Wild Cards V: Down and Dirty

by Arthur Byron Cover

In these times of trouble and dark travail; in this fertile land where the handiwork of Satan is on the verge of bearing fruit: you don’t need to pussyfoot with Marx; or stick your nose in Freud; you don’t need the help of liberals like Tachyon; you don’t need to open yourself up to anyone but Jesus—because he was the first and the greatest ace of them all!

—REVEREND LEO BARNETT

THERE ARE A FEW blocks or so between Jokertown and the Lower East Side that nats and virus victims alike call the Edge. No one knows which group originated the term, but it applies equally to either side. A joker might think of the place as the edge of New York, a nat as the edge of Jokertown.

People come to the Edge for the same reasons why some people watch a slasher movie, or see a good speed metal rock concert, or get wasted on the designer drug in fashion at the moment. They come to the Edge drawn by the illusion of danger, a safe, fleeting illusion that gives them something to talk about at parties attended by people too timid to go to the Edge themselves.

The young preacher thought about that as he watched the television news team wandering the street below through the bathroom window of the cheap hotel room he had rented for the night, though he had intended to use it for only a few hours. The team consisted of a male reporter in a coat and tie, a Minicam operator, and a sound man; the reporter was stopping pedestrians, nats and jokers alike, jabbing his microphone into their faces and trying to get them to say something. For a long, torturous moment the young preacher was afraid his tryst with Belinda May was the story the news team was searching for, but he comforted himself with the notion that the news team no doubt prowled this vicinity routinely. After all, where else did they have a better chance of finding a strong visual lead-in for the eleven o’clock news? The young preacher didn’t like to think sinful thoughts, but under the circumstances he relished the hope the news team would be distracted by a spectacular auto accident a few blocks away, with lots of visual flair in the form of fire and crumpled hoods—but with no fatalities, of course.

The young preacher let the flimsy white curtain drop. He finished his business and while washing his hands with quick, efficient motions, stared at his cadaverous reflection in the mirror over the rust-stained sink. Was he really that unhealthy, or was his pale, yellowish complexion only the result of the unshielded glare of the two naked light bulbs above the mirror? The young preacher was a blond, blue-eyed man just turned thirty-five, with handsome features dominated by high cheekbones and a dimpled, square chin. Right now he was stripped down to a white T-shirt, light-blue boxer shorts, and socks. He perspired profusely. It was definitely hot in here, but he hoped to make it a lot hotter real soon now.

Even so, he couldn’t help but feel out of place in this tacky little hotel room, with this particular woman who just happened to be one of the key staff members of his new Jokertown mission. Not that he was inexperienced. He had done it many times before, with many kinds of women, in rooms like this one. The women had done it because he was famous, or had felt good listening to his sermons, or wanted to feel closer to God. Occasionally, when he himself was having a little difficulty feeling close to God, they’d done it for money, the payments having been arranged by a trustworthy member of his most intimate circle. A few women had foolishly believed they were in love with him, a delusion he generally shattered without much trouble, but only after satiating their carnal desires.

But nothing in the young preacher’s experience had quite prepared him for a woman such as Belinda May, who apparently was here for the sheer joy of it. He wondered if Belinda May’s attitude was typical of unmarried big-city Christian women. Where in the world is Jesus going to come from, he thought, when the time arrives for him to return again?

He opened the door to the bedroom and, before he had taken a single step outside, received the shock of his life. Belinda May sat cross-legged on the bed, smoking a cigarette, as pretty as you please but as naked as a jaybird. He’d expected to see her naked, of course, but not right away. And even then, he’d thought she’d be discreetly under the sheets.

“About time you showed up,” she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and stepped into his arms before he could take a breath. Now he knew how a frying pan felt on a hot stove. She clung to him as if she wanted to pull herself into his body. He was unbelievably aroused by the sensation of her breasts pressed against his chest, and by the way she had mounted his thigh, rubbing against it as if she were trying to sit on the bone. Her tongue was like an eel exploring his mouth. One hand was under his T-shirt, the other down his shorts, caressing his buttocks.

“Hmmm, you taste good,” Belinda May whispered in his ear after what seemed like an eternity in a place that was an eerie combination of the stratospheres of heaven and the lower levels of hell. No doubt about it, Belinda May was more sexually aggressive than the kind of woman he was used to. “Come on, let’s go to bed,” she whispered, taking him by the hands and pulling him along. She climbed on the bed, got on her knees, and directing him to stand beside the bed, gently placed his right hand smack onto her pussy.

Though the young preacher experienced a deep and abiding satisfaction every time his foreplay brought her to orgasm, he felt strangely disjointed from the entire affair, as if he was watching the scene through a one-way mirror in the wall. Very self-consciously he wondered anew what he was doing in this dive, with its paint peeling off its badly plastered walls, those tacky lamps, the bed with creaky springs, and that television set staring at him with an unsleeping eye. He regretted going along with Belinda May’s request that they pick a room here, at the Edge, to engage in their encounter. It disturbed him to think that in some part of his soul he so closely resembled the people who routinely came to the Edge in search of a safe chance to take. The young preacher wanted to believe God had already filled the important voids in his heart.

However, Belinda May’s accessible beauty disturbed him on a deeper level than did his instrusive self-doubts. Gently he pushed her down, and with a strange thrill, not unlike the one he had experienced as a youth the first time he’d knelt alone before an altar, he noted how her blond hair was spread out over the pillow like the wings of an angel. She squirmed beguilingly as he kissed her ear and moved down to lick her neck. He moved down further to kiss her breasts and felt a renewed surge of heat in his scalp as she signaled the measure of her passion by running her hands through his hair and groaning softly. Then he was down at her stomach, running his tongue around the edges of her belly button—an outie—with what he hoped was a delicate, masterful touch. He was gratified beyond his capacity to understand when she at last spread her legs wide apart, an invitation he accepted almost instantly, burying his face and licking her with pagan ferocity. Never had he known a woman to taste so good. Never had he desired so fervently to serve another, instead of being served. Never had he worshiped so humbly, so eagerly at the altar of love. Never had he so gladly debased himself, or so wantonly.…

“Leo?” said Belinda May, moving back on her elbows. “Is something the matter?”

The young preacher rose onto his elbows and looked down between his legs, where his male member hung as limp as a man on a noose. O Lord, why have you forsaken me? He thought forlornly, reining in a childish urge to panic. He smiled sheepishly, looked past the altar with its still wide-open invitation, past her sweat-drenched body and those glistening breasts, to her sweetly smiling face. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just not with it tonight.”

Belinda May pouted and stretched as innocently and as naturally as if she’d been alone. “Too bad. Is there anything I can do to help?”

For the next few seconds the young preacher weighed several factors in his mind, most of them having to do with the proper balance between frankness and delicate diplomacy. In the end he decided she would respond well to frankness, but he wasn’t sure how much he could get away with. He smiled wolfishly. “Think you’d like to something to eat?”

His life passed before his eyes as she swung her left leg over his head, climbed off the bed, and exclaimed, “What a great idea! There’s a sushi bar across the street! You can buy me dinner!” Her buttocks bounced enticingly as she disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She turned on the water faucet and then, apparently before commencing her business, opened the door and stuck out her head just long enough to say, “Then we can come back here and try again.”

The young preacher was speechless. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling, the random pattern of the intersecting cracks there enigmatically symbolic of his entire existence at this juncture. He sighed heavily. At least the possibility that the roving news team outside would discover his tryst was no longer the worst thing that could happen to him.

Now, the worst thing would be if they discovered he hadn’t been able to get it up.

In that case, the damage done to his political ambitions would be incalculable. The American people were willing to forgive any number of sins in a presidential candidate, but at the very least they expected their sinners to be good at it.

“You really have a good pair of hands, you know that?” called out Belinda May from the bathroom.

Terrific, thought Leo Barnett, clinging to the precipice of despair with progressively weaker force. Bye-bye, White House; hello, Heaven.

Tonight he felt the city inside him, and he was inside it. He felt its steel and mortar and brick and stone and marble and glass, felt his organs touching the various buildings and places of Jokertown as their atoms phased in (and out) on their way (and back again) across the planes of reality. His molecules grazed the clouds swirling toward the city like an incoming black cotton tide; they mingled with air pregnant with moisture and the promise of more moisture to come, they trembled with the vibrations of distant thunder. Tonight he felt inexorably linked with Jokertown’s past and future; the coming rainstorm would differ in no way from the last one, and would be exactly the same as the next. Just as the steel and the mortar were constant, the brick and stone forever, and the marble and glass immortal. So long as the city remained so, however tenuously, would he.

