Wild Cards V (18 page)

Before they had stepped off the curb, someone coming from his blind side bumped into him. On a usual night the young preacher would have turned the other cheek, but normally he wasn't so frustrated. He yelled, “Hey! Watch where you're going!” and then realized with a shock of horror that his harsh words had been spoken to a joker:

An obviously retarded joker with a hunchback and dim eyes. The man had curly red hair and wore a freshly pressed lumberjack shirt and denim jeans. “Sorry,” said the joker, sticking the tip of his forefinger in his nostril, and then, as if thinking better of it, merely wiping his wrist across his nose.

The young preacher for some reason suspected the gesture as an affectation and became certain of it when the joker bowed stiffly and said, “I was just a tad preoccupied—lost in my own world, I suppose. You do forgive me—don't you?”

Then the joker stepped away from the curb as if he had completely changed his mind about which direction he was headed in. A trickle of drool dropped down his chin almost as an afterthought.

Wide-eyed and confused, the young preacher took a few steps after the man. Belinda May detained him, demanding, “Leo, where do you think you're going?”

“Uh, after him, of course.”

“Why?”

The young preacher thought about it during a particularly uncomfortable moment. “I thought I would tell him about the mission. See if he couldn't use a little help. He looked like he could.”

“Nice sentiments, but you can't. You're incognito, remember?”

“I am. All right.” He couldn't see the hunchback anymore anyway. The pitiful creature had already disappeared into the crowd.

“Come on, let's feed our faces,” she said, again taking him by the elbow. They weaved through a slew of automobiles gridlocked at the intersection.

The young preacher was still looking back, searching for a glimpse of the hunchback, when they came to an abrupt stop. He turned to see a microphone poised before his face. The television news team blocked their path.

“Reverend Leo Barnett,” said the reporter, a clean-cut man with curly black hair, wearing glasses and a three-piece blue suit, “what in the world are you, with your well-known stance on jokers' rights, doing here in the Edge?”

The young preacher felt his life passing before his eyes. He managed a weak smile. “Ah, my date and I are simply having a bite to eat.”

“Do you have an announcement for the society pages?” the reporter asked slyly.

The corners of the young preacher's mouth turned. “I make it a policy never to answer questions of a personal nature. This young lady is my companion for the evening. She works at the new mission my church has opened in Jokertown, and she suggested we sample some of the fine cuisine the Edge has to offer.”

“Some commentators think it strange, peculiar even, that a man who has opposed jokers' rights so stridently at his pulpit would be so concerned with the day-to-day plight of jokers. Just why did you open the Mission?”

The young preacher decided he didn't like the reporter's attitude. “I had a promise to keep, that's why I did it,” he said curtly, trying to imply the interview was over. That was precisely the opposite of his true intention.

“And what was that promise? Who did you make it to? Your congregation?”

The reporter had taken the bait. Now the young preacher's major difficulty was in keeping a straight face. The information on his mind hadn't been made public before, and his instincts guessed these were the right circumstances to do so. “Well, if you insist.”

“There's been a great deal of speculation on the matter, sir, and I think the people have a right to know.”

“Well, I met a young man once. He had been infected by the wild card virus and had gotten himself in a great deal of trouble as a result. He asked to see me, and I came. We prayed together and he told me he knew I couldn't do anything for him, but he wanted me to promise to help as many jokers as I could, so maybe they wouldn't get into the same type of trouble as he did. I was very moved and so I promised. A few hours later he was executed by electrocution. I watched as twenty thousand volts of current shot him in a hot flash and fried him like a piece of bacon, and I knew I would have to keep that promise no matter what anyone else thought.”

“He was executed?” the reporter asked stupidly.

“Yes, he was a first-degree murderer. He had turned some people into pillars of salt.”

“You made that promise to Gary Gilmore?” the reporter asked incredulously, his face ashen.

