Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (8 page)

Sometimes he told himself that the sick, exploitative, sexist situations his characters got into were okay because they were only ink on paper. Just drawings, not hurting anyone. Sometimes he even believed it, a little.

None of Eddie’s cast of characters had ever been or would ever be published. But in some ways they were all the family he had.

Eddie’s mother had been killed by the same wild card virus outbreak that left him a joker. His father had died of a stroke—or the strain of caring for a hideous, deformed child as a single parent—just a few years later. But thanks to his cast of characters, one of the teachers in the group home had spotted and nurtured his artistic talent. Eventually his work brought him enough money to move out of the group home and live independently.

But independence for a freelance artist was always a precarious thing, and he really needed this paycheck if he was going to keep the wolf from the door. So once he had taken care of business in the bathroom and swallowed another Percocet, he gathered his tools and materials, threw on some clothing—keenly aware of the stink of his unwashed body—and hauled himself down the two flights to the street.

With his hunched, diminutive stature, Eddie’s view of the heavy Canal Street pedestrian traffic was mostly butts and thighs. But he could still feel the pressure of eyes on the back of his neck, see the small children who pointed and gaped, hear the disparaging comments … he couldn’t fail to know just what his fellow New Yorkers thought of him. Even his fellow jokers. Did they think the virus had left him deaf as well as ugly, malformed, and in constant pain?

Yes, ugly, even by Jokertown standards. Though he’d been hearing that Joker Pride crap for his whole life, he couldn’t buy into the idea that “everyone is beautiful in their own way” applied to him. His head, one arm, more than half his torso, and both legs were hideous masses of deformed flesh, with lumpy pink skin like an old burn scar and tufts of black hair sprouting here and there. Even his bones had been warped and twisted by the virus into a parody of the normal human form.

And yes, despite his best efforts, he did have an odor. Thank you very much for noticing, ma’am. Was it his fault his warty, craggy, twisted body was so hard to keep clean? Bitch.

As if he needed a reminder of why he got all his groceries and other purchases delivered.

Grimly Eddie stumped onward. His right hand, the good one, gripped his four-footed cane, bearing more than half his weight on every other step. Every few minutes he paused to rest.

Finally he reached the station house, Fort Freak itself. Three labored steps up to the door, which opened even before he’d begun to fumble with his portfolio and cane. A massive pair of legs stepped aside, and a deep voice rumbled, “Morning, Eddie.”

Eddie tipped back his hat and looked up at a furry face, the smile inviting despite its fearsome fangs. “Morning, Beastie.” Beastie Bester was one of the few people in the precinct who didn’t seem to mind Eddie’s appearance.

“Haven’t seen you in a while. What brings you in today?”

“Dunno. I got a call from a Detective Black.” He shrugged. “It’s work.”

After signing in with the winged desk sergeant—and enduring the indignity of standing on a box to reach the desk—Eddie clipped a temporary badge to his lapel and waited. Officers in blue polyester bustled in and out, their belts crowded with guns and handcuffs and other cop equipment.

Daniel in the lions’ den,
Eddie thought, and loosened his tie.

The first time he’d come to the police station he hadn’t slept a wink the night before. But he’d come anyway—no one knew what his characters got up to at night, and his fellow freelance artist Swash had insisted that the job was easy and the money good. And, indeed, he’d gotten nothing from his occasional forays into cop territory but a few modest paychecks and a paradoxical sense of civic pride. He could even boast that his work had helped to put away some very nasty characters.

If, that is, he had anyone to boast to.

“’Scuse me,” said one of the cops, a shapely redheaded nat with a detective’s badge clipped to the waistband of her skirt, and Eddie shuffled out of her way. But despite her surface politeness, as she pushed past he saw that her nose wrinkled in distaste. Eddie thought about what Mister Nice Guy might do with a redhead like her and a leather strap.

“Eddie Carmichael?” Eddie jerked his eyes up to see a pale nat in a cheap suit. “I’m Detective Black.” He was young, even younger than Eddie, and had a soft voice that Eddie recognized from the earlier phone call. “You can call me Franny. This is my partner, Detective Stevens.” Stevens was a tall, black nat in a dark suit. He was slim, with prominent ears …

Jesus Christ. It was Mr. Trio.

“Whoa,” Franny said, catching Eddie’s shoulder with one slim hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I…” He swallowed hard. “I just had a tough time getting here this morning.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I don’t deal well with crowds.”

“Maybe you should sit down.”

Franny helped Eddie to a seat, then fetched him a paper cup of water. He took it with shaking hands, trying not to look at Stevens. “I’ll be all right.”

If the situation weren’t so terrifying it would almost be laughable. Called in to sketch his own creation! But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect him to Gary Glitch. As long as he kept calm and did his job—maybe not too good of a job, but not so bad as to attract attention—he could just collect his paycheck and that would be the end of it. The hardest part would be pretending that he’d never seen Stevens before.

No, the hardest part would be
not
drawing Gary Glitch as though he’d drawn the character ten thousand times before.

“What’s the case?” Eddie asked, struggling to keep his voice level.

Franny shrugged. “Missing persons. Sort of.”

“I, uh—oh?” Eddie fumbled with his portfolio and cane to cover his confusion and relief. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“It’s not much of a case,” Franny admitted.

“It’s the best you deserve,” Stevens muttered under his breath, so low that Franny couldn’t have heard it.
Oh, really?

