Wildcards - One Eyed Jacks Part 37

"He runs with a street gang that's done some work for the Shadow Fists," Latham said. "His name is Blaise. He is Dr. Tachyon's grandson."

A half-dozen derelict jokers were sitting around the entrance to the boarded-up old movie theater in the heart of the Bowery, sharing a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag and soaking up the last rays of the autumnal sun like a clutch of bloated lizards.

"How's it going, fellows?" Cunningham asked the b.u.ms. A few looked up as he spoke. "Maybe you guys could help me. I'm looking for someone. This kid." He waved Deadhead's drawing. "I heard he hangs out here with a gang." He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off a twenty. That elicited a little more interest.

One of the joker's eyes rotated forward like a chameleon's and focused on Cunningham. "You a cop or something?"

"That's right," Cunningham told him.

"You look like a cop. Kind of clean-cut, anyway. A cop on television. That right, boys?" There was general murmured a.s.sent, and Cunningham decided that he'd better bring the conversation back on track.

"What about the kid?"

"That bratty a.s.shole. Him and his gang of a.s.sholes. The theater used to be ours before they moved in. Now it's loud music every time of the day and night and you really gotta be careful. They know when the welfare money comes in and they'll take it right from you."

"Is he inside now?"

"Yeah," the joker said. "Him and his expensive clothes. You can tell he's rich.

He don't need to hang out here. He should give it back to us and go home to Manhattan. Him and all those brats."

Cunningham smiled, and dropped the twenty-dollar bill. It fluttered onto the b.u.m's lap and he grabbed at it as the other derelicts surged to their feet.

Cunningham watched them scramble for the loot, and then weave and stagger to the liquor store across the street in the wake of the lucky stiff who'd grabbed it.

He crossed the street himself and looked into the window of the car idling at the curb. Warlock was driving. Deadhead was in the seat next to him, looking jittery and unsure as always. Latham was in the backseat, flanked by a pair of fierce-looking Werewolves. There were three cars parked at discreet distances behind this one. All were loaded with heavily armed Werewolves.

"Okay," Cunningham said. He took a deep breath. "This looks like a job for Fadeout." He smiled. "I'm going to try the back door. I want you guys to wait here for now" Warlock nodded. "Be careful," he said.

"I will. Trust me on that." He-nodded to the Werewolf and recrossed the street.

The theater's back door was locked, but the lock was old and cheap and yielded easily to Cunningham's probe. The door opened into musty darkness, a dank, garbage-choked pa.s.sageway that apparently led behind the movie screen, then forked into the auditorium. Cunningham froze in his tracks as the sound of gunfire suddenly blasted through the theater. He crouched in the darkness, listening. The sound had an unreal quality to it. The voice shouting over it was familiar and almost inhumanly loud. There was a thundering crash, the sound of roaring engines, and the plaintive cry, "I can't die. I haven't seen The Al Jolson Story yet!" and Cunningham suddenly realized what was happening.

Someone was screening a movie, apparently the hideous remake of Howard Hawkes's cla.s.sic Thirty Minutes Over Broadway. Cunningham waited in the darkness as the sound of a plane going down filled the theater. There was a loud explosion as it crashed on the Manhattan sh.o.r.eline, then cheers and whistles from the audience.

There were apparently few Jetboy fans in attendance.

Cunningham went on down the pa.s.sageway. He brushed past a thick, dusty cloth hanging and found himself in the auditorium. It wasn't crowded. There were twenty, maybe twenty-five kids sitting close to the screen in the center section. Few seemed very interested in the images flickering before them. Some were gorging themselves on candy and ice cream, others were making out though making out was a rather tame term for some of the acts Cunningham witnessed in the light reflected from the huge white screen.

One boy, though, was riveted to the action on the screen, despite the underaged siren rubbing up against him like an affection-starved cat. Even in the darkness, Cunningham could make out his gorgeous red hair and delicately handsome features. It had to be Blaise, the kid Latham had identified as Tachyon's grand-brat.

His eyes were glued to the screen, where people were now turning into rubber and plastic monsters courtesy of cheap special effects as the wild-card virus rained down from the sky. There was a scene cut, and Dudley Moore was suddenly strutting across the stage in a grotesque parody of Tachyon, wearing a ghastly red wig and an outfit that would have done justice to a drag queen.

Moore clutched at his hair as if he were searching for cooties. "Burning sky!"

he swore. " I warned them! I warned them all!" Then he broke into an hysterical fit of weeping.

