Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel by George R. R. Martin
Darcy’s nose crinkled up again when she stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“It’s not about the parking tickets, Wally. The plates look legit because they don’t want to get pulled over. Probably because they don’t want anybody to see what’s in the van. I wouldn’t be surprised if it belongs to the same people who are kidnapping jokers.”
He stopped. “Really? That’s super!” But then he thought about it a little more. This detective thing was hard. “Uh, I still don’t get it.”
Darcy sighed. “If they stop to grab someone, or drop something off, they have to do it when and where the opportunity arises. So they park illegally.” She explained it patiently, and didn’t make him feel dumb. He liked that.
This was great. He’d been on the case less than a day and already he’d made his first major break in the case. Granted, it was really Darcy who’d made the breakthrough, but Wally didn’t mind. Good detectives always forged a relationship with the police. He’d managed that much.
“Wow. You found the kidnappers!” He frowned. “How come you haven’t arrested them?”
“Last time I ticketed the van was before we recognized the probable connection to the fight club. Before those aces busted it up … and half of Jokertown.” She shook her head, mumbling, “Right through my fingers … Could have stopped them way earlier … some police officer…”
All of a sudden, she looked really sad. Wally said, “You’ll catch ’em.”
“I’m not so sure. I followed it once, after I realized the plates were bogus.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It turned down an alley. Narrow, dead end. But when I came around the corner, it was gone. Where the hell did it go? But people still keep disappearing so they must have gotten a new ride. I keep looking, but.…”
Darcy sounded so dejected that Wally tried to hide his disappointment. “Huh. Well, better luck next time.”
She fell silent after that. Not entirely sure why he kept at it, other than that it seemed Darcy was pretty neat, Wally tagged along while she checked meters and wrote tickets. One guy who received a parking ticket got pretty steamed and called Darcy all sorts of mean things. Wally didn’t like that at all and told him so. Darcy seemed even sadder after that, so he walked with her for another half mile, until she demanded that he buzz off and leave her alone. It was demeaning, she said. “Chauvinism masquerading as chivalry,” is what she called it.
But she also said, “Thank you.”
Mr. Richardson’s place was a bust. Wally rang the bell a whole bunch, and circled the block about ten times, each circuit beginning and ending with Wally sitting on the stoop in case Richardson went out or came home. But Wally never saw him. No mysterious vans, either.
Each day, Wally visited another spot on Jube’s list. Each day, in spite of his disguise, and much to his disappointment, he wasn’t kidnapped. And Ghost grew more sullen with each day Mr. Richardson didn’t return to school.
Wally had decided to pack it in for the afternoon, and was turning his thoughts to the weekend and fun places to visit with Ghost, when he noticed somebody following him. Well, not really following. More like keeping pace with him across the street. The big gray guy across the street paused every time Wally did. He hurried when Wally hurried; he dallied when Wally dallied. Wally pretended to start to cross the street before turning the corner instead. Behind him, the blare of a car horn told him somebody had darted through traffic. Wally stopped to study his reflection in a storefront window but it didn’t work as well as it seemed to in the movies. He bought a hot dog from a jellyfish with a street cart, and took his time scooping relish and mustard on it. The other fellow drew steadily closer. He was covered in chunks of rock like a walking fireplace. Wally had eaten most of the hot dog before he recognized the guy from Squisher’s Basement.
This is it! thought Wally. They’re coming for me.
He tried to hide his excitement. It was difficult pretending to not notice as his kidnapper drew closer and closer. Wally concentrated on looking vulnerable.
“Gosh,” he said aloud. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe I’m coming down with something. I feel pretty weak.”
But the stone guy never made his move. Was he waiting for the van to arrive? Wally walked slower and slower. He faked a couple of sneezes. Even that did no good. Finally, feeling impatient, he decided to pretend to be lost. He gazed up at a street sign and made a show of being confused. Then he looked around, as if needing directions.
“Gosh. Where am I?” he said.
