Wild Cards Part 28

"A minute," the speakers said. "You got it."

Tach pulled off his boots, opened the door just a crack, and slid into the warehouse on purple-stockinged feet, summoning up all the stealth and fluid grace they'd once taught him on Takis. Inside, bales of shredded paper, bound tightly in thin wire, were stacked twenty and thirty feet high. Tachyon crept down a crooked aisle toward the sound of voices. A huge yellow forklift blocked his path. He dropped flat and squirmed underneath it, to peer around one ma.s.sive tire.

He counted five altogether. Two of them were playing cards, sitting in folding chairs and using a stack of coverless paperbacks for a table. A grossly fat man was adjusting a gigantic paper-shredding machine against the far wall. The last two stood over a long table, bags of white powder piled in neat rows in front of them. The tall man in the flannel s.h.i.+rt was weighing something on a small set of scales. Next to him, supervising, was a slender balding man in an expensive raincoat. He had a cigarette in his hand, and his voice was smooth and soft. Tachyon couldn't quite make out what he was saying. There was no sign of Angelface.

He dipped into the sewer that was Bannister's mind, and saw her. Between the shredder and the baling machine. He couldn't see it from under the forklift, the machinery blocked the line of sight, but she was there. A filthy mattress had been tossed on the concrete floor, and she lay atop it, her ankles swollen and raw where the handcuffs chafed against her skin.

". . . fifty-eight hippopotami, fifty-nine hippopotami, sixty sixty hippopotami," Tom counted. hippopotami," Tom counted.

The loading bays were big enough. He squeezed, and the padlock disintegrated into shards of rust and twisted metal. The chains came clanking down, and the door rattled upward, rusty tracks screeching protest. Tom turned on all his lights as the sh.e.l.l slid forward. Inside, towering stacks of paper blocked his way. There wasn't room to go between them. He shoved them, hard hard, but even as they started to collapse, it occurred to him that he could go above them. He pushed up toward the ceiling.

"What the f.u.c.k," one of the cardplayers said, when they heard the loading gate screech open.

A heartbeat later, they were all moving. Both cardplayers scrambled to their feet; one of them produced a gun. The man in the flannel s.h.i.+rt looked up from his scales. The fat man turned away from the shredder, shouting something, but it was impossible to make out what he was saying. Against the far wall, bales of paper came cras.h.i.+ng down, knocking into neighboring stacks and sending them down too, in a chain reaction that spread across the warehouse.

Without an instant's hesitation, Bannister went for Angelface. Tach took his mind and stopped him in mid-stride, with his revolver half-drawn.

And then a dozen bales of shredded paper slammed down against the rear of the forklift. The vehicle s.h.i.+fted, just a little, crus.h.i.+ng Tachyon's left hand under a huge black tire. He cried out in shock and pain, and lost Bannister.

Down below, two little men were shooting at him. The first shot startled him so badly that Tom lost his concentration for a split second, and the sh.e.l.l dropped four feet before he got it back. Then the bullets were pinging pinging harmlessly off his armor and ricocheting around the warehouse. Tom smiled. "I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE," he announced at full volume, as stacks of paper crashed down all around. "YOU a.s.sHOLES ARE UP s.h.i.+T CREEK. SURRENDER NOW." harmlessly off his armor and ricocheting around the warehouse. Tom smiled. "I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TURTLE," he announced at full volume, as stacks of paper crashed down all around. "YOU a.s.sHOLES ARE UP s.h.i.+T CREEK. SURRENDER NOW."

The nearest a.s.shole didn't surrender. He fired again, and one of Tom's screens went black. "OH, f.u.c.k," Tom said, forgetting to kill his mike. He grabbed the guy's arm and pulled the gun away, and from the way the jerk screamed he'd probably dislocated his shoulder too, G.o.ddammit. He'd have to watch that. The other guy started running, jumping over a collapsed pile of paper. Tom caught him in mid-jump, took him straight up to the ceiling, and hung him from a rafter. His eyes flicked from screen to screen, but one screen was dark now and the d.a.m.ned vertical hold had gone again on the one next to it, so he couldn't make out a f.u.c.king thing to that side. He didn't have time to fix it. Some guy in a flannel s.h.i.+rt was loading bags into a suitcase, he saw on the big screen, and from the corner of his eye, he spied a fat guy climbing into a forklift . . .

