"Absolutely. Good-bye." Beth turned and handed the man her boarding pa.s.s. He took it and smiled at her. Then she was gone.

Jerry sat back down and stared out the window at the plane. He rubbed his eyes and tried to think of his favorite song. Nothing came to mind. He watched until her plane taxied out of sight.

Dead Heart Beating

by John J. Miller

"It'sss the General'ssss order, Fadeout," Wyrm hissed, his foot-long tongue lolling out disgustingly over his chin, his eyes as expressionless as a pair of cuff links stuck through the sleeves of a frayed, cheap shirt.

"Since when have I had to be frisked before seeing the old man?" Philip Cunningham asked Kien's loyal watch joker.

"Ssssince the General ordered it." Wyrm's stare was unrelenting.

Cunningham gave his best put-upon sigh. "All right," he said, good-naturedly raising his hands over his head as Wyrm patted him down.

But the easy smile and air of practiced indifference hid the sudden unease running through Cunningham's mind. He knows, Cunningham thought. Somehow the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d found out about New Day. That's why he called me in to see him.

Wyrm grunted, stood back. "Okay," he said almost grudgingly. "You can go in."

Cunningham hesitated. He was sure that an angry Kien was waiting for him beyond the closed door to his private office, an angry, vengeful Kien, ready to confront Cunningham with his knowledge of the scheme that would have put Cunningham in his place as head of the Shadow Fists. Cunningham wondered briefly who had betrayed him to Kien, but decided to worry about that later. Now he had something more basic on his mind. Survival.

He could try to make a break for it, or he could bull his way through by putting the blame for New Day on someone else. Loophole, maybe. Or Warlock. That might be his best bet.

He squared his shoulders and opened the door to Kien's inner office. Inside, it was quiet and dimly lit. The only illumination came from the shaded lamp on the edge of Kien's desk. The room's atmosphere was dark and sepulchral, with the gla.s.s cases housing the fabulously expensive antique Orientalia scattered around the room playing the part of the grave offerings.

"You wanted to see me?" Cunningham asked as he entered the room. He stopped, frowning. "Kien?"

The shadowy figure sitting behind the huge teakwood desk was only dimly lit by the small lamp. Cunningham stepped forward cautiously, then suddenly realized that the Shadow Fists would have a new master much earlier than even he'd antic.i.p.ated.

Kien was dead.

If that indeed was Kien seated behind the desk. Cunningham approached slowly, disbelievingly, wondering if his boss was playing some kind of macabre gag. But it wasn't anywhere near April 1 and Kien wasn't the type to pull practical jokes. The body slumped behind the desk was headless, but Cunningham could tell it was Kien from the half hand flopped carelessly in the fine blue powder scattered on the desk surface. And Kien wasn't the only deader in the room. The watchdog joker that Kien normally kept in a jar on his desk was pinned to the desktop with Kien's platinum letter opener, horribly marring the wood's glossy finish.

Cunningham gingerly leaned over the desk, first shifting the lampshade to throw a little more light on the body. Carefully keeping clear of the blue powder sprinkled on the desktop that had mixed with a ma.s.sive quant.i.ty of congealing blood, he reached out cautiously and laid two fingers on the back of Kien's whole hand. The flesh was still warm and pliable. Kien's fingertips were stained blue, and more of the powder clung to the front of his bloodsoaked shirt.

"Rapture," Cunningham said to himself, stepping back from the desk. The blue powder was manufactured in Kien's own Shadow Fist labs. It enhanced the pleasure of anything, turning food into ambrosia, a simple touch into an o.r.g.a.s.m. It also had some unfortunate side effects. In a way, Cunningham thought, it was ironic justice rarely seen out of bad television shows that Kien had been using his own wares.

Cunningham didn't think of himself as a stuffed shirt, but he was old-fashioned in his choice of recreational vehicles. He stayed away from the pernicious new stuff, with the often correct notion that he wasn't going to fool around with any kind of chemical until it was proven relatively safe by countless others. He was too bright to be anyone's human guinea pig.

The thing of it was, though, Cunningham could have sworn that Kien had a more conservative att.i.tude toward drugs. When Kien played Kubla Khan In His Pleasure Dome, he would occasionally indulge in a pipe of opium, which had a long history of acceptance in Chinese culture. But that was it. He used no other drugs and was only a light drinker. It was a surprise to discover that Kien was a rap head.

Or was he?

Cunningham carefully considered the death scene. Why would Kien kill his own watchdog joker? And if Kien hadn't killed the sorry little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, who had?

