Card Sharks

1

How did I get involved in all this?

I'm not surprised at your question, given what I'm asking you to believe. Quasiman — you know him? He knows of you, but then I think everyone in Jokertown can say that — anyway. Quasiman gave me his tale. That's the real beginning, after all. With that and my background. I can visualize that horrible moment, but I wasn't there. I wasn't part of it. Not yet, anyway.

But I can see it. I can …

Evening mass in Our Lady of Perpetual Misery on September 16, 1993, was packed. Christmas, Easter, and Black Queen Night: those were the three times that Father Squid could count on a full house. Half of Jokertown seemed to be pressed shoulder to shoulder in the pews or standing in the aisles, giving the interior a look not unlike that of a Bosch painting. Many of them were families, with children entirely normal or as misshapen as the parents. Imagine a shape, anything vaguely human or even not so human, and there it would be somewhere in the crowd; a lipless frog's mouth open in the group prayer, tentacles folded in some imitation of praying hands, slimy shoulders adorned with a new dress or faceted eyes gleaming as they watched Father Squid at the altar, raising a chalice to the congregation.

Swelling chords filled the nave, a subsonic bass trembling the floor: that was Mighty Wurlitzer. MW, as he was called, looked anything but human. He had once been the choir director for All Saints' parish in Brooklyn; now he was a ten foot long, thick tube of knobby, sand-colored exoskeleton from which dozens of hollow spines jutted out. A vestigial head capped one end of the tube: two frog-like bumps of eyes, a slit nose, but no mouth. Mighty Wurlitzer couldn't move, couldn't speak, but the bellows of his lungs inside that confining sheath were powerful and inexhaustible. He could vent air through the natural pipes of his immobile body, creating a sound like a demented bagpipe on steroids. Modifications had been added since MW had been "installed" in the choir loft. Flexible plastic tubing connected some of his spines to a rack of genuine organ pipes, allowing Mighty Wurlitzer to produce a truly awesome racket. It might not have been great music, but it was loud and energetic, and no joker in the congregation would ever fault another for doing the best he could with what the wild card had given him.

Mighty Wurlitzer sang and a wild music sounded, his voice a breathy orchestra. The jokers below joined in after the eight bar introduction.

"Holy, holy, deformed Lord, God of Hosts …"

Afterward, no one was certain who first noticed. Someone in the congregation must have been gifted with a keen sense of smell in exchange for their warped body — the wild card virus has that kind of sick sense of humor. At least a few would have noticed that the odor of the votive candles seemed to be particularly intense, that there was a thin pall of acrid vapor wafting in, that the air was growing hazy and blue …

"Fire!" The word was shouted into the teeth of the song, the warning drowned out by Mighty Wurlitzer's crashing thunder. A few people heard the warning. Heads began to crane around curiously, the song faltered.

A bright yellow tongue licked at the crack between the side doors of the church, flickering in like a snake's tongue and then retreating. A child nestled in the multiple arms of his mother began to cry. The first tendrils of gray smoke began to writhe under the doorways.

A jet of blue flame hissed as it shot from under the side doors.

"Fire!"

This time the cry came from a dozen throats. Up in the loft, Mighty Wurlitzer coughed, and the bagpipe drone hiccuped in mid-melody. Like drawing the Black Queen from the deck of the wild card virus, the soaring paean to Christ metamorphosed into something far more chaotic, more human, and more deadly. The interior of the church echoed not to a hymn but to screams and shouts. Mighty Wurlitzer abandoned the song to coughing, barking discords like someone pounding on a keyboard with desperate fists.

The panic, the deadly fear, began its reign.

Father Squid shouted from the altar, his whispering, sibilant voice amplified by the microphone under the tentacles of his mouth. "Please! Don't shove! Everyone, let's move quickly to the nearest — "

The electronic voice went silent; at the same time, the lights inside the church died. In the sudden dark, the screams took on a new intensity. The surging, frightened congregation flailed and pushed and shoved toward the main doors at the rear.

There, the first people died.

Impossibly the doors were locked or barred. Worse, the metal bands of the great wooden doors were searingly hot, and through the seams of the oak a threatening brightness flickered. Those in front shouted pleadingly, but they were crushed against the unyielding doors by the weight of those behind. The doors bulged outward and then held, and now those unlucky ones who had been first to the doors were suffocating, as smoke billowed black around them and the roaring voice of the blaze announced itself.

The mob tried to retreat back into the church, pushing now, heedless of those who slipped and fell and were trampled underneath, none of them thinking now of anything but their own survival. Breathing became impossible. There was no surcease in the superheated air around them, and the smoke flared in their lungs like acid.

"Oh God, no!" Father Squid cried, but no one heard and God declined to intervene. The screaming had stopped out in the smoke-lost congregation. Those who could still breathe were saving that precious air for flight, for finding a way, any way out from the relentless hellpit that now surrounded and pursued them. Flames crawled the west wall, at the ceiling of the east wall a Niagara of superheated air boiled. Yet the fire had sucked most of the oxygen out of the interior, and the blaze seemed almost sluggish. The flames subsided to a sullen orange glow.

Then the main doors went down — pushed open or unlocked — and the opening sent fresh air gushing in. The conflagration suddenly erupted with an audible whoosh, the inferno roaring higher and more searing than before. The walls re-ignited, a fireball rolled down the central aisle. As the stained glass windows shattered and rained bright knives, waves of fire leaped inward.

The heat puckered Father Squid's face, made the golden thread of his vestments burn through the surplice beneath them. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see. He knew he was going to die. Now. There was only the smoke and the leaping, triumphant glare of flame. "Mommy! Where are you?! Mommy!" A child screamed out in the roiling hell, and the sound caused Father Squid to take a staggering step toward the beckoning flames.

