even wear all-natural fibers. Cotton and leather just rot and fall off her within half an hour or so.”

“Can she kill people?” Leo followed up.

“I assume so,” Esposito responded carefully. “But I can assure you she never has. She’s very careful not to touch anyone, except perhaps in self-defense. She has no control over the ability at all. It’s a lonely way to live.”

“Good thing she has you, then.”

“I … I found her,” he said, again with great vagueness. “And we work well together. But given her condition, you may safely revise your previous notions about our relationship. I know what it looks like, and I know what people think. I look out for her, that’s all. Though sometimes I think I ought to adopt your first polite guess, and tell people she’s my granddaughter.”

Leo gave a nodding shrug. “Might be a good idea. But what do you mean you work well together?” After all, it sounded a little sinister—immediately after confessing that the girl was capable of accidental murder.

Raul’s frown evaporated entirely. With a twinkle in his eye, he asked, “Now it’s my turn to ask you a question, Detective. Have you ever eaten here before?”

“Once or twice.”

“Have you ever tried the steaks? Aged to perfection, if you will?”

Leo said, “Oh,” in one long breath. “Gotcha. But wait, what’s your contribution?”

“Hmm. That’s a trickier question, and one you might find less palatable.”

“Very funny.”

“No, I mean literally,” he insisted. “Though if you really must know, I’d ask you to step with me around the corner.”

Something in the back of Leo’s head didn’t think it was wise to step around a blind corner with an old hit man, but they were in such a marvelous public place, and anyway, he was curious. So he followed Raul Esposito around the nearest wall, which put them past the main dining area, and behind a long red curtain that had been drawn aside.

“You must understand, Detective, this is not something I broadcast. I’ve spent years building a reputation as a reliable broker of specialty steaks and mushrooms; and although Maggie’s involvement would likely not distress anyone, mine … might.”

“Why’s that?” Leo wanted to know.

“Because I don’t import the mushrooms. I make them.”

“You make them? Out of thin air?”

“No, Detective.” His right hand reached for his left wrist, and rolled up the sleeve cuff there. The skin beneath it was mottled and lumpy; and when Leo looked closely he could see that the bumps looked rather remarkably like tiny round buttons or caps—even though they’d been pressed by his clothing. “I’m a joker too.”

Leo struggled to recall if he’d had anything with mushrooms in it, and tried not to go green in the process. “That’s … that’s…”

“I know,” Raul Esposito said as he rolled up his sleeve. “And for obvious reasons, I would appreciate your discretion. Likewise, I promise I’ll have a word with my ward. I’ll see what she’s up to, and ask her to restrain herself.”

“Thanks,” Leo said, turning away before he gave too much of his own revulsion away. He excused himself, since it was time for him to return to the precinct; he left saying, “And I’ll keep your secret to myself. Believe me.”

Back at the station, all the talk between cases was of the holidays. Thanksgiving was right around the corner and people were making plans. Michael was on the phone with his girlfriend, talking about who was coming over for supper; Slim Jim was sitting on the edge of his desk, arguing with Tenry Fong over whose relatives were more trouble; and over by her office door, the captain was telling Puff that she planned to eat a whole table’s worth of turkey.

The season’s first premature Christmas tinsel was sparkling on the corners of desks, and over by the coffeemaker someone had already stuck a small plastic tree—which had almost immediately become decorated with empty sweetener packets and plastic creamer cups. Someone had even gone to the trouble of fashioning a skinny red star topper from a pair of chewed-up coffee stirrers.

Ah, such festivity.

Leo wasn’t feeling it. His earlier warmth was effectively gone, even as he looked around and liked most of the people he saw. The fact was, he wouldn’t be seeing them much longer. Not every day like this. And everyone said, “We’ll stay in touch!” but in the real world, everyone knew it didn’t play that way.

Thanksgiving was looking lonely enough. No plans, except maybe some Chinese takeout and football in front of the television.

His wife had been dead going on thirteen years. Wanda was spending the holiday with her kids and grandkids. His daughter had a new boyfriend, and she was spending this first holiday with his parents—doing the whole “meeting the family” thing with someone else’s family.

And who else did he know, anyway? Nobody who didn’t have plans with children, in-laws, spouses, or soup kitchen volunteering.

When his shift was over he went home alone to the empty apartment, and he thought about calling Wanda just to have someone to talk to; but then again, he didn’t want to sound all maudlin, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty about leaving him alone for Thanksgiving. Not after he’d already gone to all the trouble to insist that it was fine, and he hoped she had a great time.

