Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (58 page)

The Big Bleed

Part Ten

“THEY SAID NO.”

Franny had returned from his delivery of Berman to Fort Freak with the bad news. He slumped on Berman’s couch, accepting a glass of water delivered to him by Jamal and Mollie, who moved like participants in a three-legged race.

“What kind of ‘no’?” Jamal said. “‘No’ as in ‘not now,’ or ‘not without
SCARE
’? Or ‘no’ as in ‘never’?”

“‘No never nada.’ They only thing Maseryk promised to do was tell
SCARE
so they could put the jokers on their to-do list.”

“That’s just what I didn’t want.”

“Well, will it make you happier to know he was going to add State, the Committee, the mayor’s office, and I believe parks and rec?”

Jamal just closed his eyes.
Christ.

“You two really know how to make a girl feel protected,” Mollie said. “God.” She tried to cross her arms, a gesture rendered impossible by her linkage to Jamal.

For the first half hour, Jamal had not found being handcuffed to Mollie Steunenberg to be a complete burden. She was pretty and bouncy and not wearing more clothing than necessary. Being free from Michael Berman improved her mood, too: she never reached flirty, but she had gone some distance from sullen.

But only for the first half hour. Four more half hours had passed, and now both of them were utterly sick of each other’s company. “I don’t like this any more than you do,” Jamal told the girl. Her attitude had helped him make a decision. “Our only way out is forward.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Jamal turned to Franny. “We do this ourselves. Now.”

He didn’t have to spend much time or energy on the proposal, which was helpful, since he had diminishing amounts of both. For Franny, the pitch was simple: “Every hour that passes, some citizen of Jokertown dies.”

For Mollie aka Tesseract, it was this: “The only way you’re ever going to be free of Baba Yaga and the rest of her gang is if we take them out.”

“Can we kill that old bitch?”

“It will probably come to that.”

She was suddenly happier than Jamal had ever seen her.

The first sensation Jamal felt upon stepping through Tesseract’s “door” from Berman’s apartment into the gladiator compound inside Maxim’s was dizzying vertigo.

Had Mollie bothered to consider the fact that the spatial orientation in New York, Eastern Time Zone, was radically different from that of Talas, Kazakhstan, Asian Crazy Time? Was it even possible? Or was this his illness at work, not only robbing him of his bounceback, but of
any
mental or physical resilience?

No matter. Jamal took in the huge digital television screen mounted above a wet bar, showing chaos in the arena itself. A camera operator was struggling to locate the action (
for whom
? Jamal wondered) as what looked like Snake Boy’s torso slithered through a crowd of glitterati, knocking them sideways while zapping them with his poisoned tongue.

Nice.

Adding to Jamal’s disorientation were the smell of the gladiator’s quarters—heavy on cologne, perfume, and cigarette smoke—and the sound—hideous bass-heavy rap. Lounging on couches or bellied up to the bar were maybe a dozen jokers and twice that number of attractive “hostesses.” And, holding a drink, his arm around a tall nat woman with un-nat breasts, Dmitri … fat, sleepy-eyed, sloppy, menacing.

Then Franny and Mollie walked in—looking as though they were holding hands like high school sweethearts, though most high school sweethearts weren’t joined by handcuffs.

And, to quote Big Bill Norwood, a great deal of Hades came unmoored.

The jokers all sprang to their feet—those that had feet. Their eyes went wide—those that had eyes—with surprise or amusement. “What the hell is this?” growled an eight-foot-tall man-mountain joker Jamal knew as El Monstro.

Only Dmitri seemed to appreciate the situation. Shoving his goddess to one side, he smirked and turned his menacing attention to the intruders.

“Franny!” Jamal shouted and pointed. “Cap him!”

But Franny hesitated. And in that moment, Jamal felt as sad and sick and weak and afraid as he’d ever felt in his life. Worse than the day he’d broken his leg on the football field. He thought of Julia crushed, his parents dead, his own life ended. He wanted to crawl into a hole anywhere but here—
Dmitri at work.
Knowing what to expect in no way lessened the effect.

But that foreknowledge gave Jamal a few precious seconds of lucidity, and enough energy to raise the Glock. He snapped off three rounds that caught a surprised Dmitri in the back, shoulder, and, as he turned, in the face.

Down he went in a spray of blood and cranial matter.

“Oh my God!” Mollie was almost hysterical, and Jamal couldn’t blame her. Franny stared. “Sorry, cop training.” Blinking hard, he forced a smile. “I wanted to tell him to throw down his gun…”

Jamal stared at dead Dmitri. It seemed that someone else had pulled that trigger. There was no time to reflect, however. More goons with guns would be here soon. “Hey, people,” he shouted. “We are here to take you back to New York!”

The unfortunately-but-appropriately-named Wartface was giddy about being rescued. “About fucking time! Can I hit anyone before we go? I’ve got a list!”

“Sorry.” Jamal turned to Tesseract. “Do it!”

Without a word, Mollie opened a “door” to Fort Freak. They should be safe there, and it would allow the cops to remove them from the missing-persons list … once they calmed down. “There’s the exit. Move!”