"Here!" he shouted into the roar. "Come over here, son!"

A hand grasped his shoulder, pulled him back. "Father — this way!"

"Quasiman. …" Father Squid squinted at the hunchbacked figure through the smoke and coughed, pointing back into the inferno that was the church. "Save some of them … the children, the poor children …"

"Come!"

"Not me," Father Squid protested. "Them …" But the hand was implacable and incredibly strong. Father Squid couldn't resist and — to his shame — he found that part of him didn't want to resist. The choir loft fell in an explosion of sparks, Mighty Wurlitzer giving a last scream like the final chord for Armageddon. The west wall sagged; part of the roof fell. Over the thunder of the flames, they could hear sirens, but out in the church there was only black silence.

Father Squid looked back once, then allowed Quasiman to drag him back: across the altar, into the sacristy to the side. That room was aflame too, but Quasiman roared back at the flames and leaped, gathering Father Squid in his arms. They crashed through the window in a cascade of glass, landing outside where suddenly there was air. Father Squid gasped and coughed, wheezing as he tried to drag some of that coolness into ravaged lungs. Half-conscious, he was aware of dark figures around him, faces peering worriedly at him through glass helmets. "Inside!" he tried to say, but his throat burned and all he could do was grunt. "For God's sake, please get them out!"

Someone murmured something, and he felt himself falling backward into arms. His head lolled back. Far above, a geyser of bright, whirling sparks spiraled heavenward around the steeple like burning prayers.

"Cassidy!"

At dawn, Hannah Davis stepped through the leaning, blackened timbers that had been a side entrance of the church. The wood steamed and fumed and hissed in the autumn drizzle. She noted immediately the black, rolling blisters on the wood — the fire had been unusually hot here. The floor had been burnt entirely away in front of her; the undersloping angle of the char told her that the fire had communicated up from below. Someone had laid planks across the gap, and she walked carefully over into the church. The roofless shell of the building smoldered around her. Leo Cassidy, a lieutenant in the Jokertown fire division, straightened up from where he was kneeling near the front of the church and looked back at her. His visor was up, and Hannah saw the scowl plainly. He turned back to what he was doing without a word.

Around the church's interior, department personnel were working, tearing down the walls as they searched out the remaining hot spots, or performing the grisly job of checking the soaked, black rubble for bodies. They were flagging the locations; there were far too many of the yellow triangles, more than seemed possible. The fire had come in as three alarms, had gone quickly to four and then five as soon as the first trucks had arrived on the scene. When Hannah had gotten the call to come down around midnight, the radio newscasters were already estimating that over a hundred jokers might have died. There'd been no hope of saving the building or getting anyone out — it had been all they could do to save as many of the surrounding buildings as they could. A strong wind had been blowing that night; the priest's cottage and two neighboring apartment houses had gone with the church. Burning ash had started several spot fires as far away as the East River. It had taken hours to get the fire under control.

The fire had been spectacular, fast, and extremely deadly. Even without the added interest of its location, the blaze would have made the national news. As it was, the torching of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker was the lead story everywhere this morning.

And it was, somehow, Hannah's fire. Her file. Her problem. She still wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Hannah picked her way carefully toward Cassidy. The rain made the fallen, scorched timbers slick and dangerous, and the smell of damp ash was overpowering. She slipped once, putting her hand out for support on one of the remaining pews and noting the capriciousness of fire — the wood under her hand was untouched: polished and golden and unblemished.

"Where'd the chief get to, Cassidy?"

Cassidy was putting a tarp over one of the corpses. Hannah forced herself to look. The body — too elongated, and with a neck as long as a small giraffe's — was on its side in the curled "fighting" position fire victims often assumed as the intense heat caused the major muscle groups to contract. The abdomen gaped open in a long crease that almost looked like a cut — another legacy of the fire: with the heat, gas formed in the intestines, swelling them until they burst out from the weakened, seared skin. Unburnt, pink loops peeked from the slit. The corpse was badly damaged. Hannah couldn't even tell if it had once been male or female. The smell made Hannah want to gag.

"Funny, isn't it, that no matter how deformed they were before, they all look the same once they're crisped."

"The chief, Cassidy."

"Why you need the chief, Davis?" Cassidy grunted. He looked at Hannah, cocking his head as he noticed the leather apron stuffed with tools under her slicker. "Who you working under — Patton?" He put too much stress on the "under."

"I'm not under anyone. This is my case."

Cassidy snorted. "Fuck," he said. "I wondered why the hell you were hanging around. Just what I need. I guess they thought this was a barn that burned down and they wanted you to count the dead cows."

Hannah ignored that, wishing she'd never mentioned that she'd grown up on the farm her parents still owned west of Cincinnati. She'd had to put up with the "country girl" jokes, with the sexual innuendoes, with all the bullshit "we'll never let you be just one of the guys" snubbing, with the "just how the hell did you get this job" attitude. The first few months, she'd told herself that the abuse would ease up. It hadn't. It had gotten worse. "Stuff it, Cassidy. Where's Chief Reiger?"

Cassidy snorted. "In the basement."

"Fine. I'll be down there. I have Dr. Sheets coming in to coordinate the photographing and removal of the victims. Pete Harris from the bureau will be here any time now — let me know when he gets here; he's bringing the forensics team. Tell him to start on the entrances — all the reports from the survivors say they were blocked. And, Cassidy … give my people some cooperation, okay?"

Cassidy just looked at her, and she could almost hear his thoughts with the expression on his face. Goddamn bossy bitch … She also knew that if she'd been Patton or Myricks or any of the male long-term bureau agents, Cassidy would've happily nodded and said "Yes sir." But Hannah was a newcomer, which was bad enough, and, even worse, a woman. Hannah forced her anger down. "Any questions, lieutenant?"

