Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand (2 page)

Jay stepped out. "Call the police, Sascha," he said. "And don't call me Popinjay, dammit."

8:00 A.M.

Brennan leaned into the hill, arms pumping, breath flowing easily, sprinting up the steep grade near the end of the run that had taken him over forested hills and through dew-drenched meadows. The route he followed varied, but always ended at the unpaved county road that led him, sweaty and pleasantly winded, back to the gravel driveway with ARCHER LANDSCAPING AND NURSERY posted at the entrance.

The driveway looped around a series of gardens that were living advertisements of his horticultural skills. First was a Japanese miniature hill garden in the
tsukiyama
form, then an English shrubbery, and third a traditional flower bed blooming with a dozen different species of a dozen different hues. The driveway circled the flower bed and led past two greenhouses-one for tropical foliage, the other for desert species-and the A-frame house.

Brennan finished his run with a gut-busting sprint that brought him around behind the A-frame. He took a few minutes to cool down and calm his breathing, then folded himself comfortably into a meditative posture and gazed out over the
kare sansui,
the raked gravel bed rippling like frozen water in the morning breeze. Nested in the gravel were three rock triads. Brennan spent a timeless time sunk in the pool of
zazen,
not studying the rocks, their shadows, or the patterns of the moss that grew on them, then stood smoothly, relaxed, refreshed and ready for the day.

He went back into the bedroom that was sparsely furnished with a futon on the polished wood floor, a comfortable chair with a reading lamp and side table stacked with books, and a large wicker clothes hamper. Jennifer had gotten out of bed. He could hear water running in the shower of the connecting bathroom. Brennan took off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and dropped it in the hamper as he passed on through to the room that served as a combination living room/office. He flicked on the television to get the morning news, then sat at his deck and fired up the PC to check his schedule.

He watched the television as the computer tracked down the proper file. Most of the news was devoted to the Democratic National Convention, convening today in Atlanta. Nothing of substance had happened yet, but the analysis and predictions already seemed overblown and overdone.

Gregg Hartmann was the favorite, but his nomination would be a struggle, particularly with the man directly opposite him in political philosophy and belief-the Reverend Leo Barnett.

Brennan distrusted all politicians, but if he could vote, he would cast his ballot for Hartmann. The man seemed honest and caring, especially when compared with the demagogue Barnett.

A lot of jokers were backing Hartmann. The news cameras panned the Atlanta public parks where they had gathered by the thousands to noisily show the nation their depth of support for the senator.

Brennan watched a few interviews with the joker on the street, then turned down the volume on the television set and turned his attention to the computer screen. He wished .

Hartmann and his joker supporters well, but the day was already getting old and he had his own worries.

His schedule had come up on the screen, and it promised to be a full day. Archer Landscaping was in the middle of two jobs. Brennan was building a hill garden with a
tsutai
ochi, a miniature waterfall trickling over a bed of emplaced rocks, for a Japanese-American banker who had just moved into the area, and he was also constructing a multiterraced shrubbery with a fish pond for a doctor who lived down the road. Joachim Ortiz, Brennan's foreman, would boss the crew at the doctor's while he took care of the other job. Japanese gardens were his personal specialty.

Brennan leaned back in the chair, still mildly surprised at the contentment he felt as he contemplated the upcoming day. Abandoning death and destruction and returning to the country to nurture life was the best thing he had ever done. He felt cleansed, content, and at peace for the first time in years. Sometimes he felt guilty for setting aside his vendetta against Kien and the Shadow Fist Society, but over the last few months the guilt had been coming less frequently and with less intensity.

He took his copy of
Sakuteiki,
Tachibana Toshisuna's classic treatise on garden design, from his reference shelf, but before he could look through it to get some ideas for the new job he stopped to stare at the image of a well-remembered woman that filled the television screen. He turned up the volume.

" . . mysterious woman known only as Chrysalis was found dead this morning in the office of her nightclub, the Crystal Palace. The police have so far refused comment, but an ace of spades found on her body has linked the slaying to the mysterious bow-and-arrow vigilante known as Yeoman, who was responsible for at least fifty deaths in 1986 and early 1987."

Brennan was still staring at the screen as Jennifer Maloy walked through the wall, damp from her shower, carrying two cups of tea.