So he didn’t.

Instead he called a pizza place and ordered himself a little something special for delivery. And he stood in front of the white board while he waited, staring at the connections, the names, the circles, the suspicions.

He picked up the blue marker and crossed out the Sleeper.

He added a question mark after Raul Esposito.

♣ ♦ ♠ ♥

Sanctuary

Part 2.

KAVITHA WAS HAVING A hard time concentrating at the studio—her body was an assortment of random aches. She wasn’t sure she could even count all the bruises she’d accumulated in the past weeks. The three of them had done a pretty good job wrecking the living room that first night, even though they’d been trying to not wake the kid. It was a good thing Isai was a sound sleeper. And two months later, the sex was still just as much fun, just as crazy. There was something about Minal that made every inhibition drop away—even thinking about her now was enough to start a flush of heat racing through Kavitha’s body, from cheeks to thighs to toes. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Minal was watching the kid, giving Kavitha a gift of a few precious hours to work; she needed to take advantage of that. Life didn’t stop just because you met an incredibly hot girl and got her to join you and your boyfriend in bed. On the couch and the floor, to be accurate, but eventually the bed too. Over and over and over again. But now it was work time—she had to work, damn it. Kavitha had a show coming up in two days! She couldn’t keep thinking about sex—or if she was going to, then she had to channel it into her work.

Kavitha stared at the posters for the next show, wondering if she should have changed the design. Her stage name, Natya, stretched across the top in a funky South Asian–style font—she was a little tired of playing up the ethnic angle in the promotion for her shows. Although it was appropriate, given the content of the work. This whole next set of shows was focused on the ongoing war in Sri Lanka, the misery of so many of her distant relatives. So maybe it wasn’t so bad to emphasize that connection; it might help draw in people who already had an interest in the problems of her tiny home island. And even if it just brought in white guys who had a thing for exotic brown girls—well, they could be educated too. She wasn’t above using her body and art to sell her agenda. Not after the horrors she’d seen, long ago and far away.

Lately, the war had been more and more on her mind. Kavitha was having the nightmares again, waking up in a cold sweat with the memories of men stumbling across the street, screaming, with tires around their necks, wreathed in flames. Women thrown up against the sides of buildings, their saris torn. She kept seeing the same little girl, walking through rubble and smoke, her forehead trickling blood. Too much blood. When they’d first come to America as refugees, Kavitha had had the nightmares every night. They’d eventually faded away, but the last few days they’d come back, with a vengeance. Maybe it was Minal’s presence in their home, the fading cuts and bruises on her face a reminder. The marks were almost gone now, but sudden noises still made her look startled, terrified. It made Kavitha want to find the men who had hurt her. But what would she do if she did find them?

Sometimes Kavitha wished she could go back home, do something to stop the war. There had been peace for years, but recently the fighting had broken out again, tearing her poor country apart. A new guerrilla group proclaiming the righteousness of the Tamil cause, a new prime minister, eager to win votes with a hard-line stance against the rebels. She’d even written out a letter to her uncle, who was prominent in the government there, offering to help—but she’d never sent it. Even with her powers, what could one ace do against an entire guerrilla force out in the jungle—or against an entire government-supported army? Hell, not only did she not know how to fight, she wasn’t even sure which side she’d be fighting on. Better to stay here, keep her powers directed toward the dance. Michael kept saying that she should at least try to learn how to use the power to defend herself, but the thought of deliberately injuring someone else was abhorrent to her. She’d wanted to be a doctor, damn it—she’d only given that up because dance called her too strongly. And now, Kavitha thought she was doing good work here. Raising awareness, helping to build a peace movement.

Every once in a while, though, she just wanted to hit someone, especially when she heard some of the stories Minal told. In the middle of the night, when hours of sex had made them all exhausted and drowsy, barriers came down and they shared old stories. Minal told them some of the things she’d gone through, her voice remarkably calm and matter-of-fact. Kavitha couldn’t take them so calmly; she wanted to cradle Minal in her arms, protect her from all the bad things that had happened to her—but it was too late for that. If she couldn’t save Minal, sometimes Kavitha wished that she could visit a little righteous retribution on the people who had hurt her. Maybe hitting someone would make the nightmares go away.

But there was no one to hit. She took a deep, deliberate breath and settled into working instead.

♠

“Son, do you seriously think that you aren’t going to be at our dinner table for Thanksgiving?”