Cassidy sniffed again. Rain beaded on the black rubberized jacket, sliding down the yellow flourescent stripes on the sleeves and waist. "No, ma'am," he said flatly. "No problem, ma'am. Cooperation is my middle name." A tic twitched the corner of his mouth as he stared at her, his face soot-stained. Hannah took a breath, making sure the anger was sealed in. "Fine," she said. "I'll be down — "

She stopped. On the rear wall of the church where a crucifix would normally be placed, she saw something mounted. It was a wooden figure, blackened with smoke but unburned: a two-headed person, one head bearded, the other female. One set of hands were nailed to what looked to be a twisted wooden ladder behind it; another set of withered arms sprouted from the chest where three pairs of breasts ran down like the teats on a mother wolf. The feet were also nailed to the strange cross. Rain dripped from the feet, from the multiple breasts, from the faces. A chill went through Hannah, an unbidden outrage. Alongside her, Cassidy followed her gaze. He spat into the rubble; from the corner of her eyes, Hannah saw him make the sign of the cross. "Fucking blasphemy," he said.

"What is that?"

"Don't you hicks out in Ohio ever get papers?"

"Cassidy — "

"That's Jesus Christ the Joker, nailed to a DNA helix. This place is a joker's version of a Catholic Church. Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, they call it. They even have a priest — guy looks like a squid. He went on that world tour five, six years ago, the one Senator Hartmann was on. You must've heard about that — the big dust-up in Syria with the Nur, Hartmann getting kidnapped in Berlin … or did that get crowded off the front page because of the Pig Festival?"

"Yeah, it did," Hannah replied. "And they ran your picture right above the goddamn blue ribbon."

Hannah walked away before Cassidy could reply.

In the basement, Chief Reiger was crouched in a puddle of water before an old porcelain-covered cast-iron sink. When the light of Hannah's helmet swept over him, the gray-haired man spoke without turning around. "Okay, Miss Davis, give me your evaluation of this."

"Chief, that's not fair. I'm a licensed — "

"Humor me, Miss Davis."

I shouldn't have to prove myself over and over again, not to you, not to anyone. Hannah stopped the protest before she vocalized it. She sighed, taking a quick inventory. "The porcelain's destroyed and the handles are melted off. We used to have a plywood wall behind here — nothing left but the nails in the studs. The floor joists above are heavily damaged; so is the cabinet below the sink and the floor around it." Hannah paused, leaned over the sink. "I'd say that someone plugged the drain and poured a good quantity of liquid accelerant in the tub. Then they turned the water on and lit it somehow — the damage to the porcelain and the faucets means that we had one heck of a hot fire right here. The fire touched the wall and went up through them. When the sink overflowed, it spread the fire around the bottom of the sink and over the floor — you can see the trail following the slope of the floor. A definite torch, if we didn't already know that. No signs of a big explosion, so our friend didn't use gasoline."

Reiger was nodding. The condescension bothered her. He acted like a teacher acknowledging a student. "Gasoline and fuel oil mixture," he said.

Hannah shook her head. "Uh-uh. Too hot a fire for that — it melted the fixtures, and the ignition temperature of a gas/fuel oil mixture's too low for that. The fire went awful fast, too. When we get the results, we're going to find out it's JP-4: jet fuel. I'll bet on it — I worked on a job back" — home, she almost said — "in Cincinnati where the stuff was used. And look here — " She pointed to a corner of the sink, which had cracked off. "That's a concussion fracture, really clean. There was a little explosion here. Our torch used a device to set it off. He was already out of here when it went up."

Reiger scowled, and Hannah tried to keep the satisfaction from showing on her face. He'd missed the fuse entirely, she realized. "You might be right," Reiger admitted grudgingly.

"So did I pass your little exam?"

Reiger grunted.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said.

"You know something, Miss Davis, you ought to leave that chip on your shoulder at home. I'm sorry if I've offended you, but I've never worked with you before."

"You do this field testing with every new agent the bureau sends out, Chief?"

"Yeah, Miss Davis. As a matter of fact, I do." His dark eyes glared at her from under the rim of his helmet, challenging her. You gotta work with him … Hannah could feel the tension in her jaws. She relaxed the muscles, forced herself to give the man a half-smile even though she didn't believe him. Reiger probably didn't call the other agents by their last name — they'd be "Pat" or "Hugh" or "Bob" — and she doubted that he called any woman "Ms."

"I'm sorry," she said, hating the words. "I guess I flew off the handle a little." She hated even more the fact that her apology and the smile — as she had known it would — melted the Chiefs irritation.

"It's not a problem," he said. "I don't treat you any differently than anyone else. I just want you to understand that."

Right. "I understand, Chief." She smiled again to take the edge off the words, and the man nodded. He gave her a fatherly clap on the shoulder.

"Great. Then I think you should look over here. I think we've found where he broke in …"

"Here's some more tracks-alongside the door."

"I'll be right there, Pete."

By late afternoon, the interior had been sketched and photographed. The victims had been tagged, field-examined, and removed. Evidence had been bagged and sealed and marked.

Everything about this fire was ugly. The firesetter, whoever it was, hadn't bothered to hide the arson. He — almost all arsonists were male — had entered through a basement window: Reiger had been right about that. All the windows were stained black with smoke except for one shattered pane on the floor — the glass was still clean, which meant that it was down before the fire. He'd set plants, material to start the initial fire, in the basement under each door of the church and in several other places along the walls. A trailer of oiled cotton rope had gone between each of the plants — Hannah had found an uncharred piece near the window where the torch had entered. The plants themselves were a potpourri of whatever the arsonist could find in the basement: votive candles, paper, cardboard boxes, all soaked in the same accelerant as had been in the sink. Hannah could guess at what had occurred: the firesetter had quickly heaped together the plants, linked them together with the rope, then soaked them all in the jet fuel. One end of the rope had been placed in the sink. Finally, he'd dumped the rest of the fuel in the sink, turned on the water, and placed his fuse on the side of the sink. He would have had ample time to leave the basement before the fuse set off the rising fuel in the sink, and the sound of the small initial explosion had been covered by the singing above.

