"I've wasted enough time without listening to your asshole jokes," the plainclothesman snapped. "But what did I expect? You're not too bright, are you?"
Bright enough to fool your kind for thirty-four years, Jube thought, but he didn't say it. "Well, you know how many jokers it takes to turn on a light bulb," he said.
"Haul your greasy joker ass out of here," the man said. Jube waddled to the door. At the top of the stairs, he turned back and yelled, "That paper's on me!" before taking off for the Crystal Palace.
He was early tonight, and the Palace was still crowded. Jube took a stool all the way at the end of the bar, where he could put his back right up against the wall and see the whole room. It was Sascha's night off, and Lupo was tending bar. "What'll it be, Walrus?" he asked, long red tongue lolling from one corner of his mouth.
"Piiia colada," Jube said. "Double rum."
Lupo nodded and went off to mix it. Jube looked around carefully. He had an uneasy feeling, as if he were being watched. But who? The taproom was full of strangers, and Chrysalis was nowhere in sight. Three stools away, a big man in a lion mask was lighting a cigarette for a young girl whose low-cut evening gown displayed ample cleavage from three full breasts. Further down the bar a huddled shape in a gray shroud stared into his drink. A slender, vivacious green woman made eye contact when Jube glanced at her, and slid the tip of a pink tongue provocatively across her lower lip (at least it might have been provocative to a human male), but she was obviously a hooker, and he ignored her. Elsewhere in the room, he saw Yin-Yang, whose two heads were having a spirited argument, and Old Mister Cricket too. The Floater had passed out and was drifting about near the ceiling again. But there were so many faces and masks Jube did not recognize. Any one of them might be Jay Ackroyd. Chrysalis had never said what the man looked like, only that he was an ace. He might even be the man in lion mask, who-Jube noted with a glance-had now slipped an arm around the threebreasted girl and was brushing his fingertips lightly along the top of the breast on the right.
Lupo mopped the bar, spun down a coaster, and put the pina colada on top of it. Jube had just taken his first sip when a stranger slid onto the barstool beside him. "Are you selling those newspapers?"
"Sure am."
"Good." The voice was muffled by his mask, a bone-white death's head. He wore a black cowled cape over a threadbare suit that did very little for his skinny, hollow-chested body. "I'll take a Cry, then."
Jube thought there was something unpleasant about his eyes. He looked away, found a copy of the Cry, handed it over. The cowled man gave him a coin. "What's this?" Jube said. "A penny," the man replied.
The penny was larger than it should have been, and a vivid red against Jube's blue-black palm. He'd never seen anything like it. "I don't know if-"
"Never mind," the man interrupted. He took the penny out of Jube's hand, and gave him a Susan B. Anthony dollar instead. "Where's my change, Walrus?" he demanded. Jube gave him back three quarters. "You shortchanged me," the man said nastily when he'd pocketed the coins.
"I did not," Jube told him with indignation.
"Look me in the eye and say that, you two-bit jerk." Behind the skull-faced man, the door opened and Troll ducked through into the taproom, followed by a short redhaired man in a lime-green suit. "Tachyon," Jube said with apprehension, suddenly reminded of the Takisian warship up in orbit.
Jube's unpleasant companion twisted his head around so sharply that his cowl flopped down, revealing thin brown hair and a bad case of dandruff. He jerked to his feet, hesitated, and rushed for the door as soon as Tachyon and Troll had moved toward the back. "Hey!" Jube called after him, "hey, mister, your paper!" He'd left; the Cry on the bar. The man went out so quickly he almost caught the end of his long black cape in the door. Jube shrugged and went back to his pina colada.
Several hours and a dozen drinks later, Chrysalis had still not made an appearance, nor had Jube spotted anyone who looked like he imagined this Popinjay might look. When Lupo announced last call, Jube beckoned him over. "Where is she?" he asked.
"Chrysalis?" Lupo asked. Deep red eyes sparkled on either side of his long, hairy snout. "Is she expecting you?"
Jube nodded. "Got stuff to tell her."
"Okay," Lupo said. "In the red room, third booth from the left. She's with a friend." He grinned. "Pretend you don't see him, if you hear what I'm saying."
"Whatever she wants." Jube thought the friend had to be Popinjay, but he didn't say anything. He lowered himself carefully off the stool and went to the red room, off to the right of the main taproom. Inside, it was dim and smoky. The lights were red, the thick shag carpeting was red, and the heavy velvet drapes around the booths were a deep, rich burgundy. Most booths were empty at this time of night, but he could hear a woman moaning from one that was not. He went to the third booth from the left, pulled back the drape, and stuck his head inside.
They had been talking in low, earnest tones, but now the conversation broke off abruptly. Chrysalis looked up at him. "Jubal," she said crisply. "What can I do for you?"
Jube looked at her companion, a compact sinewy white man in a black tee shirt and dark leather jacket. He wore the plainest of masks, a black hood that covered everything but his eyes. "You must be Popinjay," Jube said, before he recalled that the detective did not like to be called by that name. "No," the masked man replied, his voice surprisingly soft. He glanced at Chrysalis. "We can resume this conversation later if you have business to transact." He slid out of the booth and walked off without another word.
"Get in," Chrysalis said. Jube sat down and pulled the drapes closed. "Whatever you have for me, I hope it's good." She sounded distinctly annoyed.
"Have for you?" Jube was confused. "What do you mean? Where's Popinjay, shouldn't he be here by now?"
She stared at him. Sheathed in transparent flesh and ghost-gray muscles, her skull reminded Jube of the unpleasant man who'd sat next to him at the bar. "I wasn't aware you knew Jay. What does he have to do with anything? Is there something about Jay that I need to know?"
"The report," Jube blurted. "He was going to tell us about these Masons who hired Devil John to steal that body from the morgue. They were dangerous, you said."
Chrysalis laughed at him, drew back the privacy curtains, and rose languidly. "Jubal, I don't know how many exotic rum drinks you've indulged in tonight, but I suspect it was a few too many. That's always a problem when Lupo is behind the bar. Sascha can tell when a customer has had enough, but not our little wolf-boy. Go home and sleep it off."
"Go home!" Jube said. "But what about the body, what about Devil John and these Masons…"
"If you want to join a lodge, the Odd Fellows would suit you better, I'd think," Chrysalis said in a bored tone. "Other than that, I don't have the vaguest idea what you're talking about."
The walk home was long and hot, and Jube had an uneasy feeling, as if he were being watched. He stopped and looked around furtively several times, to try and catch whoever was following him, but there was never anyone in sight.
Down in the privacy of his apartment, Jube immersed himself gratefully in his cold tub, and turned on his television. The late movie was Thirty Minutes Over Broadway!, but it wasn't the Howard Hawks version, it was the awful 1978 remake with Jan-Michael Vincent as Jetboy and Dudley Moore doing a comic-relief Tachyon in a hideous red wig. Jube found himself watching it anyway; mindless escape was exactly what he needed. He would worry about Chrysalis and the rest of it tomorrow.
Jetboy had just crashed the JB-1 into the blimps when the picture suddenly crackled and went black. "Hey," Jube said, stabbing at his remote control. Nothing happened.
Then a hound the size of a small horse walked out of his television set.
It was lean and terrible, its body smoke-gray and hideously emaciated, its eyes windows that opened on a charnel house. A long forked tail curved up over its back like a scorpion's sting, and twitched from side to side.