Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand (29 page)

"Never mind about that," Jay said. "Hiram, we got to talk."

"What was all that about?" Jennifer asked.

Brennan was still seething. "A setup. A goddamned setup."

"What?"

Brennan looked at Jennifer. "We weren't set up. Wyrm and Sui Ma were."

"I see. I think."

"Let's find a phone."

There was one on the corner. Brennan dialed and Fadeout picked it up on the second ring. "Hello."

"I don't like to be lied to," Brennan said softly.

"Well, Cowboy. Nice to hear from you at a decent hour."

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Well, sure. What's it in reference to? I didn't get the dope on Morkle wrong, did I?"

"That was fine," Brennan said. "The dope on Wyrm wasn't quite as accurate."

"Oh?"

"He had nothing to do with Chrysalis's death. He was in Havana when she was killed."

"Oh. Well. Sorry."

Greasy weasel, Brennan thought. "I'm not your private executioner," Brennan said grimly.

"It was an honest mistake-"

"Don't compound the lie," Brennan said. "I'll be in touch-"

"Wait," Fadeout said before Brennan could hang up. "Anything on Chrysalis's files yet?"

Brennan put the phone down without answering.

1:00 P.M.

"It's simply not possible," Hiram said after Jay had finished telling his story. "No."

Jay unzipped the garment bag, brought out the jacket, and laid it on the table between them. "Yes," he said.

The cocktail lounge was one of those places that was as dark at noon as it was at midnight. It was well away from the convention, deserted enough to give them a little privacy.

The air-conditioning was set way below arctic blast, but beads of sweat trickled down Hiram's broad forehead into his neatly trimmed beard. The booth was a tight fit for the aces imposing bulk, his ample stomach pushing up hard against the table, but when Jay put down the jacket, Hiram seemed to squirm backward, as if he were afraid to touch it.

"This is some kind of grotesque misunderstanding. Gregg is a good man. I've known him for years, Jay. For
yearsl"
Jay touched the jacket. "You were with Hartmann in Syria. Is this the jacket or isn't it?"

Hiram forced himself to look at the jacket. "It appears to be," he said. "But Jay, an off-the-rack sport coat, they manufacture them by the thousands. It has to be a fraud, it
has
to be."

"I don't think so," Jay said. "Stigmata had no reason to lie. He didn't even realize what he had. The other jacket was the fraud. Kahina never trusted Gimli. She gave him a double, probably used her own blood so a test would show the presence of the virus. That was what Gimli gave to Chrysalis. The real one Kahina kept for herself. She must have had her own plans, but Hartmann and Mackie Messer didn't give her the time to carry them out."

"Then," Hiram said hesitantly, "Chrysalis..."

"Died for nothing. For a phony jacket."

"The assassin she hired wasn't phony!"

"No," Jay admitted. "George Kerby is real. The hell of it is, right now I'm not sure if I'm rooting for him or against him."

"You can't mean that!" Hiram said in horror. "What Chrysalis did makes her no better than the Nur.. . murder is murder, I don't care what she knew or thought she knew. If she had charges to make, she should have come forward and made them. Doesn't Gregg deserve the opportunity to defend himself? Jay, I tell you, this is all wrong. If you knew Gregg Hartmann the way I do ... he, he's such a fine man ... so much courage ... in Syria, if you'd only seen the way he stood up to the Nur al-Allah, you'd have been so proud. To accuse him of such ... such
monstrous
crimes ... and based on what,
what?
The testimony of Digger Downs?" Hiram was getting angry now. "The man's a professional liar, Jay! How many times have I had to throw him out of Aces High?"

"That's not the issue, Hiram," Jay said.

Hiram Worchester frowned. One hand curled into an impotent fist on the table in front of him. "Where is Downs?" Hiram demanded. "I want to look into his eyes and hear this story for myself. I'll know if he's lying, and I swear, if he is..."

"The airline lost him," Jay said ruefully. The cat carrier hadn't been on the flight after his, or the flight after that one either. Delta said on the next plane for sure. "Never mind."

Hiram looked confused. He drained half his Pimm's Cup in a series of long gulps. His hand was shaking when he put it back on the table. "You didn't say who you think... actually did the ... the business ... with Chrysalis, I mean."

"Let's just say I'm going to be real interested to find out what Billy Ray was doing on Sunday night and Monday morning."