Ten, fifteen minutes' work. By the time the odor of the jet fuel had wafted upward, the fire would have been raging.

Hannah and Pete Harris were outside, to the rear of the church. The drizzle had stopped and the clouds had broken. The lowering sun touched the steeple, still standing over the roofless edifice, and threw a block of light on the wall in front of the two. A swirling path of darker black showed against the charred wood of the door, like a graffiti-scrawled name on a building: the arsonist, after setting the basement on fire, had gone to each of the entrances of the church and sprayed them with accelerant, also. When the fire climbed the walls, it found more fuel waiting for it.

What made Hannah sick was that he'd also blocked the doors. Here, on the rear sacristy door, a metal bar ran through the ornate curved handle, across the door, and behind the mounting for a lamp. Similar bars had been used on both side entrances and on the main doors in front, though they'd been broken or burnt through eventually. As with the basement plants, no attempt had been made to even pretend this might be accidental. It was almost as if the torch were daring her to catch him.

Whoever he was, he'd wanted those inside to die. This wasn't just a pyro, someone setting a fire just so he could watch the building burn. It wasn't one of the repeat psychos who set a fire and then scurried around trying to help the smoke-eaters put it out.

This was someone who wanted to kill.

"Son of a bitch," she said. "No one saw anything?"

"We've talked to all the witnesses," Harris said. "No one's admitting it if they did. But then they're all jokers. They protect their own kind."

"If a joker did this, I don't think they'd protect him, no matter what."

"You don't know them, do you?" Harris answered. "I've had to do business in Jokertown before." His grimace told Hannah his opinion of the area and jokers in general. Hannah decided not to pursue it. Frankly, she didn't like what she'd seen of Jokertown herself.

"This was planned," she said. "Did you see the bar that he put on the front door? It was sleeved, so it could be expanded to fit yet not be too bulky to carry. Our guy had this all worked out, down to the last detail. Sick."

"This is the place for sick, if you haven't figured that out yet."

"Yeah. So I've been told." Hannah shook her head, staring at the door. Ugly. "I'll get the photos of this. Check the other entrances again; I'll bet we'll have the same pattern under the ash."

"You're the boss," Harris answered. Hannah decided that the tone was more tired than sarcastic.

As Harris walked away, Hannah took her char probe from her belt, jabbed the end of the stainless steel rule into the wood, and recorded the depth of the burn. She did the same to the bottom of the door, then stepped back. She pulled her miniature tape recorder from her pocket and spoke into it. "Rear sacristy entrance. Same situation here — a plant in the basement beneath the door, accelerant sprayed on the door and surrounding structure afterward. Spray pattern on wall. Burn on door consistent with a fire communicated from below. Door barred with a steel rod — looks like one of those used in concrete work. The sacristy window is broken out from inside — that's how the priest made it out." Her head was pounding. With a sigh, she released the record button.

Stretching, she leaned her head back, glancing up at the steeple. She thought for a moment that she saw someone up there, a figure staring down at her from one of the gargoyle-crowded ledges. She blinked and shaded her eyes against the sky-glare, but saw nothing. Just tired. You've had about three hours sleep in the last thirty-six hours.

"You …"

Hannah whirled around with the word. A man, a thing was standing behind her. He was humpbacked, deformed, a lump of twisted limbs. "Jesus — " she half-shouted involuntarily, then took a deep breath. "Listen, you aren't allowed here. This is a crime scene."

The creature took a limping step toward her. Hannah retreated. Back home, people touched by the wild card virus were almost unknown; in the few months she'd been in New York, she'd never had close contact with any of the jokers, the people altered by the virus. She found that she didn't like the experience much at all. A fear that this joker might infect her made Hannah shiver; she'd read the news stories about how one of them ran around New York unknowingly passing the virus several years ago. Almost worse, it was hard not to stare at the joker and that made her embarrassed, and she found herself covering the embarrassment with anger.

He took another step. Again, she gave ground, wondering whether she should call for Harris.

"Listen," she said. "I've already warned you."

"You …" the apparition repeated again. His mouth twitched, and he seemed to look far away before his gaze focused on her. As Hannah watched, his right arm disappeared from hand to elbow, as if it had been wiped from existence by some cosmic eraser. There was no gush of blood; the arm just popped out of existence. The joker stared at the spot where it had been as if he were as surprised as Hannah. A few seconds later, the arm reappeared. The joker prodded it with a curious forefinger, as if to make sure it was really there, then turned back to Hannah.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I belong here. I work here, and … I keep seeing you," he said. "Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't. Right now I do, and I know that you will … find out who did this." The joker's speech was ponderous, yet it wasn't as if he was slow or retarded. Rather, it seemed that he was receiving too much input, as if there was so much happening inside his head that it was difficult for him to maintain his train of thought. He seemed to be straining to remain coherent. When he did speak, the words were well-articulated, but he frowned. He seemed to be listening to interior voices, scowling as he tried to keep his mind on what he was saying.

"You work here?" Hannah noticed now the telltale dark stains on his hands and the ash smeared into his clothing. A long fresh cut adorned his right cheek, the blood dried to a brown scab. Hannah remembered the reports of the first firefighters on the scene. "You're the one who pulled the priest out, aren't you? The one called Quasiman."