The person who had taken Kien's head as a souvenir. But why steal the head of a dead man?

To keep the memories locked in Kien's dead brain away from Deadhead.

Perhaps. If that were the case, then this was an inside job. Knowledge of Deadhead's unique ability to access the memories of dead brains wasn't exactly widespread outside the Shadow Fists.

Cunningham tugged the letter opener from the batrachian joker's chest, then set it aside. A small box stuffed with elegant wrapping paper sat on the edge of Kien's desk. The box was stamped with the name "Lin's Curio Emporium," an expensive antique store that was part of Kien's far-flung commercial empire.

Besides importing costly Asian antiquities, Lin's was also a high-cla.s.s drugstore where well-heeled clientele could pick up anything from marijuana to heroin. To rapture.

Cunningham put the jokers body in the box. The joker might be dead, but that didn't mean he couldn't be questioned. Not as long as Deadhead was available.

Cunningham took a long, careful look around the room. There were no windows and the room's only door led to the antechamber guarded by Wyrm. He sighed. It looked like a cla.s.sic locked-room mystery. Too bad he never read Agatha Christie.

Only the door to the office wasn't locked. It suddenly opened and Wyrm stuck his head in, saying, "Excussss..." and stopped before he got the first word out.

Leslie Christian stood behind Wyrm. Cunningham didn't like the weathered-looking British ace who'd appeared from nowhere the previous year and had somehow stepped right into the Shadow Fist Society as Kien's personal confidant. He was a smug, supercilious b.a.s.t.a.r.d who stank of unsavory secrets.

The two in the doorway stared at the scene inside Kien's office, then Christian said laconically, "So, finally made your move, old boy?"

There was a moment of shocked silence, then Wyrm howled in anger as Christian's words finally penetrated his stunned brain. The joker rushed into the room, his foot long tongue whipping back and forth, his fangs bared and dripping poison.

Wyrm wasn't very bright, and he was intensely loyal to his master. When he got an idea through his skull, it tended to stay there. And now he had the notion, neatly planted by Christian, that Cunningham had killed Kien. Cunningham knew he wouldn't have the opportunity to talk things over with the insanely jealous joker.

He faded. Fading made Cunningham as blind as he was invisible, but his other senses had been sharply honed by continual practice. He called a picture of Kien's office onto the video screen of his mind, and moved around a freestanding gla.s.s case that contained a selection of delicately inlaid and enameled snuff bottles. He headed out of Wyrm's path and to the office door.

But Wyrm's angry screams got closer. Rapidly. Cunningham ducked and there was a loud crash as Wyrm hurled himself forward, barely missed, and smashed through the front of the display case. The angry joker floundered through shards of shattered gla.s.s and broken bits of priceless antiquities, hot on Cunningham's trail despite his total invisibility.

What the h.e.l.l was going on? Cunningham thought, then felt on his face the wet caress of Wyrm's ultrasensitive tongue. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d can smell me, Cunningham realized. Then Wyrm was on him.

He twisted away as the, joker grabbed at him and one of his flailing hands caught in Cunningham's shirt. Wyrm pulled him close. Cunningham could picture the wide gaping mouth, sharp fangs running with saliva like the drool of a mad dog.

He was no match, Cunningham knew, for Wyrm's wild-card-enhanced strength.

He faded in his eyes to see Wyrm ferociously biting empty air and brought his right knee up hard between Wyrm 's legs.

Wyrm screamed and Cunningham pulled away, glancing quickly around the room. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Christian had disappeared, pulling the office door shut behind him.

Crossed on the wall near the door were a pair of antique ceremonial daggers, their hilts encrusted with pearls, rubies, and emeralds. Cunningham sprinted across the room, cursing Wyrm under his breath as the joker hobbled after him.

He ripped the daggers from their wall mounts. Wyrm's hot breath was on the back of his neck as he faded again, taking the daggers with him to invisibility.

Wyrm slammed into him, smashing him hard into the wall. The breath exploded from Cunningham's lungs as he turned and slashed with both daggers. But the weapons, centuries-old antiques, were no longer useful for anything but show. One glanced harmlessly off Wyrm's forearm, the other snapped on his rib cage.

Cunningham wanted to swear, but he couldn't catch his breath. Wyrm caught his face with one of his inhumanly strong hands, his clawed fingers raking furrows on Cunningham's cheeks. One of the joker's fingers found its way into Cunningham's mouth, and ace bit down hard.