His name was Quasiman. Once he had had another name, but all he could remember about his previrus self was that he had been an explosives expert. Currently he was a caretaker of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, and of him Father Squid relished saying, time and time again, “The bomb squad’s loss has been the God squad’s gain.”

Usually it was all Quasiman could do to remember those bare facts, because the atoms of his brain, like those in the rest of his body, constantly, randomly, phased in and out of reality, soaring to extradimensional realms and snapping back again. This had the dual effect of making him more than a genius, and less than an idiot. Most days Quasiman considered it a victory to keep himself in one piece.

Tonight maintaining even that modest goal was going to prove more difficult than usual. Blood and thunder were in the air. Tonight Quasiman was going to the Edge.

As he reached the door at the top of the stairs leading to the roof of the cheapjack apartment building where he lived, portions of his brain glanced off the immediate future. Already he felt cool night air, saw distant flashes of lightning, felt rooftop gravel crunch beneath the soles of his tennis shoes, and saw an old bag lady, a joker, sleeping beside a warm-air duct, her belongings beside her in a cart she had pulled up the fire escape.

The intersection between present and future became stronger and more vivid the instant he actually touched the doorknob, and becoming stronger still once he turned it. Quasiman was used to this sort of minor precognition by now. For him the different levels of time constantly clashed together like discordant cymbals. Long ago he had accepted the only conclusion possible from living in such a mindworld: Reality was just the fragments of a dream shattered before the dawn of being.

Future and present merged seamlessly as he stepped through the doorway. The lightning flashes and the gravel underfoot and the sleeping old woman were there, as he had known they would be. What he hadn’t envisioned was the creaking of the door’s rusty hinges, screeching like a buzz saw cutting through nails over the steady hum of the automobile traffic below, startling the old woman from her uneasy sleep. She had brown scaly skin, and the face of a furless rat. Her lips drew back and exposed sharp white fangs. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded with false bravado.

He ignored her. A hunchbacked man with an unbending left hip, he shuffled to the building’s ledge with the efficient grace of a dancer permanently engrossed in a sick, satirical joke.

Without the slightest hesitation he stepped off the ledge.

The old woman, mistakenly believing he was committing suicide, screamed. Quasiman didn’t care.

He was too busy doing what he always did after stepping off a building: he willed himself to where he wished to be.

Time and space folded about him. In the following instant his rapidly fading intellect fought hard to hold on to his own self-image. For an enduring nanosecond he almost became lost in the fluidity of the cosmos. But he maintained, and when that moment ended, he was in an alley in the Edge.

He was one second closer to the thunder, one step closer to the blood, one event closer to the final blackout.

III

Tonight was the night of Vito’s big break. The Man never would have instructed him to come along on this little excursion to the Edge if he hadn’t already indicated his ability to handle responsibility. Of course that also meant Vito was a mite expendable, but that was okay, it came with the territory. You had to take risks if you wanted to move up in the Calvino Family.

And lately there had been a lot of openings in the Family hierarchy. Vito, an ambitious youngster, hoped to survive long enough to rise a few notches, just high enough to get somebody else to take the more obvious risks.

Unfortunately a truce of some sort seemed likely, if there was any truth to the scuttlebutt he had picked up from a few of the boys while he was busy waxing the Man’s limo. Evidently the Man planned to hash over some important business with one of the high mucky-muck jokers pulling the strings on all the hits that had decimated the Five Families recently.

Some joker named Wyrm, yeah, that’s his name, thought Vito tensely as he walked down a sidewalk in the middle of the Edge, weaving through a flood of tourists and jokers and maybe even a few aces. He checked out the street scene for potential trouble. It wasn’t his job—that was to walk into the lobby of the cheap dive just ahead and pick up the key to the room where the Man and the joker had agreed to meet—but he couldn’t help hoping he’d notice something significant in the security area anyway, so the Man and the boys would maybe consider him a little less expendable.

Stepping into the lobby, however, Vito felt like a blind bear walking into a campsite full of hunters. Trying to keep his posture straight and his jaw tightly set, the way he’d seen the boys do while rousting some welsher, he strode up to the registry counter and slammed his palm on it with what he hoped was an authoritative air. “I’m here for one of your, ah, most important customers,” he said with an unfortunate crack in his voice.

The clerk, a seedy old man with white hair and a black eyepatch, probably some joker passing for nat, barely looked up from the girly magazine he was reading. The back of the cover heralded some joker fetish article, and in the blurry photo some beefy dude straddled a creature with gorgeous, lusty eyes, but who otherwise resembled a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream with skinny arms and legs and tiny hands and feet. The clerk nonchalantly turned a page.

Vito cleared his throat.

The clerk cleared his. After a long pause he finally looked up and said, “We’ve got a lot of important customers, young man. Which one do you represent?”

“The one you owe so many favors to.”

The words were barely out of Vito’s mouth when the old man jumped up and picked up a key from the rack and dashed to the counter and held it out for Vito, saying, “Everything’s been taken care of, sir. Hope you find the facilities to your liking.”

“It’s not my opinion that counts,” Vito said, plucking the key from the clerk’s hand. “Watch it or else those pages will stick together,” he added, turning toward the exit. Briefly he wondered if he should check out the room, but then he remembered that his instructions had been very succinct and to the point. Go to the lobby and bring back the key. Vito had already learned from watching a few fellas learn the hard way, that the boys often didn’t appreciate initiative.

So he went outside into the cool air and put his head down as if walking into a strong wind, although it was barely blowing and his posture allowed his greasy black hair to fall into his eyes. His confidence that things would go his way tonight, based on how things had gone so far, was almost immediately negated by the presence everywhere of men he recognized—on both sides of the street, standing around, sitting at the tables of junk food venues or in parked cars. Usually the only time that many family members and grunts were together in the same area was during a funeral. Now though, rather than being conspicuous in their clothing of mourning, they were trying to blend into their surroundings. Vito didn’t recognize a few of the people accompanying the boys, but something about their cool confidence exuded an air of restrained cruelty that made even the roughest, toughest boys appear a little uneasy.

His mind racing with a hundred questions, Vito walked with a quickened pace to the streetcorner where Ralphy was waiting for him. Ralphy was one of the Man’s most trusted assistants. Rumor had it he had been a hit man of such talent that he once shot a mayoral candidate from two hundred yards and disappeared into a crowd right in front of the television cameras. Vito didn’t doubt it was possible. For him, Ralphy was more of a force than a human being. So when Vito halted a few respectful yards away from Ralphy, he looked up into those cold brown eyes above those pockmarked cheeks and saw a man who would snuff him out as casually as he would step on a bug. Vito held out the key. “Here it is!” he proclaimed, perhaps a trifle too loudly.

“Good,” said Ralphy in his gravelly voice, pointedly not taking the key. “You check out the room?”

“No. I wasn’t told to.”

“Right. Check it out now.”

“What’s going on?” Vito blurted out. “I heard this was supposed to be a peace conference.”

“You ain’t heard nothing. We’re just taking precautions, and you’ve been volunteered.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You’ll know if you find it. Now get.”

Vito got. He didn’t know if he should be elated or worried that he was being trusted with this part of the operation. His musings were interrupted as he accidentally bumped into a hunchbacked joker with a stiff hip shuffling from an alleyway. “Hey—watch it!” he barked, pushing the joker away.

The joker stopped and drooled, nodding fearfully at Vito. Something flickered on in his dull eyes, lasting for only a second, as the joker clenched and unclenched his fist. During that second the joker straightened and Vito got the distinct impression he could crush granite in that massive fist.

Then the joker deflated, another stream of spittle drooled from his mouth, and he shuffled backward into the alley until he bumped into a garbage can. The joker ignored Vito and rummaged about in the garbage. He found a dried, half-eaten chicken and took a big chomp of it with his white, straight teeth, masticating it furiously.

Disgusted, Vito turned away and hastened back to the hotel. Only as he pushed his way through the rotating doors that led into the lobby did Vito note that the joker’s clothing—a lumberjack shirt and blue jeans—had been very clean and tidy. He couldn’t remember having seen before a street person, reduced to scrounging in garbage cans for food, with fresh patches on his jeans at the knees.

Vito put the picture of the man from his mind with a shrug. He walked past the counter where the clerk still had his nose buried in the magazine, and thinking he might be trapped in the elevator with an unsavory sort who could reduce his probability of surviving the peace conference to zero, he instead took the six flights of stairs to the third floor. The hallway was depressingly dark, the dim fluorescents casting as much haze as actual light, light that barely reflected off the grimy tan walls, infusing them with an unpleasant glare.