Michael bit back a sharp retort, reminding himself to be patient with the old man across the desk. His father leaned heavily on a mop, a bucket of dirty water at his feet. Wisps of white hair fluttered in the breeze from the creaking station fan, the last remnants of a once-glorious ’fro. Joe Stevens had been a janitor at the station for forty years, and he wasn’t about to start calling his son “Detective,” even if he was secretly proud of how far his only child had come. Michael had asked him to call him by his title in front of the men more than once, and his father just laughed. It didn’t help that his partner had known Joe since before Michael was born, and laughed right along with his dad.

Leo chimed in now, “Yeah, Michael. What are you thinking, not going to your parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner? If I had a mom who cooked braised short ribs like yours, I’d be there every night.”

“Stay out of it, Leo.”

His partner shrugged, and bent his horned head back over the pile of papers on his desk, pretending not to listen. The truth was, with Leo so close to retirement, there wasn’t much else for him to do but eavesdrop, especially with the station so dead; nothing was happening around here this week. Everybody was gearing up for the holidays, even the bad guys.

He tried again. “Dad, I promised Kavitha that we could have Thanksgiving at our place this year. She really wants to try making a turkey. Don’t you think it’d be nice for Isai to have Thanksgiving at home with her parents? You know how difficult it is to manage her at your place.” His parents’ apartment was tiny and full of stuff—every time Isai shifted, she knocked something over.

The old man shook his head. “The child should spend time with her grandparents; you hide her away too much, as if you’re ashamed of her. Michael, you know damn well that this is one fight that you are going to lose. Your mother has been cooking for days.”

“Dad, she isn’t going to make us eat two Thanksgiving dinners again, is she?” Michael had thought he’d complained enough last time to get them off that hook—for all the years he was growing up, his mom had insisted on making a full American Thanksgiving for them to eat at midday—turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, the works. And then, about six hours later, a Korean feast—ba bim bop, barbecued pork, kimchi, and more. Even with Kavitha joining them for the meal, it was way too much food for four people, but his mom looked so hurt if he didn’t eat some of everything that he couldn’t bear to let her down. He got a wicked stomachache, every time. Yet another reason not to celebrate at his parents’ place this year. Besides, it would be so crowded in his parents’ tiny apartment, four adults with an active toddler who sometimes became a flying active toddler.

His father shook his head. “No, I talked her out of the double dinner; it’ll be just the one meal. But she’s making southern food for me, Korean food for her, American for you, and something Sri Lankan for your … girlfriend.” His dad hesitated before that last word—his parents still weren’t pleased that Michael hadn’t married Kavitha, especially now that they had a kid. His mom prayed about it in church every Sunday morning. That was one reason why he didn’t want to bring Kavitha to their apartment; Kavitha didn’t need to deal with the pointed comments. He was sure she’d like to get married, and Michael wanted to marry her, he did. At least he thought he did, most of the time. He just wasn’t sure. The thought of being tied down to just one woman, for the rest of his life—that wasn’t an easy thing to wrap your mind around. Especially with Minal in their house. Especially that.

Back to the problem at hand. “Dad, that’s crazy.” Four different cuisines—there would be enough food to feed an army. Tasty, delectable food—even the Sri Lankan food that his mother had never made before was sure to be delicious. But still.

“Bring me back a doggy bag,” Leo interjected.

“Shut up, Leo.” Michael ran his fingers over his shaved-bald head, almost wishing he had grown out his hair into a big old ’fro like his dad’s, just so he could tear it out.

His father shrugged. “Crazy or not, that’s what she’s doing, and the meal is half cooked already, so you had better just adjust your mind to the facts, boy. Unless you want to break your mother’s heart.”

Michael sputtered, “I’ve been telling her that we’re not coming this year. I’ve told her and told her.” Admittedly, not to her face. But he’d left messages on the home phone, when he knew his mom would be working at the laundromat. Messages he knew she’d heard, but apparently heard wasn’t the same as accepted or agreed.

“So?” His father gazed at him expectantly.

“Damn it.” Michael sighed, giving in.

“I knew you’d come around, son.” His father beamed, flashing two straight rows of white teeth. He straightened up, picking up the mop and dunking it back in the bucket. “If you’re worried about managing the kid at our house, why don’t you bring along that nanny of yours too? Your mother will be happy to have another person eating her food. And tell Kavitha to bring a few pies for dessert, okay? If she buys them at the store, I won’t be the one to tell your mother. Why you’d pick a girl who can’t cook, I will never know…” His father trailed off, muttering, as he pushed the bucket down the dank hallway. No matter how much time his father spent scrubbing, somehow the place never looked clean.

