Wildcards - One Eyed Jacks Part 8

" I mean, it wasn't her inside her body. It was like she was ... I don't know.

Possessed."

"Possessed? The devil made her do it?"

" I don't know."

She told the story again and again, until the words lost all meaning.

Then a cop in a suit came out of the darkness and said, "What do you know about a bunch that calls itself WORSE!"

" I never heard of them. Can I have a gla.s.s of water?"

"In a minute. Can you tell me what the initials stand for?"

"I told you, I never-"

"Women's Organization to Reach s.e.xual Equality. Now does it ring a bell?"

"No, I--"

"Last year there was a riot outside an abortion clinic. These people from WORSE sent five protesters and a cop to the hospital."

"Good for them," Veronica said.

"The cop died. Now do you think it's funny? There's at least seven incidents in the last year where these women have provoked violence in the streets. One of the people they've got it in for is your old employer. Fortunato."

"What's that got to do with Hannah?"

"Not much. She's only the president."

"What? That's impossible."

"I guess you know everything about her, right? How long did you say you've known her? Ten days?"

"She said she had nothing to do with those people anymore."

"You just said you'd never heard of WORSE."

"She never mentioned the name. She said she used to be part of some radical organization, but she didn't agree with their methods. She said it was over a long time ago."

A little man with pattern baldness and gla.s.ses said, "She's clean, Lou. She's telling the truth." The man was a low-grade ace, the weakest sort of telepath.

The cops had ten or fifteen on staff to use as lie detectors.

"To h.e.l.l with it then," the man in the suit said. "We're cutting you loose. But I don't want you away from a phone where I can find you for more than an hour at a time. You got that?"

"I want to see her," Veronica said.

"Forget it. Her lawyer's there. That's all she gets."

"Who's her lawyer?"

The man in the suit sighed. "Bud?"

One of the cops looked through the file. "Lawyer's name is Mundy." He whistled.

"From Latham, Strauss. Hot stuff."

"Now get out of here," the man in the suit said. Two uniformed cops gave her a ride home, then followed her inside. They had a warrant, signed and sealed. She sat on the floor and watched them as they took the apartment apart. One of them found the s.e.xual toys in the drawer by the bed. He held up the wooden ben wa b.a.l.l.s for his partner to see, then looked over at Veronica. "f.u.c.k you," Veronica said, blushing, close to tears. "Leave that stuff alone."

The cop shrugged and put the b.a.l.l.s away. Finally they left. Veronica had watched them carefully. There was nothing in the apartment, not a single piece of evidence, to connect Hannah to WORSE.

As soon as they were gone, she called Latham, Strauss. The answering service took her number. She hung up and moved restlessly through the house, putting the Plexiglas framed drawings back on the walls, refolding clothes and putting them in the drawers, wiping down the cabinets. The phone rang.

"Veronica? This is Dyan Mundy."

"Thank G.o.d."

"I was about to call you when I got your message. Hannah asked me to. She wanted you to know she's okay, they haven't hurt her." The woman's voice exuded confidence, control, a kind of artificial warmth. Veronica visualized chin-length blond hair, gold rings, three strands of pearls. "There's no way I can get you in to see her just now. She understands that, and sends you her love."

Tears ran down Veronica's cheeks. "What happened? Did she say what happened?"

"She tried to explain, but frankly, her story doesn't make much sense. She apparently had some kind of out-of-body experience. She felt this shock and disorientation and then she was suddenly off to the side somewhere. Watched herself shoot the guard as if from a great distance. I don't know how well that's going to play in court. Do you know if she's ever been treated for an emotional disturbance? Is there any history of it in her family?"

"There's nothing the matter with Hannah," Veronica said. "Somebody else was in her body when the guard was killed. It wasn't Hannah."

"That's what she said."

"What about the blond kid?"

"What blond kid?"

"When Hannah got... taken over, or whatever it was, there was this blond kid. He just keeled over, like a zombie. Then at the end Hannah was back in her own body and I couldn't find the kid anywhere."

