Dead Man s Hand Page 0,8
to Chrysalis, maybe, or the loathing in his eyes when he glanced toward Wyrm, or maybe the fact that he'd had the decency to hesitate when Hiram stepped forward and blocked his shot. Or it could have been the girl he had with him, the masked blonde in the string bikini who seemed so fresh and innocent.
It hadn't been what you call a deliberate, conscious decision; a lot of the time Jay just went on gut instinct. But if he'd been wrong that night, then Chrysalis had paid for it with her life. "I really need to see that file," he said.
Joe Mo made a sad little clucking sound. "Why, that file's up on the captain's desk; Jay. She sent down for it right away, soon as the squeal came in. Of course, I made a xerox before I sent it up. It always pays to make a xerox. Sometimes things get misplaced, and you don't want to lose any valuable documents." He blinked slowly, looked around. "Now where did I put that? It's a wonder I ever find anything, with my eyes."
The copies were on top of the xerox machine. Jay riffled through the folder, rolled up the papers and slid them under his blazer, replaced them with two twenties. "I'm sure you'll sniff them out," he said.
"If not," Joe said, with a wide pink smile, "I can always wait till the captain returns the originals, and xerox another set." He busied himself with some filing, but when Jay opened the door to leave, he called out quietly, "Popinjay." Jay looked back. "What?"
"Find the bastard," Joe Mo said. He took off his tinted specs, and his pale pink eyes implored. "All of us will help," he promised, and Jay knew he wasn't talking about the police.
As he drove down Route 17, alone, Brennan was already missing Jennifer. He couldn't blame her for not accompanying him on a quest to find Chrysalis's murderer. And it didn't help any that she'd been right. They had a quiet, beautiful life. Why was he so ready to return to the death waiting him in the city?
It wasn't, Brennan knew, because he enjoyed the killing and the violence. He'd rather build a garden than dodge bullets in a stinking, garbage-choked alley. It all came down to what Jennifer had said about letting things go. He just couldn't get Chrysalis out of his mind. He didn't think of her often. He was too satisfied with his life with Jennifer to dwell morbidly on what might have been with another woman.
But sometimes at night he'd lie awake with Jennifer asleep beside him and remember the crystal lady. He'd remember her invisible flesh flushed to a delicate pink with the passion of their lovemaking, he'd remember her cries and moves in the dark. He'd remember and wonder what it would've been like if she'd accepted his offer of protection and love. He would look at Jennifer asleep at his side and know that he was happy and content, but he would still wonder. The memory of her was a throbbing ache that wouldn't leave him alone:
He buried the van in the Tomlin International parking lot and caught a taxi to Manhattan, where he took a room in a cheap but dirty hotel on the fringe of Jokertown. The first thing to do, he decided, was visit the Crystal Palace. He slipped on his mask for the first time in over a year and left the hotel carrying his bow case.
3:00 P.M.
ACE-OF-SPADES KILLER SLAYS JOKERTOWN BARKEEP, the Post screamed.
The Jokertown Cry was less generic. CHRYSALIS MURDERED, it said beside a two-column picture. The Cry was the only paper in the city that regularly ran photographs of jokers.
JOKERS DESCEND ON ATLANTA AS DEMOCRATS CONVENE, said the front page of the Times. Thousands of them had headed south in support of Senator Gregg Hartmann, the presidential frontrunner. But in this year's crowded Democratic field, nobody was even close to a majority, and a brokered convention was being predicted. There were widespread fears of violence should Hartmann be denied the nomination. Already there were reports of ugly clashes between Hartmann's jokers and the fundamentalist supporters of Reverend Leo Barnett.
Jay usually ranked politicians right alongside used-car salesmen, pimps, and the guy who invented pay toilets, but Hartmann did seem to be a breed apart. He'd met the candidate a few times at the fundraisers Hiram had hosted at Aces High. Hiram was a big Hartmann supporter, and Jay never could resist the