"God, it hurts just to look at you," Digger said. "You realize that half your face is purple?"
"Good thing I don't wear a tie. The colors might clash."
"Don't worry about it, in a day or two the swelling will go down and the bruise'll turn green." Downs sounded like a man who had been there himself; sometimes the public didn't appreciate crusading journalists. "Where the hell you been?" Sleeping," Jay said. The painkillers made him groggy. "Sleeping? Jesus, Ackroyd. All hell is breaking loose down in Atlanta, Hartmann's something like three hundred votes from the nomination, and you decide to take a nap?"
"Downs," Jay warned, "I just woke up, my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton, I've got a concussion and a broken rib but I don't dare take any more painkillers because I can't think straight when I do, and I lost the goddamned jacket, so if you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'm going to pop you to the middle of the Holland Tunnel to play in traffic, okay?"
Digger made a noise like a man whose aged grandmother had just been run over by a semi. "You lost the jacket!" he screeched.
Jay sighed. "Dutton destroyed the damned thing before I could get to it," he said wearily.
"Jesus," Digger said, his irritating little voice in a panic. "Jesusjesusjesus, what are we gonna do?"
"We're running out of options," Jay admitted. "Not to mention time." He tried to think. It wasn't easy, the way his head was pounding. "Look, maybe Kahina had something else beside the jacket. Blood tests. Letters. Anything. I know, it's a long shot, but what else is there? How much do you know about her?"
"I did a little digging after… after she died," Digger said. "Very low key, y'know? I didn't want to stir nothing up. The chick was in the country illegally, I know that much. With her background, I didn't think it was likely she smuggled herself in, so she must have had help, but whoever did it was a pro, covered up her trail real nice."
"What about after she got here?"
Digger shrugged. "She was living in Jokertown under an assumed name. You shoulda seen where she was staying, a real dump. The girl had guts, I'll give her that, but it wasn't like she knew what she was doing. She couldn't of been more conspicuous if she tried. The day she arrived, she was even wearing one of them black Moslem things, you know, whatchacallit, a chador. She switched to American clothes pretty quick but it didn't help much, she was still the only nat in the hotel, and it was obvious she just loathed jokers."
"Then what the hell was she doing working with Gimli and Chrysalis?" Jay said bluntly.
"She wasn't working with Chrysalis," Digger said. "That was Gimli's idea, Kahina was against it all the way. They had some huge fight about it. They fought all the time. Religion, politics, strategy, they didn't agree on anything." He shrugged. "Hey, politics makes strange bedfellows, right?"
Jay frowned. "How do you know all this?"
"Chrysalis told me," Digger admitted. "Gimli had a leak in his little conspiracy, and you know how it was, if anything leaked anywhere in Jokertown, you could bet your sweet ass that Chrysalis would hear it."
"Yeah," said Jay thoughtfully. He got slowly to his feet.
"Where you going now?" Digger asked.
"Jokertown," Jay said. "I got an urge to see Kahina's last known address for myself."
7:00 P.M.
Brennan looked around Chickadee's helplessly, wondering what to do now that he was here, alone. Jennifer was waiting for him outside, this not being the type of club where she could go and not attract attention. He went up to the bar and ordered a Tullamore. He was nursing it silently, letting thoughts crawl lazily, fruitlessly through his mind, when a slurred, drunken voice said, "You're the one was my little girl's friend."
He glanced down annoyedly, did a double take, and stared. The man who had spoken looked like Joe Jory, but he had been changed. His chin was virtually gone. His nose had been turned into a pig snout, and two-inch-long incisors protruded from his helplessly grinning mouth. His eyes were beady and red, as if he'd been drinking, or weeping, for hours.
"What happened?" Brennan asked.
Jory gave a helpless shrug, as if nothing mattered anymore. " I don't know. I went to a bar last night. It was in an alley and the doorman was dressed all in black. He smiled a real strange smile and let me in for nothing, he said, nothing at all. I told some of the people inside about my little girl, about how beautiful she'd been and what the virus done to her, and they brought me drinks and told me how sorry they were that my child was a joker and they told me to tell everyone about it. I got up on a stage and told everyone how awful it was, how we didn't have jokers in Oklahoma and people laughed at me. They laughed and laughed and someone yelled, `You do now!' and this ugly bouncer threw me out of the bar. I went to another place and people still laughed at me and I realized that something horrible had happened, like someone put a mask on my face but I couldn't take it o$: I drank till I passed out and in the morning I went back to the bar to make them turn my face back so I could be a real person again, but the bar was gone. It wasn't there…"
His voice ran down into racking sobs, and despite himself Brennan was touched with pity for the bewildered man who was so far out of his depth. He'd run into a place Brennan had only heard whispers of; jokers Wild in Rat's Alley, where the dead men lose their bones, where no one who enters is safe, where most anyone who enters is changed, never for the better.
"Help me…" jory sobbed.
"What do you want from me?" Brennan asked quietly. "Give me my face back," jory asked, but Brennan shook his head.
"Cart do that," he said in the same soft voice.
"Then buy me a bottle. They took all my money last night. All my money, and my face."
Brennan stared at him a moment longer, then signaled the bartender and put a twenty on the counter. When the bottle came, jory took it and clutched it to his chest and scurried away. Brennan watched him disappear into the crowded room. It was then that he saw the girl with the blue mouth.
She was with a man down the bar, drinking with him and laughing a little too loudly whenever he spoke. She was standing so close to him that her bare knees were pressing against his thigh, and she was toying with his hair, making little loose ringlets of it with her middle finger. Brennan thought she looked familiar, then realized that she was Lori, the hostess who'd escorted him to Quinn's suite the night the Eskimo was having his coming-out party for rapture. She was one of the demonstrators who had shown how safe and easy it was to take the drug.
Brennan took his Tullamore's and moved off down the bar. He stopped before the man, crowding him so that he had to look up. He smiled down at him.
"I'd like to talk to the lady."
The man looked as if he were going to dispute things, then thought better of it. "Sure, buddy," he said. "Plenty of babes in this place."
He slid off the stool and Brennan took his place. Lori watched the john hurry off, then switched her attention to Brennan. She smiled. Her blue gums and tongue made her smile look sinister against her white teeth and red lips.
"You look like a man who likes to party," she said hopefully. She obviously didn't recognize Brennan, which was perfectly understandable since he had been wearing a Mae West mask the last time she saw him.
"I do."
"Good." Her smile grew wider, her eyes brighter. "Let's go upstairs, honey. I can show you something you've never seen before."
"You can?"
"Sure. Trust me." She urged Brennan off the stool. Her palms were sweaty, her body had a vaguely sour odor about it, an odor of perspiration drowned in cheap body scent.
Her room was a small cubicle with a messily made bed. She closed the door after them and smiled with insincere coyness at Brennan.