There was a mad rush. First the hookers, then the jokers flopping, crawling, hopping after them. They piled through the door, and Jamal imagined the chaos at the other end of the journey.

Two goons appeared from a side door, guns blazing in spite of the presence of at least two joker-gladiators. Jamal ducked: he knew these idiots were just spraying rounds. He squeezed off three rounds that were aimed no better, but served to force the goons to take cover.

As he reloaded, Jamal had a sudden surge of energy. Maybe he
was
some kind of adrenaline junkie, happy only when moving, chasing, shooting. It certainly fit the persona of Stuntman the ace from
SCARE
and Hollywood. Maybe he was seeing the endgame. All they had to do was grab the rest of the jokers—

Franny and Mollie were forced to duck as a lucky shot from one of the goons passed between them, shattering a mirror on the wall. Franny had finally lost his inhibitions, unleashing a spray of covering fire that silenced both goons.

Mollie was crying, whether out of fear or anger or the residual effects of the Dmitri mindfuck, Jamal couldn’t know. He wondered what these Tesseract shifts did to the girl—God knew that bounceback drained him, even when he was healthy.

El Monstro had been lingering off to one side (his height made it impossible for him to truly take cover). Now the eight-foot-tall joker abruptly headed for the arena door. Jamal grabbed him. “Hey, big guy, where are you going?” He nodded toward the “door.” “New York is that way.”

“I’m not going. I like it here!” El Monstro insisted.

For a moment Jamal was furious—this was just the latest entry in a long litany of stupidity he had endured since learning about Wheels and the missing jokers. He was out of time, out of patience. He was not going to let this big goon stop him from completing this mission, no more than he had let Rustbelt stop him from winning
American Hero
! He trained his Glock at El Monstro’s vast mid-section. “Look,” Jamal said, “I don’t know what they’ve done to your head here, but you’re going through that door.”

With no apparent windup, no warning, El Monstro simply swung one of his giant arms and metal fists toward him. It was slow, but still too fast for Jamal Norwood to dodge.

The massive fist slammed into the right side of his face.

It was worse than his first deliberate jump from a tall building, in
Halloween Night XIII
. He had time for the sickening realization that there was going to be no bounceback, that Stuntman was falling fading dying.

Galahad in Blue

Part Ten

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO SLOW
down.

Franny’s vision narrowed to a tunnel that showed him only Jamal’s face, blood flying from his mouth, his right eye dangling loose, the deep indentation in the side of his skull. The agent seemed to collapse in stages, until he lay on the floor like a broken toy, casually discarded. Mollie was screaming in his ear, trying to hide behind him, yanking at the handcuffs that joined them.

Franny yelled. It wasn’t even words, just an incoherent sound of rage and grief and denial. He brought up his gun.

And suddenly the dragging weight on his left arm was gone. He whirled in time to see Mollie, a paper clip clutched between her fingers, step backwards through an opening that afforded him a brief glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, flipping him the bird. Then the doorway snapped shut.

Of course the door to Fort Freak was also gone.

Trapped.
Panic clogged his throat.

The whine of a bullet past his head brought him back to the precariousness of his situation. Franny dove behind a sofa. He heard El Monstro yelling to the remaining guards, “I’ll get him.”

Despite his ringing ears from all the gunfire Franny could hear and even feel El Monstro’s footfalls as he closed on him. He leaped up and vaulted over the back of the sofa. He snapped off a few shots at the last remaining guard on the catwalk overhead, who ducked into cover.

El Monstro was closing. It wasn’t that he was particularly fast, but he was so big that each stride covered a lot of ground. The buffet table was on Franny’s left. Franny’s eyes flicked across the offerings—deli meats, bread, cheese, a mound of caviar, a soup tureen set on a hot plate. The handle of a ladle invited someone to try a bowl.

Franny snatched out the ladle brimming with hot soup. The smell of paprika hit his nose. About half spilled as he whirled, but there was enough left in the big ladle for Franny to flick into El Monstro’s face. The big joker howled, and clawed at his face and eyes.
Guess it was hot not sweet paprika,
Franny thought inanely. He closed with the big joker, screwed the barrel of his gun into El Monstro’s ear, and pulled the trigger twice.

Until this day he had never actually fired his gun outside the range. Most cops went through their entire careers and never fired their piece much less killed someone. Now Franny had killed a man. A man he’d supposedly come to rescue.

It wasn’t like in the movies. It wasn’t even like watching Jamal shoot Dmitri. His knees suddenly felt like they’d been replaced with rubber bands, and he found himself sitting on the floor. A bullet creased the air where his head had been only seconds before.

There was no time for shock or regret. If he was getting out of here alive he needed to take care of that asshole on the catwalk, and find his way to the outside. After that—well, he’d think about after that once he got that far.

Access to the catwalk wasn’t immediately obvious. There was another burst of gunfire from above that sent Franny scrambling for cover, but someone on the high ground always has the advantage, and Franny found himself knocked sideways from the force of the bullet that slammed into his left shoulder.