Lowball

The Big Bleed
Part Ten

“They said no.”

Franny had returned from his delivery of Berman to Fort Freak with the bad news. He slumped on Berman’s couch, accepting a glass of water delivered to him by Jamal and Mollie, who moved like participants in a three-legged race.

“What kind of ‘no’?” Jamal said. “‘No’ as in ‘not now,’ or ‘not without SCARE’? Or ‘no’ as in ‘never’?”

“‘No never nada.’ They only thing Maseryk promised to do was tell SCARE so they could put the jokers on their to-do list.”

“That’s just what I didn’t want.”

“Well, will it make you happier to know he was going to add State, the Committee, the mayor’s office, and I believe parks and rec?”

Jamal just closed his eyes. Christ.

“You two really know how to make a girl feel protected,” Mollie said. “God.” She tried to cross her arms, a gesture rendered impossible by her linkage to Jamal.

For the first half hour, Jamal had not found being handcuffed to Mollie Steunenberg to be a complete burden. She was pretty and bouncy and not wearing more clothing than necessary. Being free from Michael Berman improved her mood, too: she never reached flirty, but she had gone some distance from sullen.

But only for the first half hour. Four more half hours had passed, and now both of them were utterly sick of each other’s company. “I don’t like this any more than you do,” Jamal told the girl. Her attitude had helped him make a decision. “Our only way out is forward.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Jamal turned to Franny. “We do this ourselves. Now.”

He didn’t have to spend much time or energy on the proposal, which was helpful, since he had diminishing amounts of both. For Franny, the pitch was simple: “Every hour that passes, some citizen of Jokertown dies.”

For Mollie aka Tesseract, it was this: “The only way you’re ever going to be free of Baba Yaga and the rest of her gang is if we take them out.”

“Can we kill that old bitch?”

“It will probably come to that.”

She was suddenly happier than Jamal had ever seen her.

The first sensation Jamal felt upon stepping through Tesseract’s “door” from Berman’s apartment into the gladiator compound inside Maxim’s was dizzying vertigo.

Had Mollie bothered to consider the fact that the spatial orientation in New York, Eastern Time Zone, was radically different from that of Talas, Kazakhstan, Asian Crazy Time? Was it even possible? Or was this his illness at work, not only robbing him of his bounceback, but of any mental or physical resilience?

No matter. Jamal took in the huge digital television screen mounted above a wet bar, showing chaos in the arena itself. A camera operator was struggling to locate the action (for whom? Jamal wondered) as what looked like Snake Boy’s torso slithered through a crowd of glitterati, knocking them sideways while zapping them with his poisoned tongue.

Nice.

Adding to Jamal’s disorientation were the smell of the gladiator’s quarters-heavy on cologne, perfume, and cigarette smoke-and the sound-hideous bass-heavy rap. Lounging on couches or bellied up to the bar were maybe a dozen jokers and twice that number of attractive “hostesses.” And, holding a drink, his arm around a tall nat woman with un-nat breasts, Dmitri … fat, sleepy-eyed, sloppy, menacing.

Then Franny and Mollie walked in-looking as though they were holding hands like high school sweethearts, though most high school sweethearts weren’t joined by handcuffs.

And, to quote Big Bill Norwood, a great deal of Hades came unmoored.

The jokers all sprang to their feet-those that had feet. Their eyes went wide-those that had eyes-with surprise or amusement. “What the hell is this?” growled an eight-foot-tall man-mountain joker Jamal knew as El Monstro.

Only Dmitri seemed to appreciate the situation. Shoving his goddess to one side, he smirked and turned his menacing attention to the intruders.

“Franny!” Jamal shouted and pointed. “Cap him!”

But Franny hesitated. And in that moment, Jamal felt as sad and sick and weak and afraid as he’d ever felt in his life. Worse than the day he’d broken his leg on the football field. He thought of Julia crushed, his parents dead, his own life ended. He wanted to crawl into a hole anywhere but here-Dmitri at work. Knowing what to expect in no way lessened the effect.

But that foreknowledge gave Jamal a few precious seconds of lucidity, and enough energy to raise the Glock. He snapped off three rounds that caught a surprised Dmitri in the back, shoulder, and, as he turned, in the face.

Down he went in a spray of blood and cranial matter.

“Oh my God!” Mollie was almost hysterical, and Jamal couldn’t blame her. Franny stared. “Sorry, cop training.” Blinking hard, he forced a smile. “I wanted to tell him to throw down his gun…”

Jamal stared at dead Dmitri. It seemed that someone else had pulled that trigger. There was no time to reflect, however. More goons with guns would be here soon. “Hey, people,” he shouted. “We are here to take you back to New York!”

The unfortunately-but-appropriately-named Wartface was giddy about being rescued. “About fucking time! Can I hit anyone before we go? I’ve got a list!”

“Sorry.” Jamal turned to Tesseract. “Do it!”

Without a word, Mollie opened a “door” to Fort Freak. They should be safe there, and it would allow the cops to remove them from the missing-persons list … once they calmed down. “There’s the exit. Move!”

There was a mad rush. First the hookers, then the jokers flopping, crawling, hopping after them. They piled through the door, and Jamal imagined the chaos at the other end of the journey.

Two goons appeared from a side door, guns blazing in spite of the presence of at least two joker-gladiators. Jamal ducked: he knew these idiots were just spraying rounds. He squeezed off three rounds that were aimed no better, but served to force the goons to take cover.

As he reloaded, Jamal had a sudden surge of energy. Maybe he was some kind of adrenaline junkie, happy only when moving, chasing, shooting. It certainly fit the persona of Stuntman the ace from SCARE and Hollywood. Maybe he was seeing the endgame. All they had to do was grab the rest of the jokers-

Franny and Mollie were forced to duck as a lucky shot from one of the goons passed between them, shattering a mirror on the wall. Franny had finally lost his inhibitions, unleashing a spray of covering fire that silenced both goons.

Mollie was crying, whether out of fear or anger or the residual effects of the Dmitri mindfuck, Jamal couldn’t know. He wondered what these Tesseract shifts did to the girl-God knew that bounceback drained him, even when he was healthy.

El Monstro had been lingering off to one side (his height made it impossible for him to truly take cover). Now the eight-foot-tall joker abruptly headed for the arena door. Jamal grabbed him. “Hey, big guy, where are you going?” He nodded toward the “door.” “New York is that way.”

“I’m not going. I like it here!” El Monstro insisted.

For a moment Jamal was furious-this was just the latest entry in a long litany of stupidity he had endured since learning about Wheels and the missing jokers. He was out of time, out of patience. He was not going to let this big goon stop him from completing this mission, no more than he had let Rustbelt stop him from winning American Hero! He trained his Glock at El Monstro’s vast mid-section. “Look,” Jamal said, “I don’t know what they’ve done to your head here, but you’re going through that door.”

With no apparent windup, no warning, El Monstro simply swung one of his giant arms and metal fists toward him. It was slow, but still too fast for Jamal Norwood to dodge.

The massive fist slammed into the right side of his face.

It was worse than his first deliberate jump from a tall building, in Halloween Night XIII. He had time for the sickening realization that there was going to be no bounceback, that Stuntman was falling fading dying.