Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (14 page)

“Literally?”

“Oh, yes. They believe this to be the pre-ordained fate of the universe. They believe that they can help this process along and hasten the coming of Parousia.”

“Parousia?”

“Sorry,” Nighthawk said. “You hang around these people enough and you forget how to talk like ordinary folk. Parousia is just a fancy word for Jesus’ Kingdom on Earth.”

“So, they hired you to help them?”

“I got them the Shroud, didn’t I?” Nighthawk asked with some indignation. “I found you to channel Jesus’ spirit so the Cardinal could discover how exactly they could help bring about Jesus’ return. Is it my fault you got Cole Porter instead?”

Cameo had to fight back a smile. “No.”

“Anyway,” Nighthawk said, “that’s only part of the plan.”

“The other part being?”

“The other part being destroying the Anti-Christ, who Contarini believes has already appeared on Earth, as Scripture has predicted.”

“That’s crazy,” Cameo said. “Just who is this supposed Anti-Christ, anyway?”

“The Spawn of the Whore of Babylon and Satan himself.”

Cameo shook her head. “I’m still in the dark.”

Nighthawk sat silently as Usher drove with quiet, sure skill through the empty streets. The Mercedes windows were all blacked out so Cameo could have no clue where they were going. That was part of the reason why he had activated the barrier between the front and back seats. He also didn’t want Usher or Magda to hear their conversation. He slouched back on his seat.

“The Whore of Babylon is a famous television star and documentary film producer who has dared to oppose the Church on pretty much every social issue imaginable. Abortion rights. Ordaining women for the priesthood. Homosexuality. Even the doctrine of papal infallibility which, it turns out, was invented in the nineteenth century. Plus, she’s a wild carder.”

“Peregrine?” Cameo hazarded.

Nighthawk nodded. “That’s right, missy. Now, Satan himself: He’s also a wild carder. He deals in sex, drugs, and violence. Or at least used to. He’s black—”

“Fortunato! But,” Cameo said, “he’s been in that monastery in Japan, what, it seems like forever now.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nighthawk said. “If he doesn’t come out when things start happening, Contarini will send someone after him. And,” Nighthawk added significantly, ”things have definitely started to happen.

“And the Anti-Christ,” Cameo said thoughtfully. “Their son, John Fortune.”

Nighthawk nodded again. “You got that right. The only known offspring from the union of two aces. That’s important to Contarini. Wild carders are equivalent to demons in his theology. He believes we’re all damned from birth. That we’ll all suffer the agonies of Hell for eternity.”

“Yet you work for him,” Cameo said with an edge of disgust in her voice.

Nighthawk shook his head. “I don’t work for him. I take his money. There’s a difference.”

“A vague one,” Cameo said.

“No. An important one. I told you before—I took this job for a reason.”

“The money?” she asked.

Nighthawk shook his head silently. His gaze turned inwards as if he were reliving memories of old, unforgettable, unpleasant events.

“No. I took this job because I wanted to see if you were the real thing, or just some kind of fake.”

“It wasn’t my fault that I got Cole Porter, either—” Cameo began, but Nighthawk interrupted her.

“No, I believe you. You’ve convinced me that you can channel the dead.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Your trust, for now.” He frowned. “We’re probably all right, here, now. If we’re being taped, we’re both dead if the Cardinal ever hears this conversation—”

Cameo snorted. “I thought you weren’t afraid of the Cardinal.”

“I’ve lived a long time, missy,” Nighthawk said, “and I didn’t do it by being stupid. Of course I’m afraid of the Cardinal. If you had any sense, you’d be too. I can’t afford to openly oppose him. I’m one old man. He has the Allumbrados. Aces. Money. More thugs with guns than I could kill in a year.”

“All right,” Cameo said in a small voice. “I believe you.”

“You better,” he said. “St. Dympna’s now, is not a nice place. It will be hard for you there. But you’ll only have to endure it for maybe a day, no more, then I’ll get you out. Trust me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” Nighthawk said softly. “I swear on the honor of my immortal soul.”

They looked at each other for a long time, and then Cameo finally nodded.

“All right,” she said in the voice of a little girl.

“Thank you,” Nighthawk said.

She nodded again, and they rode the rest of the way to St. Dympna’s in silence.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Jokertown: Rectory, Our Lady of Perpetual Mystery

Father Squid’s rectory was suffused with the peace of the monastery. Fortunato felt that he’d found an oasis of tranquility after nearly two days of travel and re-immersion in the strangeness of Jokertown. It was a small room in a small cottage attached to a church that had been abandoned by the Catholic diocese sometime in the 1960’s after they’d pulled out of Jokertown without regard for the souls of their vastly changed parishioners. Somehow it felt very much like home.

After enjoying a glass of mellow, surprisingly tasty wine in the rectory, Father Squid took Fortunato on a quick tour of his church, which after several years of reconstruction still wasn’t quite up to snuff.

“We’re doing the best we can,” Father Squid said as if reading Fortunato’s thoughts. He gestured at the scaffolds half-holding up one of the interior walls, the flooring that was partly warped plywood, the mismatched pews that must have come from half a dozen other forgotten churches. “But money is tight. And I hesitate to spend it all on building projects when so much has to be done for the parish poor. Meals for the elderly, or those incapable of taking care of themselves. Money for heating oil in the winter. A small camp we send joker children to in the summer, so they might know what sunshine and forests and clean lake water feels like.” The priest shook his head ponderously. “Never enough time. Never enough money.”

Fortunato nodded. He felt ashamed. He would have felt worse if he’d let himself dwell on it. Here he’d spent sixteen years gazing at his own navel, while this fat old joker was out in the real world, trying to make a difference. He looked around the church’s interior. It was nowhere as nice as the old Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. Fortunato particularly missed the icons that had been part of the old church. The old representations had been genuine works of art. Their replacements...