Blaise stood, throwing aside the girl who had been squirming against him and licking his ear, and drew a handgun he'd had holstered at his side. Cunningham shrank back against the wall as Blaise squeezed off a round. The report was startlingly loud within the confines of the auditorium, making the soundtrack explosions sound like harmless popguns in comparison.

But Blaise wasn't shooting at Cunningham. He hadn't even seen him. He'd put a bullet through the screen right between Dudley Moore's eyes. The ragtag audience of juvenile delinquents cheered, and Blaise sat down, a malevolent smile on his lips. In that moment Blaise looked as hardened and evil as the most twisted characters Cunningham ever had to deal with in the Fists. It was frightening to see such an expression on such a young face.

Cunningham shuddered, and moved on.

The lobby was dirty, dark, and deserted. The afternoon's last light filtered in through the cracks between the plywood boards haphazardly placed over the theater's gla.s.s doors. The concession stand was empty and dusty, though fresh popcorn was in the popper and cardboard boxes half-full of candy treats were stacked atop the counter. The confections all looked recent, probably brought in by the gang to devour while watching the main feature. They had, Cunningham remembered, also been eating ice-cream bars.

He went to the portable ice-cream cart parked next to the candy counter and opened the door in the top. He looked in it for a long moment. There, nestled among a couple dozen ice-cream sandwiches, was Kien's head, raggedly cut off at the neck.

Cunningham found himself oddly reluctant to touch the cold, dead flesh. He wasn't squeamish, and he'd had no great love for Kien when the general had been alive, but there was something ghastly about his manner of death that disturbed him. He looked down at the gla.s.sily staring eyes and sighed.

There was no way he was going to get any answers unless he got the head to Deadhead. He picked it up. It was cold as a block of ice. Somehow he felt better after he'd dumped a box of candy bars behind the counter, put the head in the box, and faded it all to invisibility.

He peeked into the auditorium. The movie had progressed through the scene where Tachyon had saved Blythe van Rennsaeler from a gang of crazed joker lootersto accompanying hisses and boos from the watching gang. They were just raggedy-a.s.s kids. Sure, some were armed and Tachyon's grand-brat was a mind-control artist, but Cunningham had a couple of carloads of Werewolves outside waiting for his call. He crept back into the lobby and set the box with Kien's head in it on the candy counter. He went up to the lobby doors. They were pulled shut with a chain looped around their bars. with an open padlock dangling from the chain. He creaked the doors open cautiously and peered out the front of the theater.

The b.u.ms were back, but they were too engrossed in squabbling over the newly purchased bottle of booze to even notice Cunningham. He gestured at the cars parked at the curb across the street, waving vigorously, and doors opened and Werewolves got out. They crossed the street. The derelicts noticed them and realized at last that something was about to happen. They moved off silently down the street, clutching their paper-bag-wrapped bottles as if afraid the Werewolves were going to try to take them away.

"What is it?" Warlock asked as they approached. "It's Blaise and his fellow delinquents, all right. Round 'em up, but don't start anything rough. Watch out for Blaise. He's got a gun and some kind of mind-control powers, but he should be smart enough not to start anything when he sees there's a bunch of us. And Deadhead." The insane ace looked almost guiltily at Cunningham. "I've got something for you."

"The head?" Warlock and Latham asked at the same time.

Cunningham nodded.

The Werewolves filed silently through the lobby. There were a dozen of them, big, tough mothers dressed in leather and armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and shotguns. Cunningham was at their head, after showing a happily drooling Deadhead the cardboard box on the candy counter and leaving him to it.

"Remember," he warned the Werewolves, "keep it quiet, but if that Blaise brat tries to start anything, blow him loose." He turned to the Werewolf leader.

"Warlock, stick close to Latham. Make sure he behaves."

"You heard him," Warlock said. "Let's do it."

Inside the auditorium the movie had progressed to the famous scene between Dudley Moore as Tachyon and Pia Zadora as Blythe van Rennsaeler, with Moore, rose in mouth, playing an elephantine melody on the piano while Zadora sang of "alien love" and the audience roared with laughter.

Time to end this, right now, Cunningham thought. He stepped into the auditorium, drew his pistol, and fired off a round into the ceiling.

That got everyone's attention. Candy and popcorn went flying as the teenage delinquents leaped to their feet and made abortive attempts to flee.

"Hold it, everyone!" Cunningham shouted in his best authoritative voice. Either his tone of command worked or the sight of a dozen heavily armed Werewolves did.