Michael bit his lip and pulled out his cell to call Kavitha, heading toward one of the conference rooms as he dialed. This wasn’t going to go well. The only consolation he had was that family drama might help distract him from what a mess things were at work. The Joe Twitch case was never far from his thoughts. If only Michael knew exactly what to say, and who it was safe to say it to. He trusted his partner with his life—but could he trust Leo with what Minal knew? Bad enough that Ratboy and the kid lawyer knew. Michael would have sworn that Angel Grady, one of the two cops involved in the Twitch incident, was a straight shooter. So maybe Minal was just wrong about the gun and the drugs? If not, if she was right about Joe … well, if Puff and Angel were dirty, how could he be certain anyone was clean?

Last night, after Minal had fallen asleep, Michael had heard Kavitha whisper, “I love you.” She could have been speaking to him, but he was pretty sure the words had been for Minal. Which made everything complicated; he knew his girlfriend well enough to know that she wouldn’t take love lightly. She couldn’t. Michael wasn’t sure exactly what he felt for Minal—he didn’t really want to think about it. Mostly, he’d been enjoying the hell out of the sex and just hoping the women kept on thinking this was a good idea. He didn’t want that to end, and he also didn’t want Minal to get hurt. The thought of Minal getting hurt made his throat tighten and his stomach churn. Was that love? He had no idea.

For now, Michael was keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open. He had enough to worry about; he didn’t need to go looking for more trouble.

♦

Just as she finished her warm-ups and was about to settle seriously into working, her cell rang. Kavitha bit back a curse and reached for the phone, checking to see who it was. Michael. Damn it. She answered, hoping at least this would be something quick.

His voice on the phone, “Hey, sweetheart.”

That wasn’t good. Michael wasn’t the endearment type. “What’s wrong?” If he messed up this day any further …

Luckily, he knew her well enough not to screw around with her. “We’re going to my parents’ for Thanksgiving.”

“Michael, you promised me.” Kavitha’s head was already throbbing and they weren’t two minutes into this conversation.

“I couldn’t do it to my mother. I just couldn’t.” He paused and then offered weakly, “My dad said I could invite the nanny too.”

Kavitha felt irritation flare up in her. “You are kidding me. Do you seriously expect Minal to pretend to just be the nanny for an entire Thanksgiving dinner? And you expect me to pretend it too? With your parents sitting there in their holiday best, asking me when we’re going to finally get married?”

Michael protested weakly, “They wouldn’t—”

She cut him off. “Of course they will. They ask every damn time they see us. What are you going to tell them this time?”

“I’ll tell them we’re not ready…”

“And do you have a plan for what you’re going to tell them when their granddaughter calls the nanny mommy?” Mostly Isai called Minal aunty, but every once in a while in the last few days, she was mommy instead. Kavitha was always mama—Isai hadn’t forgotten her, but she was adapting to her new family structure. At first, Kavitha had felt a little twinge, seeing how close Isai and Minal were—but really, it was to be expected, since Minal was the one at home with her most days. Mostly, it was a relief having Minal there, mommying. She was more patient and better suited to full-time mothering than Kavitha ever had been. Their lives had all gotten so much better since Minal had moved in that Kavitha had started fantasizing about what their life would look like if Minal just stayed. It looked really good to her—if Michael didn’t fuck it up. “Michael, tell me you’re not going to do this.”

Silence on the other end of the phone, silence that lingered and grew until it was hanging, a dark cloud between them. She could almost see it, hovering in the air like one of her fields.

Kavitha sighed, and tried to soften her tone. “Michael, love. Why don’t you tell them? I told my parents that we were seeing someone else.” Admittedly, that had been maybe a little premature—Kavitha hadn’t even told Minal that she loved her yet. But she was going to; she was just waiting for the right moment. She’d been wanting to say it for weeks. And in the meantime, Kavitha didn’t want her parents hearing mangled rumors from somebody else. It was amazing how quickly the Sri Lankan gossip network could spread news, and all it would take would be some relative or acquaintance seeing Kavitha and Minal holding hands as they walked in the park. “Tell them and get it over with. Just talk to them.”

Michael laughed, bitterness clear down the phone line. “You told your brother, who then sent an e-mail to your parents. It’s not the same.”

