Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (36 page)

“He asked for a lawyer and then clammed up. That’s the problem with career criminals,” she said. “They get arrested enough times and
we
end up teaching them how to beat an interrogation. You get anything from the aces?”

“Not a lot. They did have these.” He showed her the
DVD
s. Franny jerked his head toward the multi-limbed joker. “Is his lawyer still around?”

“No, Flipper had a court date.”

“Great. I’ll leave a message, and meantime I’ll check these out,” Franny added, gesturing with the
DVD
s.

“Take the player out of Mendelberg’s office and plug it in in the conference room. The one in there is a piece of shit.”

“Thanks.”

Once he had everything set up Franny loaded one of the fight club videos. The images of the screaming spectators were almost more revolting than the two jokers locked in combat in the ring below. Under the bright lights the blood seemed garish, almost fake. The people watching weren’t rednecks in T-shirts and jeans. They wore tuxedoes and floor-length gowns. The lights glittered off diamonds and gold cuff links, and glistened in their sweat-damp faces. Discreetly attired waiters moved through the crowd carrying silver trays with champagne flutes.

Franny was too new in Jokertown to be able to identify many of the jokers who passed beneath the camera’s unfeeling lens. If Father Squid were here, he would have known them. Franny decided to ask for help from Dr. Finn. Some of these people had probably passed through the clinic.

He picked up another
DVD
, the handwritten label read
And the Beat Goes Down
. Franny loaded it. Drummer Boy’s broad back and hips pumped accompanied by harsh grunts, and a woman’s shrill cries. At one point they rolled over placing the woman on top and Franny recognized Tiffani, one of the contestants from
American Hero
’s first season. Face flaming, Franny quickly ejected the
DVD
, feeling like a Peeping Tom. He picked up another one—
Bath Time
was the title. He watched Jade Blossom squeeze water down her back as she lolled in a bathtub. The next cut was of Curveball, one long shapely leg extended out of the water as she scrubbed down with a loofah. He kept watching that one. He tried another, and another. The disks were a mix of the fight club and sex tapes from
American Hero
featuring Drummer Boy fucking an astonishing number of the female contestants.

He stood and paced around the conference room table. Did the
American Hero
disks qualify as evidence? He knew he needed to watch the fight disks, but this stuff? His stuttering thoughts settled, and he picked up a fight club disk and a sex disk and compared the printing on the titles. It looked like the same hand had lettered both. So maybe the same cameraman? But it wasn’t like he’d signed his work, so who would know? He needed to talk to somebody associated with the making of
American Hero
. He knew Peregrine had something to do with it.

The door to the conference slammed open, and Sergeant Taylor, who was normally on the desk, rushed in. His eyes were wide, and his usually drooping wings were fluttering with agitation.

“Detective! You’re wanted! At the holding cells!”

“Why? What?”

“You can see faster than I can explain,” Homer said.

Franny ran. There was a clot of people gathered around the door of Rance’s cell. Franny pushed through them, and checked at the sight of Joe Rance slumped on the steel toilet, orange jumpsuit around his ankles.

Gordon the Ghoul knelt at the man’s side holding one wrist. The extra, vine-like appendages between his waist and his real arms were blackened and wilted as if a fire had swept down those faux arms. Gordon climbed back to his feet and dusted off the knees of his slacks with an embroidered handkerchief.

“What happened?” Franny demanded of nobody and everybody.

“Somebody made him dead,” the pathologist answered.

“Yes, thank you. I gathered that. How?”

Gordon rolled the body off the john, and inspected the blackened posterior. “Electrocuted. Got him right in the ass.”

“God
damn
it!” Franny swung his fist at the wall, only to have it caught by a giant paw tipped with vicious claws.

“Don’t,” Beastie said. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”

“I never even got a chance to talk to him!” Franny took several deep breaths, fought for control. “Did he say anything? Anything at all?”

Head shakes all around.

“Should have let me squinch him down, and put him in the castle,” Jessica Penniman said. Slender and delicate with flyaway blond hair, she didn’t match anyone’s idea of a cop.

Vivian Choy glared at her. “Hard to question a suspect when they can barely talk because their vocal cords are the size of threads.”

“Harder when they’re dead,” Jennifer snapped back.

“Stop it,” Franny ordered. Amazingly both women did.

Gordon motioned to a couple of orderlies, who entered the cell and loaded the body on a gurney. “I’ll have the autopsy report for you tomorrow,” the medical examiner said as the sad little parade passed by. “But I’m pretty confident I won’t find anything more.”

Franny went to his desk and began writing up the report. The death of a prisoner in custody would bring in internal affairs, and lawsuits would follow. He could just imagine the reaction of the precinct brass to this
FUBAR
.

Aside from the bureaucratic shit that was about to hit the fan, there were very real consequences for his case. This was the first real, clean break they’d had, and now the suspect was dead. He asked Bronkowski and Michaelson to stop by his desk to see if Rance had said anything to them during his arrest. Typically Bugeye refused, but Michaelson agreed. Unfortunately Rikki had nothing to add. “He was pretty woozy,” she said, as she fidgeted in the chair next to his desk. “Look, if there’s nothing else, I’m beat. My shift ended hours ago.” She stood up, and stretched her whip-lean body. “Sorry Eel got away from us. If he hadn’t, Rance would still be alive.”

Franny sat, drumming his pen on his desk. It was a safe bet that Eel was behind the murder. Franny pictured the sewers beneath the city, a highway, albeit a disgusting one, for Eel. He could travel everywhere, enter anywhere. And Franny was the lead investigator on this case. He wondered if his home address was obtainable online? Probably, everything was. He pictured himself vulnerable, sitting on the toilet taking a crap. His sphincter tightened. Do they still sell chamber pots, he wondered? A bucket would work too. He resolved to stop at a hardware store before he went home that night.

