Wildcards - Down and Dirty Part 33

As Croyd approached the apartment building that evening, he noted that the man in the car parked before it appeared to be speaking into a small walkie-talkie and staring at him. He'd grown very conscious of parked cars following the second attempt on his life, a little earlier. Ma.s.saging his knuckles, he turned suddenly and stepped toward the car.

"Croyd," the man said softly.

"That's right. We'd better be on the same side."

The man nodded and s.h.i.+fted a wad of chewing gum into his left cheek. "You can go on up," he said. "Third floor, apartment thirty-two. Don't have to ring. Guy by the door'll let you in."

"Chris Mazzucch.e.l.li's there?"

"No, but everyone else is. Chris couldn't make it, but it don't matter. You tell those people what they want to know. It's the same as telling him."

Croyd shook his head. "Chris hired me. Chris pays me. I talk to Chris."

"Wait a minute." The man pressed the b.u.t.ton on his walkie-talkie and began speaking into it in Italian. He glanced at Croyd after a few moments, raised his index finger, and nodded.

"What's comin' down?" Croyd asked when the conversation was concluded. "You find him all of a sudden?"

"No," the guard answered, s.h.i.+fting his wad of gum. "But we can satisfy you everything's okay in just a minute."

"Okay," Croyd said. "Satisfy me."

They waited. Several minutes later a man in a dark suit emerged from the building. For a moment Croyd thought it was Chris, but on closer inspection he realized the man to be thinner and somewhat taller. The newcomer approached and nodded to the guard, who nodded at Croyd and said, "There he is."

"I'm Chris's brother," the man said, smiling faintly, "and that's as close as we can get at the moment. I can speak for him, and it's okay for you to tell the gentlemen upstairs what you've learned."

"Okay," Croyd said. "That's good. But I was thinking about collecting the rest of my money from him too."

"I don't know about that. Maybe you better ask Vince about it. Schiaparelli. He sometimes does payroll. Maybe you shouldn't, though."

Croyd turned toward the guard. "You've got the b.i.t.c.hbox. You call the guy and ask him. The other side's already hit on me today for what I got. If my money's not here, I'm walking."

"Wait a minute," Chris's brother said. "No reason to get upset. Hang on."

He pointed at the walkie-talkie with his thumb and the guard spoke into it, listened, waited, glanced at Croyd. "They're getting Schiaparelli," the guard said. After a longer while he listened to a low squawking, spoke, listened again, looked at Croyd again. "Yeah, he's got it," he told Croyd.

"Good," Croyd said. "Have him bring it down."

"No, you go up and get it."

Croyd shook his head.

The man stared at him and licked his lips, as if loathe to relay the message.

"This does not make a very good impression, for it is as if you had no trust."

Croyd smiled. "It is also correct. Make the call."

This was done, and after a time a heavyset man with graying hair emerged from the building and stared at Croyd. Croyd stared back.

The man approached. "You are Mr. Crenson?"

"That is correct."

"And you want your money now?"

"That's the picture."

"Of course I have it here," the other told him, reaching into his jacket. "Chris sent it along. It will grieve him that you are so suspicious."

Croyd held out his hand. When the envelope was placed in it, he opened it and counted. Then he nodded. "Let's go," he said, and he followed Schiaparelli and Chris's brother into the building. The man with the walkie-talkie was. shaking his head.

Upstairs, Croyd was introduced to a group of old and middle-aged men and their bodyguards. He declined a drink, just wanting to give them the name and get out.

But it occurred to him that giving them the money's worth might entail stretching the story out a bit to show that he'd earned it. So he explained things, step by step, from Demise to Loophole. Then he told them of the attempt to take him out following that interview, before he finally got around to giving them Siu Ma's name.

The expected question followed: Where could she be found?

"This I do not know," Croyd replied. "Chris asked me for a name, not for an address. You want to hire me to get that for you, too, I suppose I could do it, though it would be cheaper to use your own talent."

This drew some surly responses, and Croyd shrugged, said goodnight, and walked out, stepping up his pace to the blur level as the muscle near the door looked about, as if for orders.

It was not until a couple of blocks later that a pair of such street troops caught up and attempted to brace him for a refund. He tore out a sewer grating, stuffed their bodies down through the opening and replaced it, for his final bit of subtlety before closing the books on this one.

The Hue of a Mind

by Stephen Leigh

Wednesday, 9:15 A.M.

For seven days, since Misha had arrived in New York, she had met nightly with the joker Gimli and the abominations he had gathered around him.

For seven days she had lived in a festering sore called Jokertown, waiting.