He tasted blood in his mouth as Wyrm screamed and instinctively pulled away. His lungs laboring for air, Cunningham staggered back across the room to where he remembered seeing a viable weapon: the letter opener he'd put down next to the lamp on Kien's desk. He faded in his eyes just as he ran into the desk. Pain flashed through his knees as he bashed them against the edge of the desk, then he skidded across the stinking, sticky mixture of congealed blood and blue powder. He slid over and off the polished surface and landed on the desk chair and Kien's cooling corpse. Somehow he managed to grab the letter opener as he went sailing by.

Wyrm followed him, leaping over the desk with outstretched talons and dripping fangs. Cunningham thrust out his right hand, holding the letter opener, as Wyrm slammed into him, flipping the chair, Cunningham, and Kien's corpse all to the floor.

Cunningham was stunned by the double impact of colliding with Wyrm and smashing into the floor. It took him a moment to realize that he was still holding the letter opener and that something wet and sticky was running down his hand. The letter opener, he finally realized, had penetrated Wyrm's throat, angled upward through the joker's mouth and into his brain. The joker's blood was pulsing thick and warm on his hand.

Cunningham lay there for a moment breathing in the cloud of swirling blue powder.

It tasted so good to be alive.

Kien's chair felt comfortable against Cunningham's body. It was soft and plush and swiveled silently on well-oiled casters. Cunningham spun around in it idly, knowing that he should get going, that Christian could return at any moment with a goon squad, but somehow he just couldn't help savoring the feeling of complete triumph over his onetime boss. He stopped twirling around in the chair and rested one foot on Kien's headless corpse, another on Wyrm's rapidly cooling body.

So this is what it felt like to be head of the Shadow Fists. It was a heady mixture of power and mastery flavored with the antic.i.p.ation of sweet riches to come. Of course, Cunningham realized, some of this flight of fancy had been caused by the rapture he'd breathed. He had to get it in gear. He couldn't afford to get _caught napping now.

He reached out gingerly, careful not to disturb any more of the fine blue powder that had settled back down upon the desktop, and picked up the telephone hanging precariously on the desk's edge. He dialed.

"Fadeout," he said into the phone. "Put me through to Warlock."

He hummed as he waited for his co-conspirator, the head of the Werewolf street gang, to get on the line. Warlock was tall and strongly built; no one, not even Cunningham, knew what form his jokerhood took. He always wore a mask. The Werewolf custom of wearing a common mask originated with him, as his followers aped whatever celebrity mask he wore for however long he chose to wear it.

"This is Warlock." The head Werewolf s voice was deep and emotionless, though there was something of cold, dispa.s.sionate danger in it. The Werewolves were, in Cunningham's opinion, mainly just a bunch of jokers with delusions of toughness.

Warlock, though, was authentically dangerous. Even his ace power, which Warlock called his death wish, was eerily perilous.

Warlock would simply wish a target dead, and within twenty-four hours he'd get his wish. Sometimes the victim's heart would give out, or a blood vessel would burst in his brain. Sometimes they'd be in the wrong place at the wrong time and a runaway taxi would do the job. Once one of Warlock's victims had had the cosmically bad luck to be drilled between the eyes by a micrometeorite. No one knew how he did it, but Warlock's death wish never failed. He was a man to be cautious around.

"New Day is on," Cunningham told him with raptureinduced exuberance in his voice. "Now"

"Already?" Warlock asked thoughtfully. "It wasn't scheduled until next week. No one's in place-"

"We have to move now," Cunningham interrupted, and told Warlock about Kien's death. "I don't know who did it or why, but Christian's got to be involved somehow," he finished. "He showed up here too d.a.m.n conveniently, and left after sitting Wyrm on me."

"What's his motive for wanting Kien dead?" Warlock asked.

"I don't know," Cunningham admitted. "But we'll find out when we get ahold of him. Right now we've got to move. Fast. He's already tried to pin the killing on me once. I figure he might bring Sui Ma in next."

Warlock made a sound deep in his throat and Cunningham knew that he'd pushed the right b.u.t.ton. Even though both gangs belonged to the Shadow Fist Society, there was no love lost between the Werewolves and the Immaculate Egrets. The Wolves were jokers. They had the smell of the street on them. The Egrets were nats, for the most part smug, snotty nats. Though they worked the streets like the Werewolves, somehow they thought themselves superior to their brothers in the Fists, an att.i.tude actively encouraged by their leader Sui Ma, Kien's sister.

"Put the Wolves on alert," Cunningham said. "Find Chickenhawk. Contact the Whisperer. I have a feeling idea we may need him before this shakes out."

"Lazy Dragon?" Warlock asked.