He realized he had left the
DVD
s in the conference room when Homer had burst in. Franny went to collect them, and stood holding them for a long moment. All hell was about to break loose over this murder. He really didn’t have time to call Peregrine right now. Could he ask Stevens? Would his supposed partner be willing to do that for him? Then Franny realized that he knew someone who had federal clout, and who had actually been on
American Hero
. He returned to his desk, and called Stuntman. The agent answered on the first ring with a terse, “Norwood.”

“I confiscated some
DVD
s this morning,” Franny began. “Some of them show my missing jokers fighting in a kind of gladiatorial arena, but others are from the first season of
American Hero,
and they’re … well, let’s just say somebody had pinhole cameras where there shouldn’t have been cameras. What’s clear is that the same person prepared both the fight club
DVD
s and these Contestants Gone Wild
DVD
s from
American Hero
.”

“Am
I
on any of these
DVD
s?” Norwood’s voice was low and rather dangerous.

“Not that I saw. I just thought given that you were on the show you might have contacts.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I’ve got problems. A prisoner died while in custody.” Franny wasn’t going to say more, but he knew a shitstorm was about to break over his head, and he had a feeling he was going to get blamed for what had happened to Joe Rance. “One of the people kidnapping jokers. This could have broken the case. He could have told me where they were taking them. Where they are now! They’re in that ring, and it’s brutal. Some of them have to have died.” Disgust at his own impotence choked off the words. Worse, Franny realized he’d shown weakness and admitted to police incompetence to a Fed. He waited for the inevitable insult.

Instead there was a long silence, and Norwood said quietly, “I’m sorry. I understand these are your people being taken. I’ll talk to Michael Berman, he actually runs the show, see what I can find out.”

“You’ll let me know what you learn?” Franny asked.

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll make copies of the
DVD
s and send them over to you.” Franny hung up.

It was late afternoon by the time he’d finished copying the
DVD
s and sent them to Norwood, finished his report, talked to internal affairs and Rance’s public defender.

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” the joker lawyer wheezed asthmatically. “Rance told me he was open to making a deal in exchange for immunity.”

That little tidbit added to Franny’s sense of despair and the stunning headache that had settled behind his eyes. He realized it was nearly six
P.M
., and he’d had nothing to eat since the night before. He started out in search of dinner, only to be waylaid by Apsara. “Remember, tomorrow night, Starfields, eight o’clock. Dinner with my parents. They’re looking forward to meeting you. And wear your dress uniform.”

“That’s just for funerals and parades,” he said, his headache intensifying.

“They don’t know that, and you look very handsome when you wear it.” She started away with that swaying dancing gait.

But Franny had had it. Three long strides and he caught her by the upper arm. “No.” He pulled her aside and said in a low voice, “I’m going along with this for your sake, but I don’t like it, and I’m not going to act like a clown.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and trembled on the ends of her lashes.

“Forget it, Apsara, the tears won’t work. And what does your phi think of all this?” It was low of him, but it had the desired effect.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “Be yourself, Frank.”

“I could recommend the same to you,” he growled.

Those About to Die …

Part Four

THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN
and the guard prodded him forward and he slid out onto the smooth floor of a small arena. He blinked under the bright lights, barely able to make out the ranks of expectant faces that ringed him. They stared at him from behind a wall of thick glass. Above it, a crosshatch of netting enclosed the space. Whatever this was, he was trapped in it.

The guard shoved him forward, and then retreated back through the door. It closed, trapping Marcus in the oval.
This can’t be happening
, he thought.

He’d told himself that again and again since he’d woken up in that small room with Asmodeus and Dmitri. He’d said it several times to Father Squid as they talked. The priest—kindly, grave, the membranes of his eyes sliding closed and then opening again—had assured him that it was, in fact, happening. “We are trapped in a garden of evil,” he had said. “Have courage, son.”

Marcus gaped at the spectators. Men and women in suits and fancy dresses, champagne glasses in hand. Fat men grinned their pleasure. Beautiful women rubbed up next to them, bejeweled and gaudy. Some of them clapped. A few shouted at him, jeers or encouragement—he wasn’t sure which.

Set apart from the others, a private box hung above the netting. An old couple inside of it. The woman looked like some ancient librarian with shockingly red hair. What the fuck was she doing here? The man was a twisted monstrosity in a wheelchair, with wires and tubes running all over him, connecting him to the machines that crowded behind him. Attendants hovered around him as if he might croak at any moment. He looked like he was close to it. His gaping mouth drooled. His face twitched. His palsied hands squeezed in on themselves. Head cocked to one side, eyes closed, breathing labored: he was a monster, a knotted deformity of a man.

Lining the wall at the back of the box was a row of big-shouldered men in black suits and dark sunglasses. They looked like some Hollywood versions of Russian gangsters on steroids. It went without saying that they were packing.

Who were these people? Why were they here and what did they want from him? Asmodeus may have explained it, but it still seemed mad and unreal.

A voice spoke over the commotion, announcing him. “
IBT
in his debut bout, ladies and gentlemen. Vigilante of Jokertown. Serpent of the sewers. Villain or hero? You be the judges. Place your bets.”

This can’t be happening
.

The door at the other side of the oval swung open. Through it, Marcus saw a figure in silhouette. His heart hammered. The figure was like something dredged out of his childhood nightmares. It emerged into the light, a perversion of a centaur, horrific in a way that made Marcus’s skin crawl. From his torso up he was humanoid, but beneath he merged into a bulbous, arachnid body, with eight long, segmented legs.