Everyone froze. Everyone but Blaise.

He stood slowly, and faced Cunningham from across the auditorium. "What do you want?" he shouted over Zadora's sudden squeals of ecstasy as Dudley Moore had his way with her on the piano bench.

"Just to talk," Cunningham said. "There's nothing to fear."

"Sure," Blaise said. He sauntered up slowly to the head of the auditorium, fully aware that everyone's eyes were on him and playing his role as gang chieftain to the hilt. "What do you want to talk about?" he asked Cunningham casually.

Cunningham jerked his head back to the lobby. "In there." He looked at the Werewolves. "You five keep an eye on the kids. The rest of you come with us."

The Werewolves followed Cunningham, Blaise, Warlock, and Latham back into the lobby. Deadhead looked around guiltily. "Chinese food," he said through a full mouth, and turned back to his task.

Blaise frowned. "Oh," he said. "I see you found it. Too bad. He said I could have it."

"He?" Cunningham asked, leaning forward eagerly in antic.i.p.ation.

"Me," a new voice drawled.

Everyone turned to look at the stairs leading up to the projection booth to see a middle-aged, blond, weatherbeaten man standing there, smiling. Something in his smile made Cunningham feel cold.

"Christian," he said, swiveling his gun toward the British ace. "I knew itl Why did you do it? Why did you kill Kien?"

Christian's sardonic smile widened as he ambled casually down the remaining stairs and joined the others on the floor of the lobby. "But I didn't," he protested.

"You can't deny that you were this brat's accomplice."

"I'm not denying that at all," Christian said blandly. "I'm simply denying that we killed Kien."

"What?" Cunningham asked.

As if on cue, Deadhead suddenly moaned and turned and faced them. "Why are you doing this to me?" he whined. "Why are you stealing my body? Why, Kien?"

A cold wind blew through Cunningham. "Kien?" he repeated softly.

Christian leaned against the candy counter. "Of course," he said with a sardonic smile on his tanned features. "You've been plotting and planning to take my place for a long time. I got sick of it. I decided to flush all the conspirators into the open, using," and he nodded at Blaise, "my jumper friend here to provide me with a perfect cover."

"No," Deadhead whined. "Please, no. I've been loyal..."

"Jumpers?" Cunningham said. The realization that Blaise and the others were jumpers made him turn cold. "You changed bodies with Christian and faked your own murder?"

"Exactly. Latham had brought the jumpers into our sphere of influence some time ago. I decided, however, to bypa.s.s him this time and approach Blaise directly. I used him to switch bodies. Since then I've been using Christian's astral projection to keep track of you and the others."

That explained a lot, Cunningham thought, grateful that he was surrounded by a band of friendly Werewolves. "Too bad, in the end, you miscalculated." He turned to Warlock. "Waste him," he said.

Warlock's face was unreadable behind the Michael Jackson mask. He lifted his pump shotgun, then turned and placed its barrels directly under Cunningham's chin. "Sorry," he said.

Christian--Kien--laughed. "Splendid!"

"What are you doing?" Cunningham demanded. "Kill him! Kill him and it's all over."

"It is over," Warlock said gently. "You see, my power allows me to see death on people's faces. I saw it this morning on yours at Sui Ma's. I knew then that you would die before the day ended."

Cunningham felt sudden sweat spring up on his forehead. "But kill him! All you have to do is kill him!" Warlock shook his head and Kien laughed and laughed.

Cunningham turned to face him. "You were dead. I thought you were dead-" he started, but Kien held up his hand, stopping him.

"No excuses. No lies. I have flushed out a traitor, but find myself trapped in an old, badly abused body. I think," he said, looking hard at Cunningham, "that I would like to trade it in on a younger model."

"No!" Cunningham screamed. He tried to fade and run, but he heard high, t.i.ttering laughter from Blaise and a hand of cold metal clamped down on his naked brain. The room spun and he was somewhere else. His legs were young and strong, but everything was whirling about, making him dizzy and nauseated, and he couldn't get them to work. His perspective shifted again almost immediately and he'fell against the candy counter. He bounced, hit the floor, and started to crawl away, but his body was old and tired and his head was swimming and confused.

He heard faraway laughter, and an eager young voice said, "Let me!"

Someone turned him over and he saw blazing red hair and a young, horrible grin, but most of all he saw a huge gun barrel pointing right at his face.

