Lowball

The Big Bleed
Part Six

“We caught him,” Sheeba said. “And he’s singing.”

“Good,” Jamal croaked.

“But it’s not what anyone expected.” She went on to relate the details of an exotic smuggling and manufacturing cartel, only the product wasn’t heroin or meth. “It’s food.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“There’s no need for that language. The product is illegal-endangered species used for entrées, magic mushrooms, other stuff that isn’t supposed to be imported because it could get loose and wipe out indigenous plant life-”

Jamal tuned out at that point. The only relevant thing he heard was: “Everyone at HQ is happy with our results,” implying that Carnifex had not been entirely enthusiastic about the mission-no surprise there. “And now that that’s behind us-”

“That’s it?” Jamal said. “No follow-up?” Jamal Norwood was sitting up in a bed at the Jokertown Clinic. He had been taken first to St. Vincent’s, but the single attending there was over-burdened (there had been a bad fire several blocks away, with four people brought in suffering from burns and smoke inhalation), and claimed to know nothing about aces.

Loaded with painkillers, Jamal had waited, conscious or dozing, for four hours until an ambulance arrived to move him to Jokertown Clinic and Dr. Finn.

Who examined him yet again, and again just shook his head. “This obviously can’t be considered part of your … syndrome.”

“Is that anything like illness?”

The joker doc smiled. “We still don’t know that whatever is … afflicting you doesn’t have, say, an environmental trigger. So, no, syndrome, not illness.”

“Not yet.”

“Do you want to be ill, Mr. Norwood?”

“Have you added shrink to your job title?” Jamal had snapped. “Consider this a firm ‘no.’”

Finn wanted to keep him for the day, for observation. And in truth, Jamal was not eager to be discharged. He was finally feeling bounceback, and was confident that he would be a hundred percent in a day … but he wanted that figure to be closer to sixty percent before he chanced the streets.

And told Julia. And his parents. Because each notification would be as good as telling the recipient that something was seriously wrong with Jamal Norwood-because his ace power should have put him back on his feet within the hour.

Not forty-eight.

The door hadn’t even closed before Sheeba slid onto the corner of Jamal’s bed and, assuming what must have been her idea of a motherly manner, said, “What’s wrong, Jamal?”

He saw no benefit to denying the obvious: the Midnight Angel had worked with him for years. She knew how Stuntman was supposed to bounce back; she’d seen him hit harder. So he gave her the quick version.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I can’t let you back on active duty in this state, Jamal.”

“Okay, Sheeba, two things.” He was getting angry. “One, I’m not fit for duty today and could probably use another twenty-four hours off. Fine.

“But, two, I am bouncing back. A nat would be out of duty for months, maybe crippled for life. So whatever rules you’re trying to access … they just don’t apply.” He smiled. “Don’t make me charge you with discrimination.”

Sheeba was so shocked she actually stood up and struggled for a response.

Jamal spared her. “I’m kidding,” he said. “Really, really kidding.”

But maybe he hadn’t been kidding. He owed his whole SCARE career to his win on American Hero … and he owed that win to his confrontation with Wally Gunderson, the ace known as Rustbelt, a big, goofy, iron-skinned hoser from Minnesota, a world without African-Americans or anyone other than white Lutherans. Rusty had bugged Jamal from the moment he showed up at the American Hero house … he was too obviously trying to be nice, too simple. No one was really like that. No one outside of a group home, that is. And in one of the contests, with cameras rolling, Jamal was convinced he had heard Rusty come out with what he was really feeling, the words, “I’m gonna beat his black ass.”

Or so he remembered it after all these years. It wasn’t as though he had ever watched any footage of American Hero since the day it ended for him.…

Jamal had confronted him. Rusty had denied it, of course, but Jamal had been shaken … enough to lose. Days later, with what his mother would have called more charity, he realized it was possible Rusty had said “black ace.” Which wasn’t really objectionable, though whenever a white person threw “black” into a sentence, it was usually loaded-

“What do you want, then?” Sheeba was asking him. Jamal realized that he had her on the run-which was exactly where he wanted her.

“Look, let me see how I feel when they turn me loose. I’ll tell you in the morning,” he said.

She nodded, patted the bed while smiling wanly. “Just get better.”

Jamal Norwood’s wild card had turned his first year out of USC, when working as a junior stuntman on a bad movie. But there had been a harbinger.

It was a JV football game between Loyola and Cathedral. A Friday in early October, it was raining, cold, miserable. The moment he got off the bus, Jamal wanted nothing more than to have someone postpone the game.

No chance. Big Bill Norwood and every coach who ever lived said the same thing: football is violence and bad weather. (Jamal had Googled that quote later, and found that it wasn’t complete. “Football was violence and bad weather and sex and rye.” He still wondered what rye was.)

In spite of the mud and wet, the game turned out great, for Jamal. He’d returned the opening kickoff sixty-five yards. He might have reached the end zone except that he slipped getting past the Cathedral kicker … and landed on his butt.

