WILD CARDS
EDITED BY
GEORGE R.R.
MARTIN
Book II of a New Cycle
MARKED CARDS
The Color of His Skin
by Stephen Leigh
Part 1
"Ms. Davis, I promise you that I take the concerns of the jokers very seriously. I will do whatever needs to be done."
Gregg Hartmann ushered the attractive and intense blond woman from his offices, sliding her out the door with a perfect blend of smile and frown. Yes, I understand the importance of what you've just shown me, his expression said. You've made the right decision. Really, you have ...
"Hold my calls, Jo Ann," he said to his secretary after the outer door closed. A soft, strangely inflected "Gotcha, boss" followed him as he closed the mahogany doors to his private office. The way she said it made him look back, but Jo Ann only smiled at him. Jo Ann was a minor joker, a woman whose only visible affliction was that her skin was as green and warty as a fairy tale witch's - and her tongue as sharp. Gregg had always had joker secretaries; it was expected of him.
Gregg sank into the leather caress of his chair and contemplated the cardboard box of transcripts, tapes, and photos Hannah Davis had given him. His right hand throbbed achingly, but when he looked down there was only the dead plastic mockery of the prosthetic resting on the chair's arm - a dead weight whose ironic, crude symbolism didn't escape him. The inner voice that had begun to nag him more and more over the last several months spoke again.
You took Tachyon's hand with Mackie Messer and Herne's hounds returned you a just revenge. Don't complain when you bear only a tithe of the pain you've caused over the years, Greggie. An eye for an eye ...
Shut up, he told the voice. Left-handed, he touched the speed dial on his phone system and punched in two numbers. He listened to the phone ringing and picked up the receiver as the line clicked open.
"Pan?" he said "Gregg Hartmann."
"Gregg, so good to hear from you." The voice on the other end sounded entirely normal. Gregg heard nothing in the soft accents he hadn't heard before, and Gregg knew Pan Rudo, or at least he once had. He'd known him very well indeed. "In fact, I've just learned that the new WHO funding sailed through the Senate untouched, thanks largely to the lobbying you've done on our behalf. Thank you."
"You're entirely welcome, and Jo Ann should have my invoice to you tomorrow, but that's not what I'm calling about. Pan ... well, I need to talk to you. In person. I'm also calling Brandon van Renssaeler...."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"She is truly a most persistent woman," Pan said.
The director of the World Health Organization placed the sheaf of transcripts back in the box on Gregg's desk and sat back in his chair, as elegant and composed as usual. Rudo shook his graying head slowly and let out a deep sigh, glancing at Brandon van Renssaeler, who sat silently next to him with his gaze directed on the shuttered windows behind Gregg, his jaw muscles bunched under his grim frown. Brandon had flushed brightly when he'd seen Lamia's transcript; since then, he'd said little.
"But then, fanatics often are persistent," Rudo continued. "I should have guessed that she'd come to you eventually, considering your reputation."
"I felt you both deserved a chance at private rebuttal before I did anything. Since we all know each other, and since you're both mentioned in the material, I thought I might as well talk to the two of you together. But I have to tell you, Pan, Brandon, this stuff here ..." Gregg frowned. "I'd hate to think there was any truth in it."
"There's none," Brandon grunted suddenly. "Not in what was said about me, anyway. Gregg, we've known each other a long, long time. I consider us friends as well as colleagues. Pan and I certainly know each other well, and I've done work for him through the firm, but to suggest that I had something to do with the assassination of Robert Kennedy ..." He shook his head. "My ... wife was never exactly a stable person, Gregg. You knew her then. You were at the damn party she talks about in this transcript, where I supposedly became involved with Ms. Monroe. Gregg, I really hope you're not planning to do anything about this."
"You're denying it, then."
"Yes," Brandon said emphatically. "All of it. And believe me, if I hear a word of it in the press or anywhere else, I will slap a lawsuit on this Hannah Davis and whoever is with her so fast ..." Brandon pressed his lips together. "We're both attorneys, Gregg. You can see as well as I can that all Davis has are the imaginings of a neurotic woman who probably blames me for the failure of our marriage. There's no photograph, Gregg. There never was one. I believe world-spanning conspiracies are best left to comic books and the tabloids. I understand why you feel you had to ask, and I appreciate that you called before doing anything Davis wanted you to do, but I resent the fact that I have to defend myself against anything so ludicrous, even to you." Brandon released a long, heavy exhalation after that. He ran fingers through perfectly clipped hair. He was so obviously angry that Gregg simply nodded and turned to Rudo.
"And you, Pan? I take it you're denying all this as well?"
Pan smiled, and Gregg once more felt the sense of frustrating interior blindness that had afflicted him for the last five and a half years, since that terrible night in Atlanta. Once, Gregg could have deciphered the emotional matrix behind that smile. Once, Gregg would have known exactly how Rudo was feeling, could have twisted and pulled on that emotion until Rudo writhed in his chair in fury or disgust. Rudo had been a puppet like a thousand others - not one Gregg had ever used much, but pliable and interesting in his own way, with odd quirks that made him ... tasty. But Puppetman had perished in the black chasm of Demise's gaze, and the power had gone with him. Like his lost hand, the vestigial remnants of the ability still ached, mockingly useless.
"Gregg, my friend, I would prefer to talk with you alone, if that's possible."
Brandon cast Rudo a sharp glance at that, and the two men locked gazes for a second. Once more, Gregg regretted the loss of his power. There was something going on here that he was missing, some unspoken communication between the two men. Like Rudo, Brandon had also been a puppet - and like Rudo, one not much used. He regretted that; it seemed he might have missed something.
"Fine with me," Brandon said. "I'm supposed to be at a Chamber meeting anyway. Gregg, is there anything else?"
Gregg shook his head. "No. I think you've told me all I need to know."
"Good." Brandon put his hand on Hannah's cardboard box. "Give this stuff back, Gregg. Give it back or just burn it and be done. That's the best advice I can give you, both as a professional and as a friend. Don't get involved in this insanity."
"I hear you, Brandon. Thanks for coming."
Brandon nodded to Gregg, then looked again at Pan before taking his coat from the rack and leaving the office. As the outer door closed behind the man, Rudo rose stiffly from his chair and went to the side window of Gregg's office.
Gregg had sent Jo Ann home at five. Brandon and Pan had arrived around seven, within minutes of each other. A few office lights in the old building across the alley gleamed outside Gregg's windows. Scant blocks away, hidden behind the brick flanks of Broadway and 44th, Jokertown was awakening, rising as the sun set. Now more than ever in its life, J-town was a place of night and shadow, a land where the only normality was abnormality.
And if what Hannah Davis had told Gregg was even partially true, then the person sitting before him was responsible for much of that. If it's true, then I wasted a glorious puppet ... And with that, the voice scolded: Be glad. It was that much less pain laid at your feet, and Hannah has given you a chance for atonement.