Shelley was in the Lincoln. She'd just been jumped. Croyd was following the wrong body, damn it.
Shad clutched and shifted, and the Vincent's engine boomed in synch with his thrashing heart. He raced down St. James Place, elbows and knees tucked in as the bike dived between stationary gridlocked vehicles. Leaving a trail of booming decibels, he performed a power slide behind One Police Plaza, then crossed Park Row without waiting for a break in the traffic, and felt as if he were saved only by some abstruse corollary of particle physics: He wasn't in the same state, particle or wave, long enough for anyone to hit him.
Once onto Center, he saw the Town Car in the distance and throttled back. Center joined Lafayette, and the powderblue Lincoln turned right on Houston, then made another right on First, heading back into Jokertown. The streets were choked, and Shad had no trouble following.
The Lincoln made a few more turns once it entered Jokertown, then turned off into a nineteenth-century brownstone warehouse with its tall windows closed off by more recent red brick. The electronic garage door closed behind the Lincoln, and Shad passed slowly on the motorcycle, turning neither left nor right, an odd prickling on the back of his neck. He wouldn't show up on this block again, certainly not on the bike. He'd be someone else entirely by the time he came back.
He turned, positioning himself to see the Lincoln if it headed back east, then pulled over to the curb and tried to contact Croyd-nothing. He searched the sky for a flapping pink figure, saw no one.
Time passed. Juve jacked a set of earphones into the radio and bobbed his head to a Kenny Clarke beat.
Two Werewolves stood on the corner, wearing gang colors but only ski masks, which gave them a better field of vision than Liza Minnelli or Richard Nixon, a precaution in case any Asians with guns showed up. The gang war seemed to be proceeding nicely. They scoped Shad out, offered him procaine cut with baby laxative, were ignored.
"Yo. Homes. This is Wingman."
Juve straightened, reached for the police radio. The tw dealers saw him raise it and split.
"Homes here."
Undercover cops used the same sort of elliptical language, Shad knew-he hadn't been challenged with these radios yet, even though the police were listening. If anyone questioned him, he planned to be Detective-Third Sam Kozokowski of the Internal Affairs Division, and what was your name and badge fucking number? Which should shut them up in a hurry.
"She just wandered around for a while," Croyd said, "then passed her handbag to a boy on a scooter. Then she wandered some more. Now she's in a restaurant, eating an Egg McMuffin. Anything I should do?"
"She's been jumped. There's somebody else in there."
"Shit."
"I need you to follow a powder-blue Lincoln Town Car."
"Snazzy wheels."
Shad paused. This was the first time he'd heard the word snazzy in decades. He told Croyd where the car was, then went back to being Juve. A little shift in the infrared spectrum showed him where Croyd was hovering.
It was almost one in the afternoon before Shad saw Croyd begin to move. Shad paralleled him on the bike. The zigzag course took him and Croyd back to Chatham Square.
The dog body waited on the traffic circle. Shad pulled up behind the Lincoln, memorized the license plate, then parked where he'd been that morning. He went into the doorway and became Juve again.
There was a new chalk drawing there, right on the stoop.
It showed Shad and Shelley having breakfast in the Jokertown coffee shop. Shad looked at the picture and felt an eerie wind crawl up the back of his neck.
He forced himself to stay in the doorway till he saw Shelley hail a cab. Then, checking behind himself constantly for tails, he headed for the hotel.
"Yo. Wingman."
"Hi, homes. The dog-faced joker I was following earlier collapsed-I think she got jumped again-but I saw her getting up as I followed the car. The Lincoln went back to the warehouse."
"Thanks. I'll talk to you later."
"We'll do some beer and bugs. Wingman out."
Shad sped back through the tape he'd made of Shelley's room. Two people had scoped the place. They were in their late teens, by the look of them, the boy in stylish leathers, the girl in denim and an eye patch. She seemed to have only one hand. The boy had got them through the lock with a raking gun. The one-eyed girl put something on top of the tall cabinet that held the TV Then they both left the way they had come.
At least neither of them had been Chalktalk.
Shelley showed up a few minutes later, looking as if she'd been through a lot.
Shad reached for the phone. "Hello?"
"This is the front desk."
"Oh. Hi. Front desk, right."
"Say that yes, you want to stay another day."
"Yes. I want to stay another day."
"You still want to pay cash."
" I still want to pay cash."
"You'll have to come down and do it in person."
"I'll be down in a few minutes."
He met her at the elevator and pushed the emergency stop button to halt it between floors.
"I thought you were going to have a new body," he said. "Yes. They've promised me one." She licked her pendulous lips. "The thing is, I get to pick."
"Oh."
"They've got a catalog. Just like L. L. Bean."
"Tell me what happened."
" I got jumped again. They put a bag over my head. They drove around for a while, then took me into a little room. It was fitted out like a prison cell-metal walls, a heavy door with big locks and a barred window. There was mesh overhead and a guy with a gun walking around."
"Okay."
"There were other cells. I could hear people talking. Some were crying and screaming." She gave a strange little smile. "I didn't care. It was wonderful. I was human again. Young! And beautiful. They showed me my face in a mirror. I was gorgeous."
"Who showed you?"
"Two kids. Boys, maybe fifteen. Zits, but real good clothes. Rolexes, jewelry. The gold chains must have cost fifty grand. And there was a joker." She gave an expression of distaste. "Brown, with a carapace. Looked like a cockroach."
"Did they call him Kafka?"
"Yeah." She pulled her wrinkles back and looked at him. "How'd you know?"
"He was around a few years ago. I knew him slightly when I joined the Egyptian Masons."
Her eyes widened. "The Egyptian Masons? You mean the-the ones who="
"Yeah. Those guys. I'd only just joined, then somebody blew up their temple with me in it. I barely got out, and I didn't know there were any other survivors until they started trying to toss people off Aces High."
She looked at him, her lips twitching in what might, under the wrinkles, be a smile. "You are Black Shadow, aren't you?"
"My name's Simon." "Uh-huh. Sure."
"So what happened in this cell?"
"Somebody else came in. Dr. Tachyon."
Shad's mind whirled. He forced himself to speak. "You sure?"
"Who wouldn't recognize Tachyon?" She gave a shiver. "Jesus, I never expected that. I was scared he'd read my mind or something and figure I knew you."
Maybe he did, Shad thought. "Did you see a one-eyed woman?"
"No. Why?"
"Never mind. Just tell me what happened."
"Tachyon made a speech. About joker rights. Now I had a chance to experience life as a member of the oppressed, and so naturally I'd want to join him in his great work." "And the great work?"
She shrugged. "They're jumping the rich. If I agree to do what they want, I get jumped into a new body. I clean out the bank accounts and the family silver. Half goes to Tachyon and the jumpers, and the other half I get to keep to set up a new life somewhere. Unless-" she hesitated, "I decide to do it again. And again. He made that offer. I build up a nice nest egg, then they jump me into whatever body I choose when I want to retire."