His hand crushed beneath the tire, Tachyon writhed in excruciating pain and tried not to scream. Bannister-had to stop Bannister before he got to Angelface. He ground his teeth together and tried to will away the pain, to gather it into a ball and push it from him the way he'd been taught, but it was hard, he'd lost the discipline, he could feel the shattered bones in his hand, his eyes were blurry with tears, and then he heard the forklift's motor turn over, and suddenly it was surging forward, rolling right up his arm, coming straight at his head, the tread of the ma.s.sive tire a black wall of death rus.h.i.+ng toward him . . . and pa.s.sing an inch over the top of his skull, as it took to the air.

The forklift flew nicely across the warehouse and embedded itself in the far wall, with a little push from the Great and Powerful Turtle. The fat man dove off in midair and landed on a pile of coverless paperbacks. It wasn't until then that Tom happened to notice Tachyon lying on the floor under the place the forklift had been. He was holding his hand funny and his chicken mask was all smashed up and dirty, Tom saw, and as he staggered to his feet he was shouting something. He went running across the floor, reeling, unsteady. Where the f.u.c.k was he going in such a hurry?

Frowning, Tom smacked the malfunctioning screen with the back of his hand, and the vertical roll stopped suddenly. For an instant, the image on the television was clear and sharp. A man in a raincoat stood over a woman on a mattress. She was real pretty, and there was a funny smile on her face, sad but almost accepting, as he pressed the revolver right up to her forehead.

Tach came reeling around the shredding machine, his ankles all rubber, the world a red blur, his shattered bones jabbing against each other with every step, and found them there, Bannister touching her lightly with his pistol, her skin already darkening where the bullet would go in, and through his tears and his fears and a haze of pain, he reached out for Bannister's mind and seized it . . . just in time to feel him squeeze the trigger, and wince as the gun kicked back in his mind. He heard the explosion from two sets of ears.

"Noooooooooooooooooo!" he shrieked. He closed his eyes, sunk to his knees. He made Bannister fling the gun away, for what good it would do, none at all, too late, again he'd come too late, failed, failed failed, again, Angelface, Blythe, his sister, everyone he loved, all of them gone. He doubled over on the floor, and his mind filled with images of broken mirrors, of the Wedding Pattern danced in blood and pain, and that was the last thing he knew before the darkness took him.

He woke to the astringent smell of a hospital room and the feel of a pillow under his head, the pillowcase crisp with starch. He opened his eyes. "Des," he said weakly. He tried to sit, but he was bound up somehow. The world was blurry and unfocused.

"You're in traction, Doctor," Des said. "Your right arm was broken in two places, and your hand is worse than that."

"I'm sorry," Tach said. He would have wept, but he had run out of tears. "I'm so sorry. We tried, I . . . I'm so sorry, I-"

"Tacky," she said in that soft, husky voice.

And she was there, standing over him, dressed in a hospital gown, black hair framing a wry smile. She had combed it forward to cover her forehead; beneath her bangs was a hideous purple-green bruise, and the skin around her eyes was red and raw. For a moment he thought he was dead, or mad, or dreaming. "It's all right, Tacky. I'm okay. I'm here."

He stared up at her numbly. "You're dead," he said dully. "I was too late. I heard the shot, I had him by then but it was too late, I felt the gun recoil in his hand."

"Did you feel it jerk?" she asked him.

"Jerk?"

"A couple of inches, no more. Just as he fired. Just enough. I got some nasty powder burns, but the bullet went into the mattress a foot from my head."

"The Turtle," Tach said hoa.r.s.ely.

She nodded. "He pushed aside the gun just as Bannister squeezed the trigger. And you made the son of a b.i.t.c.h throw away the revolver before he could get off a second shot."

"You got them," Des said. "A couple of men escaped in the confusion, but the Turtle delivered three of them, including Bannister. Plus a suitcase packed with twenty pounds of pure heroin. And it turns out that warehouse is owned by the Mafia."

