Wildcards - Down and Dirty Part 48

"Uh," he said to the waiter, "you're the sixth or seventh person I've seen wearing a surgical mask recently...."

"Wild card virus," the man said. "Its around again."

"Just a few cases, here and there," Croyd said, "last I heard."

"Go listen again," the man responded. "It's close to a hundred-maybe over-already."

"Still," Croyd mused, "do you think a little strip of cloth like that will really do you any good?"

The waiter shrugged. " I figure it's better than nothing. ... More coffee?"

"Yeah. Get me a dozen donuts to go, too, will you?"

"Sure."

He made his way to the Bowery via Broome Street, then on down toward Hester. As he drew nearer, he saw that the newsstand was not yet open, and Jube nowhere in sight. Pity. He'd a feeling Walrus might have some useful information or at least some good advice on dealing with the fact that both sides in the current gang war periodically took time out to shoot at him-say, every other day. Was it sunspots? Bad breath? It was rapidly ceasing to be cost effective for the Mob to keep chasing him to recover his fee for his investigationand Siu Ma's people must have hit at him enough by now to have recovered a lot more face than he'd ever cost them.

Munching a donut, he pa.s.sed on, heading for his Eldridge apartment. Later. No rush. He could talk to Jube by and by. Right now it would be restful to lean back in the big easy chair, his feet up on the ottoman, and close his eyes for a few minutes....

"s.h.i.t!" he observed, tossing half a donut down the stairwell to a vacant bas.e.m.e.nt flat as he turned the corner onto his block. Was it getting to be that time already?

Then he continued to turn with that rapid fluidity of movement that had come with the territory this time around, following the donut down into darkness where the asthmatic snuffling of some ancient dog would have been distracting but for the fact that he was viewing, even as he descended, a cla.s.sical stakeout up the street near his pad.

"Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" he added, just his head above ground level now, outline broken by a length of upright piping that supported the side railing.

One man sat in a parked car up past the building, in view of its front entrance.

Another sat on a stoop, filing his nails, in command of an angled view of the rear of the building from across the side alley.

Croyd heard a panicked gasping as he swore, unlike any doggy sound with which he was familiar. Glancing downward and back into the shadows, he beheld the quivering, amorphous form of Snotman, generally conceded to be the most disgusting inhabitant of Jokertown, as he cringed in the corner and ate the remains of Croyd's donut.

Every square inch of the man's surface seemed covered with green mucus, which ran steadily from him and added to the stinking puddle in which he crouched.

Whatever garments he had on were so saturated with it as to have become barely distinguishable like his features.

"For Christ's sake! That's filthy and I was eating on it!" Croyd said. "Have a fresh one." He extended the bag toward Snotman, who did not move. "It's okay,"

he added, and finally he set the bag down on the bottom step and returned to watching the watchers.

Snotman finished the discarded fragment and remained still for some time.

Finally, he asked, "For me?"

His voice was a liquid, snotty, snuffling thing.

"Yeah, finish 'em. I'm full," Croyd said. "I didn't know you could talk."

"n.o.body to talk to," Snotman replied. "Well-yeah. That's the breaks, I guess."

"People say I make them lose their appet.i.tes. Is that why you don't want the rest?"

"No," Croyd said. "I got a problem. I'm trying to figure what to do next.

There're some guys up there have my place covered. I'm deciding whether to take them out or just go away. You don't bother me, even with that gunk all over you.

I've looked as bad myself on occasion."

"You? How?"

"I'm Croyd Crenson, the one they call the Sleeper. I change appearance every time I sleep. Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes it isn't."

"Could IT?"

"What? Oh, change again? I'm a special case, is what it is. I don't know any way I could share that with other people. Believe me, you wouldn't want a regular diet of it."

"Just once would be enough," Snotman answered, opening the bag and taking out a donut. "Why are you taking a pill? Are you sick?"

"No, it's just something to help me stay alert. I can't afford to sleep for a long time."

"Why not?"

"It's a long story. Very long."

"n.o.body tells me stories anymore."

"What the h.e.l.l. Why not?" Croyd said.

Blood Ties

IV.

Baby, your master is an idiot.

No, master.

Yes, Baby.

Blaise lay curled among the tumbled pillows on the vast canopy bed that almost filled the bridge/stateroom aboard Tachyon's yacht. Two of the curving pearlescent walls presented a miniature schematic of New York City.

Different-colored lines connected red markers. The third wall broke down the location of wild card cases by building and business. Chase Manhattan Bank Jokertown branch, three apartment buildings (one of which was in Harlem), Top Hat cleaners on the Bowery, restaurants, bars, drug stores, department stores.

It's a human vector.

Tachyon rose from the floor and dusted the seat of his pants, sensing irritation from his ship at this slur on her housekeeping. Sometimes ships had a skewed sense of priorities. An imputation of dust was far more significant than the announcement that a Typhoid Mary was threatening Manhattan. Have I done well, master?

Extraordinarily well. I just wish I had not been so slow to see.

