Jokers Wild by George R. R. Martin

  Brennan looked at him calmly.

  “My joy is doubled,” Kien said between clenched teeth. “After all these years you’ve come back to devil me. And now you’ll die by my hand.”

  Jennifer saw Brennan tense to leap and she knew that he’d never make it across the impossible distance that separated him from Kien. She lunged away from Loophole, un­able to break free of him, but pulling within reach of Kien’s pistol. She grabbed it.

  He snarled, tried to yank away, but Jennifer held on, frowned in fierce concentration, and ghosted most of the gun and most of Kien’s hand. Loophole yanked on her arm hard, hard enough to pull her away from Kien, and he screamed.

  He fell to his knees, what was left of his hand dropping what was left of the gun. The ghosted molecules of both, since they were no longer in direct contact with Jennifer, drifted away on the breeze. A stunned Loophole released Jennifer and bent down to help Kien staunch the river of blood fountaining from his mangled hand.

  Jennifer snatched up the bag, turned, and grabbed Bren­nan by the arm.

  “Come on,” she shouted. He resisted for a moment, star­ing remorselessly at his longtime foe, then he followed her into the dark, running.

  Fortunato rang the bell of the brownstone for a long time before Veronica’s voice came through the intercom. When he told her who it was, she ran downstairs to open the door.

  She threw herself into his arms and started to cry. “It was so horrible. So horrible. This . . . man . . . took me and Caroline and Cordelia. He killed Caroline. He—”

  “Shhh,” Fortunato said. “It’s over. He’s finished. His power is gone.”

  “I thought we were all going to die.”

  “Where’s Cordelia now?” he asked gently. “Is she okay?”

  “She went out. She’s okay. She said she’d be back. Maybe. But Caroline . . .”

  She started to cry again. Gradually she got herself under control and Fortunato took her inside. He had to put his suitcase down to shut the door, and Veronica saw it.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m leaving town for a while.”

  “Fortunato? Look, I can quit the smack. It’s not a big deal. We can work this out.”

  “It’s not about you.”

  She reached up and touched his forehead. It was smooth and flat. The bulge, where his reserve power built up, was gone. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He nodded. He’d been back to the apartment to pack and clean up. He put some food out for the cat and sat for a couple of minutes with her on his lap. There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him, just this over-whelming detachment.

  “I have to see Ichiko,” he said. “I’ll need some paper and a pen. And get your mother to bring her notary seal.”

  He had it all worded in his head, and it took less than five minutes for him to get it on paper, witnessed and no­tarized. He handed it to Ichiko. “It’s yours now,” he said. “Everything. You can keep it going if you want, or stop it. It’s up to you.”

  “What happened?” Ichiko said.

  Fortunato shook his head. “I don’t want to change anybody any more. I don’t want to make them into geishas or hookers or heroin addicts. If someone else does it that’s fine, but it’s not going to be me anymore. I don’t want to change anybody but myself. I can’t . . . I can’t take the responsibility.”

  “And the suitcase?”

  “I’m going home. Back to Japan. To the Shoin-ji temple at Hara.”

  Miranda said, “What about your power?”

  “It’ll come back,” Fortunato said, “I think. As to what I’m going to do with it, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Miranda looked at Ichiko. “Well,” she said. “I don’t want to give up the business. But I don’t know if we can make a go of it without help. The Gambiones are always lurking like vultures, waiting for a sign of weakness.”

  “We’ve always protected ourselves with influence and money,” Fortunato said. “You can do that as well as I ever could.”

  “Ah,” Ichiko said. “But there was always the fist inside the glove.”

  Fortunato picked up a deck of cards from the end table. He took out the ace of spades and threw the rest of the cards away. He took the pen again and wrote. Help if you can. Fortunato.

  “There’s a man called Yeoman. You can trust him. If you need him, leave word at the Crystal Palace, and show him this card.”

  Veronica walked with him to the door. “What are you going to do?” he asked her.