The being nodded, almost shyly, and gave her a fleeting, apologetic smile. "I did?" he answered, as if surprised. "Maybe.. I think I might remember …"

"You were lucky."

"No joker's exactly … lucky." Again, that shy, quiet smile. There was an openness to the man, an odd friendliness belied by his deformed appearance and the strength evident in the knotted muscles of those arms and legs. Hannah waited for him to say something more, but for several seconds, Quasiman simply stared up at the steeple, as if he were standing there alone.

"Hey!" Hannah said. The ugly creature looked at her and blinked as if he were seeing her for the first time. "I need to talk with you about the fire. Something you saw, something you heard, may give us a lead on who did this."

Quasiman suddenly looked grim and dangerous. "We'll find them," he said. "I saw us, you and me. There's more of them than you think …" He stopped again, his gaze losing its focus.

"Them?" Hannah said. "Did you see something? Was there more than one firesetter?"

Quasiman didn't answer. He continued to stare past her at the burnt shell of the church, as if looking for answers in the charred ruin. Hannah shuddered — looking at the joker repulsed her, and he seemed half insane.

"Hannah! The chief sent over some pizza — what's say we take a break?" Harris called from the side of the church. She turned, relieved and a little angry with herself for what she'd been thinking. "Half a second," she shouted, then looked back to the joker. "I'll need — "

She stopped. Quasiman was gone. Vanished.

"It's after eleven. You're keeping later hours than me. That's not fair — lawyers are supposed to be the overworked ones."

Hannah threw her coat and briefcase in the general direction of the rack, then closed the apartment door behind her. She unclasped the clip holding her hair and ran her fingers through the long, unbound strands. She heaved a long sigh. "No kidding," she said. "That was the Jokertown church fire Malcolm threw my way last night. What a mess. The Reds still playing?"

Hannah's roommate, David Adderley, glanced up from the television, where the Brooklyn Dodgers were staging a late rally against the Cincinnati Reds. He set a bottle of Anchor Steam down on the coffee table next to the white cardboard container of Chinese food and came over to hug Hannah. "Sony to hear that, kid. And no, they're not still playing. I had the timer set on the video, since I figured you'd want to see it: ol' thoughtful me. You're not going to be happy, though — the Dodgers win in the bottom of the ninth: so much for the Reds' one game lead. So why'd you get the freaks' fire?"

David didn't seem to be any more bigoted toward jokers than the rest of the people she'd met in New York; in fact, he'd worked a few cases for the city for joker causes. He wasn't one of the rabid fanatics, the ones who wanted to sterilize them all or worse, but he didn't hide his distaste. Normally she wouldn't have noticed or remarked on the "freaks" comment; tonight, the word made her knot her jaws. She'd seen the bodies of parents huddled over their dead children as if shielding them from the flames; she'd seen the desperate piles at the doors. No one deserves to die like that. No one. "Probably because no one else wants it."

"There's going to be some who think that the guy should probably get a medal for community service." David tried to soften the comment with a laugh.

"David — "

Releasing her, he held out his hands in apology. "Sorry. But you know that's how some people are going to feel. Hell, three years ago Manhattan was a war zone during the Rox crisis until the Turtle smashed Bloat and his damn fairyland to the bottom of the bay. How many bills have been introduced for mandatory blood tests since then — "

"Listen, I saw how ugly it is in Jokertown today," Hannah interrupted. "Believe me, it's worse than I ever thought. But …" Hannah shivered, remembering the death she'd seen. "It's not their fault. None of them asked to be jokers."

On the TV, the camera was panning the crowd, picking out notables in the field seats. Hannah recognized ex-Senator Gregg Hartmann, sitting alongside a woman whose skin might have been made from crumpled tinfoil. The commentator was sayipg something about Hartmann's efforts to achieve equality for all those afflicted by the wild card." David pointed at him.

"It's bleeding hearts like him who have been the problem," David said to the screen, then glanced back at Hannah. "I'm sorry as anyone that these people were infected by the damn virus. None of them asked for it, sure, and probably none of them deserve the pain and disfigurement, but it happened. The best thing we can do is to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. You've been here less than three months, Hannah. You don't know New York and you don't know jokers. I'm not the only one who feels that way. Ask any of our friends. Unfortunately, you get misguided people who think the answer is killing them all, like whoever torched your church. Talk to some of our friends — "

"Your friends, David. Not our friends. I just adopted them. I'm still 'that new woman David's living with,' to them." She wasn't sure why she said that — until she spoke, she hadn't even known that the fact bothered her. She regretted the words instantly. David gave her his hurt puppy-dog look, his I'm-not-the-one-to-blame look, his why-can't-you-argue-logically look.

"Hannah, I didn't drag you out here. You wanted to come. You wanted to be with me, remember? I found you the job you wanted, pulled a few strings to get it for you — "

"Yes, David. I remember." Hannah realized that they had shifted from the muddy waters of wild card bigotry into the more familiar shallows of The Argument, the minor skirmishes in their relationship that seemed to taint their time together more and more often. You shouldn't have come to New York this way. You should have waited, should have continued the long-distance romance, the weekend visits. Then you would have been sure. This is your fault — you feel guilty because you're afraid that if David wasn't friends with the Mayor and half the Council you wouldn't even have been considered for your job. You feel guilty because you're not sure you like New York that much, because while David's a nice guy somewhere in the last month the spark and heat and light went away and you were living with someone you really didn't know all that well …

"David, I appreciate all that. I do. It's just — "

"Just what, Hannah?" He sounded more annoyed than concerned now. "You want off this stupid fire, well, I can understand that. Malcolm's just pissed that I forced his boss to hire you. You don't want to deal with jokers; well, I'm not particularly comfortable with you prowling around in J-Town, either. I'll call Malcolm tomorrow."

