Lowball

The Big Bleed
Part Eight

After the worst twenty-four hours he could remember, Jamal returned to his Bleecker Street room at eleven P.M. Tuesday night.

And found Sheeba waiting for him.

“The logical question,” he said, panting as if he’d climbed the stairs rather than ridden the elevator, “is how the hell you got in here.”

“I’m a federal agent? It gives a lot of leeway with hotel managers. And when that fails, I can fly. Remember. You should sit down.”

The suggestion was unnecessary: Jamal had already collapsed in a chair.

“Here’s where I also say, ‘whassup?’” He barely managed his street black voice. “If this is an intervention, you should have my parents and my girlfriend, too.”

“You’ve got a girlfriend?” She shook her head. “Jamal, you aren’t well. You’ve been running off and not telling anybody where-”

“-On my own time.”

She held up a hand. “No malfeasance is suggested.”

“Christ, Sheeba, you’ve been in management too long-”

She bristled. Of course, Jamal had used “Christ” improperly. “I just want to help.”

“While getting in my business.”

“That seems unavoidable, since your business is our business.”

“Well,” Jamal said, “this wasn’t really a sin of commission as much as omission. I’m tired of hiding it.”

They had done Memorial Day duty with the Rodham campaign, then up early on Tuesday for Holy Roller-again; his appearances seemed to require double Secret Service and SCARE detachments-and no release from duty until ten that night.

With the late Wednesday, Jamal had been able to visit Dr. Finn at Jokertown Clinic-the doctor had asked him to come in Thursday the week before, but there had been no time. “You appear to be suffering from muscular deterioration.”

“Do you know what or why or whether anything can be done?”

“No to all of those, at least provisionally.”

Had he felt strong enough, he would have lunged across the desk at the doctor. “Mind if I ask what the fuck you have been doing?”

If Finn was disturbed by Jamal’s vehemence, he didn’t show it. He merely indicated the files spread out on his desk. “Eliminating other factors, mostly. Environmental, chemical-”

“So this is something in my wiring.”

“It appears to be.” The centaur paused, as if searching for something positive to offer. “You may be the first of your type.”

“So after this kills me, it will be known as the Jamal Norwood Disease? Do I get to address the crowd at fucking Yankee Stadium, too?”

“Mr. Norwood, it is difficult and progressive, but not … dire.” He cleared his throat. “I would advise you to take a much less … active role in your work, possibly go on leave. Help us with tests and conserve your energy.”

There had been more, but Jamal could no longer remember it. It all added up to … telling the Angel everything that had happened to him.

By the end, Sheeba, bless her, was blinking back tears and reaching for Jamal’s hand. “Oh my God, Jamal. This sounds awful.”

“Try feeling it.”

“We feel it,” a man said from the bedroom doorway.

Carnifex himself entered. Jamal couldn’t decide which annoyed him more: the fact that Billy Ray was part of this … or that he hadn’t even thought to look and listen. “That was pretty sneaky.”

Ray chose not to acknowledge the rebuke. “Here’s the deal: you’re on medical leave until further notice.”

Jamal was looking at the floor, feeling nothing but relief as Ray continued: “I’m going to light a fire under our medical people and get you into Johns Hopkins. I can’t believe you’ve been dicking around with the Jokertown Clinic all this time.”

“They’re sort of the world’s specialists in folks like us.”

“They give Band-Aids and aspirin to jokers, Norwood. They may have some sympathetic docs there, but that place is as far from a world-class research facility as you are from being a first-rate agent.”

Typical Billy Ray: never pass up a chance to step on a subordinate.

He stood up. Sheeba did, too. “Jamal, is there anything you need tonight?”

“Sleep,” he told her, quite truthfully. “It will be nice not to have to hit the road tomorrow.”

Billy Ray and Sheeba had not mentioned it, but Jamal assumed that being on leave would mean loss of access. So use it while you’ve got it.

The first thing to do was follow up on a promise he’d made to Franny, to search the intel database for Joseph Frank-

Well, no. First thing was, open a beer and pour it into a glass.

Then repeat.

It didn’t make him feel stronger, but he did feel better.

Then it was back to the computer, playing cyber sleuth. Jamal was surprised to find that, in the past fourteen months, Joseph Daniel Frank had made a number of exits from the USA and entrances to the Republic of Kazakhstan.

It further developed that Mr. Frank had been involved in a disturbance-a drunken dispute with a prostitute that resulted in a beating and an arrest (in Kazakhstan, likely the same thing)-three months ago.

In the city of Talas. Talas. Not Astana, the capital.

Talas, specifically at a casino-nightclub named Maxim’s.

What was in Talas that would draw Michael Berman’s cameraman there repeatedly over the past year-plus?

What would a real cyber sleuth do here? Well, since the one given was that Joe Frank, and by extension, Michael Berman, had to be involved in something illegal, Jamal ought to search for criminal enterprises or individuals that could be tied to the city of Talas, of course.

That turned out to be a rich vein. Kazakhstan was an oil producer, with oil producer-level corruption. Drugs, whores, counterfeiting, human trafficking, all on a significant scale-especially for a city with a population under fifty thousand.

Drilling down in each category, Jamal built up a list of names and links that he saved in another file. By the time he had gone through the primary areas of criminal activity, he realized one name showed up in all four: a party known as “Baba Yaga.”

There was no file on Baba Yaga, just a name and a list of activities that filled a page. All agencies were on record as welcoming further details-

God bless those foreign crime lords. They were always coming up with cute names for themselves. Johnny Batts. The Vicar. Of course, Jamal himself was known as Stuntman and he worked with the Midnight Angel-

Whatever. The name “Baba Yaga” was familiar to Jamal from some childhood book or movie, so he called up Wikipedia for a refresher even as he pictured some slick-haired, black-eyed young thug out of Scarface.

Oh. It turned out that Baba Yaga was a witch or a hag. Didn’t sound like the kind of name a young male hood would choose … unless that young male hood had a terrific sense of humor, which was not usually part of the ensemble.

Male or female, Scarface or hag, this Baba Yaga owned an establishment named Maxim’s. Which happened to be the establishment where citizen Joseph Frank got in trouble with a hooker.

Jamal sat back. Detective Francis Xavier Black was going to find this useful. Which was a good thing, because Agent Jamal Norwood was down for the count, out of the game, on the disabled list.

Likely for the rest of his short life.