"Still missing," Cunningham said. "Last time I checked his place his sister was living there, and she hadn't heard from him in months. I'm afraid that Christian--or whoever's behind Kien's killing-might have already taken him out."

"What about Loophole?"

Cunningham made a dismissive gesture. "Leave him for now. He probably knows where a lot of the bodies are buried, so he may be useful later. But I can't see how he can hurt us now. He's just a lawyer."

"All right," Warlock said. "You want me to send a few of the brothers along to keep an eye on you?"

"That's a good idea," Cunningham said. He looked at the box with the tiny joker body in it. "I'm going to head for the Lair, but first I have to find Deadhead.

I've got a little something for him here."

Fortunately Cunningham knew just where to look.

Cunningham knew the rapture was still playing tricks with him when he had to fight down the urge to buy half a dozen sandwiches at the Horn and Hardart at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street. He walked firmly through the food line, reminding himself that he was there looking for someone and not to stuff himself with mystery-meat sandwiches.

Although the eatery was crowded, Cunningham spotted Deadhead sitting by himself in an otherwise deserted corner. It was as if the automat's patrons-not usually considered a finicky crowd-were instinctively avoiding the half-mad ace.

Cunningham couldn't blame them. At the best of times Deadhead was a repellent figure. His clothing was one step up from a b.u.m's, his hair hadn't been washed since the Reagan presidency, and his corpsewhite face was continually dancing with nervous twitches and tics that made him look like he was suffering through electroshock therapy.

"h.e.l.lo, Glen," Cunningham said carefully as he approached Deadhead's table. He looked at the empty plate before Deadhead and sighed. The deranged ace was often difficult to handle after a meal. "What'd you have to eat, Glen?"

"Not much," Deadhead said defensively. He refused to look Cunningham in the eye.

"I can feel the sun and see the rolling plains. The gra.s.s tastes good."

"Christ," Cunningham muttered. "You didn't have a hamburger, did you?"

"Mooo," Deadhead said, loud enough to make people stare.

Cunningham pasted a smile on his face and put a hand on Deadhead's arm, lifting him from his seat. "We have to go now," he said. "I have something for you to do," he added quietly.

Deadhead nodded and got down on all fours.

"Up we go," Cunningham said in a voice that tried to be casual. "Time to go home."

"Mooo," Deadhead replied.

Cunningham kept a smile on his face, but leaned down and whispered fiercely, "Get ahold of yourself. I'm not going to drag you to the d.a.m.n car."

Deadhead nodded and stood, straightening his clothes as best he could. His eyes darted around the automat. "I'm fine. Really. Just wait a moment."

He went to the cash register and bought a pack of gum. He unwrapped all the sticks with shaking hands and popped them into his mouth one by one. He let out an ecstatic sigh and chewed contentedly. Cunningham flashed a knowing smile at the cashier and led him out of the automat.

"Come on," he said, pulling him down the street to the parking garage where he'd left his Maserati. Deadhead followed him meekly, his eyes fastened on the faraway scenes playing in his brain as he relived the life of the cow who'd been part of his lunch. At least, Cunningham told himself, counting his blessings, Deadhead hadn't collapsed into an insensate stupor like he often did after ingesting meat.

He deposited Deadhead in the pa.s.senger's side of his Maserati, locked the door, and stood. A man was standing in front of his car. He hadn't been there a moment ago. He was Asian and wore mirror shades that gave his youthful face a blank, hard-edged look. His hands were in the pockets of his satin jacket that Cunningham just knew had a large white bird embroidered on the back. He could afford to act casual. The two similarly attired thugs standing behind him were carrying Uzis.

It took Cunningham a moment to put a name to the face: Jack Chang, a lieutenant in the Immaculate Egrets. He smiled at Cunningham. "Sui Ma," he said, "wants to see you. It's about her brother's missing head."

"Careful," Cunningham said as Chang parked the Maserati by carelessly wedging it between a pair of overflowing garbage cans in a narrow Chinatown alley. "You'll ruin the paint job."

The Egret grinned. "What's the matter? Don't you have insurance?"

Cunningham didn't like Chang's att.i.tude, but he kept quiet about it as they got out of the car and waited for the other Egrets to show. Macho posturing was a waste of breath. He preferred to remember insults, mark them down, and act on them later under the proper circ.u.mstances. And Chang had just made his list.

The Egrets following in the van screeched to a halt right behind Cunningham's Maserati. The driver laughed as he tapped Cunningham's car with the van's b.u.mper, pushing it forward gently against the brick wall in front of it.