He found the room. He looked up and down the hall. No one was there. He could hear the muffled sounds of a few TV sets coming through the doors, as well as what seemed to be the sounds of the plumbing working in the room across the hall. All this was pretty normal hotel activity in Vito’s opinion, but he nevertheless felt prickly and uneasy inside, the way he always felt when he believed he was being watched by unseen eyes. He inserted the key with trembling fingers and opened the door.

And found himself staring into the face of one ugly motherfucker. The dude had virtually no jaw, two nostril pits instead of a nose, and a forked tongue that flicked in and out of his mouth. The way the joker grinned and looked at Vito with those predatory yellow eyes was definitely evil. Vito was used to a more banal, businesslike version. This joker savored the knowledge that he had already frightened Vito to the core.

The joker sneered. “I sssee the Calvinos are sending boysss to do their work now. Tell your boss it’sss all right for him to come in. I am quite alone.”

“Maybe you should try taking off your socks next time,” said Belinda May mischievously as the young preacher pulled the door closed. He winced at the playful sting of her words as he twisted the knob to make sure the room was locked. Belinda May giggled and put her arm around him. “Lighten up, Reverend. You take yourself too seriously.” She gave him a squeeze that started his heart pounding, and he attempted a smile. “Just remember what Norman Mailer said,” she whispered seductively into his ear. “‘Sometimes desire just isn’t enough.’ It doesn’t make you any less of a man.”

“I don’t read Mailer,” he replied as they walked toward the elevator.

“His books too dirty for you?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“It’s only life that he writes about. Life is what’s happening to us now.”

“The Bible tells me everything I need to know about life.”

“Bullshit.”

Shocked by her casual profanity, he opened his mouth to reply—

—but she continued before he could get a word in: “It’s a little late to protest your innocence. Leo.”

The young preacher suppressed his anger. Normally he only became angry before his congregations, and he wasn’t used to being talked back to. Furthermore he wasn’t used to being in the company of a female who implied his understanding of the moral dilemmas of love, life, and the pursuit of happiness wasn’t beyond questioning. But in this case he was forced to admit, though not aloud to Belinda May, he was in the wrong, because he had indeed read the works of Norman Mailer—in particular The Executioner’s Song, the exhaustive case-study of the tormented young ace who had been executed for turning nine innocent people into pillars of salt. The young preacher still had a copy of the paperback edition, hidden away in a cabinet drawer in his study in his southwestern Virginia home, where it was unlikely to be seen by anybody else. Many other books of dubious moral content were hidden away in the same drawer, and in many others, concealed from the curiosity of his closest associates the way other evangelical preachers might conceal the contents of their liquor cabinets.

So what else could he do except let Belinda May get the better of him? He was satisfied with the prospect of getting the better part of her body later. Besides, he wasn’t all that interested in her mind anyway.

She gave him another squeeze as they stood and waited for the elevator to arrive. The thrill was twice as great as before, because this time she squeezed a buttock. “You have such a cute ass for a possible presidential candidate,” she said. “Most of the current crop looks like a bunch of hound dogs.”

His eyes darted back and forth suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” she said, giving him a pinch. “There’s nobody here.”

Then the elevator doors opened and they found themselves staring at four men with impassive faces and eyes of steel. The young preacher felt his knees quake, and Belinda May’s squeeze this time conveyed her fear and need for protection, a signal direct and primal.

The two men in the middle were the focus of the young preacher’s attention. One was short and corpulent, red-faced and thick-lipped, with a long patch of white hair combed over the top of his head in a failed attempt to conceal the bald dome glistening beneath the fluorescents. His big eyes looked as if they would pop out of his head if someone slapped him on the back too hard. His fingers were thick and meaty. Despite a well-tailored black suit, with a red carnation in the lapel, and a neat white shirt and a gray vest, his taste in clothing was questionable at best, thanks to a red tie whose shade practically sent it into the Day-Glo category. The man serenely puffed at a big Havana cigar. The tobacco at the end had been darkened by his spittle, making it resemble nothing so much as a dried turd.

The man blew cigar smoke into the young preacher’s face.

The act was deliberately inconsiderate, and the young preacher might have responded had it not been for the cold brown eyes of the tall, pockmarked man beside the fat one. This man had thin, pale lips that looked like scars. His brown hair was pressed so flat against his skull the young preacher imagined he slept with a stocking over his head. He wore a beige trench coat with a decided bulge in the right pocket.

Two beefy men flanked them. They wore the brims of their hats tilted down so that most of their faces were concealed in shadow. One had his arms crossed, while the other, the young preacher belatedly noted, was waving the couple aside.

The couple obeyed. The four men left the elevator and walked down the hall without a backward glance. The young preacher couldn’t help pausing to stare at them, even as Belinda May dashed inside. “Come on, Leo!” she whispered, holding open the closing doors with her body.

The young preacher hastened inside. “Who was that?”

“Not now!” Only when the elevator had begun its downward descent did Belinda May add, “That was the head of the Calvino Family. I saw him on the news once!”

“Who’s the Calvino Family?”

“The mob.”

“Oh, I see. We don’t have the mob where I come from.”

“The mob’s wherever it wants to be. There are five Families in the city, though right now there’re only three heads. Or maybe two. There’ve been a lot of gang murders lately.”

“If that guy’s such a bigwig, what’s he doing here?”

“You can bet it was business. Calvino número uno will probably incinerate his shoes when he gets out of here.” The elevator doors opened at the lobby. Completely oblivious to the fact that several people, including a beefy joker with a rhino face, were standing at the entrance, Belinda May put her hands around the young preacher’s elbow and said, “Did you bring a box of prophylactics, by any chance?”

He felt his face blaze red. But if any of these people recognized him, he got no indication of it. At least he did not hear his name being spoken or the click of a camera. As they made their way through the rotating doors, he realized that his relief at having gotten out without being recognized could be illusionary. If he was being staked out by a muckraker, the young preacher would never know until he saw the proof on the evening news or read it on the front pages of the supermarket rags. “Belinda—why did you say that—?” he demanded.

“What? Do you mean about the prophylactics?” she asked innocently, reaching for a cigarette and lighter from her, pocketbook. “It seems like a reasonable question. I think it’s very important for sexually active people to practice safe sex, don’t you?”

“Yes, but in front of all those people!”

She stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, turned away from him, cupped her hand over the cigarette in her mouth, and lit it. When she turned back to him, puffing smoke, she said, “What do they care? Besides,” she added with a mischievous smile, “I should think you’d approve my inherent optimism.”

The young preacher covered his face. He clenched his other hand into a fist. He felt as if the eyes of every individual on the street were upon him, even though the most casual appraisal of the situation demonstrated he was simply being paranoid. “Where do you want to eat?” he asked.

Belinda May playfully jabbed his ribs. “Brace up. Reverend! I was only kidding. You worry too much. Keep on worrying and we’ll be in that room for weeks. I’m not sure I’ve got that much credit on my plastic.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll see that the church reimburses you somehow. Now, where do you want to eat?”

“That place looks good” she said, pointing across the street. “Rudy’s Kosher Sushi.”

“It’s a deal.” He took her by the elbow and walked her to the corner of the intersection. He looked both ways as the light at the crosswalk turned green, not just to make sure all the automobiles were stopping—something no big-city denizen took for granted—but to see if anyone was around whose presence he should be concerned with. The television crew was accosting a young woman at the end of the next block, but that was it. He felt reasonably certain they would be safely seated at a restaurant table in the back if the crew came this way again.

Before they had stepped off the curb, someone coming from his blind side bumped into him. On a usual night the young preacher would have turned the other cheek, but normally he wasn’t so frustrated. He yelled, “Hey! Watch where you’re going!” and then realized with a shock of horror that his harsh words had been spoken to a joker:

An obviously retarded joker with a hunchback and dim eyes. The man had curly red hair and wore a freshly pressed lumberjack shirt and denim jeans. “Sorry,” said the joker, sticking the tip of his forefinger in his nostril, and then, as if thinking better of it, merely wiping his wrist across his nose.

The young preacher for some reason suspected the gesture as an affectation and became certain of it when the joker bowed stiffly and said, “I was just a tad preoccupied—lost in my own world, I suppose. You do forgive me—don’t you?”

Then the joker stepped away from the curb as if he had completely changed his mind about which direction he was headed in. A trickle of drool dropped down his chin almost as an afterthought.

Wide-eyed and confused, the young preacher took a few steps after the man. Belinda May detained him, demanding, “Leo, where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh, after him, of course.”

