"You're offering me a bribe, Pan."
"Bribe is an ugly word. I am offering you compensation for decades of effort. I'm offering you a chance to continue your good work. I am offering you a chance at redemption for the unfortunate failures in your life."
Redemption ... "And if I say no? If I tell you that the implications of the Davis material disgust me and I can't in good conscience condone it by silence?" Because you don't believe this artful deceit. You don't believe it at all. You can look at him and see that's he's lying, Greggie....
Rudo did smile now. He chuckled - a cultured, controlled amusement. His long, delicate fingers steepled under his chin. "Am I supposed to threaten you, to say 'then we will be forced to eliminate you?' Gregg ..."
The laugh came again, then Rudo's face fell into serious lines as he leaned forward. "If you say no, I walk out of your office believing you have the sense to look at your 'evidence' and realize that you have nothing actionable beyond a few tall tales and the musings of a deranged woman. And if you still go public with this, then - " Rudo smiled again. "Then I contact Brandon and my other lawyers. There, that is a threat worse than death."
Rudo laughed once more, and Gregg found it hard not to smile in response. Gregg drew Hannah's box to him and glanced at the contents. He's lying.... "Pan, I don't know. This 'research organization' of yours.... You're operating totally outside the legal system. A cure for the wild card virus would be a wonderful thing - a damn miracle, in fact - but this.... She didn't sound deranged to me."
"They rarely do, at first. Think about it, Gregg. Mull it over. Check out this Davis woman and her conspiracy theory. If you'd like, I can arrange for you to meet with Ms. Monroe - she's still in town. I invite you to ask her version of what happened the other night. Ms. Davis's tale is so compelling because it is an artful blend of truth and delusion, fact and fiction. If you decide that there's anything evil about me, well, do what you need to do."
"That's exactly my intention."
"Good." Rudo uncrossed his legs and stood. He strode quickly across the room to the office door and paused, his hand on the brass handle. "Thank you for calling me first, Gregg. I appreciate that. And keep my offer in mind," he said. "Tell me what you need, and we will get it for you."
No! You can't just let him go like that! But Gregg found himself nodding. Rudo gave a short inclination of his head in return, and left.
... A chance at redemption ...
So what are you going to do? What are you going to do?
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
He still prowled Jokertown - not as Puppetman, no longer looking to feed on rage and fury and hatred, but searching for more mundane, more human solace.
So poor Gregg Hartmann can't get it up with normal women anymore. So you only really get off on jokers. Why should you be surprised? That's your penance, too, Greggie....
She called him "Jack," though Gregg knew that she must have recognized him - one-handed ex-senators whose faces were occasionally plastered all over the various media weren't exactly plentiful. Over the last year he'd picked up this same woman a half dozen times. Her real name Gregg neither knew nor cared to know. On the J-Town streets she was known as Ichor-bod. Her pores oozed a translucent jelly that coated her like a second skin. Her short dark hair was perpetually slicked down like a twenties movie star, and her clothing - what little she generally wore - was stained as if it'd been dipped in Vaseline. If one could have turned off the internal tap, she might have been pretty; as it was, her features were obscured and smeared with gelatinous perspiration.
She reclined on the bed naked, her legs sprawled carelessly apart, the glistening effluvium of her skin already staining the cheap sheets, the triangle of pubic hair matted with it. She watched him undress with an expression of bored impatience. "What's the problem, Jack?" she asked, her gaze low. "Oh, that's right, I remember. Jack likes it hot. He likes it hot and slick and wet."
She crawled across the bed toward him. Kneeling, she kissed him from navel to nipple, leaving a glistening trail across his abdomen as he gasped. Her hand caressed him. Where she kissed, where she touched, wherever the strange substance from her body came into contact with his skin, there was a tingling, growing heat - another attribute of Ichor-bod. She cupped his scrotum in her other hand, and the sudden warmth seared upward in his groin, just on the edge of pain. Her breasts were twin fires on his belly.
Gregg closed his eyes, moaning.
... Peanut moaning as Puppetman pumped his libido and lust to unnatural levels, as the unbidden, frightening erection split open his scaly, inelastic skin, melding glorious pain with the pleasure....
... Mackie Messer, gleefully dissecting the living Kahina before the horrified eyes of Chrysalis and Digger Downs as Gregg leaned against the wall outside the room and gorged at the feast....
... Ellen tumbling down the flight of stairs, and Puppetman reveling in the death-throes of the child dying inside her womb - the child possessed by Gimli (and it was Gimli, no matter what the bastard Tachyon said)....
"Yes, now that's more like it," Ichor-bod crooned below him. Gregg felt her slip a condom over his length, and he suddenly pushed her down, falling heavily on top of her as his hips lunged forward helplessly.
Afterward, he took a long shower.
Gregg could feel her watching as he dressed, as he settled the Leo Barnett mask over his face. Somehow it felt right to wear the face of the man who now held the position Gregg had once coveted. If Ichor-bod noticed the irony, she said nothing. "Here's another fifty," Gregg said, dropping the bill on the nightstand. "A tip."
Ichor-bod shrugged on the bed. "Whassa matter, Jack? Feeling especially guilty about humpin' a poor joker tonight?"
Gregg didn't answer. He left her room without another word - he'd learned long ago that whores didn't expect good-byes. On the way down the stairs of the apartment building, he slipped on the gloves with the sewn-on extra fingers: just another joker in the night.
Just another victim.
"Senator!"
Gregg jumped, his heart pounding. The voice came from the alley between the buildings. A shape moved there: a massive, cloaked form. The steel mesh of a fencing mask glimmered in the light of the street lamp. Gregg slowly relaxed. "Oddity. How did you - "
"Someone needs to talk to you." Oddity beckoned back into the shadows. The slurred voice sounded like Patti's, Gregg's favorite of the menage de'trois trapped inside the powerful, misshapen body. Oddity groaned as shapes moved under the cloak. Gregg remembered Oddity's eternal agony of transformation, too. That pain had fed Puppetman all too well.
"Patti, I - "
Oddity stared at him. "I hate that mask, Senator, on you of all people. You shouldn't mock yourself that way. Please, Senator. This really is important."