"I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow," Hartmann began. "I regret to inform you that I have been deceived. Although I believe that my informants were well-meaning, my own investigations have shown to my satisfaction that they were wrong. The so-called Card Sharks, I now believe, do not exist. They never existed, except in the minds of a small number of deluded people, among whose numbers I until recently counted myself. From the escape and existence of Etienne Faneuil, we unhappily created a fantasy conspiracy...."
Puppetman, Shad thought. What game are you playing now?
Maybe he'd better find out.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Mr. von Herzenhagen? The telephone. Mr. Gregg Hartmann, sir."
Herzenhagen stubbed out his cigarette, and followed his club's balding concierge from the smoking room to where a telephone waited in a small office. He thanked the man, held onto his polite face while the man left, and closed the door before he picked up the receiver.
"Yes?"
"Hi. It's me."
Herzenhagen pursed his lips. "Where are you calling me from?"
"From the apartment. I haven't been out all day."
"That's not a secure phone."
"Hell, nobody has any reason to tap it but us."
Herzenhagen found it eerily disturbing to listen to Battle's words and cadences in Gregg Hartmann's voice.
"Only this once," he said. "But after this, use a public phone."
"I can't. That Hannah woman is staking me out. She's been calling all day, and she finally showed up on the doorstep, but I told the doorman not to admit her."
"That was good."
"I think she needs taking care of."
Herzenhagen gave it some thought. "All in good time," he said.
"I mean it, Phil. She went batshit after she heard the press conference. Jesus - do you know that she and Hartmann were fucking?"
Herzenhagen laughed. "So give her a good screw, George! Maybe that'll shut her up!"
"Listen, this is serious. She knows too much. She's got to be taken care of."
"It will happen," soothingly, "I promise you. But first she must be thoroughly discredited - after that, no one will care what happens to her."
"Listen, I want out of here!"
Out of his body.
Perhaps, Herzenhagen thought, Battle could be jumped into Hannah, and then Hartmann's body, with Hannah inside, could take a walk off a pier, after leaving a poignant, disillusioned note behind lamenting chances lost. Kill two birds with one stone.
Herzenhagen smiled as he anticipated Battle's aggrieved complaints at being jumped into a woman's body.
"Don't worry," he said, "I think I have a way of neatly wrapping up the whole adventure."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The words rang in Shad's head. I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow.
He forced the window open and slid silently into Hartmann's immaculate kitchen - apparently Hartmann didn't cook much. From another room, Hartmann ranted on the phone in a grating voice that Shad had never heard before.
The voice of Puppetman.
Shad's gloved hands opened drawers until he found a kitchen knife - always useful - and a couple of extension cords.
Shad heard the phone hang up. Anger bubbled in his veins. He left the kitchen and walked past a dining room and living room to Hartmann's office. Hartmann, in slacks and a striped shirt, stood behind his desk and stared moodily at the phone. Shad walked into the room, and as Hartmann's eyes tracked up Shad stole just a bit of heat, enough to cause an involuntary shudder to run through Hartmann's frame.
"You!" The line, and the dropped jaw, was straight out of a melodrama.
"You expecting someone else, Gregg?" Shad walked forward, leaned on the desk, tried to smile, but hatred kept turning the expression into a snarl.
Hartmann recovered composed his face. He brushed at his graying hair with his prosthetic hand and, as if he wasn't used to it yet, bumped his forehead in the process.
"Sorry," he said "You caught me at a bad moment." He frowned "I suppose you think I can help you."
"All I want is to meet a friend of yours."
"Yeah? Who?"
Shad smiled. "Puppetman."
Shad had hoped for a start of surprise, a guilty catch in the voice. Instead, Hartmann seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Who? Could you, uh, refresh my memory?"
A good actor. Shad had to hand it to him. He leaned closer to Hartmann and bared his teeth.
"You know who, all light. An old friend. We first met - when was it, '76? When I was just a kid, and I was working for you. And the next thing you know, I strung some guy up from a lamppost and ran him through with a needle." He gave a cold laugh. "I didn't know I had that kind of anger in me. I thought I was a good guy, you know? Just trying to help people. I didn't know that kind of rage existed. Did you?"
Hartmann edged away from him, eyes wary. Keeping the desk between them. "What are you talking about?"
"I figure I met Puppetman again later that day, when I joined the rioters. And later, when I strung up a couple or muggers on the Deuce. And then when I busted up the Los Bozos clubhouse. And - "
"What do you want?" Hartmann said. "If it's help, I can arrange it. I've got friends who can hide you."
"What do I want?" Shad repeated. The rage boiled in him, exploded in a shriek. "I want the man who wrecked my life! I want Puppetman!"
Alarm and confusion warred in Hartmann's face. "Calm down, okay? I'll get you what you want. But you have to tell me who to call. What's Puppetman's name?"
Shad laughed as he came around the desk. "You don't know?"
Hartmann looked blank. "No. I don't."
"Perhaps you can call up - oh, I don't know - George Gordon Battle? Was he the one who paid you off?"
Shock drained Hartmann's face of color. Shad grabbed him by the throat. Hartmann reacted quickly - for a nat, anyway - by trying to kick him in the knee, and by driving his linked hands up as a wedge between Shad's forearms, breaking the stranglehold. But Shad was faster than a nat, and stronger, and he avoided the kick and doubled Hartmann over with a mid-knuckle punch to the solar plexus. He grabbed Hartmann again, slammed him down in his chair. Hartmann tried to smash him in the head with his prothesis, but Shad rapped him in the face with a fist, hearing the nasal cartilage crunch, and then stunned him with an open-hand slap to the side of the head.
Hartmann put up a suiprisingly good fight, all things considered. Maybe he remembered his old Army training.
Shad tied him to the chair with extension cords. Hartmann coughed on the blood running from his broken nose, spat, looked up with incredulous eyes. "Wait!" he said, "I'm not who you think I am."
"Yeah, Gregg baby," Shad said. He wadded a piece of paper and stuffed it in Hartmann's mouth. "I know that."
He took out the knife and showed it to the bound man.
"This is going to be unnecessarily brutal," he said. "But hey, it's only what you taught me." He smiled. "And if you've got any fancy mental powers, better use 'em now."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Shad found he hardly had to think at all. He'd had it done to him once, he knew how it went. It was a thing he'd already thought about, already visualized so completely during his years in stir that no mental effort was required - no thought, no feeling, nothing that stirred or repelled. Nothing but business.
Hartmann babbled a lot when Shad took the gag out to ask questions. He talked about will and the flames of cigarette lighters. He kept trying to pretend he was someone else, presumably someone this wasn't happening to.
Shad could have told him that didn't work. He'd tried all his life to be someone else, and it wasn't something a person could do.
Eventually Hartmann told him things. He wasn't very coherent by that point, but it was a place to start
None of this was going to make Shad any happier. It wasn't going to release or bury his demons. It was just something that had to be got out of the way so that, in some future moment, he could become more himself. Free from Puppetman. Free from the ice that prison had injected into his veins.