"David — " Hannah began, wondering how he could be so blind as to say exactly the wrong thing. Don't you understand? You pulled the strings and they all resent it. I can sympathize with that. I'm finding lately that I'm beginning to resent it too. I hate that it's Jokertown. I hate that jokers are involved, but this one's mine and I need to show them that I'm competent. I should never have let you find me the job. I should have come to New York on my own, found my own place, found my own work instead of letting you arrange everything for me. But I was in love with you, and you were so convincing. …

But Hannah didn't say any of that. She tried to deflect the argument. "I don't want you to call Malcolm, David. Thanks, but I can handle this. This is going to be big news, even if it is in Jokertown. It'll be good for me." David shrugged at that; she knew he would. A city attorney with political aspirations understood power, after all. He understood publicity and career moves. Hannah took David's arm and pulled him down on the couch, snuggling next to him. "Listen, I don't want to argue. I'm tired and beat and I'm saying things I don't really mean. I still smell like the inside of a chimney. I want to hug, cuddle a little, then take another shower and go to bed."

"To bed?"

"Yeah," she said. "I'm not too tired, if you're not."

The lines of David's thin face slowly softened.

"I love you," Hannah said.

"You don't mind, then, if I record this?"

"Not at all, Ms. Davis. Go ahead. Please, I want to help you in any way I can."

Hannah set the tape recorder down on the tray stand next to Father Squid's hospital bed. She checked the record light. "Recording started on September 17, 1993, at 8:17 A.M.," she said and stepped back again. The priest watched her with something close to amusement in his watery green eyes. The oxygen tubing ran through the wriggling mass of tentacles that were his nose. His skin was a pale gray. He greeted her with a fleeting, almost sad smile. There was webbing between his long fingers and round vestigial suckers on his palms, and when he spoke, the scent wafting from him reminded Hannah of vacations in North Carolina, wandering through the tidal pools along the beach. Behind him, monitors ticked and whirred.

"I want you to know that we're talking to all survivors and witnesses, Mr. … ummmm …" Hannah stopped. Her Catholic upbringing made it seem heretical to call him "Father."

"Father Squid, is what most people call me," he said, and there was amusement under that voice. "Even those who aren't of my church. If you're not comfortable with that, I understand."

Hannah shrugged as if she didn't care. She didn't think the gesture convinced either of them. "Father, then," she said.

Father Squid coughed suddenly, sending the scent of tidal brine through the room. He wiped his mouth with a tissue. Hannah watched the tentacles wriggling around his fingers as he did so. "I'm sorry," he said afterward. "The smoke in the lungs … Tell me one thing, Ms. Davis — will you catch him?"

"I will try … Father." She stumbled over the word. "To do that, I need you to tell me everything you can."

"May I ask you a question first?"

Hannah shrugged.

"You're afraid of jokers, aren't you?" Father Squid held up a web-fingered hand, stopping her protest. His eyes, kindly and snagged in tidal ripples of skin, smiled gently at her. "Please don't take offense. You seem to find the curtains and the bedspread a lot more interesting than my poor face. The only time you've approached my bed is to put your tape recorder down, and now you're sitting all the way on the other side of the room. You held your breath when I coughed. My guess is that you're new to the city, and you don't know that the virus can't be passed by a joker's cough." Again, a soft, sad smile showed under the tentacles. "And the way you're blushing tells me that you're sensitive enough to care that I've noticed."

Hannah could feel the flush on her cheeks. "I've been here three months," she said. "I'll admit that my contact with jokers and aces has been … limited."

"Yet they gave you this assignment." The smile touched the lips again. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

The words stung. "Father, I can assure you that I'm entirely capable of handling this. I was in charge of several arson investigations back in Cincinnati."

"Fires like this one?" Father Squid asked, but the smile took away some of the edge.

"No," Hannah admitted. "Father, I won't gild the truth; even when a fire is so obviously arson, proving a case against someone can be very difficult — your evidence tends to literally go up in smoke. But I have a good team of investigators working with me, and I have the cooperation of the fire and police departments. If your firesetter can be caught, I'll catch him."

He nodded, gently and sympathetically. "I'm sure you'll try. Yet …"

"Yet?"

His gaze held her softly; after his comments to her, Hannah could not look away. "Would your superiors have given this assignment to you if the Archdiocese of New York's cathedral had burned down, if the victims had included, let's say, a council member's family or two? What if a hundred of the Park Avenue wealthy had died instead of jokers? Do you think that you and your 'team' would be alone, or would the outraged hue and cry have mobilized every last department in the state, maybe even have brought in the federal agencies? Would you be the one interviewing the Archbishop in his hospital room?"

"I can't answer that," Hannah said, but she could. No, it wouldn't be me. It'd be Myricks, or probably Malcolm himself. Not me.

"I know you can't," Father Squid was saying. "And it's not really fair of me to ask. I'm sure you'll do whatever you can. Behind your professional mask, you have a kind face."

"Father — "

"I know, that sounds trite. But it's true. Forgive me for my meanness and pettiness, but I think they chose you because they think a young, attractive, and relatively inexperienced woman will fail and they don't think that matters. I think it's because a fire in Jokertown isn't deemed to be worth the effort of the best people in your department, because they really don't care if a murderer of jokers is ever found as long as they can show that they made some effort. I also think that they made the wrong choice if that was their thought. So … where do I start, Ms. Davis? What can I tell you?"

Hannah wanted to respond angrily, but she had found herself nodding inside to each of his arguments. She retreated into routine. "Had you received any threats recently? Do you know of anyone with a grudge against you or your church?"