For seven days there had been no visions. And that was most important.

Visions had always ruled Misha's life. She was Kahina, the Seeress: Allah's dreams had shown her Hartmann, the Satan who danced puppets from his clawed hands. The visions had shown her Gimli and Sara Morgenstern. Allah's visions had led her back to the desert mosque the day after she'd slit her brother's throat, there to be given by one of the faithful the thing that would give her revenge and bring Hartmann down: Allah's gift.

Today was the day of the new moon. Misha took that as an omen that there would be a vision. She had prayed to Allah for well over an hour this morning, the gift He had bestowed upon her cradled in her arms.

He had granted her nothing.

When she rose from the floor at last, she opened the lacquered clothes trunk sitting beside the rickety bed. Misha took off her chador and veils, changing into a long skirt and blouse again. She hated the light, brightly colored cloth and the sinful nakedness she felt. The bared arms and face made her feel vulnerable.

Misha covered Allah's gift with the folds of the chador she didn't dare wear here. She had just hidden it under the black cotton when she heard the sc.r.a.pe of a footstep behind her.

Mingled fear and anger made her gasp. She slammed down the lid of the clothes trunk and straightened.

"What are you doing in here?" She whirled around, not even realizing she was shouting in Arabic. "Get out of my room-"

She'd never felt safe in Jokertown, not once in the week she'd been here. Always before there had been her husband, Sayyid, her brother, the Nur. There had been servants and bodyguards.

Now Misha was in a country illegally, living alone in a city full of violence, and the only people she knew were jokers. Only two nights before, someone had been shot and killed in the street outside these ramshackle sleeping rooms near the East River. She told herself that it had only been a joker, that the death didn't matter.

Jokers were cursed. The abominations of Allah.

It was a joker standing at the door of her dingy room, staring at her. "Get out," she said in shaky, accented English. " I have a gun."

"It's my room," the joker said. "It's my room and I'm taking it back. You're just a nat. You shouldn't be here." The thin, scrawny shape took a step forward into the light from the room's one window. Misha recognized the joker immediately.

Gray-white rags of torn cloth were wrapped around his forehead, and the grimy bandages were clotted and brown with old blood. His hair was stiff with it. His hands were similarly covered, and thick red drops oozed through the soaked wrappings to fall on the floor. The clothing he wore over his emaciated body bunched here and there with hidden knots, and she knew that there were other seeping, unclosing wounds on the rest of his body.

She'd seen him every day, staring at her, watching. He would be in the hallways outside her door, on the street outside the tenement, walking behind her. He'd never spoken, but his rancor was obvious. "Stigmata," Gimli had told her when she'd confessed his fear of him the first day. "That's his name. Bleeds all the f.u.c.king time. Have some G.o.dd.a.m.n compa.s.sion. Stig's no trouble to anyone."

Yet Stigmata's sallow, drawn stare frightened her. He was always there, always scowling when she met his gaze. He was a joker, that was enough. One of Satan's children, devilmarked by the wild card. "Get out," Misha told him again.

"It's my room," he insisted like a petulant child. He shuffled his feet nervously.

"You are mistaken. I paid for it."

"It was mine first. I've always lived here, ever since-" His lips tightened. He drew his right hand into a fist; the sopping bandages rained scarlet as he brandished it before her. His voice was a thin screech. "Ever since this. Came here the night I got the wild card. Nine years ago, and they kick me out 'cause I don't pay the last couple months. I told em I was gonna pay, but they wouldn't wait. They'll take nat money instead."

"The room's mine," Misha repeated.

"You got my things. I left everything here."

"The owner took them, not me they're locked in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Stigmata's face twisted. He spat out the words as if they burned his tongue, almost screaming them. "He's a nat. You're a nat. You're not wanted here. We hate you."

His accusations caused Misha's masked frustrations to boil over. A cold fury claimed her, and she drew herself up, pointing at the joker. "You're the outcasts," she shouted back at Stigmata, at Jokertown itself. She might have been back in Syria, lecturing the jokers begging at the gates of Damascus. "G.o.d hates you. Repent of your sins and maybe you'll be forgiven. But don't waste your poison on me."

In the midst of her tirade there was suddenly a whirling, familiar disorientation. "No," Misha cried against the onslaught of the vision, and then, because she knew there was no escape from hikma, divine wisdom: "In sha'Allah."

Allah would come as He wished, when He wished.

The room and Stigmata wavered in her sight. Allah's hand touched her. Her eyes became His. A waking nightmare burst upon her, melting away the gritty reality of Jokertown, her filthy room, and Stigmata's threats.