“Why?”

The young preacher thought about it during a particularly uncomfortable moment. “I thought I would tell him about the mission. See if he couldn’t use a little help. He looked like he could.”

“Nice sentiments, but you can’t. You’re incognito, remember?”

“I am. All right.” He couldn’t see the hunchback anymore anyway. The pitiful creature had already disappeared into the crowd.

“Come on, let’s feed our faces,” she said, again taking him by the elbow. They weaved through a slew of automobiles gridlocked at the intersection.

The young preacher was still looking back, searching for a glimpse of the hunchback, when they came to an abrupt stop. He turned to see a microphone poised before his face. The television news team blocked their path.

“Reverend Leo Barnett,” said the reporter, a clean-cut man with curly black hair, wearing glasses and a three-piece blue suit, “what in the world are you, with your well-known stance on jokers’ rights, doing here in the Edge?”

The young preacher felt his life passing before his eyes. He managed a weak smile. “Ah, my date and I are simply having a bite to eat.”

“Do you have an announcement for the society pages?” the reporter asked slyly.

The corners of the young preacher’s mouth turned. “I make it a policy never to answer questions of a personal nature. This young lady is my companion for the evening. She works at the new mission my church has opened in Jokertown, and she suggested we sample some of the fine cuisine the Edge has to offer.”

“Some commentators think it strange, peculiar even, that a man who has opposed jokers’ rights so stridently at his pulpit would be so concerned with the day-to-day plight of jokers. Just why did you open the Mission?”

The young preacher decided he didn’t like the reporter’s attitude. “I had a promise to keep, that’s why I did it,” he said curtly, trying to imply the interview was over. That was precisely the opposite of his true intention.

“And what was that promise? Who did you make it to? Your congregation?”

The reporter had taken the bait. Now the young preacher’s major difficulty was in keeping a straight face. The information on his mind hadn’t been made public before, and his instincts guessed these were the right circumstances to do so. “Well, if you insist.”

“There’s been a great deal of speculation on the matter, sir, and I think the people have a right to know.”

“Well, I met a young man once. He had been infected by the wild card virus and had gotten himself in a great deal of trouble as a result. He asked to see me, and I came. We prayed together and he told me he knew I couldn’t do anything for him, but he wanted me to promise to help as many jokers as I could, so maybe they wouldn’t get into the same type of trouble as he did. I was very moved and so I promised. A few hours later he was executed by electrocution. I watched as twenty thousand volts of current shot him in a hot flash and fried him like a piece of bacon, and I knew I would have to keep that promise no matter what anyone else thought.”

“He was executed?” the reporter asked stupidly.

“Yes, he was a first-degree murderer. He had turned some people into pillars of salt.”

“You made that promise to Gary Gilmore?” the reporter asked incredulously, his face ashen.

“Absolutely. Though maybe he wasn’t a joker, maybe some people would call him an ace, or an individual with some of the powers you’d expect from an ace. I don’t really know. I’m only finding some of these things out.”

“I see. And has your opening of the Jokertown mission had any effect on your position toward jokers’ rights?”

“Not at all. The common man still must be protected, but I have always emphasized that we must deal with the victims of the virus compassionately.”

“I see.” The reporter’s face remained ashen, while the sound man and the Minicam operator smiled smugly. Evidently they realized, as the young preacher realized, that the reporter lacked the quick wit necessary to ask a logical follow-up question.

But since the young preacher was feeling fairly merciful—as well as confident that he had just achieved his sixty-second “bite” on the news—he felt like giving the reporter a break. A slight break. “My companion and I must get something to eat, but I think we have time for one more question.”

“Yes, there is something else I’m sure our viewers would like to know. You’ve made no secret of your presidential ambitions.”

“That is true, but I really have nothing further to add on the subject right now.”

“Just answer this, sir. You’ve just turned thirty-five, the minimum age for that office, but some of your potential opponents have stated that a man of thirty-five can’t possibly have the experience in life that’s necessary for the job. How do you respond to that?”

“Jesus was only thirty-three when he changed the world for all time. Surely a man who’s reached the grand old age of thirty-five can have some positive effect. Now if you’d excuse me…” Taking Belinda May by the arm, he brushed past the reporter and the crew and walked into the restaurant.

“I’m sorry, Leo, I didn’t know…” she said.

“That’s all right. I think I handled them well enough, and besides, I’ve been meaning to tell that story for some time.”

“Did you really meet Gary Gilmore?”

“Yes. It’s been a fairly well kept secret. There really hadn’t been the need to publicize it before now, though it might do the mission some good in the public relations arena.”

“Then maybe you have met Mailer? He said he hadn’t been able to confirm all the identities of the people who saw Gilmore toward the end.”

“Please, we have to have keep secrets from one another. Otherwise what would we discover about each other tomorrow?”

“Would you like a table for two?” asked the maître d’, a tuxedoed, fish-faced man wearing a water helmet for breathing purposes. The words from the speaker grill on the helmet gurgled eerily.

“Yes, in the back, please,” said the young preacher.

When they were alone at the booth, Belinda May lit yet another cigarette and said, “If those reporters find out about us, would it help if we assure them we’re only going to use the missionary position?”

Quasiman did not fear death, and death certainly did not fear him. Quasiman lived with a little piece of death in his soul every day, a little bit of terror and beauty, of blood and thunder. Fragments of his forthcoming demise perpetually crashed together with fleeting images of his previral past inside his brain.

How distant were those fragments? Quasiman had the distinct sensation the future might be closer than he had hoped.

He shuffled up to a newsstand and stood before the rows of girlie magazines. He thought how there had been something tantalizingly familiar about the face of the man he had bumped into, something that eluded him as parts of his brain twisted into another dimension. Quasiman would have dropped everything until enough of his brain had reassembled in one plane for him to remember, but right now he figured it was more important to remember why he had come to the Edge tonight in the first place.

Suddenly his hand became very cold. He looked down at it. It had gone somewhere else, and his wrist tapered off into a stub as if the hand had become transparent. He knew it was still attached because otherwise he would be feeling intense pain, as he had when an extradimensional creature had eaten a stray toe. The extreme cold numbed his arm all the way to his shoulder, but there was nothing he could do about that, except suffer until the hand returned. Which would be soon enough. Probably.

Even so, he couldn’t help thinking about how Christ had visited a synagogue and cured a man who had a withered hand.

Something in his heart like faith told him Father Squid had sent him to the Edge tonight on a mission. Whether or not the idea for the mission had originated in Father Squid’s fevered mind was a moot point—many from all walks of life requested assistance from the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, and Father Squid was only too happy to provide it, if he saw that only good could result.

Quasiman shuffled up and down the street, casing out the scene. His suspicions were aroused by a few of the men sitting at some tables on the sidewalk. The rumpled clothing of a man at the newsstand, come to think of it, had indicated he probably wasn’t the type who’d spend so much time looking at investors’ magazines. Finally, an unusual number of alert, grim-faced men just sat in their cars, watching, waiting. Several little pieces of death manifested themselves in Quasiman’s brain, death that pointed, thank God, at these grim-faced men.

For a moment Quasiman saw the streets running red with blood. But a closer inspection of the environment indicated the vision had just been an optical illusion, caused by reflecting red neon lights off water collecting in a few large, shallow potholes.

The revelation could not, however, explain the smell of blood and fear, permeating the air like a memory that hadn’t happened yet.

As important parts of the muscle group in his right thigh phased into another plane of existence, where the air had a slightly acidic quality, Quasiman shuffled to a street corner. There, pretending to be a beggar, he would wait for the blood and the fear to become real.

The memory of thunder echoed in his ears.

“War is a bad thing for business,” said the Man philosophically. He sat, legs crossed, in a chair in the corner of the room, beside a table and the other chair. He absently rolled his half-smoked cigar in his fingers.

“It’sss especially bad for the losssers,” said Wyrm with a grin, sitting in the other chair.

Vito stood at the door with his arms folded across his chest and felt something inside turn to ice. He had assumed, as presumably the Man and the boys had assumed, that this joker was just another businessman whose interests lay outside the law, just as their own did. Vito couldn’t help feeling, however, this Wyrm character had a hidden agenda.

If the head of the Calvino clan was as disturbed as Vito, though, he gave no indication of it. He conducted himself forcefully, secure in his position as the person who pulled the strings on the other four men in the room. Of these, Mike and Frank were simple enforcers; Vito wasn’t particularly afraid of them, but he wouldn’t want to be on their bad side either. It was always prudent to be a little afraid to Ralphy, even when he was in a good mood.