"My child," he said softly, sounding for all the world like Bing Crosby in The Bells of Saint Mary's, "I receive threats regularly, at least once or twice a month, and the list of those who might conceivably have reason to be annoyed with me is impossibly long. You don't have the manpower to check out each and every one of them. Besides, I'm a recognizable and easy target. I'm out in public every day. I never lock the doors to the church or to my house. If someone wanted to kill me, there were a thousand easier ways to do it. Ways that needn't … that needn't have killed — "

Father Squid's voice broke. Tears welled in his eyes, and he brought up a hand to wipe them away. "My dear God," he husked out, his voice quavering. "All those poor, poor people …" He gave a great, gasping sob that pulled Hannah from her seat. She wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but she held back. She told herself it was only because she was being professional, not because she didn't want to touch a joker. After a few moments, Father Squid brought his hands up and knuckled his eyes with an embarrassed laugh. "I'm sorry … All last night and this morning … every so often I would remember and find myself crying. Each time I think I've finally cried myself dry I find that there's still more grief underneath, layers and layers of it." Father Squid looked at her with stricken eyes. "Ms. Davis, what kind of monster would do a thing like this? Those innocents …" The tears began again; this time he let them fall unashamedly down his face and into the tentacles.

"Father, you said that you 'remember.' What do you remember?"

"It … it all happened so fast. It was Black Queen Night, after all, and so the church was full. …"

"Black Queen Night?"

Father Squid smiled at that, briefly. "You are a newcomer, aren't you? September 15th is Wild Card Day, ever since that day in '46 when Jetboy failed us and let the alien virus loose. The world remembers on that day, but the 15th is the day for the nats and the aces — the ones the virus left untouched or the ones it made into something more than human. In a way, the 15th is a day of celebration. But the 16th, though … the 16th is for Jokertown. The 16th is for sadness. The 16th is when we remember the 90 % of those who are forced to draw from the wild card deck get the Black Queen — the killer. And we remember that in some ways they're the lucky ones, because almost all of the rest of us get the Joker, the bitter card. We became freaks."

Father Squid spat out the last few sentences. His gaze had gone distant. "When did you become aware of the fire?" Hannah asked, and that brought Father Squid's glance around to her again.

"I noticed a haze about the time I was saying the benediction. I remember thinking that I should have turned on the ceiling fans. Mighty Wurlizter …" Father Squid stopped again. Muscles knotted in his jaw. He swallowed hard. "… began playing and people started singing. There was a lot of coughing — I noticed that, too. I found myself clearing my throat. And then … I saw a flame … at the side door …"

The voice broke again. Hannah said nothing, letting Father Squid compose himself before proceeding. "Then it was just chaos," he said finally.

"You didn't see anyone, didn't hear anything from the basement, didn't smell anything?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Father Squid smiled apologetically. "I remember thinking that this was just like the movie. You know — Jokertown, with Jack Nicholson and Marilyn Monroe?"

"What do you mean, like the movie?"

"You've never seen it?"

"A long time ago. I remember something about a plot against the jokers, some rich guy …" Hannah shrugged.

"They wanted to burn down Jokertown. They wanted to burn everything, all of us."

The slow voice came from Hannah's left, in the corner of the room. Hannah jumped, startled — she hadn't heard anyone enter and she couldn't imagine how anyone could have slipped behind her from the doorway.

Someone had. She recognized the humpbacked figure. "Quasiman," she said aloud, identifying him for the tape recorder. The joker glanced at her.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Do I know you?"

"Don't you remember? You talked to me yesterday. Your … your right arm was missing then."

"It was?" Quasiman shrugged as if he'd forgotten the entire incident, then went to Father Squid's side, looking down at the priest with an infinite tenderness on his strange, slack-muscled face. "How are you, Father?" he asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, "I'm sorry. I saw, but I didn't know … I couldn't get them all out. Only a few …"

Father Squid had reached up with his hand. He clasped the hunchback's shoulder. "You did more than anyone else could have. I owe you my life." Quasiman nodded, then he stiffened alongside the bed, looking off into distances only he could see.

"What's the matter with him?" Hannah asked. She hated looking at Quasiman even more than Father Squid. Something about him made her shudder in revulsion.

Father Squid shook his head. "Parts of him just go away at times. Sometimes parts of his body will just vanish. Other times it's his mind or his memories — often he doesn't remember me or what happened yesterday or where he is. Sometimes — like now — he just shuts down entirely."

"How long does it last?"

"A few seconds. Minutes. There's no way to tell."

Hannah started to ask another question, but Quasiman's eyes came back into focus then, and he was staring at her. "I remember you now," he said. "I needed to tell you — Father Squid is right. The fire was like the movie. You need to look into that. You ought to watch it."

"Why? How's a movie going to help me?"

"It was real," Quasiman insisted, and Father Squid's soft voice followed.

"Some of the events in the movie were based on facts," the priest said. "The script was written with the actual story in mind. There was a conspiracy, if not exactly one in the movie, back in the late '50s. '59, I think."

"Yes," Quasiman said. He was gripping the railing of the bed, and Hannah, fascinated, watched the metal bars bending under the pressure of the joker's fingers. Whatever Quasiman's other problems, he was incredibly strong. "There's a lot we need to know. Start with the movie," he said. "You have to."

"I don't think so," she told him. "I'm sorry, but we're not going to catch our torch by looking up a thirty-plus year old plot. I have a lot of leads to follow, good ones — "

Quasiman was suddenly right in front of her, those horribly strong hands on either arm of her chair as he leaned in at her. Hannah could hear the wood-grained Formica of the handles cracking as she pressed her spine against the back of the chair. "Jesus, get away from me!" she shouted, but she couldn't escape. His breath touched her, warm and sweet, but it was the breath of a joker, of someone infected by that awful virus. She would have pushed at him, but she couldn't bring herself to touch him. Hannah started to shout once more to call the nurses and security guards, but Quasiman's face stopped her. There was no menace there, only a soft, pleading concern. "This is very important, Hannah," he said, and the use of her name was startling. "I know. Please."