"What's the matter?" she asked when she saw the expression on his face. "What happened?"

Brennan turned to her, the coldness back in his eyes, the hardness back on his face. "Chrysalis is dead."

"Dead?" she echoed, unbelievingly. "Murdered."

"How? By who?" Jennifer asked as she sank down into the chair facing him. She handed him one of the cups. He took it mechanically and put it aside.

"Report didn't say. But her killer tried to frame me by putting an ace of spades on the body."

"Frame you? Why?"

Brennan looked at her for the first time. "I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

"The police-"

"The police think I did it."

"That's insane," Jennifer said. "We haven't been to the city for over a year."

They'd been so busy that it hadn't seemed that long since Brennan had called off his vendetta against the Shadow Fist crime lord named Kien and left New York City with Jennifer. They'd spent some time traveling, some time resting and healing and learning to love one another, then settled down outside of Goshen, a small town just north of New York City. Jennifer had begun writing what she hoped would become the definitive biography of Robert Tomlin. Brennan, weary of dealing in death, wanting to build rather than destroy, had started a landscaping business. He found that he had a genuine talent for horticulture, and Jennifer was happy researching and writing her book. They'd been quite content with their quiet, peaceful, isolated existence.

"Someone set me up," Brennan said in a low voice. "Who?"

He looked at Jennifer. "Kien."

She leaned back, considering it. "Why?"

Brennan shrugged. "Maybe he found out that Chrysalis knew he was head of the Shadow Fists. Maybe he thought that he could get rid of her and me at the same time."

"The police would never find you if we stay here."

"Maybe," Brennan conceded. "But maybe they'll never find Chrysalis's real killer, either."

"We're building something here," Jennifer said. "We can't just let it go."

Let it go. It should be easy, Brennan told himself, to let the past go, to live for the present and the future. But he couldn't. Someone had murdered his ex-lover. He couldn't forget that. And then the murderer had framed him for it. He couldn't forgive that. .

He stood up. "I'm not letting anything go. I can't." Jennifer just looked at him. After a moment he turned and went out to the back and unlocked the shed where he kept his bows and guns. He loaded the van and sat waiting in it for several minutes, wondering if Jennifer was going to join him.

After a while he started the engine and drove away, alone.

Noon

Maseryk played the good cop, Kant played the bad cop, and both of them deserved rave reviews. Jay Ackroyd had seen the act before, though. Maseryk was lean and dark, with intense violet eyes. Kant was a hairless scaled joker with nictitating membranes and pointed teeth. As Jay ran through his story for the seventh time, he found himself wondering whether they swapped roles when the suspect was a joker. He took one look at Kant and decided not to ask.

By lunchtime, even the two detectives had gotten tired of going round the mulberry bush. "If you're playing games with us, you're going to be real sorry," Kant said, showing his incisors.

Jay gave him a who, me? look. "I'm sure Mr. Ackroyd's told us everything he knows, Harv," Maseryk said. "If you do happen to remember anything else that might be of use, you'll give us a call." Maseryk gave him his card, Kant told him not to leave town, and they walked him to the squad room to sign a copy of his statement.

The precinct house was full of familiar faces. The doorman from the Crystal Palace was giving a statement to a uniformed cop while a waitress that Chrysalis has fired last month sobbed loudly in the corner. Other Palace employees waited on long wooden benches by the window. He recognized three waiters, a dishwasher, and the guy who played ragtime piano in the Green Room on Thursday nights. But the most important faces were the ones he didn't see.

Lupo, the relief bartender, sat alone by an unoccupied desk. After he'd dealt with the paperwork, Jay drifted over. "Can you believe it?" the joker asked. "What's going to happen to us?" Lupo had deep-set red eyes and a wolfs face. He'd been shedding; there were hairs all over the shoulders of his denim shirt. Jay brushed them off. Lupo hardly seemed to notice. "I hear it was you found the body," he said. "Was it really the ace-of-spades guy?"

"There was a card next to the body," Jay said. "Yeoman," Lupo muttered angrily. "Son of a bitch. I thought he was gone for good. He used to drink Tullamore Dew. I served him once or twice."