He had made four solid runs on that drive, only to see Trey Lackland, the QB, take the ball for the touchdown. On the second drive, however, Trey sent him on a deep post pattern. Jamal had shot out of the backfield around the right end, faked the safety toward the sideline, then cut into the middle. He could see the other safety heading toward him, but Trey’s pass was already in the air … long, but Jamal had simply stuck out his right hand. The point of the football buried itself in his palm; his momentum allowed him to quickly draw the ball into his chest.

And he ran fifty yards into the end zone, untouched, his first receiving touchdown ever.

He was on his way to the best game of his life. On the sidelines, he glanced toward the stands. With the nasty weather, the crowd was sparse … it was easy to find Big Bill Norwood on his feet, cheering. Cheering in a way he had never done before tonight.

When Jamal returned to the field on offense, he was pumped, eager for another pass play, or even a run. True, Trey’s lack of game sense had left the team with a field position right between the hash marks, which is to say on the most chewed-up part of the field (would it have killed him to run plays to the right or left, where there was grass?).

But Jamal was eighteen … he was fast and furious. He could make this work.

The call was a forty-two dive right, a handoff to Jamal with the idea that he would bust through a hole on the right side of the offensive line. Trey’s handoff was clean, but the hole collapsed. In a third of a second, Jamal turned to his right, paralleling the line, planning to simply go around it. Easy if you’re fast-

— but not if you’re turning on mud. And get hit by a defensive end going one way through your left ankle, and a linebacker the other way above your left knee.

Jamal heard his knee crunch even before he felt the pain.

Which still managed to be instantaneous and over-powering. Jamal had hit the ground as the ball squirted out of his hands, recovered by Cathedral and returned for a touchdown … something he didn’t learn for a day. Because he was howling in pain, trying to put his left leg in a position where it wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t be swollen. Would function again.

He was foolish enough to try to stand. He failed. By then Trey and Mosicki the trainer and one other player had reached him. They waited for a stretcher to carry him off. The diagnosis-several torn ligaments in his left knee, specifically the anterior cruciate, which allowed a runner to make cuts and sharp turns.

Surgery was recommended, though not for several weeks, until the swelling subsided enough for a doctor to determine the seriousness of the injury.

Basic recovery for a healthy eighteen-year-old male would have been six weeks. Jamal Norwood was running and making cuts again in three. Of course, the season had long ended. Over the rest of Jamal’s senior year, there was some talk around the Norwood house about that surgery … but since basketball was out, and Jamal found no difficulty competing in the 100, the 200 and the 4x100 in track … it just went away.

It wasn’t until five years later, once he had become Stuntman, that Jamal Norwood began to wonder if that injury had triggered his first bounceback.

Whatever. Now he was on the other side.

Jamal was still in the hospital gown, about to get dressed and get back to what was left of his life and career, when Detective F. X. Black appeared in the door. “How are you doing?”

“If I wasn’t an ace, I’d be fine.” Well, that was largely a lie. But since he didn’t know anything for sure …

“When do you get released?”

“The moment you’re gone.”

“Hey, I can-” Franny hooked a thumb toward the door: I can beat it out of here.

Jamal waved that away. “It will only take a few minutes. Besides, there was something I needed to tell you.”

Franny listened with growing amusement. Finally he said, “All this chasing around for some … magic mushrooms?”

“Not magic, just illegal. And not just mushrooms. All kinds of exotic foods. It’s a huge deal to the Department of Agriculture.” Jamal laughed at the image in his head. “I can just see those guys on a raid now, in their official Windbreakers with ‘AG’ written on the back. They probably wore green.”

Franny shook his head. “Well, that’s just fucking great. The big Wheels caper turns out to be about food, not bombers or kidnappers.”

“It is, as we say in the law enforcement biz, a dry hole.”

“Yeah, well, my hole just got reamed by one of my captains about my end of this little investigation. I am to forget the Warren County incidents forthwith and completely.”

“Don’t you still have a building-that dog-training joint?”

“You noticed that.” He was as angry as Jamal had seen him. “According to everyone on the planet but you and me, there’s no connection! These dead guys don’t show up in any Fifth Precinct files, which means that they might as well not exist. Even if we had some info on any of them for any reason, they’re not locals, which is about all we deal with. They’re just … no-name hoods from another land, someone else’s problem. Fuck.” As he spoke, Franny had taken the file folder he carried, opened it up, and started dropping pages into Jamal’s trash can, one by one.

“What’s that?”

“My files on the hoods.”

“Don’t you archive those things?”

“I wasn’t supposed to have them in the first place.”

“Well, even so, throwing them away here isn’t smart.…” Jamal had the folder fished out of the can and was presenting it to Franny before he realized: “You’re not throwing it away. You want me to take it.”

Franny smiled. “Thank you.”

“Assuming I agree to spend five more minutes on this thing, which isn’t automatic … what the hell do you want me to do?”

“Run the names through your database. SCARE must have access to FBI, DHS, CIA, Interpol, and, fuck, the Jetboy Junior Club, right?”