She snapped, “I’d talk to my parents if they were willing to talk to me.” Kavitha knew what she was asking him to risk, after all. Her parents hadn’t spoken to her in two years—not since Isai was born, and they realized Michael wasn’t just going to go away. Kavitha had hoped that a grandchild would improve the situation, but somehow Isai’s birth had just hardened her parents’ position. They’d refused to even see their granddaughter. “Your parents won’t cut you off. You’re their only child, and they aren’t as … old-fashioned as mine.” Racist was perhaps the more accurate word.

Her parents had already been pretty mad at her about all the med school money she’d wasted by dropping out. She’d promised to pay them back, but realistically, that was going to take a while. And then they’d almost had heart attacks when Kavitha had told them that she was moving in with a half-black, half-Korean man. Worse, one who pretty much looked black. You’d think that all the men and women Kavitha had slept with up till then would have broken them down, but apparently black was still the final color barrier. It hadn’t helped that Michael was a cop. Adding Minal to the situation couldn’t make the situation with her parents any worse, she was pretty sure. And if it did—oh, well. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, right? Kavitha would pick love over filial duty any day. “Didn’t your folks defy their families to pick each other? They’ll be fine with this.”

Michael snapped, “That’s easy for you to say!”

Easy? Did he really think this was easy on her? Sometimes she wondered why she even wanted to marry Michael anyway—did he know her at all? Her head was pounding and her heart ached. This had to end; it would tear them apart otherwise. Kavitha took a deep breath and then said, her voice shaking, “Look, I’ll go to your parents’ on Thursday if you want. But I’m not going to lie to them, not if Minal is sitting right there in the room. And I’m not going to leave her sitting at home alone on Thanksgiving. So you have two options. We can cancel and stay home, or we can all go and you can tell them the truth.”

“Kavitha—”

She shook her head. “I have to work, Michael. And you have a decision to make.” Kavitha hung up the phone and closed her eyes.

Time to channel this anger into the dance. Kavitha stretched her slender body in her black dancer’s leotard. She arched her back, leaning right, forward, left, back. Up to relevé, down to plié. Her neck: forward, left, back, side, letting her long braid swing freely down her back. Her rib cage shifted, following the same pattern. And reverse. She linked the fingers of her two hands together, stretched them out in front of her. Then Kavitha allowed her right hand to form an abhinaya in the shape of a flower, and called on her powers to awaken. She could feel the kundalini, the coiled and sleeping serpent energies lying at the base of her spine, arouse and ascend her body, flowing from back to arm to wrist to hand. As the energies reached the tip of her fingers, the power flowed out, creating a great, glowing, golden flower in the air. Beautiful.

Kavitha still couldn’t believe how lucky she’d been when her card turned. She’d been a starving dancer for years, and then a slightly better fed one once she’d moved in with Michael. She was a good dancer—but New York was full of good dancers, desperate for their big break, or even for a small one. It was her power that made her dance special, and since she’d started incorporating the kundalini fields into her work, that power had finally started to get her a little bit of fame. Kavitha still performed in tiny venues that seated a few hundred at most. But now many of her shows were sold out, and if her audience continued to grow … well, Isai wouldn’t have to go to community college. If Kavitha managed to send her daughter to Harvard, well, that would show her parents, wouldn’t it? And that wasn’t going to happen unless she focused on her work.

She snapped her fingers, and the flower exploded into a rainbow of tiny fragments, scattering across the stage and then fading away. If Kavitha wanted them to last longer, she’d need to build up the power with her dance, feeding more charge into the fields. She’d warmed up enough now—she was ready. She could feel the energy built up inside her, aching to get out. She’d been channeling it into sex for days, but she couldn’t afford that indulgence anymore. Now, she needed to dance, needed to pound the floor with her feet—if she didn’t get some of this power out, she felt like she was going to explode. She flung her arms out, and the energy poured out in a bright shimmering blaze, surrounding her. Surrounding Natya—that’s who she was now, the living embodiment of an ancient dance. Thousands of years of art, funneling down to this one moment. With one sharp hand movement after another, Natya built a series of glittering crimson bridges across the stage, arching higher and higher. Then, taking a deep breath, she flung her body across them and began to dance.

♥

“Isai, come down from there!” Minal reached up, but Isai was just out of her reach—the child had shifted to Garuda form, flown to the top of the cabinets, and then shifted back. It was her newest trick, and was not easy to deal with. So far, Minal had been able to handle everything the kid threw at her, and she was already ridiculously fond of the little monster, but this was just unacceptable.