"Ever see him without the mask?"

Lupo shook his head. "No. I hope they catch the fucker." His long red tongue lolled from a corner of his mouth.

Jay looked around the room again. "Where's Elmo?"

"No one's seen him. I heard the cops got a whatchacallit, a APB, out on him."

Kant came up behind them. "Your turn, Lupo," he said, gesturing toward an interrogation room. He stared at Jay. "You still here."

"I'm going, I'm going," Jay said. "As soon as I use the little cops' room."

Kant told him where to find it. By the time Jay emerged, Kant and Maseryk and Lupo were off doing their thing. Jay went back to the captain's cubicle and walked in unannounced.

Captain Angela Ellis was behind the desk, chain-smoking as she scanned a file, flipping pages like a speed reader. She was a tiny Asian woman with green eyes, long black hair, and the toughest job in the NYPD. Her immediate predecessor had been found dead in this office, supposedly of a heart attack, but there were still people who didn't buy that. The captain before him had been murdered, too.

"So," he asked, "you have a lead on Elmo yet?"

Ellis took a drag on her cigarette and looked at him. It took her a moment to remember who he was. "Ackroyd," she finally said, with distaste. "I was just reading your statement."

"There are holes in your story I could drive a truck through." "I can't help that, it's the only story I've got. What kind of story did you get from Sascha?"

"A short one." Ellis stood and began to pace. "He woke up, sensed a strange mind in the building, and came downstairs to find you sneaking out of Chrysalis's office."

"I didn't sneak," Jay said. "I sneak very well, I majored in sneaking in detective school, but on this particular occasion I didn't happen to be sneaking. And there's nothing strange about my mind, thank you. So you don't have a thing on Elmo yet?"

"What do you know about Elmo?" Ellis asked. "Short guy," Jay said.

"Strong guy," Ellis mused. "Strong enough to smash a woman's head into blood pudding, maybe."

"Real good," Jay said, "only wrong. Elmo was devoted to the lady. Utterly. No way he'd hurt her."

Her laugh was hard and humorless. "Ackroyd, you may be the world's chief authority on philandering husbands, but you don't know much about killers. They don't waste the real atrocities on strangers, they save them for family and friends." She started to pace again. Ash fell off the end of her cigarette. "Maybe your friend Elmo was a little too devoted. I heard Chrysalis fucked around a lot. Maybe he got tired of seeing the parade go in and out of her bedroom, or maybe he made a pass of his own and she laughed at him."

"You setting up Elmo to take the fall?" he asked.

Ellis paused over her desk just long enough to stub out her cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with butts. "No one gets set up in this precinct."

"Since when?" Jay asked.

"Since I took over as captain," she told him. She took a pack of Camels out of her jacket, tapped one out, lit up, and resumed pacing. "You're supposed to be a detective. Look at the facts." She stopped at the wall long enough to straighten a framed diploma, then spun back toward him. "Her head looked like a cantaloupe run over by a semi. Both legs broken, every finger in her left hand snapped, her pelvis shattered in six places, massive internal hemorrhaging." She jabbed the cigarette at him for emphasis. "I had a case once, back when I was on the street, where some Gambione capos went to work on a guy with tire irons. Broke every bone in his body. Another time I saw what was left of a hooker who'd been done in by a pimp fried on angel dust. He'd used a baseball bat. Those were pretty ugly, but they looked a lot better than Chrysalis. Those weren't normal blows. Nobody's that strong. Nobody but an ace, or a joker with superhuman strength."

"A lot of people fit that description," Jay pointed out. "Only one of them lived in the Crystal Palace," Ellis pointed out. She crossed behind the desk, sat down, opened a file folder. "Elmo was strong enough-"

"Maybe," Jay said. Elmo was way stronger than a nat, that was true enough, but there were others who made him look like a ninety-seven-pound weakling. The Harlem Hammer, Troll, Carnifex, the Oddity, even that golden asshole Jack Braun. Whether Elmo actually had the raw power to do what had been done to Chrysalis was a question Jay didn't have the expertise to answer.

Captain Ellis ignored his quibbling. "He also had the opportunity, anytime he wanted." She began rearranging a stack of files in her OUT basket, dropping ash on them in the process.