He closed his eyes and tried to speak, but no words would come. He may have heard the horribly loud, terribly frightening explosion. But that was all.

n.o.body Gets Out Alive

by Walton Simons

Jerry stood across the street from Latham's apartment building. A cool wind stirred up the dry leaves around his feet. The late-September heat had given way, at least temporarily, to the first cold snap of the season. He was dressed in a maintenance man's outfit. The steel blue .38 was tucked away in his work box, along with a few other things. He was as ready as he was going to get. He waited for the light to turn and walked across the street.

He showed the doorman a fake work order he'd manufactured. The doorman was more bored than suspicious and let him in. Jerry walked quickly to the far elevator and put an oUT of oRDER sign over the b.u.t.ton, then pushed the b.u.t.ton and stepped into the waiting car. Latham, naturally enough, had the penthouse apartment. Of the two cars, this was one that went all the way to the top. One of the things Jerry had learned about in the last month was how elevators worked. He opened the control panel and set the car to go all the way up. His knees almost gave way as the elevator started. Jerry made his features and skin tone Oriental. He pulled his change of clothes from his work box. It was mostly leather. The finishing touch was a fake immaculate Egrets jacket. He'd had it made from the videotape he'd gotten from Ichiko.

Once fully dressed, he tucked the gun into his jacket. The car stopped. Jerry clipped one of the wires. For now, the elevator was going nowhere. He could rig a bypa.s.s in a hurry if it came to that.

Jerry stepped out and walked to Latham's door. He fingered the lock and let himself in, closing the door softly behind him. The penthouse was quiet. Except for a light in what appeared to be the bedroom, it was dark as well. Jerry took a deep breath, padded across the carpeted floor to the lighted doorway, and stepped in.

Latham was lying naked on the bed. His body was covered with sweat and his hair was a tousled mess. The sheets were knotted on the floor with a red robe. Latham looked lost in a moment of private satisfaction. He glanced up and saw Jerry-the-Egret. His narrow smile slipped. "Who sent you? How the h.e.l.l did you get in?" Latham's voice lacked the a.s.surance Jerry was used to hearing.

Jerry pulled the .38, but didn't point it. "I'll ask the questions. Tell me about the jumpers." He had to have the truth before he could shoot Latham. He wouldn't be able to deal with killing him otherwise.

A young naked woman stepped out of the bathroom. It was the bald-headed girl.

She had powerful, welldefined muscles, almost to the point of being unattractive, and bikini-waxed blond pubic hair. Jerry leveled the gun at her chest. He'd been watching for two hours and hadn't seen her go in. He didn't know if he could kill a girl. Even if she did have a part in Kenneth's death.

"He made us," she said. "All of us. With that." She sat on the bed, bent over, and kissed Latham's flaccid p.e.n.i.s. It twitched under her tongue.

"Not just yet, Zelda. Business first." Latham put his hand under Zelda's chin and pointed her face at Jerry. Jerry felt something that might have been pain if it had lasted more than a few seconds. His vision blurred for an instant. When it cleared, he was looking down at Latham's p.e.n.i.s. There was a pleasant warmth between his legs, like nothing he'd ever felt before. He tried to sit up, but his body felt heavy and clumsy. A hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back.

There was an Egret in the doorway pointing a gun at him. Jerry felt his hands being twisted behind his back. Cold metal surrounded his wrists, and he heard twin clicks. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was his Egret body that screamed.

The Oriental face began to melt and flow. The Egret tore at the satin jacket and shirt, exposing his chest. b.r.e.a.s.t.s began to form there. Jerry's pirated body closed its eyes and screamed again. He felt another moment of vertigo and found himself staring at Latham and a handcuffed Zelda. She was still screaming. The lawyer pushed her off the bed. Jerry brought his body under control and squeezed his trigger finger, but Zelda had dropped the gun. He ran.

He dove into the elevator and pulled a bypa.s.s from his work box. It slipped from his sweaty fingers. He picked it up and clipped it into place, then punched the ground floor. He looked up. Latham had the gun pointed at him. Jerry dove to one side and heard the shot at the same time. The bullet tore into the car wall behind him. The doors closed and it started down.

Jerry changed his clothes and appearance back to the maintenance worker. His insides tingled and his skin was cold. He straightened hImself and took several deep breaths.

It didn't help. He was still shaking when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. He walked in measured steps across the lobby and out into the cool New York night.

He stopped at a bar near his apartment and ordered a double. He figured he needed it. Jerry knew he'd been lucky. He hadn't counted on Zelda being there.