The gray rock guy approached him. He held something that resembled a little digital voice recorder. It seemed pretty sinister, he decided. Wally wondered what that thing really was, and what it really did.
“Hey,” said the rock guy. “Can I talk to you?”
It’s working! thought Wally.
“Sure, fella. I hope you can help me. I’m pretty lost.” Wally looked around. Maybe it would be easier to kidnap me if we weren’t out in the open. “How about we step into that dark alley over there and talk?”
The stone man stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh, I’m not falling for that! I know who you are. And I won’t let you take anybody else!”
“Hey, pal, I just want directions—”
The stone man punched Wally in the face with a boulder fist.
Sparks rained on the sidewalk as Wally stumbled backward, toppling a streetlight. It hurt like heck. The gray guy was strong. Wally shook his head, dazed, while the streetlight clanged to the ground and other people on the street quickly scattered.
“You can’t hurt me!” yelled the other guy in a voice like an earthquake. With his other fist, the one that hadn’t clobbered Wally, he waved the recorder in Wally’s face. He jumped up and down, gibbering, “You can’t even touch me!”
Uh oh. Had the kidnappers seen through Wally’s disguise? If he was going to get taken to their secret hideout, he needed to impress them, make himself irresistible. He’d show them he could fight pretty well before letting the other guy win.
“No, please, I don’t want to go with you,” said Wally. He leaped to his feet, and blocked another punch with a wide sweep of his forearm. With his other fist he landed a jackhammer blow to the kidnapper’s stomach. There was a loud crack and another burst of incandescent sparks like the dying embers of a Fourth of July firework. It knocked the wind from the other guy; his breath smelled like hot ash.
“Oof.” The rock guy fell to one knee. He glanced at the recorder. “Lying alien bastard,” he groaned. It crumpled in his fist, and then he sent the pieces whistling over the rooftops.
Wally wound up for a kick, but the other guy lunged. The tackle threw Wally against a mail truck. It crunched like a soda can and toppled over, blocking the street. They wrestled atop a mangled heap of metal and glass. Each punch and kick threw sparks like a Roman candle as iron scraped against stone. A chorus of shrieking car alarms echoed up and down the street.
“I know you’re one of them! Following me everywhere, reporting everything I do,” said the rock man. His eyes darted around really fast, like he had trouble keeping still. “Bribing my dentist, eavesdropping through my fillings! Poisoning my thoughts with fluoride!”
He kept up a steady stream of paranoid ranting, even as Wally slipped in a pair of incandescent jabs to the chin and chest. The kidnapper grabbed Wally by the shoulders and kept slamming him against the flattened truck until it felt like his rivets were coming loose.
Wally got a knee up. One hard flex sent the other guy skidding down the sidewalk with a fingernails-on-blackboard screech. He pulled free of the twisted wreckage of the mail truck and got to his feet just as the other guy wrenched a big blue mailbox from the sidewalk with the groan of tortured metal and popping of broken bolts. He swung it at Wally. Wally slapped the blow aside with an open palm. The mailbox exploded into a cloud of rust and fluttering envelopes. The bright orange rust eddied into his opponent’s eyes. He flinched, coughing. Wally used
The kidnapper’s head snapped around. The shower of sparks ignited a pile of mail.
The other guy kept twisting, and took advantage of the momentum from the blow to land a high spinning kick to Wally’s ribs. It sent Wally sprawling across the street. He landed on a compact car. Pain lanced down his side from shoulder to hip. A shiny dent now creased his old surgery scar. He didn’t feel like fighting much more.
“Oh, no,” said Wally. “I’m feeling pretty woozy now.” Which he was. It didn’t require any acting to make a show of stumbling to his feet. His ears rang. The ringing turned into sirens.
The kidnapper ran away. Wally tried to give chase but tripped over the flattened mail truck.
He was still laying there when the police arrived.