"Quasiman," Father Squid said from the bed. "You're frightening the young woman."

"Oh," the joker said, as if startled. "Sorry. It's just — " He lifted his hands up suddenly and gave Hannah an apologetic smile. He scuttled away from the chair and Hannah slowly relaxed.

"Just what?" Hannah asked shakily.

"I know that you need to start there. With the movie."

"You keep saying that," Hannah answered. "You 'know.' I don't understand." She looked from Quasiman to Father Squid; it was Father Squid who answered.

"Another by-product of Quasiman's affliction is limited precognition," he told her. "One of the places his awareness seems to go during his episodes is the future. The vision is very erratic, and he can't control it, but it's there. God has seen fit to grant my friend occasional glimpses of what is to be."

"Yes," Quasiman agreed. "I've seen you, Hannah. I've seen us. I've seen other faces. I'm going to try very hard to remember."

"Great. That all sounds very convenient. Now just tell me who started the fire and I'll have him arrested and we can all go home. In fact, with that kind of evidence, we can probably just do away with the trial, too." She wouldn't look at either of the jokers. She stared at the cracks Quasiman's fingers had left in the chair arms.

Father Squid's reply was as gentle as ever, and made Hannah's sarcasm seem even more vitriolic in comparison. "Ms. Davis, I wonder how many comments were made in your office yesterday?" he asked. "I wonder how many people said that there s no way you can find this murderer?"

"What's your point, Father?"

"I just wonder if you're letting your preconceptions blind you right now. After all, how much is Quasiman asking of you? An extra interview? An hour of your time?"

There'd been comments. Hannah had even half-heard some of them. "Even granting that there's something to what you're saying, this supposed plot is ancient history. Half the people involved must be dead." Hannah said. "I don't know who to contact or where to start."

"I do," Father Squid answered. "If you're willing. If you can bring yourself to talk to another joker."

The priest's barbed comment brought up Hannah's eyes. She looked from Father Squid to the hunchback. She knew he was pushing all her buttons, but she wasn't going to be called a bigot. She sighed. "All right," she said. "I can give you an hour."

"Mr. Tanaka? Chuck Tanaka?"

Hannah had already decided that the atmosphere of the Four Seas Seafood Delivery Service, placed precariously between Chinatown and Jokertown, would probably put her off fish for months. The tiny office in the small warehouse was dingy, looking as if it had last been redecorated somewhere around World War II. From the look of the desk, the file cabinets, and each available horizontal surface in the place, every last scrap of paper that the business had generated had found a home here. On the wall were dusty, cheap frames holding faded prints that were just as cheap; behind the desk, a larger frame held a collection of baseball cards. They looked old, too, and there was a spot in the middle of the frame where a space had obviously been reserved for a card.

"You're the one called Chop-Chop?" Hannah asked.

The joker behind the desk looked up, and from his appearance and the grimace on his face, Hannah realized that the question didn't need an answer. The joker was a walking cliche of every bad comic-book depiction of an Asian. He squinted at her from behind coke-bottle bottom, black-rimmed glasses. His myopic eyes were almost comically slanted, the epicanthic folds stretched and exaggerated. He was horrendously buck-toothed, his upper front two teeth extending entirely over his bottom lip, and his ears stuck out from under jet-black hair like twin handles on a jug. His skin was a bright, chrome yellow.

I'd kill myself if I ever become a joker, she told herself. I wouldn't allow myself to be such a mockery of what I'd been.

He sighed. "Yes, I'm called Chop-Chop. And you're …?"

Hannah introduced herself and showed Tanaka her identification. "Father Squid gave me your name," she said as she took her tape recorder from her purse. "Do you mind?"

Tanaka shrugged, though he looked uneasily at the recorder as Hannah set it on a pile of old invoices. "Sit down," he said. Just move those files off the chair. … You know, I don't know anything about the fire. Just what was in the papers and on the tube. Why Father would send you to me..?" He shrugged thin shoulders.

"It wasn't exactly this fire that he thought you might know about," Hannah said, and with the words, she saw something move in Tanaka's face, a twitch of muscles around his mouth and a slow blink of both eyes. She softened her voice, tried to smile at him — there was something there, and she didn't want him to think he had to hide it. "Father … he said to tell you that you could trust me."

"How is he? I heard he got burned."

"He'll be fine. He's lucky — minor burns and some smoke inhalation. They'll release him from the hospital in a day or two."

Tanaka nodded. His skittish gaze moved away from her, as if he weren't comfortable looking at her. Which is about the way I feel about you, Hannah thought. "That's good. That's real good. I like the Father. I … I almost went to mass that night. Got stuck here instead; a problem with a shipment. I manage the place now. Have for a long time …" His voice seemed to run down. He looked at the pictures on the wall, at the file cabinet.

"Father Squid said I should ask about a movie," she said, and that brought Tanaka's head around as if she'd reached out and turned it back herself. The eyes blinked again, like an owl's.

"Jokertown," he said, flatly. It wasn't a question, but Hannah nodded anyway. "I don't know why you should be interested in that. It was just a movie."

"Exactly what I said. But Quasiman insisted that I ask. He seems to think that the fire wasn't just a random hate crime." Hannah bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair. "Look, I think this is probably just a dead end. Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry to have interrupted your busy day. …" She started to reach for the tape recorder.

"They were really all wrong, you know," Tanaka said.

"I'm sorry?"

"About the movie. They were all wrong." Tanaka looked at her through the thick windows of his glasses. "I was there. I know the truth. Did you see it? Did you see the movie? …"