Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (41 page)

“Who is it?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know,” Sascha said. “I can’t see.”

“Well,” Daddy said, “ask him.”

“Who is it?” Sascha asked the door.

“It’s me,” a voice called out gruffly. “Billy Ray. Sascha, that you? Open the goddamned door.”

“Dammit,” Jerry said. “The Feds.”

“Oh, man,” Daddy said. “The man. Oh, man.”

“Just a minute,” Sascha said.

“Open the windows—” Jerry said.

“Oh, man,” Daddy said. “Busted, man. Who’s going to take care of all my plants if they send me to the slam?”

“Can’t,” Sascha said. “Hotel windows. Can’t open them.”

The door rattled ominously.

“Are you guys in trouble in there? I’ll break the door down—”

“He will, too,” Sascha said.

Jerry made a helpless gesture with his hands.

“Open it. Open it. Maybe he won’t smell anything.”

Sascha nodded. He took the door off the chain and threw it open. Ray stood out in the hallway, hand up and ready to pound on the door again.

“Hello, Ray,” Sascha said with a smile. “Come on in, Ray.”

Ray entered the room suspiciously. “What the Hell is going on in here?”

“Nothing,” Sascha said.

“Nothing,” Jerry said.

“Nothing, man,” Daddy said, trying to shove the baggy full of weed further between the sofa cushions.

Ray stopped, sniffed the air, and frowned thunderously. “Are you guys smoking pot?”

Sascha, Jerry, and Mushroom Daddy looked at each other.

“Us, uh—” Jerry began.

“You’re holding out on me, you bastards?” Ray said. “I haven’t gotten high since I did some hash with a bunch of Afghani warlords. I had to smoke with them, of course. Had to put them at their ease.”

“Well,” Daddy said, “if you like Afghani hash, you’ll love—”

”Daddy—” Jerry began.

“It’s all right,” Sascha said, as if suddenly remembering that he could read minds. He sank down gratefully into the loveseat across the coffee table from the sofa. “He’s cool.”

“Of course I’m cool,” Ray said, sitting down next to Daddy. “What, you think I’m a narc just because I work for the Feds?”

“Course not,” Jerry said as Daddy produced the baggy of pot and an already rolled joint that he handed to Ray.

“Thanks,” Ray said. He lit up and took a toke. “Of course,” he said in a strangled voice, “if I was my old boss, that tight-ass Nephi Callendar,” he paused to blow smoke and take another hit, “your asses would all be headed for the nearest federal slam, right now. Hey. Very nice.”

Daddy nodded happily. “I grow it myself.”

Ray looked at him. “So, what’s the story, man, are you some kind of burned-out hippie, or are you an ace?”

Daddy shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that I can grow things. They taste good, and they do good things for your body and your head.”

“Maybe,” Jerry suggested, “you should call yourself the Green Thumb.”

Ray frowned, and then started to laugh. Within moments they were all giggling like hopeless fools. It felt good, Jerry thought. Really good. Ray handed Daddy the joint. He took a toke and passed it on to Jerry.

They sat together, smoking, talking, and laughing for the next hour. Ray turned out to be a fount of surprisingly amusing stories about foreign and domestic diplomats. Every now and then Jerry would just say, “Green Thumb,” and they’d all laugh again, though Jerry had the feeling that Mushroom Daddy didn’t see anything particularly funny in the name and was maybe seriously considering it.

They finally polished off their fifth or sixth joint and Ray looked at them all, seriously.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Room service, or buffet?”

They all thought about it for a moment, and then as one man said, “Buffet!”

Daddy gathered up his paraphernalia, but Ray made him leave it all in the suite. Together they descended in the elevator, to wreak havoc on the first buffet that they could find.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Peaceable Kingdom: Loaves and Fishes

Ray was ravenous. He wanted either food or women, vast quantities of either. It didn’t matter which, but he wanted them now. Everyone else seemed fixated on the idea of food, so that was all right with him.