Even so, Vito couldn’t help but notice that the Man was deliberately acting deferentially to this joker who couldn’t keep his forked tongue in his mouth. Thus far in the course of their conference, whenever Wyrm had raised his voice, the Man had soothed his feelings. When Wyrm made demands, the Man had said he would see what he and the boys could do to strike a balance. And whenever Wyrm dared the Man to step over a line, the Man politely declined. Vito had to admit to nursing some concern for the future of the Five Families, if they’d have to kowtow to the jokers to survive.

“Besidesss, a man diesss a little every day,” said Wyrm with a cryptic smile. “What difference doesss it make if he diesss all at once?

The Man laughed. His smile was condescending. If Wyrm noticed the implied insult, he gave no indication. “Once I believed as you,” said the Man. “I took delight in times of trouble and took great relish at seeing my enemies fall. But that was before I got married and began raising a family. I began to yearn for a more orderly way of resolving differences. That is why we are meeting now, so that we can resolve our differences like civilized human beings.”

“I’m not particularly human.”

The Man’s face reddened. He nodded. “Forgive me. I did not mean to offend.”

Vito glanced at Ralphy, leaning against the wall beside a desk. Ralphy’s cheek was twitching, a sign he was getting suspicious. The fingers of his right hand twitched too. Ralphy and the Man exchanged glances, and then as the Man turned back to Wyrm, Ralphy looked meaningfully at Mike and Frank, who sat on the bed, carefully watching the proceedings. Mike and Frank nodded.

Vito wasn’t exactly sure of the meaning of all those signals, but he definitely wasn’t going to ask.

“There has been much killing, much bloodshed,” said the Man. “And for what? I do not understand. This is a big town. It is a gateway to the rest of the country. Surely there is enough business for all.”

Wyrm shrugged. “You don’t underssstand. My asssociates strive for sssomething more than just lining their pocketsss.”

“That is what I am trying to say,” replied the Man, “though please don’t get me wrong. Greed is a great and noble thing. It makes the world go round. It makes for the bull market.”

Wyrm shrugged. “Bull or bear, it isss all the same to the man who ownsss the building where the market standsss. My asssociates claim our fair share of every businesss operating in thisss market. What you get out of it isss your own affair, but you will have to bargain with usss first.”

Ralphy stood straight up. Mike and Frank both reached toward the guns in the holsters beneath their jackets, but they were restrained by a signal the Man made with his forefinger. The silence filled the room like the scent of a crisp pizza in a microwave, and Wyrm ran his forked tongue over his face as if anticipating the tasty morsels to come.

Vito debated which way he should duck.

The Man stared at Wyrm for several moments. He thoughtfully rubbed his double chin. He put his cigar in his mouth, took a lighter from his pocket, and in a few seconds had filled the room with the pungent odor of burning Cuban tobacco. “Vito, I am hungry.” He reached for his wallet, which Ralphy took and gave to Vito. “Take my credit cards,” said the Man, “and go to that sushi bar across the street. Order a generous selection. For six! Who knows? By the time you return, our business might be concluded and we’ll be comfortably watching a hockey game. Isn’t that right, Mr. Wyrm?”

Wyrm hissed in agreement.

“It’s amazing how the game becomes much more exciting every year,” said the Man, settling back comfortably in his chair. “Tonight’s Ranger game should be a good one, shouldn’t it, Mr. Wyrm?”

This time Wyrm merely nodded.

Hustling down the hall toward the elevator, Vito realized how relieved he was to be out of Wyrm’s company, he imagined the Man would feel the same way, and Vito admired the manner in which his boss hid his discomfort. Wyrm seemed not to notice.

Of course you could never really be sure what a joker noticed, and what he simply chose to ignore.

VII

“What is it you people want?” the Man asked Wyrm angrily after Vito had left. “We’re both businessmen. What is it that we can reasonably do to help us live together?”

Wyrm hissed. “Yesss, that isss the question. The organization I represssent, like the organization you represssent, isss very large. It already hasss consssiderable influence. Ssso naturally it wantsss more.”

The Man puffed his cigar. “Your ambition has not escaped me,” he said sarcastically.

Wyrm grinned. “I didn’t think it would. I am merely emphasssizing that, like yourself, I can’t make promisesss for othersss.”

“Oh, but I can,” said the Man, making a subtle gesture that restrained Ralphy from giving “the signal” to Mike and Frank. “And I gather you can too, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the trouble to have this meeting with us—alone. We’re not naive, Mr. Wyrm. You must have some bargaining leeway, otherwise there’d be no point in you being so very, very alone.”

“You are alone, aren’t you?” said Ralphy, completely ignoring the irate glare the Man shot at him as he walked past Wyrm to the window and peeked out the curtain, looking to the streets below.

“Of courssse,” Wyrm replied.

Suddenly they heard the sounds of two men arguing in the hall. The tone quickly became violent. They heard the sound of a fist striking a jaw. Someone grunted and thumped hard against a wall. The impact made the floor shake. One of the men snarled a curse and then went thump! against the other wall, twice as loud as before.

Ralphy turned from the window and said to Mike and Frank, “Check it out.” The noise of the altercation in the hallway continued unabated.

Mike and Frank walked from the room. Ralphy followed them to the door to make certain it was locked. They heard Mike say something, then the hallway quieted down.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” the Man said.

“What quessstion isss that?” asked Wyrm, glancing up at Ralphy as the enforcer returned to his position at the window.

“What can we do to help us live together?”

“Oh, I think I can come up with a reasssonable anssswer.”

Then there was a knock at the door.

“What is it?” Ralphy called out.

“You better’d come here.” It was Frank.

“Good,” said the Man, responding to Wyrm’s remark. “The Calvino interests want to be reasonable.”

Wyrm hissed, his tongue darting in and out.

Ralphy opened the door and barked, “What, for Christ’s sake?”

His answer was a gunshot. The bullet ripped a hole the size of a silver dollar in Ralphy’s back and sprayed the room with bright red blood. Ralphy was dead before he hit the floor. He twitched, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

Standing in the doorway were two toughs wearing Mackintosh coats. Their faces were concealed by plastic masks that, even in his state of surprise and shock, the Man found to be strangely, disturbingly familiar. Between them was Frank, a gun held to his head.

There was another shot, and an eruption of blood and brains sprayed from Frank’s temple and splattered the door. Frank slumped to the floor.

“Mike?” said the Man softly. It had been many years since he had personally witnessed violence. He hadn’t refrained because he was afraid, or gotten soft in his old age, but because his lawyers had advised him to conduct his affairs in this manner. So he was a little slow to react, a little slow to realize he was one hundred percent alone.

By the time he stood up, with the intention of calling to his men on the street, Wyrm had already grabbed him. The Man struggled, but Wyrm was too strong. The Man was like a rag doll in his grip.

The last thing the Man saw was Wyrm’s open mouth, coming closer to his face. The Man closed his eyes in panic and kept them closed as Wyrm kissed him. The Man tried to scream, then unconsciousness claimed him as Wyrm bit off his lips and spat them across the floor.

VIII

“Where is our food?” the young preacher asked, half-impatiently, half-rhetorically. He saw the waitress coming their way, carrying an array of trays on suspiciously wide arms.

She stopped at a foursome two booths down and served two plates of steamed seafood in kelp boats, plus one of chilled noodles with peanut-miso sauce and another of a variety of meats and vegetables deep-fried tempura style. A large bowl of rice and replenishment of refreshments were quickly added for the entire table.

The air conditioner carried a fresh whiff of the tempura to the young preacher, and his mouth watered in anticipation. The worm of envy gnawed in his soul as he made a quick inspection of the lucky ones whose food had already arrived. They were a team of double-daters. Three, including an Oriental man, seemed normal enough, but he found himself unable to pry his eyes away from the scarlet-skinned victim of the virus, a beautiful woman with soft pink compound eyes like a butterfly’s, and two large blood-red antennae protruding from her forehead. She wore a low-cut gown that revealed her shape to be enticingly, even staggeringly normal. He deduced that the scintillating silver cape hung up on a nearby coatrack belonged to her.

The dining area of the sushi bar itself was L-shaped, with the front door and the cash register in the middle corner. The young preacher and Belinda May sat in the row of booths at the discreet furthermost edge of the shorter corridor, which was hidden from the storefront window that ran along most of the longer corridor. The young preacher distracted himself from the beautiful ace by watching the fish-faced maître d’ seat a couple who laughed and made jokes between themselves. At the register booth was a somber young man whose slick black hair made him resemble some juvie or punk from a gangster movie.

