Xavier Desmond, the one-time unofficial mayor of Jokertown and one of the best clients Fortunato had when he ran his string of geishas, had been dead over fifteen years. Cancer had taken him soon after that memorable round the world trip on the Busted Flush, right after Fortunato had taken up the monastic life.
Chrysalis, purveyor of fine drink and even better information, had followed Des into death not long after. Her Crystal Palace had burned to the ground.
The amiable Hiram Worchester, one of the aces Fortunato had been closest to back in the day, had gone down for her murder. Though not a lot of news had reached Fortunato while he’d been isolated in the monastery, that had, and it had shocked him. He understood that Hiram had retired from public life. Even his fabulous restaurant, where Fortunato had first met the unbelievably beautiful Peregrine and had commenced his final battle with the Astronomer, was no more.
Yeoman, whom he’d traveled with to the gut of the Swarm... there had been a bond between them born of mutual respect and shared danger. But as far as Fortunato knew there hadn’t been an Ace of Spades killing for a long time. He had no idea what had happened to his one-time comrade. They hadn’t exactly been swapping Christmas cards the last decade and a half.
Even Tachyon, the whiny little space wimp, was gone. He’d run back to Takis when the going had gotten tough. First he’d come to the monastery begging for help. Then he’d gone back to his own planet, trapped in a woman’s body, like... like a man running to a monastery on a distant and remote island, cutting himself off entirely from his old life. Cutting himself off from family, friends, lovers, comrades, and enemies. Cutting himself off from everything.
Christ, Fortunato thought, is that what it’s come down to? Unflattering self-comparison to that little alien Fauntleroy?
Fortunato stared out of the taxi window, knowing that he had to get out of the awful, self-pitying, introspective mood into which he’d fallen. It wasn’t doing him, nor anyone else, any good. He had—
“Stop,” he said suddenly, and the cabby took him for his word. He yanked the taxi’s wheel hard right and they squealed to a halt against the curb. The cabby thrust his head out the window and screamed words at the driver of the car behind them, who had swerved and barely missed side-swiping the cab, and was now going down the street with his hand sticking out the driver-side window, middle finger extended.
“Amateur!” the cabby screamed as his final insult. He caught Fortunato’s eye in the rear view window. “Your destination, Mack?”
Fortunato nodded. Even if this wasn’t his destination, he realized he’d better get the Hell out of that cab if he wanted to live through the first day of his return to New York.
“Yes, this’ll do.” He got out of the cab and nearly did a double take when he saw the fare. He counted off a couple of bills and added a ten. “Here you go.”
The cabby didn’t seem overly excited by a ten-dollar tip. Times had changed.
“Thanks, Mack,” he said, and roared off to his next adventure, almost clipping a passing Caddie as he pulled away from the curb.
Fortunato looked around. He should have been surprised to find himself in the heart of Jokertown, but he wasn’t. It was almost as if he’d been magically drawn to there. As if he were a pigeon who’d returned, almost unconsciously, to home territory. He smiled to himself. Jokertown hadn’t changed much. It was just as dirty as it had been in his day. Just as crowded. Just as damned funky.
He put out a hand to touch the curb-side glass and plastic phone booth that was plastered with handbills advertising the next rave at the Freak Zone (The Hottest New Joker Hang! Nats With Masks Welcome!). Pedestrians with too many or too few limbs, with fur, with feathers, with skin like leather, with skin like silk, with extra mouths, noses, ears, or eyes, passed him by without a glance. To the jokers he was nothing, just a tall, skinny black guy. Maybe a nat, maybe a hidden joker. Maybe strung out, maybe grossed out. It was all the same to them. They had their own problems.
He used to be Fortunato. Tachyon had once called him the most powerful ace of all. Once, they all would have known who he was.
He didn’t know where it came from, but sudden anger churned his gut as if he’d ingested a five-star curry. He knew it wouldn’t go away, so instead he focused on it to the exclusion of all else, building a pyre that burned hotter and hotter until he could incinerate all the frustrations of the last day.
The last day? he asked himself. How about the last sixteen years?
“Hey, old man, what you doing?”
The voice was young, careless, and uncaring. It tore Fortunato from his standing meditation to the dirty, noisy present of the Jokertown street. He focused his eyes on a group of kids standing around him. There were half a dozen of them. They weren’t threatening, but Fortunato had the sense that they could be, in a heartbeat. All the pedestrians around them had suddenly faded from the scene. Their innate urban dweller senses perceived imminent danger and they either crossed the street or turned and retraced their steps when they saw the knot of juveniles surrounding the lone man.
The kids were all jokers. Some, like the slag-faced hulking giant who stood behind the speaker, were severely marked. Others, like the speaker himself, whose only visible abnormality was a rather attractive pair of feathery antennae that sprouted where his eyebrows should have been, were only touched by what was still regarded as the taint of the wild card, even after all these years.
Fortunato looked at them tolerantly. They were his people. He could have been one of them, if he hadn’t been inhumanly lucky in the cosmic crapshoot. Their expressions, as they looked back at him, ranged from totally blank to utterly hostile.
“I’m just standing here,” Fortunato said, finally answering the spokesman’s question.
The spokesman snorted. “You on our corner, man.”
Fortunato’s eyebrows rose. This was the old game that had been played on the streets for generations. He himself had played it, before he’d gone on to bigger games.
“Your corner?” he asked.
“Yah,” the kid replied. “We’re the Jokka Bruddas, dig, and like I spoke, you taking up space on our corner. You owe us, man.”
“Owe you?” the anger in Fortunato’s gut flared at the gangbanger’s insouciance. “I owned this corner, this street, and all those around it before you were born, boy. You’d best believe that.”
There was no fear in the boy’s eyes. “Yeah? Who are you supposed to be, old man?”
“I’m Fortunato,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence as they all stared at him, then the kid started to laugh and all his followers joined in. “Fortunato!” He shook his head. “You ain’t nothing but a crazy old man. Fortunato, he dead, old man. Been dead many a year. Everybody knows.”
“Knows what?” Fortunato said through clenched teeth, his gut roiling as the anger threatened to explode all bonds.
“He died years ago, before I was born. He flew up into the sky and fought the Devil. They fought all night, throwing lightning and thunder at each other. My daddy told me. He saw it. Fortunato was strong, but the Devil, he stronger. Fortunato fell from the sky like a stone and burned all up and the Devil took his soul to Hell because he was a pimp and a whore-runner.”