“Isai, if you don’t come down right now, Aunty Minal will get very mad!”

“Aunty get mad?”

“That’s right, Aunty will get mad!”

“Aunty Minal not mad. Aunty happy!” The child chortled, safe from retribution on her perch, knowing that she was causing trouble. Isai put her hands up in front of her face and then peeked out, a game she’d been playing for years, her parents said, but one she never seemed to get tired of. “I see you, Aunty! I see you!”

Minal tried to keep a stern look on her face, but she couldn’t help grinning a little—the kid was just so cute. “I see you too, little monkey.” More of a bird than a monkey, of course—in Garuda form, Isai’s wings were stunning. The eagle beak was pretty sharp too. Kavitha and Michael were lucky that Isai loved her parents enough that she’d never tried pecking them or beating her wings at them. When shifted into her largest form, Garuda-Isai had a twelve-foot wingspan; barely big enough to fit into their apartment, and plenty big enough to knock her parents down.

Michael kept muttering that he ought to start commuting to work on his daughter’s back, but Minal was pretty sure he wasn’t serious. Isai would love to give her dad a ride, of course, but who could trust a two-year-old to fly them anywhere? It’d just take a single bright shiny distraction, and Isai would shift back into her own form, possibly high up in the air, which would be no fun for anyone. Her parents didn’t think she’d stay human if she were plummeting to her death—but they couldn’t know for certain, which was why she was strictly forbidden to shift without close supervision, and never outside. Which forbidding normally did, oh, so much good when it came to things like not drawing on the walls in pen, and not digging the soil out of all the plants’ pots. Still, they had to try, and as a good babysitter, Minal had to try too. And now it was time to shift tactics and try begging. “Come down, baby, please?”

Isai giggled again, shifted for just long enough to coast down, and then shifted back, landing, a warm, naked bundle, in Minal’s arms. The child’s clothes always dropped away with the shift, and then she was naked until they got her dressed again. Undiapered too, which was risky, but right at this moment, Minal was willing to take a small risk. The warmth of the toddler snuggled against her was soothing. Isai wrapped her arms around Minal’s neck and whispered, “I love you, aunty.” Minal whispered back, “I love you too, baby.” A dangerous thing to say out loud, but it was true. She was dangerously close to being in love with the child’s parents too, though she hadn’t had the nerve to say so. What would she do when Michael and Kavitha got tired of her invading their nuclear family? Even if it were safe to go back to work, her old life seemed empty by comparison.

Minal stroked Isai’s hair as she walked her over to the changing table. Practiced hands fastened a diaper, and then struggled to slide wriggling arms and legs into a T-shirt and pants. “Hold still, baby, please. Aunty’s arm is still ouchie.” The doctor Kavitha had dragged her to had said that given the extent of the damage, a nat would probably have needed a year before the arm was fully healed. Minal was way ahead of that schedule, but it was definitely still mending. Still, she managed pretty well. Isai settled down long enough for Minal to get that last leg into her pants. Hmm … they were almost out of diapers. Michael was the one coming home first—Minal pulled out her cell and punched in his number. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Michael. You need to stop at the drugstore on your way home.” But before he could say anything, there was a knock at the door. “Wait—hang on. Kavitha must have forgotten her keys again…” Isai was squirming in her arms, getting ready to shift again. Minal tried to juggle the phone, the child, and the doorknob all at once, distracted by a stab of pain as Isai’s flailing leg jabbed at her bad arm. “Hold on…” Her hand was on the knob, turning it.

“No, Minal, don’t—” But someone was already shoving the door open with enough force to break the safety chain right off the wood frame, and suddenly there were men inside, one man she knew, a man she had hoped to never see again. He grabbed her, and the other man pulled Isai from her, the child screaming. Minal only had time to shout, “Nicor, no!” before he casually swatted the side of her head with something hard. And the world went dark.

♣

“Leo!” Michael had been hiding out in one of the back rooms for his phone call, an automatic move to protect his privacy. Now he was cursing the length of the hallway as he raced back down it, calling to his partner. He’d tried calling Minal back, but no one had answered. It just rang and rang and rang. What the fuck was going on? “Leo!!!”

His partner came around the desk and grabbed his shoulder. “Calm the fuck down. What’s wrong with you?”