"Blaise, kuket, we're going now. Put your arm around my neck. Good lad."

He carried the child out of the ship. Pausing at the door of the warehouse, he fumbled with the lock and struggled with his sleeping burden. Tachyon was a small man, and his grandson already showed every indication that he would tower over his tiny forebear.

Into the sultry night. Two A.M. He could imagine what Victoria Queen was going to say to him when he woke her at this hour. But it had to be discussed, and with people he could trust. Somewhere a human contagion slept or walked the streets of New York.

His arms tightened convulsively about the boy as the realization struck. No one was safe. While Blaise was playing in the park, walking to the clinic, eating in a restaurant, this monstrous sickness could pa.s.s by and endanger his child, his line, his future. He almost turned back to the ship. This evil could not pa.s.s Baby. He chided himself for hysteria. There were millions of people in greater Manhattan. What chance of actually encountering the carrier?

Depended upon the ident.i.ty of the carrier.

And how to establish that? Ideal, it was probably a hopeless task.

"This is absolutely hopeless," said Victoria Queen.

"Thank you for that incredibly helpful observation." The chief of surgery and Tachyon exchanged sizzling glares. Chrysalis flicked a nail against the rim of her gla.s.s, pulling out a single ringing tone. Finn took another bite of raw Quaker Oats.

"We interview the family and friends of every victim. We interview the surviving victims. We search for the common thread, some individual they all recall," said Tachyon.

"It would be an incredible long shot that any of them would remember," sighed Finn.

Tachyon turned the full blazing force of his lilac eyes on his a.s.sistant. "So are you suggesting that we wait and hope that this person notices that people are dying like flies all around him or her? And even that won't help." Tach shook his head as if disgusted by his own facetiousness. "The incubation period appears to be around twenty-four hours. This carrier, whoever it is, can have no notion of their power."

"Power," snorted Chrysalis.

"Yes, power. Clearly this person's wild card gift is to give wild card. The person probably contracted the virus during this latest outbreak. If it had happened earlier, we would have been facing this crisis months or even years ago."

"Doc." Finn tossed his heavy forelock out of his face. "This has to mean that the virus is mutating."

"Yes, I'm afraid you're correct. Dr. Corvisart will be ecstatic."

"Who?" asked Queen.

"A French researcher who was absolutely convinced that the virus was mutating. I tried to explain to him that there's only been one case of a constantly mutating virus, and that's because it is this man's power-"

"What? What is it?" asked Finn sharply at Tachyon's frozen expression.

The alien relaxed his frenzied grip on the edge of the desk. He and Chrysalis met each other's gaze. "You're thinking what I'm thinking."

"Ohhh, yes."

"Then why not enlighten those of us who aren't thinking," snapped Queen bitterly, who then flushed and quickly added, "In the peculiar way you think."

"There is one individual in this city who's an old hand at wild card. Who is reinfected with the virus every time he sleeps. How many times has he transformed over the past forty years? A dozen? Twenty? Thirty?"

"It would be the most unbelievable coincidence," warned Chrysalis.

"I agree, but it has to be investigated." Tachyon pushed to his feet.

Finn lurched to his feet. "Sleep?" "Yes," said Tachyon rather impatiently.

The tiny centaur gave a long shake that began at his head, vibrated to his tail, and pulled a deep-throated groan from his lungs.

"He was here."

"WHAT!".

"Back in March. He came in to see you, but you weren't back yet. He was high on speed, and apparently he'd promised some girl he wouldn't go out with her cranked. He wanted help. I put him to sleep."

"How for the ideal's sake? This could be critical."

"Brain entrainment and suggestion."

"When did he wake and leave?"

"Um, mid-May."

"May! And you didn't tell me!"

"I didn't think it was important."

"He's been awake a month," Chrysalis said to Tachyon. "Do you still want us to do those interviews?" asked Queen.

"Yes, it might help us pinpoint his present physical form. I don't suppose you saw him when he left?"

"No, one morning he just wasn't there."

"Where did you stash him?" asked Chrysalis curiously. "In the janitor's closet."

"Have we lost any janitors?" asked Tachyon with graveyard humor.

"We were lucky, incredibly lucky," muttered Finn, crossing himself.

"People, this has got to be kept absolutely confidential. Can you imagine the panic if wind of this reaches the general populace?"

"Sooner or later the authorities are going to have to be informed," objected Queen.

"Not if Chrysalis and I succeed."

"I hate it when you're smug."

"Tachyon, she's got a point. We're going to feel like absolute s.h.i.t if we can't find Croyd, or we find him and he's not the one. How many more people are going to die, Tachyon?" asked Chrysalis.

Tachyon splashed a liberal dollop of cognac into a gla.s.s, raised the blinds, and watched the sun trying valiantly to struggle through the layers of mist and smog.

"I think I'm justified in trying this alone first. What would I say to the mayor? Well, Your Honor, we think there's a wild card carrier. We think it's Croyd Crenson. No, sir, we don't know what he looks like because he changes every time he sleeps."