“Leo, you’re staring at that woman,” said Belinda May, a mischievous light appearing in her eyes.

“I was not. I was looking at that boy.”

“Hmmm. I bet he’s some kind of fledgling gangster. They’re all over the streets tonight, for some reason. Did you notice?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Anyway, you were looking at that ace earlier.”

“Well, yes. Who is she?”

“Her name is Pesticide. She’s becoming quite well-known, thanks to that society column she writes for the Jokertown Cry. Anyway, if you’re going to stare at any woman tonight, it’s going to be me.”

The young preacher raised his cup of coffee as if to make a toast. “It’s a deal.”

Then the worm of envy finally knew defeat, as the waitress brought their meal. In a few moments all thoughts of small talk were erased as the young preacher reached out for a piece of hirame flounder, its tender white color, like glistening ivory, beckoning him like a white, cool light. The cold rice was scrumptious, the taste of the flounder delectable.

Belinda May’s fingers flittered over the selection of sushi and tempura on her tray. Quickly she settled on a piece of dark red maguro. She bit the tuna in half and chewed with an expression of ecstasy he remembered all too well.

He picked up a fantailed shrimp and bit off all but the tip. The shrimp was nudging its way down his throat like a pebble in a narrow water pipe when a sudden chilly blast of air whipped through the sushi bar. He glanced up to see the patrons in the other booths, including Pesticide, looking toward the door. A gang of young toughs had entered, dressed in mackintosh coats to a man. It was evident they had some sinister purpose in mind.

The fish-faced joker gurgled something to them via his helmet speaker, probably urging them to vacate the premises at once. The short tough who appeared to be their leader responded threateningly with a hammer, directed at the joker’s water helmet.

Their faces, Leo thought, the muscles in his gut tightening. He barely noticed the young juvie, if that’s what he was, slipping out the door. Something about their faces …

The toughs’ faces were all the same, immobile, strangely devoid of life. The young preacher realized with a start the toughs were wearing plastic masks. The familiar, grinning likeness—an exaggerated pug nose and a lick of blond hair falling across the broad forehead—was distorted with a tone that would have been satirical if the toughs hadn’t exuded such dark menace.

With a bolt of horror he recognized the face as his own. The toughs were wearing Leo Barnett masks!

He barely felt the restraining touch of Belinda May on his arm as he stepped from the booth. “Don’t go, don’t draw any attention to yourself!” she hissed. “They’re Werewolves! A joker streetgang! And they know who you are!”

Her words reminded him that many jokers had publicly spoken of their hatred of him for the political and the moral stands he had taken in the past. Their overreaction had only hardened his followers in the belief that something had to be done to end the problem of the wild card virus. This in turn had hardened victims in their belief that something had to be done to end political repression. The young preacher trembled. What would he do if the Werewolves recognized him?

Wild, fearful thoughts that made him ashamed flashed through his brain. A moment ago he had been a semi-anonymous patron of a sushi bar; now he was a lightning rod that anyone in danger could point to in order to distract the Werewolves.

“For God’s sake, sit down!” hissed Belinda May, yanking him down beside her. He landed with a thump.

And a hollow chill tore through his being as he saw the nearest of the masked faces turn toward him. That thump had been just loud enough. He instinctively put his hand over his mouth, as if to hide a belch or an untimely remark. And for the next few moments he dared to hope his ploy had worked, for the tough seemed content to use his tentacle to scratch the folds of skin hanging below his mask.

The maître d’, meanwhile, was held motionless by the threat of the hammer above his helmet. One tough withdrew a gun from beneath his mackintosh. There was a commotion at the far end of the sushi bar, as the other patrons reacted to the situation.

Another tough withdrew a machete from his coat and tossed it into the air. He tapped the forehead of his mask—a gesture evidently indicating his telekinetic power over the weapon, which spun out of sight down the far corridor like a giant version of those deadly ninja stars Leo had seen thrown in kung fu movies.

There was a loud ssshhhick!

People screamed. Drawing their knives, two other toughs moved out of sight. The machete returned to the hand of the thrower like a boomerang. The tentacled tough, meanwhile, nodded at two comrades, pointed at someone, then at someone else, and then at Leo. The trio walked up the corridor. The young preacher barely noted the screams from the other corridor.

Sweet Jesus, not me, don’t let them be heading for me, he thought. Now very much afraid that even the slightest motion would make the Werewolves notice him, he refrained from wiping the beads of sweat on his brow. Regardless of what happened next, the spotlight of the nation would be thrown on him. He prayed to the Lord, asking for guidance.

But none came. He could only wait, and hope. The ensuing seconds seemed like eons, endless stretches of time punctuated by the sounds of gunfire from outside, or screeching tires, and of people screaming. The Edge had erupted into a war zone.

The toughs with the knives, now bloody, returned. Their leader shouted to the ones approaching the young preacher, “What are you assholes doing? Let’s get out of here!”

The tentacled tough looked back just long enough to say, “In a minute, man. We’ve got some business to take care of.”

An obese tough with lobster’s claws instead of hands stopped by the booth where Pesticide sat, put one claw under her chin, and lifted her face to his. One of the men with her almost made a move but was detained by a look from the third tough, who signaled very clearly with his handgun.

“Pretty, pretty,” said the clawed tough. “You wouldn’t be so proud to show your face in public if it was anything like mine.”

The tentacled tough turned toward the young preacher and motioned as if to say, “Be right with you.”

The tough menacing Pesticide became distracted by staccato machine gun fire from outside, and Pesticide took advantage of the opportunity to bat his claw from her face with a tiny hand and stand up defiantly. Compared to the man she was facing, she seemed fragile, helpless, and small.

Meanwhile the young preacher’s sense of outrage grew, overpowering both fear and common sense.

The sushi bar alarm began to clang deafeningly, with no sign of abating.

The leader of the toughs said, “That was a stupid thing to do, fishface!” and smashed his hammer down on the maître d’s water helmet.

The joker immediately began coughing, unable to draw oxygen from the air. He cut his hands on the shards of his helmet as he brought them to his throat, as if warding off an invisible strangler.

While everyone was preoccupied with the maître d’s death throes, a strange yellow light began to glow from within Pesticide. It became so bright that her clothing resembled gossamer thrown over a spotlight. Her entire skeleton became visible, sheathed by the outlines of her skin and the dim silhouettes of her inner organs.

A black force gathering inside her became evident.

She opened her mouth, as if to scream. Instead an intense light like that of a laser stabbed from her mouth and struck the lobster-handed tough.

The black force rushed up her throat.

And came out of her mouth.

And followed the path of the light.

It was a horde of scarlet insects, wing-backed and hideous, chirping like the incessant chorus of a nightmare. They covered the tough like a swarm of locusts before he could react. They began chewing immediately, chewing through his coat, through his mask, through the shells of his claws—burrowing inside him in a matter of seconds.

The tough screamed and fell backward onto the table of an empty booth. He rolled into the seat and beat what was left of his claws frantically on his body, futilely attempting to stop the horde of insects from continuing their grisly meal. Through it all Pesticide stood motionless, shining, staring at him with lifeless eyes that in the wake of her inner glow resembled ebony jewels.

She did not notice the tough with the gun point the barrel at her head. The shot that rang out was only dimly muffled by the clanging of the alarm. Pesticide’s brains splattered against the wall and onto the friend beside her. She fell, dead instantly, into his arms. The tough backed away, pointing his gun at her other two companions to hold them off.

The leader called out, “Come on! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

Belinda May shouted, “No, Leo, no!”

For the young preacher had already given in to his rage and charged the two remaining toughs in the corridor. He had no idea exactly what he planned to do. He only knew Pesticide’s only crime had been defending herself, however strangely, against their aggression.

His ill-defined plans were quickly aborted when he was stopped by a tentacled tough—the Werewolf s arm was elongating from his sleeve! It wrapped around the young preacher’s neck and lifted him from the floor like a doll caught in a hangman’s noose. The young preacher kicked and waved his arms about; he attempted to scream in defiance, but the hold of the tentacle was too tight. All he could really do was choke. He had just enough air to breathe, no more. Still he continued to fight and kick.

Something hard struck him at the back of the head. It was the ceiling. He felt the world swirl around him as the tough partially retracted his tentacle.

The touch drew him close. He stared into the weird gray eyes behind the mask. “Look what I’ve got,” the tough said. “How does it feel to be staring into your own face, preacher? It isn’t pretty to live in fear, is it?”

The young preacher half-screamed, half-choked.