"I don't understand. What are you trying to make out of this?"

"I don't know. But I think that kid was involved somehow"

A long pause. "Veronica, I know you're upset. But you have to trust me. She's in the hands of the best law firm in the city. If anybody can save her, we can."

She couldn't sleep. She thought of Hannah alone in a damp and stinking cell, claustrophobic, terrified out of her mind. Nothing Veronica could do would convince the police-or even Hannah's lawyer-of what she knew to be the truth.

Something that wasn't Hannah had pulled the trigger.

She called all of Croyd's numbers, with no luck. Jerry would gladly help, but what could he do? His brother's law firm was already on the case. And what good were lawyers against an entire bank lobby full of eyewitnesses? Hannah's smell was still in the sheets. It made Veronica crazy with longing. It was like a heroin habit, tearing up her guts. She couldn't lie there any longer. She put on running shoes and went out onto the street.

It was nine o'clock on a Friday night. The life of the city went on without her, as it always did. She drifted toward the light and noise of Broadway, hating the faces she saw around her, wanting to throw herself into the river of yellow cabs and pound on them and scream until the world stopped what it was doing and came to help. New York was the best city in the world to be happy in, and the worst if you were desperate. It towered over the helpless, sped by them in clouds of monoxide. It shoved past them on the street without apology, and left its garbage all around them to wade through.

Life meant nothing without Hannah. Without Hannah she would end up back on the needle, would find herself giving b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs on car seats for ten dollars a pop.

Anything would be better.

That was when she saw the gun.

It was inside the gla.s.s display case of a p.a.w.nshop, just visible behind the guitars and stereos in the window. It was chrome-plated and heavy and spoke the word "power" to her.

She went inside. The man behind the counter was fifty going on twenty-two.

Veronica had had too many tricks just like him. His hairpiece wasn't even the same color as the fringe around his ears. His polyester shirt was green, with horses on it, ten years out of fashion. It was unb.u.t.toned to show his chest hair and gold chains.

"How much is that pistol?" Veronica asked him. "Now, what would a sweet little number such as yourself want with a big, nasty Smith and Wesson .38?" He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall behind the counter. On the TV over his shoulder, two football teams smashed into each other.

"I'm not in the mood for bulls.h.i.t, pal. How much is the gun?"

The man shook his head, smiling. " I see it all the time. Sweet little thing gets a little upset with her sugar daddy, maybe catches him with his hand in the wrong cookie jar, and suddenly she's got to blow him away. This is what television has done to modern society. Everybody wants to blow everybody else away."

"Look, pal-"

The man leaned forward. "No, you look. The law says I'm responsible for what I sell. I don't like your looks, I don't have to sell you s.h.i.t." He straightened up and his voice softened. "So why don't you be a good little girl and run along home to Papa?"

In that moment Veronica saw her entire life as one humiliation after another, all at the hands of men, all of whom felt they were privileged to decide her destiny.

From the father who never acknowledged her, to Fortunato who told her how to dress and how to smile, to Jerry who expected her to love him just because he loved her, to the countless men who'd used her and walked away. She was sick of it. For once she wished she had Fortunato's power, could reach out with her mind and crush this pompous, ugly little man to jelly.

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. It should have distracted her, but instead she felt connected. The lights flashed with the rhythm of her breathing and she knew she was the cause. She felt the power flowing through the wires, flowing out of the grid and into her mind. The wild card. Croyd. It was happening. The picture on the TV rolled, then turned to snow. The second hand on the big electric clock next to it stopped, then swung back and forth like a pendulum, keeping time with the flashing lights. The man started to turn toward the TV and then went pale. He sat down slowly, his arms crossing tighter, as if he were cold. Sweat beaded his face.

"Are you hurt?" she asked him.

" I don't know" His voice was weak, and higher than it had been.

She hadn't crippled him, apparently. Beyond that she didn't care. "Give me the gun."

"I ... I don't know if I can."

"Do it!"

