"I know it is," Jay said, placatingly. "Look, I need to know a few things about the woman who had the room before you- "
Stig didn't give him the chance to finish. "It was my room first!" he interrupted. "They kicked me out, just 'cause I got a few months behind. Nine years I was here, and they just kick me out and give my room away. Welfare was the ones screwed up, it wasn't my fault I didn't have the money. They kicked me out of my own room and locked up my stuff, where was I going to go?"
"The woman," Jay said, trying to get him off the world's injustice and back on Kahina. "Do you know who she was?" Stigmata sat down on the bed and examined one of his hands, picking at the black, bloodstained fabric. "She was one of us. She didn't look like a joker, but she was, she had fits. I saw one." He looked at Jay. "What happened to her?" he asked.
"She was murdered," Jay said.
Stig averted his eyes. "Another dead joker," he said. Scrawny fingers toyed with the bandage across his palm, scratching away the dried blood. "Who cares about another dead joker?"
"What happened to her things?" Jay asked.
The joker's eyes flicked up nervously, met Jay's, looked away again. "Ask downstairs. They took it, I bet. They locked up my stuff. Nine years and they lock me out and take my stuff, it's not right." All the while his fingers played at his scabs.
"You're kind of nervous, aren't you?" Jay asked. Stigmata jumped up. "I am not!" he said. "I don't have to answer these questions. Who do you think you are? This is Jokertown, you stinkin' nats don't have no business here." Jay was looking at his hands. At the bandages. Plain cotton, dyed black, torn in ragged strips to bind his wounds. "I'm not a nat," he said, putting a little ice in his voice. "I'm an ace, Stiggy." He made a gun with his fingers.
Pink droplets of moisture ran down Stigmata's forehead, blood mingling with his sweat. "I didn't do nothing," the joker said, but his voice cracked in midsentence.
"That's a nice TV," Jay said. On the screen was a police composite of the suspected assassin, a scrawny teenage hunchback dressed in leather. "How'd you pay for that TV, Stig?"
"Looks kind of expensive. Where'd you get the money to pay your back rent, Stig?"
Stigmata opened and closed his mouth.
"The cheapskates who own this dump never change the locks, do they?" Jay said quietly.
The look in Stig's eyes was all the confirmation he needed. The joker backed away from him. Some aces could shoot fire from their hands, toss bolts of lightning, spray acid.
Stigmata had no way of knowing what Jay's finger could do. "She was gone," he pleaded. "I never hurt her. Please, mister, it's the truth."
"No," Jay said. "You didn't hurt her. You just robbed her. You still had your key. So after she was dead, you just came in here and helped yourself. She must have had a nice chunk of cash. Enough to pay off your back rent and buy you a new television set, at least. What else did she have? Luggage, jewelry, what?"
Stigmata didn't answer.
Jay smiled, aimed, and pulled back his thumb like a hammer.
"No jewels," Stigmata said as beads of blood left pink trails down his forehead. "Just her luggage, and a bunch of clothes, that's all. Honest, it's the truth. Please."
"Where is it?" Jay asked.
"I sold it," Stigmata said. "It was all girl's clothes, it wasn't no good to me, I sold it. The suitcases, too."
It was the answer Jay had expected. "Yeah," he said, disgusted. "Figures. You sold it. Except for the chadors. Not much market for used chadors in jokertown, right? So you kept those." He pointed at the joker's hands. "She must have had quite a few, if you're still ripping them up for bandages a year later."
Stigmata gave a tiny, guilty nod.
Jay sighed and put his hands in his pocket. "You're not going to hurt me?" Stig said.
"Nothing I could do would hurt you any more than the wild card has done already," Jay told him. "You poor sad sorry son of a bitch." He turned to leave.
He actually had his hand on the doorknob when the joker, out of some strange sense of relief and gratitude, said, "There's one other thing. You can have it if you want. They wouldn't give me nothing for it at the Goodwill."
Jay turned back. "What?" he said impatiently.
"A sport jacket," Stig said, "but I don't think it's your size. Anyhow it's no good. It's got a tear in the shoulder, and someone got blood on it."
"Blood?" Jay said.
Stigmata must have thought he was angry. "It wasn't me!" he added quickly.
Jay could have kissed him.
11:00 P.M.
Maseryk paused halfway into his apartment with his hand still on the light switch, glancing around his dark living room with the tightly wired instincts of the hunter.
"Hope you don't mind me just dropping in like this," Brennan said from the sofa, "but it's time to trade info again." Maseryk flicked on the light and snorted. "I don't see you for almost fifteen years, now I can't get rid of you."
"I've got something you want to hear. I guarantee it." Maseryk sighed, shook his head. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back to it. "All right," he said. "I'll bite."
Brennan looked at him closely. His mood seemed dark and somber even for Maseryk. His eyes were sunken and there were dark circles under them. The investigation into Chrysalis's murder, Brennan guessed, probably wasn't going very well. "Ever hear of a woman named Ezili Rouge?"
"Ezili Rouge? What's she got to do with anything?"
"So you've heard of her. Got an address?"
"What am I, the telephone book?"
"Well, do you know anything about her? Is she clean?"
"Clean? Christ, I guess so. Other than the fact that every man who sees her wants to hump her-and most do, from what I hear-she's clean as the goddamn driven snow"
"You sure?" Brennan asked.
"Yes, I'm sure," Maseryk grumbled. "We checked her out when she first made the scene-the boys drew straws for the privilege=-and she checked out clean."
"Someone reliable do the checking?"
"Of course. My partner, Kant."
Pure as the driven snow? Brennan thought. That's not exactly what Tripod had told him. Something here didn't add up. Kant either wasn't as good a cop as Maseryk thought, or wasn't as trustworthy.
"All right," Maseryk grumbled. "What's this big thing I'm supposed to be getting all excited about?"
Brennan reached into the pocket of his denim jacket and tossed Maseryk the vial of rapture he'd taken from Lori. "Know what that is?"
Maseryk grunted. "From its pretty blue color I'd say it's that new designer drug that hit the streets this week. Most of the other samples we've managed to score have been impure. Cut with everything from dry milk to strychnine."
"You know that it enhances sensation. Food, drink, sex-it's supposed to turn near anything into an ecstatic experience."
"Yeah, we know all that."
"What you don't know about is the side effect," Brennan said. "After you take that stuff for a couple of weeks, you need it. You really need it. Anything without it-food, sex, whateveris tasteless and sensationless, or worse, actually revolting."
Maseryk sighed and sank back into his chair. "So it quickly becomes addictive?"