The tough laughed unpleasantly. “I have to thank you for providing us with something to play with after the evening’s entertainment is over. Don’t worry. She’ll be returned to you unharmed. Only her pride will be a little damaged.”

The young preacher turned into an animal at that moment, a trapped, frenzied animal. His weak fists beat furiously but vainly at the tentacle. He heard Belinda May scream but didn’t catch exactly what was happening to her because he felt himself rising. His last coherent vision was that of the dead tough still being eaten by the insects, who were slowing down, now that their host had died. Even so, half the tough’s torso had already been consumed, as well as most of his arms and thighs. Chirping insects listlessly poked through the joker’s eyes and crawled out on what remained of the mask, to breathe their last.

The young preacher’s last coherent thought was, Oh, well. At least no one can fault me for fainting—not under these circumstances.

Then his head struck a beam, and the lights went out.

Mother of mercy, is this the end of Vito? thought the young hood as he ran from the sushi bar into the street. For a moment he hoped he had been imagining everything, that the Werewolves were just out on an insignificant robbing spree, and that he would return to the hotel room to find the Man incredibly incensed that he had left the sushi bar before even placing an order. Then the shooting started.

Vito hit the sidewalk and rolled beneath an automobile. He bruised his knee against the concrete and scraped his forehead against the metal, but except for being inconvenienced by the trickle of blood flowing into his left eye, he was way beyond caring about minor injuries. Judging from how things were going so far, he would be lucky to survive the night.

Across the street two of the boys were being attacked by more members of the Werewolves street gang. One of the boys managed to stab a Werewolf in the chest, but as the blood spurted high in the air, the Werewolf behind him cut his throat from ear to ear. It became difficult to tell whose blood was whose. The other boy pulled out his gun but only managed to get a single shot off—getting a Werewolf smack between the eyes of his plastic mask—before he was sliced to ribbons by a slew of attackers. Indeed the Werewolves, apparently unimpressed by the fact that their victims were decidedly dead, continued to cut them both up with such frenzy that Vito feared they might throw the ensuing pieces of meat to the rest of the gang.

Of course the rest of the Werewolves were a little too busy at the moment to notice. Chaos had erupted on the streets of the Edge. Nats and jokers alike ran in every direction, taking cover wherever they could find it, which was nowhere to be found. There were simply too many bullets flying about for anybody to be safe for long. Those Werewolves not engaged in personal combat with the members of the Calvino Family indiscriminately fired machine guns in every direction, sometimes cutting down their fellow gang members in their efforts to get everyone who even looked like they might be a Calvino. The members of the Calvino Family reacted pretty much in kind, except for those trying to get away in their cars.

Vito covered his head with his hands and watched as a Werewolf stood before an oncoming automobile and sprayed the front windshield with bullets. Vito couldn’t tell if the driver bought it or if he merely ducked. In any case the guy in the passenger seat lost the majority of his brains. The car plowed into the attacking Werewolf and then carried along several pedestrians until it crushed them against a parked car. A few survived long enough to know their last few seconds would be spent waiting for the cars to erupt into flame. The plume of fire was spectacular. Pieces of flaming metal and scorched meat flew high in the air, and they landed on the ground in the sort of slow-motion ballet of violence Vito had thought only happened in the movies.

Vito scrambled to the rear of the car he was under, figuring he’d be safer if he was as far away as possible from all that hot debris. He saw a fight happening right next to him. He could only see the legs of the people involved, but he gathered a panic-stricken tourist was trying to wrestle a gun away from a Werewolf. The guy’s girlfriend was trying to stop him. Vito was still trying to decide whom he should root for when the Werewolf succeeded in knocking the guy down. The guy landed on his butt, doubled over with the wind knocked out of him. His girl—a black chick in a tight green dress—knelt beside him and said something. Vito couldn’t hear what because of all the noise going down, but whatever it was, it didn’t do either any good, because two seconds later the pair was riddled with bullets and lying in a pool of blood.

Vito’s stomach tightened into a slab as he watched the Werewolf walk away. Vito resolved to stay where he was until one side was wiped out or the cops arrived, whichever came first. He wasn’t going to be like some fool showing off to his girlfriend, and he wasn’t going to have any stories to brag about to whoever was left in the Calvino clan tomorrow. He was going to survive, and nothing more. That would be enough.

Across the street a couple of fool Werewolves threw Molotov cocktails. Vito imagined he was a bug, lying low in a pile of leaves, hoping if he imagined hard enough, then maybe on some level he would become one. Even then, he thought, being a bug might still be too big.

Vito turned around to see a familiar pair of legs kneeling beside the dead couple. The person was low enough so Vito could see his face. It was the hunchback, making the sign of the cross. Vito couldn’t help wondering just how intelligent this nut-case really was.

Suddenly the hunchback turned his head, and Vito found himself staring directly into the nut-case’s eyes.

He believed he saw many things happening there. The eyes quickly misted as if they were peering into some far-off place just around the corner. Fear manifested itself in the hunchback’s eyes. His face lost all color, and he opened his mouth to say something.

But whatever he had on his mind, it was already too late to say it. In that brief second before Vito was engulfed in the flames of the Molotov cocktail that smashed under the car, he was curiously aware that the hunchback recoiled from something that hadn’t happened yet.

The young preacher woke up on the floor of the sushi bar. The bar was packed with folks attempting to escape the chaos outside, which, from what he could hear, resembled one of the more horrendous visions from the Book of Revelations.

The place where the young preacher lay, however, was nearly empty. It contained just a few corpses and a lot of dead insects.

Belinda May was nowhere to be found.

The young preacher rose, brushed off a few dead insects clinging to his jacket and trousers, and then sat down in the nearest booth to nurse his aching head. He touched the spot where the throbbing was the greatest. When he took his fingers away, they were flecked with dried blood.

From outside he heard the shrill sound of approaching sirens. The police were coming. He hoped they were bringing with them a full complement of paramedics. Of course there was still all that shooting and screaming going on outside too, so the scene from the good book wasn’t over yet.

Suddenly the sushi bar was racked from the shock waves of a nearby explosion. The young preacher dived under the booth and struck his head against the pedestal. He didn’t mind. After what he had already been through, a tad more excruciating pain wasn’t going to make that much difference.

He crawled on the floor through a pile of dead bugs, under the limp legs of the dead Pesticide, and wondered where Belinda May was. He couldn’t think straight, but he knew he couldn’t let his mental fog prevent him from finding her. What would the people say? What would the Lord say, or the reporters? Worse, what would she say if he tried to have her again and discovered he didn’t have the courage to brave fire and brimstone for the honor of parting her like the Red Sea?

He was vaguely aware of people trying to stop him as he got up and staggered into the street where the ruins of a car burned. There weren’t nearly as many panic-stricken people running about as he had expected. Bodies, bloody or burned to a crisp, were strewn all over the sidewalks. The young preacher hoped the television crew was picking all this up.

Where’s Belinda May? he wondered.

Then he saw the tentacled tough in the middle of the street. The tough held a limp Belinda May high, daring others to make her a target.

The tough approached some hoods with machine guns. The hoods were beaten and battered, but they were still alive. And they were lifting their guns.

The tough lowered Belinda May. He was going to use her as a shield!

Now that it was too late to make a difference, Quasiman remembered that Father Squid had sent him to the Edge to prevent Wyrm from making a hit on a Mafia don.

Of course neither Quasiman, Squid, nor the individual who had provided the information about the hit had guessed that Wyrm would cover his tracks with a sea of blood. It was proving to be an effective, if brutal, idea. And although Quasiman knew no one would blame him for being unable to prevent the bloodshed of the evening, he hated himself for not having done anything to prevent all this suffering.

He had seen so many people die. A few details were lost as portions of his brain phased in and out of reality, but nothing could diminish the profound sense of desolation that assailed him. The worst death he had seen was that of the kid hiding beneath that car. He’d watched the flames engulf the kid before the event had actually happened. Maybe that was why it had been so unnerving.

But the night wasn’t over yet. Quasiman had seen the blood, but the thunder was still to come.

Quasiman belatedly noticed the sounds of the approaching sirens as he decided he might as well split with the rest of the survivors. A few hoods and Werewolves still battled on the street, but Wyrm had doubtlessly made himself scarce long ago. Quasiman was still visualizing where he wanted to be when he saw the Werewolf, an unconscious woman in his tentacle above his head, walking down the middle of the street toward a couple of hoods. The hoods lifted their weapons.

Quasiman didn’t need precognitive senses to guess what might happen next. He knew he had to help the woman, somehow.