“We aren’t even really sure anyone has actually gone missing,” Franny explained as he led Eddie through swinging doors and across the crowded, noisy wardroom, where too many desks were crammed together under harsh fluorescent lighting and a miasma of stale vending machine coffee. “Very few of the supposed missing persons are, you know, anyone that anyone would miss. But now we’ve got a witness—someone who claims he saw some of the missing jokers getting snatched off the street.” They paused outside an interrogation room and looked through the one-way glass. “For all the good he does us.”

Slumped in a plastic folding chair on the other side of the glass was one of the most pathetic-looking jokers Eddie had ever seen. His head resembled a wolf’s—a mangy, flea-bitten, ragged-eared cur of a wolf. The fur was matted and patchy, with a lot of gray around the muzzle; the watery, red-rimmed eyes stared wearily at nothing; and the lolling tongue was coated with gray phlegm. The rest of him was essentially human, with a stained and tattered Knicks T-shirt stretched across a swollen beer gut. Dandruff and fallen gray hairs littered the shoulders of his filthy denim jacket.

Stevens crossed his arms on his chest. “His name’s Lupo. Used to tend bar at some swank joint, he says, but that was a long time ago. Now he’s just another denizen of No Fixed Abode.”

“He was passed out behind a Dumpster,” Franny continued, “and woke up just as the supposed kidnappers were leaving the scene. Didn’t get a very good look at the perps, but maybe enough for a sketch.”

Eddie was dubious. “I’ll do what I can.”

Franny sighed. “I sure hope so, or else this case is just going to fizzle out.”

At the sound of the door, Lupo’s head jerked up like a spastic puppet’s, his eyes wide and feral. Eddie let the detective precede him into the room.

“It’s just me, Lupo,” Franny said.

Lupo’s muzzle corrugated as Eddie entered, his eyes narrowing and his ears going back. Though the wolf-headed joker was no rose himself—he stank of garbage, cheap wine, and wet dog—his beer-can-sized muzzle probably gave him a keen sense of smell. “What’s
that
?”

Love you too
, Eddie thought.

“This is Eddie Carmichael, the forensic artist,” Franny said. “He’s going to draw some sketches of the men you saw last night.”

With some reluctance Lupo pulled his eyes off of Eddie and stared pleadingly at the detectives. “I tol’ you, it was dark. And I don’ remember stuff so good anymore.”

Stevens gave Lupo something that Eddie figured was supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Mr. Carmichael is a professional, Lupo. He’ll help you to remember.” He looked sidewise at Eddie, his hard glance saying
Right?

Eddie froze for a moment, remembering those cold cop eyes looking over the barrel of a gun at him, then shook away the memory. “That’s, uh, that’s right.”

“Well then.” Stevens stood. “I’ll leave you two to this oh-so-important case while I get back to some real detective work.” He looked pointedly at Franny. “If you need any help … don’t call me.” And then, without a backward glance, he left.

Eddie swallowed, his heart rate slowing toward normal. There was something weird happening between the two detectives, but as far as Eddie was concerned, he felt like he’d dodged a bullet for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Hauling himself up into a chair, Eddie unzipped his portfolio. He pulled out a sketchpad, a fat black 6B pencil, and a battered three-ring binder of reference images, but to begin with he just laid them all flat on the table. “There’s nothing magic about this process,” he said, beginning a spiel he’d used a hundred times. But this time he was trying to calm himself as much as the witness. “I’m going to ask you some questions, but you’ll be doing most of the talking. All right?”

Lupo’s ears still lay flat against his head, but he nodded.

“So, just to begin with … how many of them were there?”

“Three, maybe four. They had this poor asshole with four legs all tied up carrying him toward a van. I only saw the front, couldn’t get no plate—”

“Um, actually,” Franny interrupted, “he doesn’t need to know about the crime. That’s my department.”

Eddie nodded an acknowledgment at the detective, then returned his attention to Lupo. “All
I
want to know is what they looked like.”

A wrinkle appeared between Lupo’s eyebrows, and the pink tip of his tongue poked out. “Well, they were all guys … or really ugly women.” He smirked. “This one big guy seemed to be ordering the other ones around.”

“Tell me about him.”

Lupo spread his hands like he was describing the fish that got away. “Big.”

Eddie sighed. “
How
big? Six feet tall? Bigger?”

“I dunno. Six four, maybe?” The lupine joker squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over them, bending his head down. “I used to be good at this,” he muttered into the table’s scarred Formica. “When I was tending bar at the Crystal Palace, I knew every regular customer. What they liked, how they tipped, everything.”

The name of the bar struck Eddie like a lightning bolt. “You tended bar at the
Palace
?”

Franny just looked at Eddie. He was a nat, so he couldn’t possibly understand how important the Crystal Palace was. Eddie himself could only dream of what the place had been like—he’d been only five when the place had burned in ’88—but here was someone who’d actually worked there!

Lupo raised his muzzle from the table. “Yeah. I was the number two guy in the whole place—I was in charge whenever Elmo wasn’t there.”

Eddie felt as though he were in the presence of one of the Founding Fathers … or, at least, the decrepit, wasted shell of one. “Did you know … Chrysalis?”

Lupo’s leer was an amazing thing, the long black lip curling up to reveal an impressive array of discolored fangs. “Yeah, I knew her.” He sat up straighter, his eyes seeming to focus for once, though what they were focused
on
was something beyond the walls of the interrogation room. But after only a moment, he slumped in his chair again. “Not that she ever gave me the time of day.”