"The Mafia?" Tachyon said.

"The mob," Des explained. "Criminals, Doctor Tachyon."

"One of the men captured in the warehouse has already turned state's evidence," Angelface said. "He'll testify to everything-the bribes, the drug operation, the murders at the Funhouse."

"Maybe we'll even get some decent police in Jokertown," Des added.

The feelings that rushed through Tachyon went far beyond relief. He wanted to thank them, wanted to cry for them, but neither the tears nor the words would come. He was weak and happy. "I didn't fail," he managed at last.

"No," Angelface said. She looked at Des. "Would you wait outside?" When they were alone, she sat on the edge of the bed. "I want to show you something. Something I wish I'd shown you a long time ago." She held it up in front of him. It was a gold locket. "Open it."

It was hard to do with only one hand, but he managed. Inside was a small round photograph of an elderly woman in bed. Her limbs were skeletal and withered, sticks draped in mottled flesh, and her face was horribly twisted. "What's wrong with her?" Tach asked, afraid of the answer. Another joker, he thought, another victim of his failures.

Angelface looked down at the twisted old woman, sighed, and closed the locket with a snap. "When she was four, in Little Italy, she was run over while playing in the street. A horse stepped on her face, and the wagon wheel crushed her spine. That was in, oh, 1886. She was completely paralyzed, but she lived. If you could call it living. That little girl spent the next sixty years in a bed, being fed, washed, and read to, with no company except the holy sisters. Sometimes all she wanted was to die. She dreamed about what it would be like to be beautiful, to be loved and desired, to be able to dance, to be able to feel feel things. Oh, how she wanted to things. Oh, how she wanted to feel feel things." She smiled. "I should have said thank you long ago, Tacky, but it's hard for me to show that picture to anyone. But I am grateful, and now I owe you doubly. You'll never pay for a drink at the Funhouse." things." She smiled. "I should have said thank you long ago, Tacky, but it's hard for me to show that picture to anyone. But I am grateful, and now I owe you doubly. You'll never pay for a drink at the Funhouse."

He stared at her. "I don't want a drink," he said. "No more. That's done." And it was, he knew; if she could live with her pain, what excuse could he possibly have to waste his life and talents? "Angelface," he said suddenly, "I can make you something better than heroin. I was . . . I am am a biochemist, there are drugs on Takis, I can synthesize them, painkillers, nerve blocks. If you'll let me run some tests on you, maybe I can tailor something to your metabolism. I'll need a lab, of course. Setting things up will be expensive, but the drug could be made for pennies." a biochemist, there are drugs on Takis, I can synthesize them, painkillers, nerve blocks. If you'll let me run some tests on you, maybe I can tailor something to your metabolism. I'll need a lab, of course. Setting things up will be expensive, but the drug could be made for pennies."

"I'll have some money," she said. "I'm selling the Funhouse to Des. But what you're talking about is illegal."

"To h.e.l.l with their stupid laws," Tach blazed. "I won't tell if you won't." Then words came tumbling out one after the other, a torrent: plans, dreams, hopes, all of the things he'd lost or drowned in cognac and Sterno, and Angelface was looking at him, astonished, smiling, and when the drugs they had given him finally began to wear off, and his arm began to throb again, Doctor Tachyon remembered the old disciplines and sent the pain away, and somehow it seemed as though part of his guilt and his grief went with it, and he was whole again, and alive.

The headline said TURTLE, TACHYON SMASH HEROIN RING TURTLE, TACHYON SMASH HEROIN RING. Tom was gluing the article into the sc.r.a.pbook when Joey returned with the beers. "They left out the Great and Powerful part," Joey observed, setting down a bottle by Tom's elbow.

"At least I got first billing," Tom said. He wiped thick white paste off his fingers with a napkin, and shoved the sc.r.a.pbook aside. Underneath were some crude drawings he'd made of the sh.e.l.l. "Now," he said, "where the f.u.c.k are we going to put the record player, huh?"

Interlude Two From The New York Times The New York Times, September 1, 1966.

JOKERTOWN CLINIC TO.