"Billy Ray," Hiram said. "My God, that's absurd! He's a Justice Department operative! You can't think the whole federal government is involved in this, surely!"

Jay shrugged. "Until somebody proves otherwise, I'm not trusting anyone I don't have to."

Hiram finished his drink. He looked down at the empty I glass, but his eyes had turned inward. "So many people have worked so hard. We've all ... done so much. You saw those pour souls in the street. Gregg's their only hope. What will they do if it's true?"

"Vote Republican?" The quip was a halfhearted effort and the minute it was out, he regretted it. It was far too flip for the circumstances, for Hiram's genuine grief.

But Hiram scarcely seemed to hear it. He pulled out a black silk handkerchief from his lapel and used it to mop his brow. The huge man looked confused and lost, too weak to carry all that flesh. "There's a reporter," he said slowly. "Sara Morgenstern, she's been telling everyone that Gregg is a killer ace. No one believed her. She's not a very stable person, you know. But last night, an attempt was made on her life. By an ace, I'm sad to say. Jack Braun saved her, and would have died himself if I hadn't taken a hand."

"I saw the highlights on TV," Jay said. "The man Braun fought fits Digger's description of Mackie Messer."j "It sounds like the same man," Hiram said. "That doesn't prove he was actually working for Gregg, but I suppose ... " He gave a long deep sigh of resignation, like a man being forced to accept something he could not stomach. "I suppose I must take this all seriously. Very well, then." For a moment he sounded like the old Hiram; decisive, full of resolve. "I'll take you to Dr. Tachyon. He can perform the necessary blood test, and if need be, he can go into Hartmann's mind and find the truth. Whatever that truth may be." On the table, his fingers opened and closed, opened and closed.

Hiram stared down at them, grimaced, forced his hand to relax. "So much is at stake," he said. "Jay, if we're wrong, think of all the people we'll hurt."

"And if we're right?" Jay asked quietly.

Hiram seemed to shrink in on himself. "If we're right," Hiram said softly, "God help us all."

"Ever see anything like this before?" Brennan asked Tripod, putting the mysterious note down on the bar, careful to avoid the wetness seeping out from around the joker's beer mug.

Tripod bent down close to the bar to get a good look at it and shook his head. "Nope," he said.

"Great."

Squisher's Basement was still packed with the lunch crowd. Squisher himself was floating contentedly in his aquarium. He waved a long boneless arm at Brennan and whistled in a shrill, piping voice. "Hey, big guy, long time no see. Who's the babe?"

Brennan glanced at Jennifer. "Friend of mine."

"Hey," Squisher said, "we should all be so lucky." He winked his huge, staring eye and smiled leeringly. "Free drinks for my pals," he ordered the bartender.

"Thanks," Brennan said. He remembered the quality of their whiskey. "I'll have a beer," he told the mouthless bartender who was staring at him and Jennifer fixedly.

"White wine," Jennifer said, and the bartender continued to stare. "Uh, I'll have a beer, too."

"Right," he rasped through the small hole cut at the base of his throat.

"Find a table," Brennan told Jennifer and Tripod, "where we can talk things over."

They pushed off into the crowd. He waited for their drinks, nodded thanks to the bartender, then took them over to a small, isolated corner table. He put the drinks down. Tripod took a long sip of beer through a straw.

"So where'd you get that note, Mr. Y?" he asked. Brennan told him between sips of beer. Tripod shook his head after Brennan's story. "You got me baffled."

"Me too," Brennan admitted. "It's obvious that we're being watched. But by who?"

"Besides Lazy Dragon?" Tripod asked.

Brennan nodded. "He certainly hasn't been leaving notes. He's been watching us for Fadeout."

"Well," Tripod said. "I'll keep an eye out. Any other leads to follow?"

"We've eliminated Bludgeon, Oddity, and Wyrm," Brennan said. "Doug Morkle and Quasiman seem unlikely. But there's still two inconsistencies. Two things that still don't add up."

"Kant," Jennifer said. "He investigated Ezili Rouge and said that she was clean. That's not exactly what you told us."

"That's right," Brennan said. "And Sascha. He's still missing. He must know more about the murder than he told me at his mother's."

"And
he's
also connected with Ezili," Jennifer added. "Right," Brennan said.

"Kant should be easy enough to find," Jennifer said. "I'll check with Fort Freak and see where he is." She came back from the phone in less than a minute and sat down, shaking her head. "He didn't report in this morning. No one at the station knows where he is."