Michael’s voice broke. “Something’s wrong with my kid. Someone broke into our place. I heard her screaming.” Oh God, oh God, oh God. He couldn’t think straight. There was a procedure for this, wasn’t there? Fuck procedure—he just wanted someone to tell him what to do. Before he ripped someone’s throat out with his bare hands.

“Come on.” Leo was checking his gun, grabbing his coat. “Let’s go.”

Go. Yes. That’s what he needed to do. Maybe if he got home fast enough, he could do something. Figure out what had happened. He was a detective, wasn’t he? He knew how to figure these things out. If he could just think. If he could think loud enough to drown out the sound of his little girl’s screams, which echoed in his ears, getting louder with every step.

Leo grabbed his arm and dragged him out, ignoring the queries from others in the station. They slammed through the front door, out into the blistering cold and the dark and the snow. His daughter was out there in that. And he didn’t even know if she had her coat.

♠

Minal came to with the sound of Isai sobbing in her ears, the child curled hard against her chest. Her head was throbbing and she had to swallow to keep from hurling. She blinked her eyes, wincing. It took her a second to realize that they were in the backseat of a car, some beat-up old thing. There were no handles on the insides of the doors. No way out.

“Hey, she’s awake,” the thug sitting next to her said to the man up front. The thug looked mostly normal, except for the sharp bird’s beak he had instead of a nose. He wore the black-and-silver leather of the Demon Princes.

“Get her to shut the kid up, then,” Nicor snapped back, without turning his head. Water was dripping down his hair as usual, drenching his clothes and the seat of the car beneath him. It’d be running down his face too, a constant, cold stream, as if he were standing under a rain shower. Water sliding over his abnormally wide nose, and the flared gills along his neck. But she couldn’t actually see Nicor’s face—he was keeping his eyes on the road. They were hurtling through the city much faster than was safe, weaving in and out of traffic. Where the hell was he taking them?

“Shhh, shhh, baby.” Minal had already been trying to calm Isai down, but when Nicor said that, she almost stopped, she was so pissed off. What the hell was he thinking? But with Isai to protect, she couldn’t afford to piss off a Demon Prince, especially a scary dangerous ace. Minal bit her lips and kept stroking the child’s hair.

These idiots hadn’t even gotten her shoes on before leaving—Isai was just wearing a T-shirt and pants. Didn’t they notice that it was fucking freezing outside? There was snow on the ground, damn it. Who brought a kid outside like this?

Minal’s clothes were even worse; she’d been feeling sick enough she hadn’t bothered dressing today, so she was just in a battered white T-shirt and a pair of red silk pajama shorts. No pants, no sweater, no coat, no shoes. Her arms and legs exposed to the cold, and to the eyes of the goon a few inches away. Her nipples were hidden under the T-shirt, but just barely. And from the way he was staring at her torso, this guy knew exactly what was under her shirt. Minal hugged Isai closer, feeling her heart jackhammering in her chest. “Shhh, baby, shh. Everything’s going to be fine,” she whispered.

“Hey, Nicor,” the bird-beak asked, never taking his eyes off her, “is it true what they say about this one?”

Nicor laughed—a low, bitter laugh with no actual humor in it. “Raum, everything you’ve heard is true, and more.”

Raum started reaching out a hand toward Minal, and she cringed away, back against the cold metal of the car door. The sensation was almost too much to bear, the cold icing through the tendrils on her back, through the thin material of her shirt. Still, it was better than his hands on her, his hands that were sharply pointed at the fingertips, like claws. Before he could touch her, Nicor snapped out, “Hands off!”

“But, Nicor…” Raum started whining.

“Forget it. He said no touching. Not yet.”

Raum slumped back in his seat, glaring sullenly at her. He muttered, “I don’t answer to you, you know. I’m not going to answer to anyone for long. I am the fucking Lord of Crows, and I am going to be moving up in this organization.”

Nicor shook his head and said, “You ain’t moved up yet.”

Raum looked even angrier, but he kept his claws to himself, thank the gods.

Minal finally got up the nerve to say something then. If they weren’t supposed to touch her, maybe they wouldn’t hurt her or Isai. Not yet. She had no faith that they’d stay safe once they got wherever they were going, so she had to ask while they were still in this car under Nicor’s control, had to use this chance as best as she could.