OPEN ON WILD CARD DAY.

The opening of a privately funded research hospital specializing in the treatment of the Takisian wild card virus was announced yesterday by Dr. Tachyon, the alien scientist who helped to develop the virus. Dr. Tachyon will serve as chief of staff at the new inst.i.tution, to be located on South Street, overlooking the East River.

The facility will be known as the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic in honor of the late Mrs. Blythe Stanhope van Renssaeler. Mrs. van Renssaeler, a member of the Exotics for Democracy from 1947 to 1950, died in 1953 in Wittier Sanatorium. She was better known as "Brain Trust."

The Van Renssaeler Clinic will open its doors to the public on September 15th, the twentieth anniversary of the release of the wild card virus over Manhattan. Emergency room service and outpatient psychological care will be provided by the 196-bed hospital. "We're here to serve the neighborhood and the city," Dr. Tachyon said in an afternoon press conference on the steps of Jetboy's Tomb, "but our first priority is going to be the treatment of those who have too long gone untreated, the jokers whose unique and often desperate medical needs have been largely ignored by existing hospitals. The wild card was played twenty years ago, and this continued willful ignorance about the virus is criminal and inexcusable." Dr. Tachyon said that he hoped the Van Renssaeler Clinic might become the world's leading center for wild card research, and spearhead efforts to perfect the cure for wild card, the so-called "trump" virus.

The clinic will be housed in a historic waterfront building originally constructed in 1874. The building was a hotel, known as the Seaman's Haven, from 1888 through 1913. From 1913 through 1942 it was the Sacred Heart Home for Wayward Girls, after which it served as an inexpensive lodging house.

Dr. Tachyon announced that the purchase of the building and a complete interior renovation had been funded by a grant from the Stanhope Foundation of Boston, headed by Mr. George C. Stanhope. Mr. Stanhope is the father of Mrs. van Renssaeler. "If Blythe were alive today, I know she'd want nothing more than to work at Dr. Tachyon's side," Mr. Stanhope said.

Initially the work at the clinic will be funded by fees and private donations, but Dr. Tachyon admitted that he had recently returned from Was.h.i.+ngton, where he conferred with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Sources close to the Vice President indicate that the administration is considering partial funding of the Jokertown clinic through the offices of the Senate Committee on Ace Resources and Endeavors (SCARE).

A crowd of approximately five hundred, many of them obvious victims of the wild card virus, greeted Dr. Tachyon's announcement with enthusiastic applause.

THE LONG, DARK.

NIGHT OF.

FORTUNATO.

by Lewis s.h.i.+ner

All he could think about was how beautiful she'd been when she was alive.

"I got to ask you can you identify the remains," the coroner's man said.

"It's her," Fortunato said.

"Name?"

"Erika Naylor. Erika with a K K."

"Address?"

"Sixteen Park Avenue."

The man whistled. "High cla.s.s. Next of kin?"

"I don't know. She was from Minneapolis."

"Right. That's where they all come from. You'd think they had a hooker academy there or something."

Fortunato looked up from the long, horrible wound in the girl's throat and let the coroner's man see his eyes. "She wasn't a hooker," he said.

"Sure," the man said, but he took a step backward and looked down at his clipboard. "I'll put down 'model.' "

Geisha, Fortunato thought. She had been one of his geishas. Bright, funny, beautiful, a chef and a ma.s.seuse and an unlicensed psychologist, imaginative and sensual in bed.

She was the third of his girls in the last year to be neatly sliced to pieces.

He stepped out onto the street, knowing how bad he looked. He was six foot four and methedrine thin, and when he slumped his chest seemed to disappear into his spine. Lenore had been waiting for him, huddled in her black fake-fur jacket, even though the sun had finally come out. When she saw him she put him straight into a cab and gave the driver her address on West 19th.

Fortunato stared out the window at the long-haired girls in embroidered denim, at the black-light posters in the store windows, at the bright chalk scrawled over all the sidewalks. It was nearly Easter, two winters past the Summer of Love, but the idea of spring left him as cold as the morgue's tile floor.

Lenore took his hand and squeezed it, and Fortunato leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.