He got onto his hands and knees, fumbled a key into the lock, slid the back of the display case open. He had to use both hands to lift the gun onto the counter. Veronica reached for it, then realized what she'd done. Why did she need a gun?

She ran into the street, waving for a cab.

She got as far as the holding tank on nerve alone. The beefy, red-haired guard outside the lockup refused to let her any farther and Veronica tried to do to him what she'd done in the p.a.w.nshop. Nothing happened.

She felt a surge of panic. She had no idea what the power was or how it worked.

What if she couldn't use it again right away? What if she needed something that had been in the p.a.w.nshop as a catalyst?

"Lady, I told you, this is a restricted area. Now, are you going to get out of here or do I got to call somebody?" Panic turned to helplessness, helplessness to anger. What good was this power if she couldn't use it to help Hannah? And with the anger it came. The lights flickered and the music from a TV inside the lockup dissolved in static. Suddenly she could hear the prisoners screaming. The man staggered, leaned forward to support himself on his desk. "Jesus Christ,"

the man said. "Jesus Christ."

"Where's the keys?"

"What'd you do to me, lady? I can't lift my f.u.c.kin' arms."

"The keys."

The man slumped into his chair, unsnapped the keys from his belt, and slid them across the desk. Behind Veronica a man's voice said, "Charlie?"

Veronica concentrated on the voice without turning around and heard the man slump to the floor. The third key she tried fit a control panel next to the steel lockup door. A motor wheezed and the door bucked but didn't open. She realized she was still disrupting the electricity and forced herself to relax.

The door slid back. There were four cells inside. Three of them held drunks and addicts and derelicts. In the fourth were four black prost.i.tutes, and Hannah.

All of them but Hannah were screaming for help.

Hannah hung from a pipe in the ceiling by her trousers. Her face was swollen and purple and her tongue stuck straight out of her slack mouth. Her eyes bulged. A patch of hair had been ripped out by the zipper in her pants and a drop of dried blood still clung to her scalp. Veronica threw herself at the bars, her screams lost in the voices around her. She felt the keys tugged out of her hand and one of the hookers opened the cell from inside. Veronica ran to Hannah and held her with one arm around her waist, the other hand tugging at the knotted pant leg around her neck.

She refused to think. Not yet. Not while there was still something left to try.

She laid Hannah's body out on the sticky gray floor of the cell. She pushed the swollen tongue aside and dug vomit out of Hannah's throat with her fingers. She blew air into her lungs until she lost all breath herself.

One of the prost.i.tutes had stayed behind. She looked at Veronica and said, "She a wild woman before she die. b.i.t.c.h went completely crazy. Never saw anything like it. We couldn't get near to her."

Veronica nodded.

"I tried to stop her, but there weren't no way. Girl was crazy, that's all."

"Thank you," Veronica said.

Then the cell was full of police, guns drawn, and there was nothing she could do but raise her hands and go along with them.

She waited until she was alone with two detectives before she used her power again. She left the two of them barely conscious on the floor of the interrogation room and walked out into the night.

The street was headlights and horns honking, blaring jam boxes and shouting voices, all of it too bright, too loud, too overwhelming. Inside her it was the same. Her mind would not shut up. Hannah was her life, the only thing that mattered. If Hannah was dead, how could she still be alive?

The thought was white-hot, too painful to touch. Better, she thought, to just think of herself as already dead. She watched a bus roar past her and wondered what it would feel like to go under its wheels.

Then she remembered the look on Hannah's face as she lay on the floor of the bank, as her consciousness came back into her. She remembered the prost.i.tute in the cell. Crazy, wild woman, the prost.i.tute had said.

Someone had done this to Hannah. Somewhere in the city there was someone who knew what had happened, and why.

Not dead, Veronica thought. Hannah is dead, and I'm not. Someone knows why.

It turned into a refrain, a mantra. It brought her back to Hannah's apartment, took her inside. She lay down in Hannah's bed and held one of Hannah's shirts to her face and breathed the smell. Liz crawled up onto the bed next to her and started to purr. Together they lay there and waited to, see if the sun would ever rise.