They rode the elevator to the ground floor, passing the hotel restaurants in unspoken accord. They didn’t want to go sit down at a table, wait for a waiter to show up and take their drink order, come back and take their food order, go turn it into the kitchen, and then wait for the kitchen to cook it, wait for the waiter to go pick it up and bring it to their table, and after all that get only a miserly little plate of food and they were all pretty sure that a plate of rolls or a small loaf of wheat bread wouldn’t hold them in check while they waited.

They hit the street with hunger rumbling in their stomachs and anticipation roiling in their brains. Their eyes focused on the building before them. LOAVES AND FISHES!!! Steaks! Chops! Seafood! Salad! Deserts! All You Can Eat! They looked at each other and nodded, even Sascha. They had found their Mecca.

They descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts, and after paying their fourteen ninety five apiece at the door (Ray covered for Mushroom Daddy with his personal credit card, bitching that Angel still had Barnett’s.) they tore through the buffet line and salad bar, leaving devastation in their wake like a force five hurricane.

Ray got himself a steak, a couple of pork chops, and a roast chicken, whole. He decided to leave the carving station—turkey, ham, and lamb—for later. He piled on some mashed potatoes, french fries, buttered noodles, and corn on the cob. Dessert was tempting, but he had no more room on his tray. He took a large ice tea, unsweetened, at the drink station. He was pretty thirsty.

He joined Daddy, Sascha, and Creighton at the table where they were already plowing through their food. Sascha had taken the sweet route, going for all the desserts he could grab, including an entire Black Forest cake. Creighton had cleaned out the carving station, and had a couple of made to order omelets, while Mushroom Daddy, apparently a vegetarian, had about half the salad bar in front of him, as well as a selection of hot vegetables.

“This isn’t bad,” he said around a mouthful of potato salad, “but mine is better.”

“Green Thumb,” Sascha said.

No one laughed. Somehow it wasn’t as funny as before. Maybe they weren’t as stoned, or maybe they were all just concentrating on the food.

“Mmmm,” Creighton said, at least acknowledging Daddy’s remark.

Ray just kept on eating. The food was indescribably good. Ray wasn’t sure why. Sure, he was stoned and Daddy’s pot was potent. Powerful yet with a curious mellowing effect, it heightened Ray’s senses, intensifying his sense of smell, taste, and touch. He smiled as he popped a piece of steak in his mouth and chewed slowly and thoughtfully. Too bad Angel wasn’t here, he thought. He’d like to see her smoke a joint of Daddy’s weed. It would really loosen her up.

That was it. He felt really, totally, one hundred per cent relaxed for the first time in weeks. Probably months. He was back in Branson with few prospects, except a return bout with Butcher Dagon and an unknown number of henchmen with unguessable powers and abilities, but that was okay. That was in the future. He would handle it as it came, like he always did. Tonight he was just a guy enjoying a meal. If he wasn’t with friends, he was with comrades, and that was just about as good. He never had many friends in his life, but he’d had comrades plenty and he’d never let them down. He hadn’t won every fight he’d ever been in and over the years he’d lost some of the steadfast men who’d stood at his side. But that was life. At least he knew that he always did the best that he could and he never ran from a fight.

He tore off a chicken leg, and looked around as he bit a chunk out of it. Mushroom Daddy had just said something, he’d missed exactly what, that had set both Creighton and Sascha laughing. Daddy joined them and then he did, too. He laughed aloud at nothing, though apparently, if you believed Barnett, Armageddon was just around the corner and the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.

“Let it hang,” Ray said aloud. The others all looked at him.

“What?” Creighton asked.

Ray shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked around the table at the three, shaking his head. “You are three crazy sons of bitches.” He picked up his ice tea glass and tipped it in their directions. “I salute you all.”