She was in Badiyat Ash-sham again, the desert. She stood in her brother's mosque.

The Nur al-Allah stood in front of her, the emerald glow of his skin lost beneath impossibly thick streams of blood that trailed down the front of his djellaba. His trembling hand pointed at her accusingly; his chin lifted to show the gaping, puckered, bone-white edges of the wound across his throat. He tried to speak, and his voice, which had once been compelling and resonant, was now all gravel and dust, choked. She could understand nothing but the hatred in his eyes. Misha gasped under that baleful, accusing gaze.

"It wasn't me!" she sobbed, falling to her knees before him in supplication.

"Satan's hand moved mine. He used my hatred and my jealousy. Please. . ."

She tried to explain her innocence to her brother, but when she looked up, it was no longer Nur al-Allah standing before her but Hartmann.

And he laughed.

"I'm the beast who rips away the veils of the mind," he said. His hand lashed out, clawing for her as she recoiled belatedly. Like talons his nails dug into her eyesockets, slashed the soft skin of her face. Blinded, she screamed, her head arced back in torment, writhing but unable to get away from Hartmann as his fingers tore and gouged.

"We don't wear veils here. We don't wear masks. Let me show the truth underneath. Let me show you the color of the joker below," He clenched harder, ripping and tearing. Ribbons of flesh peeled away as he clawed at her, and she felt hot blood pouring down her ruined features. She moaned, sobbing, her hands trying to beat him away as he raked again and again, shearing flesh from muscle and muscle from bone.

"Your face will be naked," Hartmann said. "And they will run in horror from you.

Look, look at the colors inside your head-you're just a joker, a sinner like the rest. I car, see your mind, I can taste it. You're the same as the rest. You're the same."

Through the streaming blood she looked up. Though the apparition was still Hartmann, he now had the face of a young man, and the whine of a thousand angry wasps seemed to surround him. Yet in the midst of her torment, Misha felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and turned to see Sara Morgenstern beside her.

"I'm sorry," Sara told her. "It's my fault. Let me send him away."

And then Allah's vision withdrew, leaving her gasping on the floor. Trembling, sweating, she raised her hands to her face. Marveling, she touched the unbroken flesh there.

Stigmata stared at the woman sobbing on the splintery pine boards.

"You ain't no d.a.m.n nat," he said, and his voice was touched with a gruding sympathy. "You're just one of us." He sighed. Slow droplets of blood welled, fell. "It's still my room and I want it," he added, but the bitter edge was gone from his voice. "I'll wait. I'll wait."

He walked softly to the door. "One of us," he said again, shaking his gory, swaddled head, and went out.

Friday 6:10 P.M.

"So all the rumors are true. You are back again."

The voice came from behind him, in the shadow of an overflowing trash container.

Gimli whirled, scowling. His feet kicked up oil-filmed water pooled in the alleyway, the remnants of the afternoon's showers. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?" The dwarfs left hand was fisted at his side; his right stayed very close to the open flap of the windbreaker he wore despite the warm night, where the weight of a silenced .38 hung. "You've got about two seconds before you become gossip yourself."

"Well, and as temperamental as ever, aren't we?" It was a young man's voice, Gimli decided. Streetlight flowed over a figure beside the trash. "It's me, Gimli," the man said. "Croyd. Move that d.a.m.n hand from the gun. I ain't no cop."

"Croyd?" Gimli squinted. He relaxed slightly, though his squat, muscular body stayed low. "Your ace sure screwed up this time. I've never seen you look like that."

The man chuckled without mirth. His face and arms were a shocking porcelain white, his pupils dull pink; the tousled dark brown hair only accentuated the pallor of the skin. "s.h.i.+t, yeah. Gotta stay out of the sun, but then I've always been a night person. Dyed the hair and started wearing sungla.s.ses, but I lost the shades. Still got the strength this time, though. It's a d.a.m.n good thing too," he added reflectively.

Gimli waited. If this guy was Croyd, fine; if he wasn't, Gimli didn't intend to give him a chance to do anything. Being in New York again made him edgy.

Polyakov wouldn't meet with them until Monday, when Hartmann was rumored to be making his bid; the f.u.c.king Arab woman was a jokerhater who spouted religious nonsense half the time and had 'visions' the other; his old JJS people had lost their fire while he'd been in Europe and Russia; and with the Shadow Fist/Mafia wars and Barnett's rabble-rousing, no one felt safe.

Yet staying cooped up in the warehouse made him edgy.

He had told himself that taking a brief night walk would take some of the edge off.