“Absolutely. Though maybe he wasn't a joker, maybe some people would call him an ace, or an individual with some of the powers you'd expect from an ace. I don't really know. I'm only finding some of these things out.”

“I see. And has your opening of the Jokertown mission had any effect on your position toward jokers' rights?”

“Not at all. The common man still must be protected, but I have always emphasized that we must deal with the victims of the virus compassionately.”

“I see.” The reporter's face remained ashen, while the sound man and the Minicam operator smiled smugly. Evidently they realized, as the young preacher realized, that the reporter lacked the quick wit necessary to ask a logical follow-up question.

But since the young preacher was feeling fairly merciful—as well as confident that he had just achieved his sixty-second “bite” on the news—he felt like giving the reporter a break. A slight break. “My companion and I must get something to eat, but I think we have time for one more question.”

“Yes, there is something else I'm sure our viewers would like to know. You've made no secret of your presidential ambitions.”

“That is true, but I really have nothing further to add on the subject right now.”

“Just answer this, sir. You've just turned thirty-five, the minimum age for that office, but some of your potential opponents have stated that a man of thirty-five can't possibly have the experience in life that's necessary for the job. How do you respond to that?”

“Jesus was only thirty-three when he changed the world for all time. Surely a man who's reached the grand old age of thirty-five can have some positive effect. Now if you'd excuse me…” Taking Belinda May by the arm, he brushed past the reporter and the crew and walked into the restaurant.

“I'm sorry, Leo, I didn't know…” she said.

“That's all right. I think I handled them well enough, and besides, I've been meaning to tell that story for some time.”

“Did you really meet Gary Gilmore?”

“Yes. It's been a fairly well kept secret. There really hadn't been the need to publicize it before now, though it might do the mission some good in the public relations arena.”

“Then maybe you have met Mailer? He said he hadn't been able to confirm all the identities of the people who saw Gilmore toward the end.”

“Please, we have to have keep secrets from one another. Otherwise what would we discover about each other tomorrow?”

“Would you like a table for two?” asked the maître d', a tuxedoed, fish-faced man weaing a water helmet for breathing purposes. The words from the speaker grill on the helmet gurgled eerily.

“Yes, in the back, please,” said the young preacher.

When they were alone at the booth, Belinda May lit yet another cigarette and said, “If those reporters find out about us, would it help if we assure them we're only going to use the missionary position?”

V

Quasiman did not fear death, and death certainly did not fear him. Quasiman lived with a little piece of death in his soul every day, a little bit of terror and beauty, of blood and thunder. Fragments of his forthcoming demise perpetually crashed together with fleeting images of his previral past inside his brain.

How distant were those fragments? Quasiman had the distinct sensation the future might be closer than he had hoped.

He shuffled up to a newsstand and stood before the rows of girlie magazines. He thought how there had been something tantalizingly familiar about the face of the man he had bumped into, something that eluded him as parts of his brain twisted into another dimension. Quasiman would have dropped everything until enough of his brain had reassembled in one plane for him to remember, but right now he figured it was more important to remember why he had come to the Edge tonight in the first place.

Suddenly his hand became very cold. He looked down at it. It had gone somewhere else, and his wrist tapered off into a stub as if the hand had become transparent. He knew it was still attached because otherwise he would be feeling intense pain, as he had when an extradimensional creature had eaten a stray toe. The extreme cold numbed his arm all the way to his shoulder, but there was nothing he could do about that, except suffer until the hand returned. Which would be soon enough. Probably.

Even so, he couldn't help thinking about how Christ had visited a synagogue and cured a man who had a withered hand.

Something in his heart like faith told him Father Squid had sent him to the Edge tonight on a mission. Whether or not the idea for the mission had originated in Father Squid's fevered mind was a moot point—many from all walks of life requested assistance from the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, and Father Squid was only too happy to provide it, if he saw that only good could result.