She softened her voice, asked as nicely as she could. “Nicor? What’s going on? I thought you and I, we’d left things okay between us.” Nicor had been a regular client. He’d always left a decent tip when he could afford it, and he’d never roughed her up. It wasn’t exactly fun fucking him most of the time—all that cold water sort of killed the mood, even if she turned the heat up high in the room. Not to mention its tending to wash away any lubrication. But it wasn’t all bad—when he felt like it, Nicor could use his power over water to give her pleasure, send the ocean surging through her, which he’d had no obligation to do. He’d been one of the nice ones, and she’d liked him.

Nicor shook his head, eyes still on the road. “I can’t talk about it, babe. I got orders.”

Minal swallowed. “Nicor. She’s just a kid. If they want me, why don’t you have someone take her home. Her parents will be home soon, and her dad’s a cop. You don’t want to grab a cop’s kid.” Kavitha and Michael would never forgive her if she let Isai get hurt. She’d never forgive herself.

“No dice, chica. They said to bring you, and anyone with you. The kid was with you, so she’s along for the ride.”

Nicor glanced at her then in the rearview mirror, finally meeting her eyes for a brief second. Minal shivered when she saw what was in his eyes. Pity.

She opened her mouth to ask him to let them go, one more time, but he cut her off. “No more talking. We’re almost there.”

♦

The apartment door was wide open, but aside from that, nothing was missing—nothing was even disturbed. It might be hard for a stranger to tell, given the toddler toys and books scattered across the apartment, but that was just the normal chaos; Michael was used to editing that out of his view. He couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Who would break in here and not even steal anything?

“Why would someone take her? She’s just a baby! If they had just taken Minal…” Michael ground out the words, pacing frenziedly back and forth across the small living room. If he could just think.

“They destroyed your door,” Leo said. He stood erect in the doorway, more alert than Michael had seen him in months. Much good it was doing them. “Minal’s the sitter?” Leo asked.

Michael hesitated—but he had to tell the truth. He had to trust Leo—he needed him. “She’s—more than a sitter.”

“Oh?” Leo asked, an eyebrow lifted.

“We’re involved,” he admitted.

Leo shook his head. “Sleeping with the nanny, huh? Better not let Kavitha find out. If I had a hot girlfriend, I don’t think I’d risk it for some fun on the side with the nanny.”

Michael didn’t know what to say, how to explain. “It’s more complicated than that. Look, I’ll explain it all later. That’s not important now.” He couldn’t think about Minal right now, couldn’t picture last night, the three of them in their big bed. They’d all been tired, but they’d managed a quickie, a tangle of arms and legs and soft whimpers, with Minal whispering periodically, “Don’t wake the baby!” Eventually they’d settled down to sleep, with Kavitha in the middle—she was always cold at night. And Minal got too sensitized sometimes; she needed to be able to roll away, to get a little space to let her extra nipples settle down after lovemaking … “What’s important is that the Demon Princes are after her. She said a name on the phone. Nicor.”

Leo frowned. “Hell.”

“Exactly.” Michael started pacing now, planning. “They’re probably at McGurk’s. We should call it in, get a squad out there … We have to move, Leo. We might not have much time.”

Leo was already heading out the door. “Let’s go.”

♥

Natya was resting when the phone rang, two hours into her practice. If she’d been in the middle of a dance, she would have let it ring, but she didn’t have that excuse now. She sighed and walked over to pick up the phone.

“Yes, Michael?”

His voice on the phone was rough and low. “I have bad news. Isai and Minal have been kidnapped.”

“What?” He couldn’t be serious.

“They were taken from our apartment. But we think we know who took them, the Demon Princes. We’re going to get a squad and go get them from McGurk’s.”

Her chest was pounding. All she could see was the little girl from her dreams, with blood running down her face—but now her face was Isai’s. “McGurk’s Suicide Hall? Why there?”

“That’s the gang headquarters. They’ll be holding them there.”

“You can’t go in there with guns blazing. What if someone shoots one of them by mistake?” She’d seen too much gunfire in the war. Terrible, random.

Michael said, “We know how to handle this. We’re trained for it. Just sit tight. Or better yet—come to the station. I can’t be sure someone won’t come after you too.”

She was on her feet, shaking, feeling the power starting to build again, just with that small motion. “If you think I’m going to just sit there while someone’s hurting my little girl—and I’m half a city closer than you are. I can be there in five minutes.”

He was shouting now. “Don’t be an idiot! You don’t know anything about fighting.”

“I know a hell of a lot more than you do, Michael.” She’d never told him what she’d seen in the war, what she’d done. He thought she was an innocent, but there was already blood on her hands. “And I’m going to go get my girl and make sure she’s safe. Now.”