Fortunato frowned as he looked at them closely.

“I know,” Father Squid said, sadly. “We lost much that night Our Lady of Perpetual Misery burned to the ground. Many parishioners. But also some things nearly as irreplaceable as human beings.” He gestured at the mosaic upon the walls. The two headed male/female joker crucified on the DNA helix; the handsome, golden-auraed demon juggling his thirty pieces of silver; the two-faced scientist in his lab coat dispensing pain with one hand and relief with the other; the thin black man with curling ram horns and a bulging forehead hurling thunderbolts as he floated in the air. Another part of him bulged inhumanly large in his pants. “Crude as they are, these will have to do until a joker artist with more ability comes along.”

Fortunato stared at the mural. The thin black man with curling ram horns and a bulging forehead hurling thunderbolts looked familiar. “That’s me,” he said, half fascinated, half horrified.

Father Squid smiled. At least, his facial tentacles twitched. “It’s what your legend has become, my son.”

“And that is?” Fortunato asked, still unable to take his eyes off the mural.

Father Squid shrugged broad shoulders. “Like most things in Jokertown, theology is two-faced. You’ve become the fertility god who showers both fecundity and destruction upon his people. Pregnant jokers pray to you that their children be normal. Or at least not hideous. On the other hand, you’ve become a cult figure to certain of those with a destructive bent. Youth gangs in particular.”

“The Jokka Bruddas,” Fortunato said.

Father Squid nodded. “Among others. I deal with them frequently. Their clubhouse, as they call it, is an abandoned apartment building just across the street—”

“Excuse me,” Fortunato said, as his cell phone went off. He fumbled with it for a moment, unfamiliar was he was with the controls, but finally got it working. “Yes?”

“Fortunato?” a familiar, frenzied voice asked. “Digger,” it said, before Fortunato could reply. “Have you heard the news?”

“News?” Fortunato looked at Father Squid. Father Squid shrugged. He shrugged back.

“There was some kind of dust-up in Vegas. Your son’s been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” he heard himself repeating stupidly.

“Yeah, and Peregrine, she... she was hurt. Apparently she’s been flown back to New York and is at the Jokertown Clinic—”

“This must have happened hours ago! Why didn’t you find out about it until now?”

“I was busy, all right?” Digger said defensively.

“Busy doing what?” Fortunato asked.

“Writing up your story at my apartment—then my girlfriend came by and one thing led to another, and I just turned on the TV—”

Fortunato caught himself about to swear, then shut his mouth. He took a deep breath and ran through the Heart Sutra a couple of times. He didn’t feel any calmer when he was finished, but he realized that it was all water under the bridge and there was no use crying over it.

“All right,” he said. He checked with the map of Jokertown that was still etched into the furrows of his brain. “I’m going to the Jokertown Clinic—”

“I’ll meet you there—”

“If you want.”

”I’m on the way. Keep the channel open and I’ll fill you in on the details.”

“All right,” Fortunato said. He turned to Father Squid. “I have to go,” he said.

The priest nodded ponderously. “God go with you, my son.”

Fortunato nodded as he ran out of the church, Digger still yammering in his ear.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Las Vegas: Urgent Care Center

Ray made sure that he was still bleeding a little when he checked himself into the emergency clinic. Experience had taught him that nothing proclaimed emergency like spurting blood. It was a sure way to jump right to the head of the line.

After Angel had slammed her door in his face, he’d figured he had nothing better to do, so he decided to tie up some loose ends. He didn’t really feel like going down to the cop shop and lying his ass off to the locals, so, first things first, he went to his own room and changed into a set of old sweats. He left what was left of his suit in a pile on the bathroom floor, went down to the cab stand and had the taxi take him to the nearest emergency clinic.

He paid off the cabby, striped off his short-sleeved tee, and dropped it in a garbage can as he approached the clinic, then walked into the front door holding the flap of torn skin and meat up against his upper chest. The receptionist took one look at him and had an orderly escort him to an empty waiting room. Once there he twiddled his thumbs, as usual waiting for the doctor to finish his sandwich or counting his Medicaid kickbacks, or whatever it was that occupied his time when he could actually be seeing patients.

The tiny room was sterile and uninteresting. Ray looked at the poster of the little kitten dangling from a branch with the words “HANG IN THERE” emblazoned with bold yellow letters, and pursed his lips. All in all, it was better than being shot in the ass and having to sit in a cave in Afghanistan while awaiting medical treatment, but not by much.

Well, he told himself, you asked for it.

Speaking of asking for it, he reminded himself that he had some other unpleasant tasks to perform. Ignoring the sign that said “Please turn off cell phones as a courtesy to the doctors and staff,” he took his cell phone out and dialed Barnett’s number.

There was a click after the third ring and a sexy and bored voice said, “Peaceable Kingdom, President Leo Barnett’s Office.”

“Hello, Sally Lou,” Ray said. “Let me talk to the big guy.”

“You mean President Barnett?”

It was their little joke. He always called Barnett “the big guy” and she pretended that she didn’t know whom he meant. But Ray wasn’t really in the mood to drag this out for too long. “I don’t mean the Pope.”

She must have heard something in the tone of his voice, for there was a click, a buzz, and then Barnett’s smooth voice was on the line, with more than a hint of distress in it. “Billy, my boy, what in the name of Melchisidek is going on there in Vegas, boy? I’m hearing strange tales. Strange tales indeed—”

“Yeah, well, you should have actually been here.” Ray gave a concise report on the day’s activities, and then listened to a long silence on the other end of the line.

“Disturbing,” Barnett finally said.

There was no way to deny it. “Yes, sir,” Ray said. “You know that those Allumbrados have aces working for them as well as assholes with guns.”