It had taken Spector the better part of an hour to track down a cab in Jokertown. He sat in the back seat, thumbing through the early edition of the Times. Except for the Astronomer, all the dead aces had their pictures on the front page, surrounded by a black border. There was a question mark next to the Turtle, but he was obviously still alive and kicking. Specfor was almost glad. But he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t dead too. He’d always managed to survive. Most losers did. “Yesterday was a hell of a day, I’ll tell you,” the cabbie said.
“Yesterday?” Spector shook his head. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It was like a long, bad dream.
“Yeah. It would suit me fine if all those aces killed each other off I got no use for them.”
Spector ignored him and pulled out the sports section. He wondered if the Nets would be any better this year.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think about aces?”
“I don’t. Why don’t you just shut your mouth and drive.” It was several minutes before the cabbie spoke again. “Here we are. What the hell do you want down here?” Spector opened the door and got out, then handed the cabbie a hundred-dollar bill. “Wait here.”
“Fine. But I can’t sit around all morning.”
Spector walked down to the chain-link fence. It was time to visit Ralph again. Maybe he’d be too tired to kill. The king of the garbage dump really didn’t deserve it.
A young black man wearing a green windbreaker and red cap met him at the fence. “You need something?”
“Yeah, there was a bunch of barges full of garbage here last night, and a guy named Ralph. Where are they?”
The man turned around and pointed out to the river. “They’re halfway to Fresh Kills by now. Just garbage, though.”
“Right. Thanks.” Spector watched the man walk away, then looked out across the water. “You get to live, Ralphie. Unless you say something stupid.”
The cabbie honked his horn. One thing Ralph had been right about. There’s no substitute for being your own boss. Doing work for the Astronomer and Latham had gotten him shot, broken, bitten, and zapped to the top of the scoreboard in Yankee Stadium. He was sick of it. No more being a loaded gun who some big wheel pointed at someone else. From now on he’d decide who he killed and when.
Another honk. “One more time, shithead,” Spector muttered. “Just one more time.”
The sky was beginning to brighten, but the light brought no warmth. The docks were already alive. Most people were waking up or downing their first cup of coffee. Spector was going to go to bed and sleep for a week. The talk about this Wild Card Day probably wouldn’t die down for a week or even a month.
“Yessir, Ralph, you showed me the way. From now on, I look out for number one. No more cleaning up after other people’s shit.”
There was a third long honk. Spector turned slowly. “You asked for it moron.” The endless pain hummed through him like a fresh papercut.
It was going to be hell finding another cab.
Even in that darkest hour that comes before the dawn, Manhattan never truly sleeps, but Riverside Drive was motionless and empty as Hiram Worchester climbed from his cab.
It was almost eerie. He tipped the driver, found his keys, and climbed the stoop to his own front door. Nothing had ever looked as welcoming.
Inside, Hiram climbed the stairs wearily, without bothering to turn on the lights. He undressed while he trudged upward, hanging his jacket on the wooden acorn at the foot of the polished banister, dropping his tie and shirt on the steps, abandoning his shoes on the first landing and his trousers on the second. The maid could pick them up tomorrow, he thought. Except that it was already tomorrow, wasn’t it? No, he decided. No, no matter what the calendar might say, this was still Wild Card Day, and it would be until he got to sleep.
His third-floor bedroom looked out over the Hudson. Hiram went to the window and opened it wide, taking a deep breath of the chill night air. The western sky was black satin, and over in Jersey the lights were beginning to come back on. But the most beautiful sight in the room was his king-size water bed, its pillows plumped and ready, its covers turned back on clean flannel sheets. It looked so warm and comfortable. Hiram lay down with a sigh of gratitude, feeling the water slosh gently beneath him. He slid under the blankets and closed his eyes.
Somewhere the Howler laughed, and Hiram’s dreams shattered into crystal shards. Kid Dinosaur swooped through Aces High, dropping pieces of his body onto the dinner plates.
A maniac with a bow aimed an arrow at his eye, but Popinjay sent it away with an off-color quip. Faces turned toward him, bruised and bleeding, eyes full of pain: Tachyon, Gills, an old joker woman who walked like a snail. Water Lily smiled, the moisture running off her naked skin as if she had stepped fresh from a shower, her hair gleaming in the soft light of the chandelier, and she walked outside to look at the stars, climbing up on the edge of the parapet, straining toward them, reaching, reaching. Hiram tried to warn her, shouted that she needed to be careful, but her foot slipped, and as she began to fall he saw that it was not Jane after all, it was Eileen, Eileen who reached out her hand for help, but Hiram was not there, and she fell away from him screaming. In dreams you fall forever.
