Miss Fascetti was gone, the other detective told him, did he know anything about that? Did he think she was involved? Was she a culprit or a victim? What could he tell them about her? He said he didn’t know any such person, until they explained that they were asking about Angela Fascetti and maybe he knew her better as Angelface. She was gone and Mal was shot dead, and the most frightening thing of all was that Tach did not know where his next drink was coming from.
They held him for four days, questioning him relentlessly, going over the same ground again and again, until Tachyon was screaming at them, pleading with them, demanding his rights, demanding a lawyer, demanding a drink. They gave him only the lawyer. The lawyer said they couldn’t hold him without charging him, so they charged him with being a material witness, with vagrancy, with resisting arrest, and questioned him again.
By the third day, his hands were shaking and he was having waking hallucinations. One of the detectives, the kindly one, promised him a bottle in return for his cooperation, but somehow his answers never quite satisfied them, and the bottle was not forthcoming. The bad-tempered one threatened to hold him forever unless he told the truth. I thought it was a nightmare, Tach told him, weeping. I was drunk, I’d been asleep. No, I couldn’t see them, just the reflections, distorted, multiplied. I don’t know how many there were. I don’t know what it was about. No, she had no enemies, everyone loved Angelface. No, she didn’t kill Mal, that didn’t make sense, Mal loved her. One of them had a soft voice. No, I don’t know which one. No, I can’t remember what they said. No, I don’t know if they were jokers or not, they looked like jokers, but the mirrors distort, some of them, not all of them, don’t you see? No, I couldn’t possibly pick them out of a lineup, I never really saw them. I had to hide under the table, do you see, the assassins had come, that’s what my father always told me, there wasn’t anything I could do.
When they realized that he was telling them all he knew, they dropped the charges and released him. To the dark streets of Jokertown and the cold of the night.
He walked down the Bowery alone, shivering. The Walrus was hawking the evening papers from his newsstand on the corner of Hester. “Read all about it,” he called out. “Turtle Terror in Jokertown.” Tachyon paused to stare dully at the headlines. POLICE SEEK TURTLE, the Post reported. TURTLE CHARGED WITH ASSAULT, announced the World-Telegram. So the cheering had stopped already. He glanced at the text. The Turtle had been prowling Jokertown the past two nights, lifting people a hundred feet in the air to question them, threatening to drop them if he didn’t like their answers. When police tried to make an arrest last night, the Turtle had deposited two of their black-and-whites on the roof of Freakers at Chatham Square. CURB THE TURTLE, the editorial in the World-Telegram said.
“You all right, Doc?” the Walrus asked.
“No,” said Tachyon, putting down the paper. He couldn’t afford to pay for it anyway.
Police barriers blocked the entrance to the Funhouse, and a padlock secured the door. CLOSED INDEFINITELY, the sign said. He needed a drink, but the pockets of his bandleader’s coat were empty.
He thought of Des and Randall, and realized that he had no idea where they lived, or what their last names might be.
Trudging back to ROOMS, Tach climbed wearily up the stairs. When he stepped into the darkness, he had just enough time to notice that the room was frigidly cold; the window was open and a bitter wind was scouring out the old smells of urine, mildew, and drink. Had he done that? Confused, he stepped toward it, and someone came out from behind the door and grabbed him.
It happened so fast he scarcely had time to react. The forearm across his windpipe was an iron bar, choking off his scream, and a hand wrenched his right arm up behind his back, hard. He was choking, his arm close to breaking, and then he was being shoved toward the open window, running at it, and Tachyon could only thrash feebly in a grip much stronger than his own. The windowsill caught him square in the stomach, knocking the last of his breath right out of him, and suddenly he was falling, head over heels, locked helplessly in the steel embrace of his attacker, both of them plunging toward the sidewalk below.
They jerked to a stop five feet above the cement, with a wrench that elicited a grunt from the man behind him.
Tach had closed his eyes before the instant of impact. He opened them as they began to float upward. Above the yellow halo of the streetlamp was a ring of much brighter lights, set in a hovering darkness that blotted out the winter stars.
The arm across his throat had loosened enough for Tachyon to groan. “You,” he said hoarsely, as they curved around the shell and came to rest gently on top of it. The metal was icy cold, its chill biting right through the fabric of Tachyon’s pants. As the Turtle began to rise straight up into the night, Tachyon’s captor released him. He drew in a shuddering breath of cold air, and rolled over to face a man in a zippered leather jacket, black dungarees, and a rubbery green frog mask. “Who … ?” he gasped.
“I’m the Great and Powerful Turtle’s mean-ass sidekick,” the man in the frog mask said, rather cheerfully.
“DOCTOR TACHYON, I PRESUME,” boomed the shell’s speakers, far above the alleys of Jokertown. “I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET YOU. I READ ABOUT YOU WHEN I WAS JUST A KID.”
“Turn it down,” Tach croaked weakly.
“OH. SURE. Is that better?” The volume diminished sharply. “It’s noisy in here, and behind all this armor I can’t always tell how loud I sound. I’m sorry if we scared you, but we couldn’t take the chance of you saying no. We need you.”
Tach stayed just where he was, shivering, shaken. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.
“Help,” the Turtle declared. They were still rising; the lights of Manhattan spread out all around them, and the spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building rose uptown. They were higher than either. The wind was cold and gusting; Tach clung to the shell for dear life.
“Leave me alone,” Tachyon said. “I have no help to give you. I have no help to give anybody.”
“Fuck, he’s crying,” the man in the frog mask said.
“You don’t understand,” the Turtle said. The shell began to drift west, its motion silent and steady. There was something awesome and eerie about the flight. “You have to help. I’ve tried on my own, but I’m getting nowhere. But you, your powers, they can make the difference.” Tachyon was lost in his own self-pity, too cold and exhausted and despairing to reply. “I want a drink,” he said.
“Fuck it,” said Frog-face. “Dumbo was right about this guy, he’s nothing but a goddamned wino.”
“He doesn’t understand,” said the Turtle. “Once we explain, he’ll come around. Doctor Tachyon, we’re talking about your friend Angelface.”
He needed a drink so badly it hurt. “She was good to me,” he said, remembering the sweet perfume of her satin sheets, and her bloody footprints on the mirror tiles. “But there’s nothing I can do. I told the police everything I know.”
“Chickenshit asshole,” said Frog-face.