Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel by George R. R. Martin
The first phase of any night out, ideal or less than, meant checking out the women who were entering or already present when the trio arrived at Gulliver.
“Thursday night is ladies’ night,” Roland kept saying.
“Meaning it’s Jamal’s night,” Brett said. He was the white guy in the trio, a friend from high school. Like Jamal, he had been a good athlete who, thanks to lack of height, got no respect or opportunity. Unlike Jamal, he had not been hit by the wild card.
Of the three, Jamal was the most likely to come out of any club with a number, if not an actual woman on his arm. Jamal had realized long ago that he needed Roland and Brett, or two guys a lot like them, to make this happen. Women were warier around a man alone.…
The bar was filled with actress wannabes and some never-weres busy posing and chatting, along with any number of middle-aged hotties celebrating birthdays.
The only men in the place—aside from those obviously attached to various women—were huddled at the bar like nervous teenagers at a school dance. “I’m not seeing the joker angle,” Brett said.
“Well, maybe you’re not looking at it the right way,” Jamal said. The interior of the place was done up like a medieval village, with “stone” walls, battlements, wooden chairs and tables … all of them scaled in such a way to make even Jamal feel like a giant.
Confirmation arrived in the form of the hostess, a beautiful blonde in some kind of medieval-style dress with a pretty-definitely-not-medieval-style hemline. She possessed flawless milky skin and had eyes so blue they were almost purple. As they say in Hollywood, she was actress pretty, not just girlfriend good-looking.
He would have been attracted to her in any case: any male who could fog a mirror would have. Her only flaw, if the word applied, was that she was about a foot and a half tall. “Dinner or bar?” she chirped. Her voice was pitched a little high, but no worse than Betty Boop.
Brett grinned, thinking he was perhaps forty percent cuter than he actually was. “Both.”
“Any particular order? Or shall I surprise you?”
“Surprise us,” Jamal said.
“This way.” To Jamal’s amazement, the tiny waitress hopped onto a ramp behind her podium, then fluttered across the floor. Of course: the inverse square law (which Jamal knew from the Tak World movies), which doomed giant aliens invading Earth to muscle failure and early death, worked in Julia’s favor. She could practically fly … like a cartoon fairy.
Within seconds they were seated, giants in a Lilliputian village. Menus arrived via a joker doing a creditable impression of a troll. But Jamal and his friends were watching Julia flutter away. “I hope no one steps on her,” Brett said.
The meal passed with the usual amount of chat and teasing, most of it aimed at Jamal and his adventures in Africa. When they had paid and were heading out, Julia called to them from her stand. “Don’t tell me I scared you?”
“What are you talking about?” Jamal said.
Julia indicated a couch in the corner of the crowded library-bar. “It’s been waiting for you for fifteen minutes.”
“We already ate,” Brett said.
“I know, darling,” she said. “It was dinner first, then bar. Surely you remember.”
“Actually,” Jamal said, “we hadn’t. But we do now.”
And they proceeded to spend two more hours in Gulliver, having one of the most enjoyable evenings Jamal had had in years … laughing, meeting half a dozen new people, including four women. “A new low,” Brett said, grinning. He had not only gotten a phone number, at one point Jamal had spotted him kissing a woman he had just met.…
“Julia’s good,” Roland said as they were leaving.
And so she was. But Jamal had not tried to get her number that night—indeed, had not considered it—even though Roland had noted his interest at beer round number three. “Jamal’s got tone,” he said. Roland liked military technology. “Tone” was a cockpit signal that told a fighter pilot he was locked onto a target.
“Get serious!” Brett had said. “You are … not a match.” He made a face and pantomimed a big finger penis bumping up against his scrunched fist.
“Relationships aren’t always about the act, my friend.”
As they left, Jamal made sure to pass by the hostess station, where he was rewarded with a Julia smile, and: “Come back soon.”
“We just might,” Brett said.
“Not you, big boy,” Julia said, her smile dazzling. “You seem nice,” she said to Roland, and here she looked directly—eye to eye, thanks to the height of the podium—at Jamal. “I meant you.”
He went back the next night … with Roland. And came away with Julia’s number. “Call me between one and four,” she had said.
And he had done that. They had talked for two hours, until Julia said, “Oh my God, you charming, distracting bastard, I’ve got to get ready for work.”
They had spoken again the next day—and the next—and three more times, before seeing each other in person again.
When they did have their first actual date, to see some English movie about another star-crossed couple in love, Jamal had driven to Julia’s address in Studio City. It was on a side street behind Republic Studios. In their first extended conversation, Julia had said she lived in a “treehouse.”
It turned out to be the literal truth: the address drew Jamal to a tiny A-frame built into a notch of an ancient oak tree, six feet off the ground.
There was an access ramp winding around the trunk. And a rope. Jamal wondered again at Julia’s strength: he was in shape and there was no way he could have climbed the equivalent height.…
She emerged and, mercifully, took the ramp. Jamal had wondered about the protocol of walking with Julia—let her go at her own speed, two of her steps for every one of his? Or—
“You may pick me up,” she said. Which, most carefully, he did, allowing her to rest in the crook of his arm.