  “Fuck men for money,” she said. “It’s all I’ve got. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lucky,” she said. She kissed him good-bye. Her mouth was soft and sweet and almost enough to change his mind.

  CHAPTER 25

  6:00 a.m.

  After Jack left, Bagabond was left to stare at her transfor­mation. The mirror revealed an attractive woman in her mid-thirties who tried to smile, but gingerly, as though her face might crack. She turned away. The suits had been barely tolerable, and only because she saw them as protec­tive color. This dress revealed too much of someone she didn’t know. For a moment, she considered changing into the dirty, torn clothing she had worn for so long. This new persona frightened her.

  The black and the calico cats came up to her in response to her broadcast of pain. The calico leaped into her lap and licked her under the chin while the black rubbed his back against her calf. They questioned her about the sending. Bagabond tried to explain. She sent a picture of Paul to them both. Neither cat was impressed by the human they saw. Even Bagabond’s emotional shadings of the face she remembered were not enough. The black looked up at her and imagined Paul’s throat torn out. It was the simplest solution to him. If something annoys you, kill it. Bagabond shook her head and rebuilt Paul’s image.

  The calico sent a scene of Bagabond, back in her normal dress, sitting on the floor of Jack’s home and playing with the kittens. Bagabond stroked the calico, but blocked out the sight of the familiar group. The black snarled and placed his huge paws on Bagabond’s knees. He stared into her eyes and she knew his anger and frustration.

  Bagabond looked back at the mirror and saw a girl in a beaded leather headband and a tie-dyed T-shirt. The younger woman seemed to smile at her in encouragement. Bagabond reached out to touch the girl’s hand, wondering if she could ever have been so young and happy. As she touched the glass, the image changed to herself, teal dress, mascara, and blush. Examining herself again, Bagabond thought she saw something of the girl’s eyes still in hers.

  The shrill ring of the phone broke her reverie. Dumping the calico onto the floor, she wondered if this was more bad news for Jack. But the voice at the other end was Rose­mary’s.

  “Suzanne, did I wake you?”

  “No.” Bagabond sat down on the floor beside the phone.

  “Can you meet me at home? I mean, the penthouse?”

  “Why?”

  “I just feel as if . . .” Rosemary’s voice grew thin for a moment. “I guess I want to tell my father what I’m doing. Maybe it’s why I held on to the place. But I don’t want to go there alone. Please, Suzanne.”

  “Why me?”

  Rosemary hesitated. “Suzanne . . . I trust you. I can’t trust anyone else. I need you.”

  “That’s not new.” Bagabond clenched her jaw and her hand tightened on the phone.

  “Suzanne, I know you don’t agree with what I’ve done, but I promise I’m going to change things.”

  “All right. But I have an appointment at seven.” Baga­bond closed her eyes in disgust at her need for Rosemary’s approval.

  “Thanks. I’ll meet you there.” Rosemary hung up.

  Bagabond looked down at the cats.

  “I don’t think this night is ever going to end.”

  She pulled on the long, open, ankle-length black sweater Jack had insisted she get. The black and calico accompanied her to the door. Bagabond mentally tol
d them both to stay. The cats responded with yowls of anger, but backed away from the door. Closing the door, Bagabond knew the black was using another exit to follow her.

  At the subway station, she held the door of the car so the cat could enter. The black was not happy he had been spotted, but was glad he would not have to chase the train or find another route. He panted as he lay at her feet. For him, now, it had been a long run.

  She got off at 96th Street, abruptly aware of how few people had been on the subway. The crowds really had given up. She went upstairs to the street. Two blocks down Central Park West, Rosemary waited on a bus bench. Her eyes wid­ened as she saw Bagabond’s dress, but she did not comment.

  “Let’s go in.” Bagabond was impatient to get this done. She suddenly felt the gray cat watching her from the park across the street. She looked up, but saw nothing in the trees.

  “I suppose I’m ready.” Rosemary hesitated before pulling open one of the heavy glass doors.

  “Signorina, you’d better be.” Trailed by the black, Bagabond followed her in.

  The doorman was no longer a Gambione man. He was young, and Bagabond noticed he was studying a book on contract law. Rosemary showed him her key and signed in, as Rosa Maria Gambione, on the guest register.

  In the elevator, she used another key to send the car to the penthouse.

  “I haven’t been here in five years.” Rosemary looked up at the ceiling of the car.

  “Are you sure you want Rosa-Maria to return?” Bagabond reached out to touch the other woman’s shoulder. “You were desperate to leave all this behind. Your father, the Family, all of it. You wanted to atone for what he did. Now you want to be like him?”

  “No!” Rosemary glared at Bagabond for an instant before she lowered her head. “Suzanne, I could do a lot of good, turn the Family around.”

  “Why?” Bagabond barely kept her balance in the high heels as the elevator jerked to a halt. “Let them be destroyed. They deserve it. They’re criminals.”

  Rosemary stepped out into the hallway. “It looks wrong without the men. There were always guards here for my father.”

  “You want to live that way?”

  Rosemary unlocked the double oak doors, then turned and was framed against the darkness behind. “Suzanne, don’t you understand that I can make a difference? I can stop the violence and the killing.”

  Bagabond was skeptical. “You could destroy yourself instead.”

  “It’s worth the risk.” Rosemary pushed the doors open wide and walked in. “I believe that.”

  Behind her, Bagabond watched the new head of the Gambione Family walk down the dark entry. She murmured to herself and the black, “I know you do, God help you.”

  Rosemary showed Bagabond the apartment, telling her of the happy things that had happened there. There were some: the holidays, family gatherings, birthdays. The last room they entered was the library. Books lined the black walnut walls and heavy draperies seemed to absorb most of the light. Despite the oppressive atmosphere, Rosemary laughed.

  At Bagabond’s look, she explained. “It’s awful. All these books? My father bought them by the yard. He didn’t care what they were, so long as they had leather bindings and looked impressive. I used to sneak in and read some of them. There was Hawthorne and Poe and Emerson. It was fun.” She looked at Bagabond defensively. “It wasn’t always bad to live here.”

  Running her hand over the backs of the chairs that lined the central table, she walked to the chair at its head. For a moment she put her arms around the back as though she embraced a person. Then Rosemary pulled the chair out and sat down, contemplating Bagabond down the length of the table.

  “Can you find the door?” Rosemary leaned back and was dwarfed by the massive, carved back of the chair. “I just want to think for a while.”

  Bagabond walked out of the room feeling as though she had seen a ghost. Back in the elevator, she knelt and stroked the black until he purred at her. Then she stood and pulled the sweater more tightly around her.

  Outside, the sun was up and traffic had increased on the streets until the horns and diesel fumes made it clear the day had begun. The gray still watched from the park. She was unable to pick up the animal’s emotions without effort. She left him his privacy. Bagabond patted the black’s head and sent him across to the park to see his son.

  She stepped to the curb to hail a cabto take her down-town to the restaurant.

  As the taxi wove through the thickening morning traffic, Bagabond started attempting to think of good conversational gambits. Nothing she remembered from the sixties somehow seemed appropriate.

  Bagabond wondered if Paul liked cats. He had better.

  “Okay, how did you track me to Jetboy’s Tomb?”

  Brennan shrugged. Jennifer was carrying the book sack and he had two bags full of Chinese food that Jennifer had insisted on buying at a take-out place near her apartment.

  “It was easy. I’d put a bug on the cloak I’d given you. That little fellow with Fatman teleported me to the middle of the Holland Tunnel, which, luckily enough, isn’t far from Jetboy’s Tomb. Though I must say I was worried that you’d do something foolish before I managed to reach you. And I was right.”

  “Humph. And then?”

  “And then? Wyrm had planted lookouts to make sure they wouldn’t be bothered while they were recovering the books. You must have come through while they were either still securing the perimeter or rousting someone else. At any rate, I took the place of one of them just as Wyrm and the others were dragging your unconscious body out of the tomb. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for my chance. I saw it, and jumped Wyrm.”

  “What did you do to him, anyway?”

  Brennan held up his hand. The palm was still stained brown.

  “Remember the mustard I brought from the street vendor?” She did. “Wyrm’s tongue is an extremely sensitive sensory organ that doesn’t take too well to spices. Besides discomforting him, I’m sure the mustard also wiped away all traces of your scent. So you should be safe from him.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for saving my life.”

  “You did the same for me. I’d have never gotten that gun away from Kien.”

  Jennifer nodded. She’d never used her power that way before, and, even though it had been unintentional and Kien had, after all, tried to kill her, now that she had time to think about it, she felt nauseated. All that blood . . .

  They walked on in silence for a while. She felt Brennan’s eyes on her, but said nothing until they’d gone up the four flights of stairs to her apartment.

  “Well, here we are.”

  Books were everywhere about the living room, giving it a comfortable, lived-in look. At least that’s how Jennifer thought of it. Brennan put the bags containing the food on the counter that divided the kitchen nook from the rest of the room.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said as she turned to put the coffeepot on the stove and got two plates and utensils from the cupboard. She turned back to see Brennan standing in the middle of the apartment, an impatient expression on his face. “You want to see the book?”

  He nodded. She took the bag off her shoulder and put it on the counter next to the food. She selected a box, ladled a portion of shrimp fried rice onto her plate, and reached for the box with the sweet-and-sour chicken.

  “Well, go ahead.”

  If Brennan noticed the resignation in her voice he gave no sign. He strode forward eagerly, took the pouch, and looked inside. Jennifer kept her eyes on the food. She took a forkful of the chicken and somehow it didn’t taste as good as she had thought it would.

  “Is this a joke?” Brennan asked after a moment, his voice flat and emotionless.

  He was holding up Kien’s diary.

  Jennifer swallowed. “No, no, I don’t think so,” she said in a small voice.

  He thumbed through it, disbelief on his face.

  “It’s blank,” he said, fanning the pages for Jennifer to see.

  ?
??I know.” She put her fork down and looked at Brennan for the first time.

  “What the hell happened?” Brennan demanded, anger growing in his voice. She could see his jaw muscles jump as he clenched his jaw tighter and tighter.

  “Well, the nearest I can figure is that the ink didn’t translate when I ghosted the book. You see, it takes special effort to make dense material like lead, or gold, insubstan­tial, and he must have used something like that to write . . . with . . . you see . . .”

  Her voice ran down as the storm gathered on Brennan’s face.

  “I. Went. Through. All that shit. For. A. Blank. Book.” He said each word as if it were a sentence.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Jennifer said. “At first I didn’t totally trust you. Then, when I saw how important it was to you, I just couldn’t find a way.”

  Brennan stared at her silently, and she flinched, ex­pecting him to scream, to throw the book, to strike at her, to do just about anything but what he did.

  “A blank book,” he repeated. The storm on his face broke and vanished as quickly as it had gathered. He sank down unseeingly into the large stuffed chair near the bookcase, rose up slightly and picked up the hardcover copy of Scaramouche that was open, face down on the chair. He looked at it as if he’d never seen a book before and muttered, “Ishida, my roshi, if you could only have experienced the events of this day. What lessons could be learned. Tell me.” He looked at Jennifer with serious, questioning eyes. “What lessons can one learn from a blank book?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she faltered.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know either, yet. A new koan to meditate upon.” Brennan thumbed through the diary again, a bemused expression on his face. “Of course,” he said after a moment, “Kien doesn’t know the book is blank. Doesn’t know that at all.”

  He smiled, the first real smile that Jennifer had ever seen on his face. He looked at Jennifer and his smile broadened, turned into laughter. It was joyful, cleansing laughter. Jen­nifer sensed he hadn’t laughed out loud in a long time. She felt herself smiling as well out of relief and because of the recognizable, binding companionship that already lay between them.