Quasiman shuffled up and down the street, casing out the scene. His suspicions were aroused by a few of the men sitting at some tables on the sidewalk. The rumpled clothing of a man at the newsstand, come to think of it, had indicated he probably wasn't the type who'd spend so much time looking at investors' magazines. Finally, an unusual number of alert, grim-faced men just sat in their cars, watching, waiting. Several little pieces of death manifested themselves in Quasiman's brain, death that pointed, thank God, at these grim-faced men.

For a moment Quasiman saw the streets running red with blood. But a closer inspection of the environment indicated the vision had just been an optical illusion, caused by reflecting red neon lights off water collecting in a few large, shallow potholes.

The revelation could not, however, explain the smell of blood and fear, permeating the air like a memory that hadn't happened yet.

As important parts of the muscle group in his right thigh phased into another plane of existence, where the air had a slightly acidic quality, Quasiman shuffled to a street corner. There, pretending to be a beggar, he would wait for the blood and the fear to become real.

The memory of thunder echoed in his ears.

VI

“War is a bad thing for business,” said the Man philosophically. He sat, legs crossed, in a chair in the corner of the room, beside a table and the other chair. He absently rolled his half-smoked cigar in his fingers.

“It'sss especially bad for the losssers,” said Wyrm with a grin, sitting in the other chair.

Vito stood at the door with his arms folded across his chest and felt something inside turn to ice. He had assumed, as presumably the Man and the boys had assumed, that this joker was just another businessman whose interests lay outside the law, just as their own did. Vito couldn't help feeling, however, this Wyrm character had a hidden agenda.

If the head of the Calvino clan was as disturbed as Vito, though, he gave no indication of it. He conducted himself forcefully, secure in his position as the person who pulled the strings on the other four men in the room. Of these, Mike and Frank were simple enforcers; Vito wasn't particularly afraid of them, but he wouldn't want to be on their bad side either. It was always prudent to be a little afraid to Ralphy, even when he was in a good mood.

Even so, Vito couldn't help but notice that the Man was deliberately acting deferentially to this joker who couldn't keep his forked tongue in his mouth. Thus far in the course of their conference, whenever Wyrm had raised his voice, the Man had soothed his feelings. When Wyrm made demands, the Man had said he would see what he and the boys could do to strike a balance. And whenever Wyrm dared the Man to step over a line, the Man politely declined. Vito had to admit to nursing some concern for the future of the Five Families, if they'd have to kowtow to the jokers to survive.

“Besidesss, a man diesss a little every day,” said Wyrm with a cryptic smile. “What difference doesss it make if he diesss all at once?

The Man laughed. His smile was condescending. If Wyrm noticed the implied insult, he gave no indication. “Once I believed as you,” said the Man. “I took delight in times of trouble and took great relish at seeing my enemies fall. But that was before I got married and began raising a family. I began to yearn for a more orderly way of resolving differences. That is why we are meeting now, so that we can resolve our differences like civilized human beings.”

“I'm not particularly human.”

The Man's face reddened. He nodded. “Forgive me. I did not mean to offend.”

Vito glanced at Ralphy, leaning against the wall beside a desk. Ralphy's cheek was twitching, a sign he was getting suspicious. The fingers of his right hand twitched too. Ralphy and the Man exchanged glances, and then as the Man turned back to Wyrm, Ralphy looked meaningfully at Mike and Frank, who sat on the bed, carefully watching the proceedings. Mike and Frank nodded.

Vito wasn't exactly sure of the meaning of all those signals, but he definitely wasn't going to ask.

“There has been much killing, much bloodshed,” said the Man. “And for what? I do not understand. This is a big town. It is a gateway to the rest of the country. Surely there is enough business for all.”

Wyrm shrugged. “You don't underssstand. My asssociates strive for sssomething more than just lining their pocketsss.”

“That is what I am trying to say,” replied the Man, “though please don't get me wrong. Greed is a great and noble thing. It makes the world go round. It makes for the bull market.”