“Shouldn’t you be calling this a dollhouse instead?”
She slapped him on the arm with surprising effect. “Don’t start with the short jokes.”
“A serious question, then.” They were almost at Jamal’s car.
“One serious question.”
“Don’t you worry about…?”
“What?”
“Hawks.”
Fortunately, she laughed. “I have Mace, baby! So don’t get any ideas.”
He had helped her into the passenger seat. “The belt—” Was as likely to crush her as protect her, he was about to say.
“It’s okay.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“This is not my first date, correct.” He had the car in motion when she said, “Not to get ahead of ourselves, but, sexual relations are likely to be nonstandard.”
“Not a problem.”
“So you say. Now.”
“As you said, we’re a little ahead of ourselves.”
She smiled over at him. “I have some work-arounds.”
The work-around turned out to be the phone.
It was just a natural extension of their soon-to-be-daily catch-ups, almost always between the hours of two and four Pacific Time, when they talked work, books, movies, people, SCARE, and sleep schedules and then—
What they would like to be doing with each other, to each other. How it would feel. How it would look. Taste.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy … and even more surprisingly, satisfying.
Which was the big reason why Jamal hated missing Julia’s calls.
This one turned out to be a huge fizzle, however, mostly because Julia started it by saying, “How are you doing?”
Now was a perfect time, and Julia was the perfect person, for Jamal to unburden himself about his health problems. Instead, he offered a curt “Fine.”
“Now I know something’s wrong,” she said.
“Work is what’s wrong.” This had the virtue of being true while avoiding her question.
“Tell me.”
So he gave her the short version—his boredom with the campaign, his Sheeba fatigue, the ammonium nitrate shipment, joker truck mystery, how they were going to grab Wheels later tonight. “Isn’t some of that, what do you call it, classified or special access?”
“Probably,” he said. “If they’re bugging us—”
“—Hah! We’re already in jail!” They both laughed. And then she said, “They need me—”
“I know,” he said. “Thanks—”
“Now listen,” she said. “Because I was so hard to reach, you get a pass this time. You can lie by omission. But next time we talk—tomorrow—tell me what’s really wrong, okay?”
Galahad in Blue
Part Three
“PUT A FORK IN it and call it done,” Captain Mendelberg said.
Franny stared down at the precinct’s joker captain. Her bloodred eyes seemed to glare back, and her high-set, fin-like ears were waving slowly, the bright blood vessels in the lacy flesh as red as her eyes. She swiveled her chair around and turned her back on him. “We’ll find something else for you to do.”
“I assume you’re talking about the missing joker file, ma’am,” Franny said.
“Well, what else would I be talking about? The case is closed.”
“Respectfully, I don’t agree, ma’am.”
“Oh, cut the crap, you sound like a fucking Boy Scout, or worse, a fag in some Brit movie. This case is closed. The perps were using the missing jokers like poodles to train their attack dogs. Gordon blew ’em up. End of story.”
“They were Russian, ma’am.”
“And the Russian mob isn’t all over New Brighton?”
“None of the mob guys had ever heard of them.”
“So, they were a new mob.” A vein was pulsing in Mendelberg’s temple.
“That doesn’t make any sense. The bosses would have heard if someone was trying to move in.”
“Do you know what this means, Black?” Mendelberg said and pointed at her ears. They were now motionless and stiffly upright.
“No, ma’am.”
“It means I’m really pissed. The case is closed. Now get out.”
Franny returned to his desk, stomach acid churning and an incipient headache lurking behind his eyes. He knew police forces were overworked and understaffed, and a simple explanation was a godsend, but this was malfeasance in his opinion. There were just too many unanswered questions. He was on thin enough ice with his promotion to keep pursuing this himself, but he knew someone who could. And who probably had better resources than he had.
He picked up the phone and called Jamal. It went right to voice mail. Franny returned the phone to its cradle, and sat drumming his fingers on his desk. Make another call and this time leave a message? If Captain Mendelberg found out, his ass was grass—a local cop calling in the Feds was one of the cardinal sins. He thought of the strained and frightened faces of the jokers they’d freed from the pens at that dog-training facility. Fuck it. They were wrong to close the investigation. He called Norwood’s cell, and this time he left a message.
“This is Black over at the Fifth. I need your help with something.”
He went back to the Warren County files.
He went to Mary’s Lamb for lunch. Bill had introduced him to the restaurant when they’d walk the beat together. It only served breakfast, but the food was cheap, plentiful, and delicious—perfect for a cop on a budget, and it kept them in touch with the people they were protecting. A win all around. It was owned and operated, not surprisingly, by Mary, a joker whose true shape could only be guessed at because her large form was swathed in a cloak and she always wore a mask.
“Cherry almond muffins today, Franny,” Mary said as she lumbered past. Her voice had a strange, burring rasp.
“Sounds great. Let me have a Denver omelet with a side of ham, and coffee too.”
“You got it.”
The coffee and muffins arrived. He broke open a pastry and it added its steam to the pennant floating over the coffee cup. The mingling odors of coffee and warm baked goods had his stomach grinding. Slathering the muffin with butter and jam, he leaned over to Tim at the next table, who was reading the Jokertown Cry.
“How’d the Jets do?” he asked, referring to Xavier Desmond High School’s baseball team.
Tim tilted the paper so Franny could see the photo and the headline. “We’re in the playoffs,” he said with pride. The pale green cilia that filled his mouth quivered from the puffs of air carried with the mumbled words.
The plate of ham arrived, and he dug in. The bells over the door gave an agitated ring as it was pushed violently open. Franny, along with everyone, else looked up as the door banged into the wall.
Abigail Baker strode in. Her mouth was set in a tight line, and her brow furrowed. Franny reflexively checked to see if he had done something to piss off the girl, but since he hadn’t seen her in months he couldn’t think of anything. Of course, Abigail was just enough of a drama queen to have gotten upset about something that happened ages ago.
His mental trashing of the girl didn’t help. Franny’s heart still raced and his breath went shallow when he saw her. He reminded himself that he had a girlfriend now. An irritating girlfriend.
Could she be walking over to him? Nah, it had to be somebody else on this end of the room. He had had a crush on Abby from the first moment he’d seen her naked and angry on a Jokertown street, another victim of The Stripper.
She couldn’t be walking over to him.
Liked her even when she insulted him.
Could she?
Liked her when she shot him down when he’d asked her out.
She was still coming his way.
Kept liking her even when she took up with that part-time small-time crook, Croyd Crenson.
Speculation ended when she pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down.
“Hi,” Franny began, then had to cough to clear the muffin crumb that had lodged in his throat.
She didn’t waste time on social niceties. “I need your help,” she said in her clipped British accent.
She needed his help? Oh, holy shit.
“Why aren’t you asking your lowlife boyfriend?” his mouth said, before his brain engaged and thought better of it.
She reared back in her chair, and she flashed her eyes at him. “Are you not an officer of the law? Isn’t it your job to bloody well help people?”
He discovered that shame had a funny taste. It laid on the back of his tongue and seemed to burn. “Uh, yeah. Sorry. So, this is official?”
Now she looked uncomfortable. Horribly uncomfortable. “Umm, not exactly.”
Franny opened his mouth to make another smart-ass remark only to be completely unmanned when she started to cry. Soundlessly, shoulders shaking, tears sliding down her cheeks. Unlike Apsara she didn’t cry beautifully. Her nose turned bright red. He thought she looked adorable.
He bounced out of his chair like he’d been shot from a catapult, came around the table, and knelt at her side. He slipped an arm around her heaving shoulders. “Oh, God, Abigail, Abby, I’m sorry. What’s wrong and how can I help?”
Franny noted that the other patrons in the restaurant had politely looked away, engaged pointedly in conversations with their breakfast companions, or buried themselves in newspapers or e-readers. He was struck again by the courtesy and sensitivity of jokers. More than any other humans they understood the need for privacy and empathy to another’s pain. “Come on,” he said, lifting Abby out of the chair. “Let’s take a walk.”
“But you haven’t finished your food,” she sniffed.
“It’s okay.” He threw a twenty on the table and guided her out of the restaurant.
The sidewalk was filled with people, nats and jokers on their lunch hour. He tried to think of someplace private to talk. Only one thing came to mind. “Uh … look don’t take this wrong, but my apartment is just a couple of blocks away.” She just nodded. His arm was still aro
They climbed the four flights of stairs past the sounds of televisions, and a crying baby, and the smell of frying liver and onions. He really wished Mrs. Fortescue didn’t make liver so often. He let Abigail into his apartment, and she stepped away, head turning as she inspected his space. Franny followed her gaze; touching on the small flat-screen TV and the Xbox. At the leather recliner facing said TV. At the TV tray off to one side of the chair. For art he had a framed print of a Fredric Remington painting, The Stampede. Franny decided the place looked tawdry and ordinary and like a sad, single guy lived here, which was the absolute truth. “You like cowboys?” Abigail asked.
“Well. Yeah. My dad had a huge collection of Louis L’Amour books. I read ’em all.”
“Because he made you or because you wanted to?” Abigail asked.
“He died before I was born. I wanted to.”
Her face was a study in embarrassment. “Oh. Sorry about that.” Her fingers writhed through her hair, making it even more spiky and tousled. “My being rude, I mean. Sorry about your dad too. I mean, being dead and all. Oh, Christ, I’m making such a muddle of this.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like I ever knew him to mourn him. I’ve actually got two chairs at the table in the kitchen. Want some coffee? Or tea?”
“Tea, please.”
She followed him into the postage-stamp-sized kitchen, and settled at the tiny two-person table. He filled up two cups with water and stuck them in the microwave to boil.
While the mugs twirled like dancing partners Franny sat down across from her, and put on his best you can trust me, I’m an officer of the law expression. “So, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Croyd.”
Great. Just great. She was going to talk about her boyfriend.
She gulped down another sob, cleared her throat, and composed herself. “He hasn’t slept for weeks, he’s cranked out of his mind, and…”