Ace in the Hole Page 0,1
blank brick imbecile face of wall. The doorway was normal height, but most of them kept heads ducked low into collars wilted with the sweat of fear, anticipation, and sweet release, kept them that way as they picked their way through mother-of-pearl puddles, the faded glory of plastic food wrappers, stale city smell of tired proteins and complex hydrocarbons aging without grace.
An insignificant figure loitered next to the doorway, James Dean with a hunchback, his black Ked propped against the wall behind him, his white one down in the muck, nodding and humming low in his throat to make sure the night's clientele kept heading in the right direction. It was no sweat. The ones still inside were leaving to put the rubbery, giggling menace of Moon Goon behind them, and once outside the right direction was away from him.
On the other side of the door a bulky figure, bagged in black cloak and pantaloons, nodded and murmured floorwalker endearments through a seamless clown's mask: "Thankyou. Please come again. Thank you. Always a pleasure." At most they nodded back.
Last out were a handful of Beautiful Youths, late teens who still managed to look fresh and scrubbed beneath their flattops and floppy nouveaux dos, the jokers Wild wait staff.
James Dean manque watched them walk. His pupils dilated when his eyes fixed the boys, jocks as clean limbed and muscled as fledgling Howard heroes. He wasn't aware. They were probably queers anyway. There were queers everywhere; you never could tell. Mackie's scrotum and fingertips itched at the thought; there were things he liked to do to queers. Not that he got much chance. The Gatekeeper and the Man were always on him to be careful where he used his powers. And whom on.
When the last were gone from Rat's Alley, the man with the clown face shut the door. Its outside was enameled a chipped green. He took hold of the frame with white-gloved fingers, pulled it away from the wall. What lay behind was brick. He folded door and frame into a bundle, like a collapsed artist's easel, and tucked it into the billow of one armpit.
"Be good, Mackie," he said, reaching up to pet the thin cheek, just showing a scum of downy whiskers. Mackie didn't pull away. Gatekeeper wasn't queer, he knew that. He liked it when the masked man touched him. He liked approval. A skinny teenage expatriate hunchback didn't get much of that. Especially when Interpol wanted to talk to him.
"I will, Gatekeeper," he said, grinning lopsidedly and bobbing his head. "You know I'm always good." His words had a broad loopy north German lilt to them.
Gatekeeper regarded him a moment longer. His eyes were only visible sometimes. Right now they were just hooded blacknesses in his mask.
His gloved fingertips slid down Mackie's face, rasping softly. He turned and walked away, down the alley with a slight waddle, carrying his bundle beneath his arm.
Mackie went the other direction, picking his way carefully around the puddles. He hated to get his feet wet. Tonight, Rat's Alley would be somewhere else. He'd find it, no worry. He'd feel the call, the siren's song of jokers Wild, like the rest of those who belonged, the victims and the audience, whose thrills sprang in part from the knowledge that their roles were interchangeable.
Not Mackie, though. In Jokers Wild, Mackie was untouchable. Nobody fucked with him in the nightclub of the damned.
He emerged on Ninth into a breeze full of Hudson River and diesel fumes. Motile features contorted in a brief twitch of nostalgia and loathing: it was just like the Hamburg docks where he'd grown up.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned his higherright-shoulder to the wind. He had to check a message drop in a Bowery flop. The Man was doing something big down in Atlanta. He might need Mackie at any time. Mackie Messer couldn't bear to miss a moment of being needed.
He started to hum his song, his ballad. Ignoring a tortured rabbit squeal of bus air brakes, he walked.
7:00 A.M.
The crazies were out early. Once he walked past the police perimeter at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Jack Braun saw hundreds of convention delegates, dressed mostly in casual clothes, silly hats, and vests covered with campaign buttons; several stretch limos carrying Party Elders; a 1971 primer-gray Chevrolet Impala with a swastika flag fluttering from the aerial and three uniformed Nazi storm troopers sitting stonefaced in the front seat-for some reason no one was in back-and two