Ace in the Hole Page 0,12

best of friends and do what we have to do. Okay?"

Hiram, still dragging at his collar, nodded.

Jack stepped into the corridor and closed the door of the suite behind him. He felt like the school bully picking on the class fat kid.

From down the corridor came the raucous cry of conventioneers on their first day in town. Jack headed toward it.

10:00 A.M.

Gregg was tired of talking to the delegates Jack had gotten laid the night before. He was tired of sounding enthusiastic. Alex James had been a puppet since the beginning of the campaign. Most of the extra secret service people assigned to Gregg had been uninteresting to Puppetman, too dutiful and without the hidden flaws on which he fed. But Alex ... he had slipped through the battery of psychological examinations and background checks. Like that of Billy Ray, Alex's soul was marbled with a delicious streak of sadism, tinted with the jade-green urge to flaunt and abuse his power. Left alone, he might have been only a little overzealous in his duties, a touch harsh when he moved people away, preferring to confront a situation rather than defusing it. No one would have noticed.

But Puppetman knew. Puppetman saw all the cracks in the veneer of a soul and he knew best how to make them gape wide open.

Gregg sat in the living room of his suite. The Zenith bolted to the wall cabinet was on, set to CBS and Dan Rather's coverage of the convention's opening. Cautiously, Gregg let down the bars that held Puppetman. The power surged out, searching for Alex's presence. Gregg had just seen the man in the hall outside, knew that Ray had just sent him to check the stairwells. There were often people on the stairs: lobbyists looking for a way to the candidate's floors, reporters, groupies, or just the curious. The chances were good that Alex would find someone. Puppetman reached out and curled into the familiar recesses of the guard's mind. This time, the power sighed. This time.

Be careful, Gregg warned him. Remember what's been happening lately. Go slowly.

Puppetman snarled in reply. Shut up! It's all right now. Everything's turning our way again. Chrysalis is finally taken care of. Oddity is going to find the jacket and we've sent Mackie after Downs. The convention's started well. I need this one. Cant you feel the hunger? Remember, if I go, you go down with me. I'll make damn sure of it.

With the threat, the power turned away, suddenly rapacious. Through Puppetman, Gregg could feel a surge of anticipation in Alex. He knew what that must mean-the guard had found someone. Gregg could imagine the scene: some nat kid, probably, dressed in stone-wash jeans, a T-shirt studded with oversized "Hartmann in '88" buttons, and a cheap J-town mask over his all-too-normal face. Alex would be staring, his hands a shade too close to the bulge under his sports jacket, barking orders.

Puppetman lanced into Alex's emotional matrix, thrusting aside the heavy blue layers of duty and the leather-brown binding of morality until he uncovered that orange-red core of psychotic brutality. Puppetman nurtured it, fanned it into flame. It flared easily into heat. Now .

(Alex would be shouting by this time, his neck corded, and his cheeks red with blood. He'd reach out, grab a fistful of the T-shirt, as campaign buttons rattled like tin pie plates, and shake the kid like a disobedient puppy. The mask would fall to the floor and crumple under Alex's Florsheims.)

...Yes. Puppetman could taste it, and Gregg tasted with him. There was raw fury there, a waiting feast. Puppetman leaned toward it hungrily, tweaking the emotions again, turning the settings just a little higher ...

(Alex's hand would come back, and the open palm would slash across the kid's cheek, snapping the head to one side. Blood would be drooling from a cut on the lip and the kid would be crying in fear and pain, suddenly terrified.)

... and it happened again. In Gregg's mind, the interference seemed like a cold, obsidian wall, cutting between himself and Alex and sending Puppetman reeling backward.

The power inside Gregg wailed in frustration and rage, hurling itself at the wall again and again and always being slammed back down. Gregg could hear the laughter behind the wall, and that faint voice.

Only this time, this time, he could hear the words. You're a fucking son of a bitch, Hartmann, but I finally got the way to take you down, don't I? I found your goddamn