They laughed, grabbed their glasses and returned the toast, and Ray laughed with them, the hardest of all.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Somewhere in Kentucky

It was the carburetor. Fortunately there was a small town at the bottom of the mountain with a service station. It didn’t have the right type of carburetor in stock, though the guy knew a guy with a junkyard that probably had a couple of old hippie vans laying around it somewhere. The Angel told them they were in a rush. She flashed the platinum card and the service station attendant managed to take his eyes off her (he barely seemed to notice that John Fortune was glowing) and he took off to find the part. The Angel checked themselves into the town’s single decrepit motel, figuring that some sleep on a real bed would do them some good. She’d told the mechanic where they’d be, and to come and get them as soon as he was finished.

“You know,” John Fortune said, after they’d checked in, “I’ve never shared a motel room with a girl before.”

The Angel forestalled a grimace. This, she didn’t need. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I have to take a shower.”

John Fortune nodded, his eyes wide as if he were considering the possibilities. “Sure,” he finally said. “I’ll just wait for you here.”

The Angel went into the bathroom and quietly locked the door. Maybe, she thought, if she drew this out as long as she could, John Fortune would get distracted by the TV or something. It didn’t seem likely.

The water came out of the showerhead at a trickle. She took as long as she could, but the mildew and fungus stains on the stall wall did not incline her to linger. The towels were paper-thin and didn’t really dry her body as much as blot it kind of fruitlessly. She wrapped a paper-thin towel around her form and stuck her head out of the bathroom, but John Fortune was lying on the room’s single bed, sound asleep, a bright aura shining all around him.

The Angel sighed in relief. He’d been very tired, she supposed. She watched him for a few minutes. His face was angelic, if not exactly God-like. He looked like everybody’s favorite son.

She dried herself as best she could and shrugged into her jumpsuit again. It was tough to put on while she was still damp. She wished that she’d thought to bring her duffel bag along so she could change into one of her spare suits, but it was still sitting in the Escalade back in New Hampton. She hoped that Ray had remembered to return the SUV to the rental agency before the late charges started to pile up. He probably hadn’t, though. He didn’t seem particularly dependable, even if he did seem to have some uses.

She tiptoed into the tine room and sat carefully in the creaky chair next to the bed. Something nagging at the back of her brain made her feel jumpy. It was a sensation that something was breathing on her. Snuffling about her in the dark. She put it down to nervousness about the Allumbrados somehow striking their trail. When someone knocked on their door in the middle of the night, she jumped.

It turned out to be the mechanic. He was finished with the van.

The Angel awoke John Fortune. He seemed groggy and at first was disinclined to get up. She felt his forehead in concern. He was hot, of course. She wondered if he was running a temperature, or if it was his ace metabolism acting up. She knew that it could take some getting used to. When her card had turned ten years ago it took months before she’d gotten used to hers. Her mother never had. She never believed her when she said she was hungry. That she was starving. She just called her a glutton, and said it was a miracle that she wasn’t a fat pig because of all the food she ate. It was hard to be hungry all the time.

She finally got John Fortune up. It was about three o’clock in the morning by her watch. She overpaid the mechanic enormously. She felt guilty about it, but as Ray had said, Barnett could afford it and after all she was doing God’s work.

They hit the road again in the dark. The Angel, even though she knew it would add a couple of hours to their trip, was more determined than ever to take the detour she’d been considering. Something was driving her. Calling her, really. She wondered if it was old ghosts.

Whatever the source, it could not be denied.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower

It was dark by the time Nighthawk and his group arrived at the Peaceable Kingdom. A limo had been waiting for them at the airport and taken them to the suite reserved for them at The Angels’ Bower. The hotel was quite crowded.

They went up to their suite. Nighthawk thought it was a little kitschy, but kept quiet because Magda was quite taken with it and Nighthawk saw no need to stir up trouble. Usher was satisfied because it was comfortable. That was all he needed. Nighthawk checked in, and they waited. They didn’t have to wait for long.