It was a tight fit in the squad car, but this time they did take Wally to the precinct. The kidnapper was long gone, but they hauled Wally in on charges of disturbing the peace, destruction of city property, mail tampering, and reckless public endangerment. He wondered what would happen when the adoption committee heard about this. At least the police let him call Ghost’s school, to arrange to have Miss Holmes take her home again.
The booking officer, whose name sounded like Squint or something like that, kept a large dollhouse on her desk. That seemed strange. She wasn’t very interested in Wally’s side of the story. She didn’t appear to be listening at all until Wally mentioned that the whole thing happened because he was defending himself from one of the fight club kidnappers. And suddenly the police were very interested in Wally’s story. Particularly in his description of the kidnapper. They put him in a room and left him waiting.
The room had two chairs, a wooden table, and a water cooler with a little tube of paper cones hung alongside it. A window with broken venetian blinds gave him a view of the station house. The precinct was a busy place. All sorts of people—uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, lawyers in suits, criminals and suspects—passed back and forth outside the room. Wally even glimpsed Darcy at one point. He knocked on the glass and waved at her; she seemed disappointed, but not surprised, to see him.
Wally pressed a paper cone full of cold water against his bruises. It helped to numb the ache. He wondered what Ghost and Miss Holmes were eating for dinner. He drank the water, laid his head on the table, tried to ignore the rumbling in his stomach, and closed his eyes. He hadn’t quite fallen asleep when a voice roused him.
“I’ll be goddamned … Wally Gunderson.”
The voice was vaguely familiar. Wally sat up. And then he blinked. There were two men in the doorway. One he recognized.
“Cripes,” he said. “Stuntman?”
The man standing across the table wore a suit. Moving like a man in pain, he flipped open a thin leather case about the size of a wallet. “It’s Agent Norwood now. I’m with SCARE. More or less.”
Heart sinking, Wally stared at the badge. He couldn’t remember what SCARE stood for but he knew it was a pretty big deal. “Gosh.”
The other guy leaned across the table, extending a hand to Wally. He looked tired too, but in a different way from Stuntman. “Mr. Gunderson, I’m Detective Black.” He glanced at Stuntman. “And shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Yes. But I’ve got to hear this story.”
Stuntman closed the badge case hard enough that the breeze tickled Wally’s face. He tucked it back into a breast pocket.
“Howdy.” Detective? “Is this about the mail truck?”
The men shared a look. Stuntman rolled his eyes and shrugged.
“Uh, no,” said the detective. “Agent Norwood is helping me investigate the Jokertown kidnappings.”
From his suit pocket Stuntman produced a narrow notebook. The kind with a spiral wire along the top. Clicking a pen he pointed it at Wally. “I’m just dying to hear how you of all people got mixed up in this mess.”
Wally told them about Ghost’s teacher, his conversation with Jube, and his decision to infiltrate the fight club by letting himself get kidnapped.
“This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Stuntman said.
The detective frowned at the agent, then said to Wally, “What you were trying was very dangerous, Mr. Gunderson. People are dying in that ring.”
“That’s why I’m doing it. Somebody has to stick up for them folks.”
Stuntman rolled his eyes. “You’re moderately famous, and apparently well liked,” he said, “for reasons I’ve never understood. Did it never occur to you that they might choose to avoid nabbing a minor celebrity?”
“Father Squid is way more famous than I am. Everybody in Jokertown knows him.”
Wally imagined he could hear the grinding of Stuntman’s teeth. “We’re aware of that.”
“And anyway,” Wally continued, “I was undercover. With a special hat and everything. So they didn’t know who they were grabbing.”
“You’re made of metal and covered in rivets. What kind of disguise did you think—”
“Tell us about this disguise,” prompted the detective.
Wally explained the made-up crossword puzzle club, and how they needed to find Mr. Richardson so that they could afford more pencils.
Stuntman laughed. It wasn’t a friendly laugh. “You know, I used to wonder if the rube thing was just an act. I’ll never wonder again.”
Detective Black shot another sharp look at Stuntman. “Please continue.”
“No, wait,” said Stuntman, struggling to get the laughter under control. “Let me make sure I get this down.” He clicked the pen again and jotted something in his notebook. “Crossword puzzles. Genius.”
“Zip it,” Detective Black snapped. He turned back to Wally. “Keep going, Mr. Gunderson.”
Wally did. When he got to the part about the botched kidnapping, the detective sighed. He said, “Big gray guy? Covered in stone? Fists like boulders?”
“Yep.”
“Ranting and raving?”
“Uh huh.”
The detective ran a hand over his face. To Stuntman, he said, “That wasn’t a kidnapper. That’s Croyd Crenson.”
Stuntman stood. He and the detective conferred in the corner, whispering. Wally caught the words “sleeper” and “Takisian.” Stuntman came back a moment later, and sat with a sigh of disgust. He glared at Wally, shaking his head. Finally, he said, “I swear to God. You make hammers look smart.”
Wally said, “Well, I don’t know about this Croyd fella, but he sure seemed suspicious to me.”
“Of course he did,” said the detective. “He’s blitzed out of his mind on speed.” He shook Wally’s hand again. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Gunderson, and please leave the police work to the police. You could get hurt.” He walked out, muttering, “Paranoid delusions, fists like sledgehammers, and now he’s blaming me. Wonderful…”
Stuntman closed his notebook, and threaded the pen through the spirals. “Thanks for wasting our time.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“That is a question.”
“I was just wondering if you ever get tired of always blaming other people when things don’t go the way you want. I mean, that must be a pretty lonely way to live.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I turned my short turn with celebrity into a good career.” Stuntman spoke with a hollow pride that didn’t touch his eyes. He still looked tired. “I was smart about it.”
“I dunno. You still seem like a pretty angry guy.”
“Holy shit. Did you just call me an angry black man? You, of all people?”
“No, I think you’re a mean person who is also black.” Wally remembered a conversation he’d had with Jerusha. It seemed like yesterday. They were piloting a boat down a river in Congo, and talking about their time on American Hero, which even then had seemed like a jillion years ago.
I didn’t say that stuff.
I know, Wally. Everybody knows it.
“You never fooled anybody,” said Wa
Stuntman made another show of checking his watch. He yawned. “Let me know when you get near a point.”
Wally thought about that. What was his point? He hadn’t thought he had one; he was just curious, because it seemed like a crummy way to live. But then he realized maybe he did have something to say. “If you hadn’t done what you did all those years ago, my life would be a lot different. Actually, maybe lots of lives would be different. Because of you I went to Egypt, and then so did some other folks, and that’s how the Committee was formed. And then I got to know Jerusha and I met Ghost and now I’m adopting a kid and everything. I miss a lot of folks—” Wally struggled to force the words past the lump that always congealed in his throat when he thought about Jerusha. He thought about Darcy, too. “—And it hasn’t fixed everything for everybody. But, I dunno, I think maybe my life would be a lot lonelier if not for you. So, thank you.”
Stuntman stared at him as if he’d just grown another head. He stood. “We’re finished here.” He left without another word.
“You know what?” Wally called after him. “You’re still a knucklehead.”
“Gosh,” said Wally to nobody in particular in his loudest speaking voice, “those joker kidnappings sure do worry me. I hope those cage match guys don’t decide to make me fight because I’m so strong. I have a kid at home.”
He pitched his voice so that it carried over the music; past the rotating stage where a bored-looking lady covered in goldfish scales half danced, half strutted around a fireman’s pole; and even into the darkened corners where ladies danced privately for solitary drinkers.
Early afternoon at Freaker’s was one of the most depressing things he’d ever witnessed in Jokertown. Nobody here looked particularly happy.
The bartender, a man with tattoos covering both his arms and most of his neck, wrapped a dirty dishtowel around the lid of a jar of pickled pearl onions. The tattoos shifted as he heaved on the jar.
“Do you need help with that? I’m pretty strong.” Wally studied the room from the corners of his eyes, adding, “Strong enough to be a wrestler or something, probably.”