Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (20 page)

“I hope you’ll forgive me for not going with you to the hospital,” Gordon said. “I didn’t know how to fix you, and I wanted to be there when the captives were freed in case they needed a doctor.”

Dina affected thought. “Maybe I’ll forgive you,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I was there when you woke up,” Gordon pointed out.

She’d come to herself about noon on Monday, demanding her clothes, meat protein, and her gun. No permanent harm seemed to have been done to her, and she could remember nothing of the time she’d been in a coma. “You were the first person I saw,” said Dina. “You get points for that.”

“At least the sight didn’t send you back into a coma.”

She laughed thinly.

“When the first cops turned up at the facility,” Gordon said, “they saw three dogs shot dead in front of the gate and the corpse of a man who’d had his throat ripped out. It was an obvious crime scene, and they no longer needed a warrant to go in, but they felt a little leery of going in by themselves and called for backup, and while they waited Franny Black showed up with about half the detectives from Fort Freak.” He grinned. “They were toting some serious firepower and a lot of attitude. Harvey Kant even had a tommy gun that must have dated from Lucky Luciano’s day—which, by the way, made me wonder just how old Kant actually is. So our guys just brushed the Jersey cops aside and stormed the place.”

Gordon laughed. “They were serious. For some reason they thought you were being held captive in there.”

Dina’s eyes narrowed. “Who gave them that idea?” she asked.

“They must have misinterpreted my phone call,” Gordon said. His face was deadpan. “Our guys were too late. The compound had been emptied. At least three computers were carried away, but they did manage to pull up a few names off envelopes and bills. But they did find Steely Dan and two kidnapped Jokertown residents held in some kind of steel-lined underground cells in the rearmost building.” He shook his head. “It was like some supervillain’s headquarters from the movies.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t put them in dog cages,” Dina said.

“Dog cages aren’t strong enough for Dan or any other wild card with extra strength,” Gordon said. “He would have ripped his way right out. The perps needed a custom facility.”

“But what was it for?”

“Even the captives didn’t know.” All Steely Dan knew was that he’d gone to answer the door, and there had been a couple of guys there with stun guns. They’d tased him into helplessness, then bound him, thrown him in a van, and driven away.

“They were fed regularly. They weren’t mistreated beyond being held against their will.” He looked down at the gleaming tableware laid out on either side of his fine china plate. “The brass are thinking they were to be used to train dogs to kill people,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking. Maybe they were being held for … medical experiments.”

Dina gave a canine growl that came very close to raising the hairs on Gordon’s neck. “That ain’t right,” she said.

“Maybe if we can
ID
the body, or if the latent fingerprints tell us anything…”

“That dead guy was Russian or something, right?” Dina said. “If he was a crook, maybe the Russians can tell us who he was.”

“Maybe.” Gordon spread his hands wide. “So now the Jersey cops are involved, and the
NYPD
, and the
FBI
because there was a kidnapping. And
FBI
and
ATF
are both investigating my shed, because they’re half convinced I’m a terrorist.”

“‘Blown to constituent atoms,’” Dina quoted. “Where’s their evidence?”

“Well,” Gordon said dubiously, “there’s the big rocket engine in the barn. They might make something of that, I suppose.”

She gave a laugh. “At least you’re not a joker. They’d put you with the Twisted Fists.” He looked at her. She looked back at him, then frowned. “You aren’t a joker, right?” she said.

The police at Fort Freak had every reason to think he was a joker, because there it was in his file, the fact he’d tested positive for the wild card. In fact he’d been struck by the virus on the island of Okinawa, where his Air Force father had been stationed. Gordon had been in the hospital, out of his mind with fever, vast tumors growing everywhere on his skin, his heart thundering as his blood pressure crashed into the basement …

American military hospitals come equipped for all sort of contingencies. They’d given him the trump, which in those days had only a thirty percent chance of success. And it had worked, reversing the chaotic wreckage the wild card was making of his body. He’d test positive for the rest of his life, but in fact he was a nat. A nat with his height, his weight, and his olfactory sense on the extreme edge of normal, but a nat nonetheless.

“Am I a joker?” he repeated. “No, I’m not.”

She screwed up her face as she looked at him, as if she wasn’t quite sure whether or not to believe him. Then she picked up the menu. “Maybe we’d better order.” Dina frowned over the menu, which did not include an English translation. “Well,” she said, “I know what
porc
means.”

“
Cochon
also means pig,” Gordon added helpfully.

“What’s
panés
?”

“In breadcrumbs.”

The waiter stepped forward with his smile and his pad. Gordon ordered calf’s face for an appetizer, followed by pig’s knuckle braised in spices. Dina had onion soup for a starter, followed by—her finger traced the words on the menu as she spoke them aloud—
queue, oreille, museau et pied de cochon panés,
the pork dish coated in breadcrumbs.

Gordon didn’t tell her that she’d just ordered the ear, tail, snout, and foot of a pig. Foreign cookery, he thought, should come with its share of surprises.

If she didn’t like it, he decided, he’d buy her a hot dog from a vendor. Or maybe two.

The Big Bleed

Part Four

“IT LOOKS LIKE OUR
terror plot is stalling out,” Jamal said.

They had returned to the Bleecker after a Holy Roller speech in Harlem, a mercifully brief and trouble-free event, if you ignored the reverend’s disconnected ramblings and his signature “roll-up,” which never failed to win laughs … and lose votes.

Roller had gone to ground, and the
SCARE
team had been released. Upon returning to their ops center, after a slow, nasty drive through the apparently never-ending rain, Jamal had found an update from the Analysis Team at Riker’s.

“We didn’t find ammonium nitrate?” Sheeba said, collapsing her tall frame into her desk chair. No matter what he thought of the Midnight Angel’s leadership style or personal habits, these maneuvers still fascinated Jamal. It was like spying on a whooping crane or some other long-legged bird bending to snatch a fish from a lake … improbable, a bit awkward, but endlessly watchable.

Especially when you happened to be bored and exhausted—and eager for any kind of distraction. “Oh, it’s am nitrate,” Jamal said. “A dangerous amount, too.”

“So, good for us, right?”

“No. The shipment doesn’t connect. Homeland Sec has no lead on a source for it, and more to the point … no buyer. It’s an orphan.”

“Would they know every buyer or potential terrorist in and around New York City? I mean, look at our watch lists.…” They bore hundreds of names, Jamal knew.

“That’s what took a few days. They did a big search and crosscheck, and found no one who seemed to be in the right place to get hold of the shipment.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question. What about the guy
DHS
doesn’t
know?”

“They’ve got an analysis staff that interfaces with every agency on the planet—”

Sheeba suddenly stood up—another impressive physical display. “Are you working for them or us? You’re defending these guys and their lack of information!”

“I’m just telling
you
what they’re telling
me
!”

Sheeba had started to pace. “Maybe I should call Billy Ray.” Another surprise: on the infrequent occasions when Sheeba admitted that she spoke to her husband Billy Ray, aka Carnifex at
SCARE
HQ
, she usually said “the home office” or “our nation’s capital.”

Never his name. Maybe Sheeba wanted to go home, too. Back to a normal life. Whatever that was, for aces. “We have other options,” Jamal said. “New Jersey State Police were at the site. I do know that the body somehow wound up here in Manhattan, Fifth Precinct.”

“I suppose we could call them,” Sheeba said, clearly unenthusiastic about either.

“It’s end of day and we’d just get run around,” Jamal said, struggling to his feet. “Fort Freak’s not far from here. Why don’t I just go over there?”

Sheeba blinked. “Now. In the rain.”

“I have an umbrella,” he said. He glanced toward the window, and, not particularly caring about the truth, said, “And it’s letting up.”

And, what the hell, he might actually learn something at Fort Freak.

To his amusement, his ruse about the weather turned out to be true. The rain had let up, which allowed him to dangle the umbrella from its wrist strap … and use his free hand to hold his phone.

It was the end of the workday, when lower Manhattan’s buildings released their daily captives. But Jamal found the sidewalks blessedly empty … perhaps the threat of additional downpours was keeping people inside. Even the traffic seemed lighter.

No matter—Jamal was free to walk and talk to Julia, the one activity in his day that gave him pleasure, even though it had become increasingly difficult to arrange of late.

Part of it was the time difference, of course. Jamal was three hours ahead. Then there was the
SCARE
schedule along with its mandatory group dinners.

The real problem, however, was Julia’s schedule. If she was at the club, she was unavailable from nine
P.M
. Jamal’s time until two or three in the morning—and those were the times he could talk.

She would sleep from five
A.M
. his time til early afternoon. Her physical situation required that amount of sleep.

So in the past couple of weeks they had taken to saying hello during a brief window between five and six
P.M.
New York time.

It was a hell of a way to run a relationship.

Not that it was like any relationship in Jamal’s undistinguished history. He had had several long-term arrangements, including one that was headed toward marriage until Jamal booked a film shooting in Mexico, where the combination of insane hours, high stress, unnecessary amounts of tequila, and an actress named Mary-Margaret had contributed to some relationship-toxic behavior on Jamal’s part.

Even his bad long-term relationships were a long way in the past … thank you again,
SCARE
. He wanted to keep this one alive. More precisely, he wanted to follow this one wherever it was going. But his first call went straight to voice mail, which was annoying.

Two blocks later—deeper into Jokertown now, where, given the surging population on the sidewalks, the freaks did not seem deterred by the nasty weather—Jamal tried again. Still nothing.

Julia never went anywhere without her phone. It was her one piece of essential gear. In the four months that they’d been seeing each other, she had never ignored two calls in a row. At worst, the second attempt resulted in a “Busy, call u in a few” text. Which she always did.

What could be wrong? Worse yet, what could he do about it?