"Bingo," Tripod said.

Brennan stood up, smiling grimly. "I hope we can get to him before he disappears, too."

"Try Freakers," Tripod suggested. "That's his favorite hangout. I'll circulate. Someone will know where he is."

"Right," Brennan said. He turned to Jennifer. "You wait at Freakers for him. Don't approach him if you spot him, just keep him under surveillance. I'm going to try Sascha's mother's place. She might know where her son is. If she doesn't open up, maybe I'll ask Father Squid to talk to her. He's not exactly Russian Orthodox, but he is a priest."

They all headed for the door. Squisher rose out of his aquarium and stopped them with a shrill whistle. "Hey, pal," he said to Brennan, "you got something I could put on our celebrity wall?"

He gestured toward a section of wall near the aquarium that Brennan hadn't noticed before. Tacked up on it was an amazing array of junk, from an autographed photo of a queasily smiling Tachyon standing next to Squisher's aquarium with one of the joker's boneless arms draped around his shoulders to a lacy handkerchief stained with green ichor, and a pair of crotchless panties with spaces for two crotches.

Brennan reached into his pocket for an ace of spades. "Will this do?"

"Sure," Squisher said. "Say, can you make it out to `My good pal, Squisher'?"

3:00 P.M.

Jay could hear the voices through the door, shouting. "Maybe we ought to come back later," Hiram said weakly. "I don't think this is a good time."

"There's no good time for shit like this," Jay told him. He knocked loudly. Silence fell inside. A moment later the door to the suite was flung open. Dr. Tachyon gave them both a look like they were the last two people in the world he wanted to see right now. The little alien was ragged and weary. lie had scratch marks on his face and a puffy split lip. Wordless, he looked at them for a long moment, then stepped back to let them enter.

Hiram moved heavily across the room, brushed aside the drapes, stared blindly out into the Atlanta heat. A teenage boy with painfully bright red hair was looking at Jay curiously. Ackroyd sat on the couch, the garment bag across his lap. No one seemed to want to speak, so Jay had to do it. "Lose the kid," he told Tachyon.

The boy protested. "Heyl"

"Blaise, go," said Tachyon, in a tone that brooked no arguments.

"I thought I'd forfeited the right."

"Go, damn youl"

"Shit, just when things were gettin' interesting." Blaise held up his hands, palms out. "Hey, no problem. I'm gone." When the door banged shut, the quiet fell again. Tachyon made an exasperated gesture. "Hiram, what the devil is this?"

Jay answered. "You gotta run a blood test, doc. Right now"

Tachyon looked about. "What? Here?"

"Don't be dense, and don't be cute," Jay told him. "I'm too fucking tired and I hurt too much to deal with it." He unzipped the garment bag, dragged out the rag that so much blood had been shed on, for, and over. "This is Senator Hartmann's jacket from Syria."

Tachyon looked at the bloodstain as if it might leap off the jacket and devour him. "How did you come to possess this?" he asked, in a voice thickened by fear.

Jay sighed. "That's a long story, and none of us have the time. Let's just say I got it from Chrysalis. It was, well... sort of a legacy."

Nervously clearing his throat, Tach asked, "And just what do you think I am going to find?"

"The presence of Xenovirus Talds-A," Jay said.

The alien stumbled across the room like a zombie and made himself a drink. Jay could have used one, too, but none were being offered. "I see a jacket," Tachyon said when he was well fortified. "Anyone could buy a jacket, doctor it with virus-positive blood-"

Hiram finally spoke up. "That's what I thought. But he's been through too much. The link from Syria to this hotel room is clear. It's the sen-it's Hartmann's jacket."

Tachyon turned to look at Hiram. "Do you want me to do this thing?"

"Do we have any choice?"

"No," said Tachyon, with vast weariness. "I don 7t suppose we have."

4:00 P.M.

Mrs. Starfin was polite in a cold, gracious way. She offered Brennan tea, but no new information on her missing son. Just as Brennan was about to leave the apartment, the phone rang. Mrs. Starfin answered it and gestured at Brennan. "It's for you," she said.

He took it, more than a little surprised. It had to be either Jennifer or Tripod, because they were the only two who knew that he was here.

It was Tripod.

"Yeoman," he said, "I've got something for you."

"What is it?" Tripod's voice was rougher than usual.