“Yes, but-”

“Look, maybe these three guys were just wannabe mobsters though they had a few kidnapped jokers stashed in cages. My captain has made up a story, but truthfully none of us have any idea why. And, naturally, my boss has made it clear that she doesn’t want me proving her guess wrong and making her look bad, so I should just back off. That’s bad enough. But just suppose, though, that they are deep-cover terrorists, the kind that always seem to bite us on the ass. They’re dead, but they must have come from somewhere, must have been working with someone.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

He woke, as usual, before his alarm. He had his right arm over his head … when had he started sleeping like that? He blinked. Oh yes, it was Wednesday. Tuesday he had spent in the Jokertown Clinic.

He had come home, spoken to Julia briefly-she was at work-and yet, in a few moments, managed to terrify her with a description of his symptoms.

Good work, Jamal. That conversation convinced him to defer the parental notification for a day or two.

Then, feeling as though he was probably seventy percent bouncedback, he had collapsed in bed.

Now, this morning, ten hours later, he couldn’t seem to move. Not with any ease.

He fought the panic. Listen to me, whatever you are! You are not a degenerative disease! You are only accumulated injuries!

Okay, he told himself. Whatever. Maybe he was suffering from something (and when was that useless piece of shit Finn going to give him some good news?). Obviously it didn’t help to have a vicious close encounter with a joker sized and shaped like a small truck-

Build yourself up. Bounce the fuck back.

Breathe. Stretch.

Take a moment and think. Listen to the city coming alive around you.

Where are you? Where have you been?

Where do you want to be?

He had a condo in Toluca Lake, so close to the Warner, Universal, and Disney studios that he could have walked there … and a short drive from Republic, Columbia, and Paramount. He hadn’t seen it in two months. His parents were checking up on it, making sure there weren’t letters jamming the mailbox, that the plants got watered.

He’d gotten so used to life on the road, to hotel rooms, the lonely breakfasts and nasty coffee, because he couldn’t stand another buffet, the piled-up laundry, and the street roar, even on the twelfth floor. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he believed that it was quiet at his condo. Maybe there was some freeway drone. Surely the planes taking off from Burbank Airport.…

What troubled Jamal was that he couldn’t remember!

But that wasn’t a sign of diminished capacity-he hoped, anyway. That was entirely due to living on the road for most of the past four years.

He took another breath. He seemed to be better.

Roll to your left … elevate with hands and arms, not your middle-

He was sitting up.

Then, miraculously, he was standing. Heading for the bathroom and feeling as though he were seventy years old.

Forty-five minutes later he had showered-and conducted a survey of the bruising on his legs and right side-shaved, and dressed. After a yogurt and cereal breakfast, with one cup of coffee, he was functional if nowhere near good. Maybe back to where he was last night. His phone carried no new messages from the Angel or anyone at SCARE. No surprise there; as far as they were concerned, he was off the grid. Nothing from Franny, either, which was nice: no “reminders.”

Why not check out the cop’s information? What else was he going to do with his time? He opened his laptop and set it on the foot of the bed. (The desk was the wrong height … he had developed a severe case of lower back pain using the computer in that position during his first week at Bleecker Towers.)

He logged in, going through the tedium of entering his password. (Clearing the cache was not only a habit, but a requirement). Then called up a multi-agency search, able to access the master DHS watch list, FBI and ICE and even Interpol.

While the page was loading, he opened the file Franny had given him-pages of standard police narrative as well as crime scene photos-and flipped to the list of names.

“Gornov, Dennis Timofeyevich.” Thirty-six, Russian, from the sound of it, and from the ID photo. Blond, born to be a thug. Search.

New window: “Krekorian, Sev.” Armenian. Twenty-seven.

“Rafikov, Zakir.” That sounded Kazakh. Forty. New window.

God, these names. The African-American community had a few brain-twisters and Jamal was generally good at them … but today, especially, he kept having to look at his notes and re-type. Jamal’s laptop wasn’t new or fast, and the Wi-Fi connection in the Bleecker was iffy. So it took several moments for the database searches to turn up results. The wait was worth it. U.S. agencies and Interpol all had files on the men. All had made border crossings in questionable circumstances or with suspect associates. Jamal quickly noted one surprising commonality: All three were ex-KGB.

Suddenly Jamal felt sicker than he had since getting slammed by Wheels on that Jokertown street. This wasn’t some random, small-time crime. When you found three Russian hoods, you were likely to find half a container ship filled with contraband, or de-stabilizing weapons. Or even a goddamned nuke.

And these clowns were kidnapping jokers. Why? Potential suicide bombers, maybe? People who could be blackmailed into doing bad things? Jamal fumed. This was important information-

— but not necessarily to SCARE, not yet. Especially with the team so concentrated on candidate protection … and the dismaying results of the search for Wheels so unrelated to terrorism. And tomorrow he’d be going back on Holy Roller detail.

He dialed Franny at Fort Freak.