Then he was in his kitchen, cooking, stirring a great pot, and in the pot was a thick liquid that bubbled slowly and looked like blood, and he stirred frantically, because they would be here soon, the diners would be here soon, but the food wasn’t ready, it wasn’t any good, they wouldn’t like it, they wouldn’t like him, he had to get it ready, had to make sure everything was perfect. He stirred faster, and now he heard footsteps, growing louder and louder, heavy pounding footsteps on the stairs, someone coming closer and closer…
Hiram jerked upright, scattering pillows and bedclothes, just as a fist the size and color of a smoked Virginia ham crashed through the closed bedroom door. The door was kicked, once, twice, and on the third kick it few apart, and Bludgeon stepped through. Hiram gasped.
He was seven feet tall, dressed in tight-fitting leather. His head was square and brutal, seamed with callous and twisted horn, eyes set beneath a heavy ridge of bone, one a clear bright blue, the other a vivid red. The right side of his mouth was closed by the slick, shiny scar tissue that had grown over it, and his flesh was mottled by a huge greenish bruise. His ears were veined leathery things like the wings of bats, his scalp covered by boils instead of hair. “Fucker,” he screamed in a voice that whistled out of half his mouth like scalding steam. “Fucking cuntface ace,” he shrieked. The fingers of his right hand were closed permanently in a fist, rough calloused skin grown over fingers and knuckles in great ridges. When he made a fist of his left hand, his muscles bulged, and the seams of his leather jacket split open. “I’m gonna kill you, you fucking cuntface asshole fatboy.”
“You’re only a nightmare,” Hiram said. “I’m still asleep.” Bludgeon screamed and kicked the bed. The wooden frame shattered, the plastic burst, and water began spraying out from underneath the blankets. It looked like a sprinkler. Hiram sat there numbly, the water soaking through his underwear, blinking in shock. This wasn’t a dream, he told himself as he got wetter and wetter. Bludgeon reached through the spray and grabbed the front of his undershirt with his left hand, lifting him bodily in the air. “You fucker,” the giant was screaming over and over. “I’m out, you cuntface bastard, you stinkin’ piece of lard, they cut me fuckin’ out and it’s all because of you, I’m going to fuckin’ kill you, you shitface cunt-lapping fatboy, you’re fuckin’ dead, you hear that, you fuckin’ hear that?”
His right hand waved under Hiram’s nose, a misshapen ball of bone and scar tissue and horny callus cocked into an eternal fist. “I can dent fuckin’ tanks with this, you cuntface fucker, so just imagine what it’s going to do to your *-eating face. You see it? Do you see it, fucker!”
Dangling at the end of Bludgeon’s arm, Hiram Worchester managed to nod. “Yes,” he said. He raised his own hand. “Do you see this one?” he asked, and made a fist.
As Bludgeon bobbed off the floor, his clubfist came around and caught Hiram on the cheek. It smarted quite a bit and left a red welt. By then Bludgeon was floating, hanging onto Hiram for dear life, his feet scraping against the ceiling. He began to scream threats. “Oh, keep quiet,” Hiram told him. He tried to disentangle Bludgeon’s fingers from his undershirt, but the joker was too strong.
Frowning, Hiram restored himself to full weight. Then he doubled it.
Then he doubled that.
Instead of trying to push Bludgeon away, he pulled him nearer, hugged him tightly to his ample stomach, and did a bellyflop onto the hardwood floor. It was the second time that day he heard bones crack.
Hiram climbed to his feet, panting, his heart trip-hammering away in his chest. He lightened himself and stood frowning down at Bludgeon, who was hugging his ribs and screaming. As he drifted up off the floor again, Hiram caught him by wrist and ankle and heaved him right out the open window.
He fell up. Hiram went to the window and watched him rise. The wind was from the west. It ought to blow him over the city, toward the East River, Long Island, and eventually the Atlantic. He wondered if Bludgeon could swim.
The bed was ruined. Hiram went to the linen closet. He paused with the sheets in his hand, shook his head, stacked them neatly back in the closet. What was the use? The night was almost gone, and he had so much to do-Aces High was supposed to be open for lunch, someone would have to supervise the repairs, and in a few minutes the dawn would be coming up, the start of a whole new day. He was too tired to sleep anyway.
Sighing deeply, Hiram Worchester went downstairs and began to cook. He made himself a cheese omelet and a triple rasher of bacon, fried up some small red potatoes with onions and peppers, and washed it all down with a large orange juice and a fresh-brewed pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain. Afterward, he was almost certain that he would live.
Around her the city was coming alive. Several million people performing the routine little actions that give form to a life. A litany of the ordinary, the mundane, the comfortable. And Roulette felt a stir of interest, a flare of anticipation. So humdrum when compared to the obsession that had ruled her life. But so restful in its simplicity. She thought she would start by brewing a cup of coffee. And after that? The possibilities were limitless.
There were still merchant ships headed for the Far East. It was still possible to get a cabin on one, though with this short a notice it had been expensive.
But it was done. Fortunato stood at the rail as they steamed out past Governor’s Island and into Upper New York Bay.
The sun was coming up over Brooklyn. Underneath him the sea moved at its own pace, vast, balanced, fluid yet unchanging. It was the first of Fortunato’s new teachers.