He was about to make a turn through space when he saw the man with the familiar face rushing toward the Werewolf and the woman. The blasting reverberating in Quasiman’s head wasn’t exactly thunder.

XII

If the young preacher had given the matter a serious thought, he would have gotten down on his knees and prayed. Instead he ran as fast as he could toward the Werewolf and knocked him down. The hood’s tentacle snapped like a whip, flinging Belinda May to safety. She landed on the hood of an automobile. At the same time the Werewolf and the young preacher struck the ground, the two members of the Calvino clan pulled the triggers of their machine guns.

Surprisingly the young preacher felt no anticipation for the next life to come. Instead he felt a curious sense of regret, along with a particular, only slightly contradictory sense of relief. He drew his mind in upon itself and tightening it up into a psychic ball, hurled it to a place where he had once dared not look.

The gunshots were like thunderclaps magnified to an infinite power, and he almost visualized the bullets speeding through the barrels. If this was to be the last nanosecond of his life, well then, he would live it gladly. It was still a long time.

Enveloped by cold, he felt himself going down. Going down, down, down into a hell colder than any polar nightmare. He felt his soul dissipating. Was this what death was like? Would he soon envision himself lying on the street, surrounded by the others who had died before him? Would he then be inexorably pulled toward a beckoning white light, where the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ stood side by side with his own mother, awaiting him with outstretched arms? Would he know at last what Heaven was like?

Why then did he feel as if his mind were being ripped apart in a thousand directions? A hundred flashes of intense heat alternated with a hundred flashes of absolute zero. He suddenly believed all his concepts of eternity were just timepieces glimpsed in a dream, his concepts of infinity motes in a sandbox. The young preacher couldn’t escape the notion that he had merged, somehow, with all conceivable times and places—a prelude to merging with the inconceivable times and places that lay just beyond the confines of reality.

Death was turning out to be a more complicated experience than he had ever imagined. He wondered if the bullets had already penetrated his body, if his skull was being shattered, and his heart and lungs perforated.

Thankfully there was no pain. Yet. Perhaps he would be spared that one unpleasant aspect of his death.

It was strange, though, to feel so whole and complete when he was actually coming apart.

It was strange still that the nothingness, at first incomprehensible and indescribable, suddenly became just an expanse of concrete, lined at varying intervals, just like a sidewalk.

It was strangest of all to think that instead of lying in the street beside the dead tentacled Werewolf, he found himself still alive. The sidewalk was drenched with blood, none of it, thankfully, his.

But what was that weight on top of him? How had it gotten there?

The weight slid to the sidewalk beside him. It was the hunchbacked joker he had spoken harshly to earlier. Only this time the hunchback lay faceup, as haggard as a corpse, and was sinking half an inch into the concrete. The young preacher could only guess how, but he was certain the hunchback was paying the price for saving him.

Suddenly someone jammed a microphone in his face. He looked up to see the television reporter, flanked by his remote team, leaning down. The sound man had a bloody, makeshift bandage over his wirst, and the reporter a fresh wound across his forehead. The camera was on. The sound was on. And the reporter said, “Hey, Reverend Barnett, how are you feeling? Do you have any words for your—”

But before the young preacher could answer, a policeman yanked the reporter away. Another policeman grabbed the young preacher and tried to pull him away from the hunchback. The wail of sirens blasted the air with shrill vibrations, and a horde of rotating red and blue lights added an entirely new level of surreality to the scene.

“Get the fuck away from me!” the young preacher shouted, breaking away from the policeman.

He was vaguely aware of the newsman saying softly into his mike, “You heard it on Channel Four first, folks—a minister using an expletive in public. I’m sure a lot of Reverend Barnett’s constituents are wondering what this world’s coming to.…”

The young preacher felt a flash of anger at the impertinent bozo, but he decided to be patient and beg God to curse him later. Right now all he was concerned about was the ace, or joker, or whatever, who had saved him. He knelt beside the man, who was already sinking deeper into the sidewalk. A paramedic with a confused expression knelt beside the pair.

“Save him!” the young preacher implored. “You’ve got to save this man!”

“How?” asked the paramedic helplessly. “I don’t know what the matter is—and besides, I can’t even touch him!”

It was true. The paramedic’s hands had penetrated into the hunchback’s body. The paramedic yelped and jerked them out and stuck them beneath his armpits. He shivered as if he had been immersed in a deep freeze. The young preacher remembered feeling cold while he thought he was dying. A small, dark part of that cold still resided in his soul like an unwanted friend.

He realized nothing the paramedic or anyone could do would help the hunchback. The hunchback was gradually becoming just an outline of his former self. Even as he watched, the hunchback sank another half inch into the concrete. The poor man’s glazed eyes stared at the sky, and his breathing was tortured, as if whatever kind of air he was gasping at was unsuitable for the job at hand.

“Who are you?” Leo asked. “How can we help you?”

The man blinked his eyes. It was hard to tell just how lucid he was. “My name is … Quasiman,” he whispered. “I’ve never jaunted with so much weight before … so hard … so hard even now to hold myself together.…” He coughed.

The young preacher looked up to see Belinda May kneeling down beside him. “Are you all right?” he asked curtly but not without feeling.

“Yes,” she replied. “What happened to you?”

“I’m not sure, but I think this man was responsible.”

“My God—I remember him! Leo, you’ve got to help him.”

“How? I can’t even touch him.”

That old mischievous light returned to Belinda May’s eyes. “You’re a preacher,” she said in a tone greatly resembling the one she had used when she’d said she wanted to go to bed with him. “Heal the poor bastard!”

It had been many years since the young preacher had performed an act of faith healing. He had refrained from the activity, having been advised that it didn’t look good on videotape, especially for a man planning a presidential bid.

Even so, he coudn’t let this noble spirit be snuffed out. Not if it was somehow in his … in God’s power. He looked up to the sky. The clouds, pregnant with rain, were occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning; their thunder was only a soft rumble. He breathed deeply. He reached out to those clouds, to the earth beneath the concrete of this city, to the dark forces of creation. He gathered it all into his spirit, and into a single ball of energy.

Then he reached inside Quasiman. The spectrum of sensations in his fingers clearly originated someplace he would never know—at least during this lifetime.

He forced himself to be calm, to ignore the cold, to disassociate himself from the itching of his hands, and the overwhelming numbness of his fingertips. And when he believed he had succeeded, he said with all the passion he could muster, “Heal, you goddamn son-of-a-bitch! Heal!”

Finally it began to rain. The thunder erupted directly overhead as if a nuclear device were ripping the sky apart.

XIII

That night over fifty people died at the Edge. A hundred more were seriously injured. The carnage, however, wasn’t the lead-in story on the news that night, nor was it the biggest headline on most of the front pages across the country. After all, the gang war had been going on for some time, and the fact that scores of innocent people had been caught in that grisly crossfire was unfortunate, but not really of much consequence so far as the day-to-day development of the news was concerned.

There’s a big place between New York and Los Angeles. It’s known as the American Heartland, and for the people who live there, the story of the hour was the one about the Reverend Leo Barnett proclaiming his candidacy for president of the United States. He had laid his hands on the outline of some poor joker and had brought him back from an involuntary trip to parts unknown. He had done something no one had ever done before—using only the power of his faith, he had healed a joker. He had proved that the grandest power on earth was the love of the Lord and of Jesus Christ, and he had put some of that love in the body of a creature whose body had been polluted by that obscene alien virus. Even the liberal news media, which had captured that event for all the world to see on videotape, had to admit that the Reverend Leo Barnett had done an amazing thing. Maybe it didn’t qualify him to be president, but it certainly set him apart from the pack as someone to watch.

It also helped that immediately after healing the joker and watching the paramedics carry him off on a stretcher, the Reverend Leo Barnett didn’t consult with his advisers or wait to see how the incident played on the news or how it sat with the public, he simply walked up to the array of cameras and microphones and announced that God had said the time had come for him to declare his candidacy. He demonstrated, clearly and forcefully, that he could make a decision and act on it.

Reverend Leo Barnett’s standing in the polls became very high, very respectable, almost immediately. Of course a few of the voters were a little concerned about what he was doing in the Edge in the first place, especially with regard to that hotel room he and the young mission worker had checked into, but it wasn’t as if either one was married or anything. And there had been talk, which neither would confirm or deny, of an impending engagement announcement. Women in the Democratic party, as it turned out, were particularly impressed that the Reverend Leo Barnett might have found his true love and his political destiny on the same night. If true, then perhaps all that carnage hadn’t been in vain.

If God doesn’t judge America, he’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

—REVEREND LEO BARNETT, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE