Who'd have thought he'd turn soft now?
"Zappa's got his own connections. He spends a lot of time with Barnett. Barnett always wanted to be in the military - he ran off to join the Marines at sixteen, remember - and Barnett really looks up to Zappa. So they get together a couple times a week, and sometimes Zappa brings along his stepfather, the Marine, and they all smoke cigars and tell war stories and Barnett just laps it up. And what Zappa is saying is that the Quarantine Bill isn't necessary, that if what we really want is to find a cure for the wild card and help the jokers, all we need to do is use the clinics and systems already in place, and just fund them better."
"Damn it."
The hell of it was, Zappa was perfectly right. The existing system was more efficient than quarantining all the wild cards in "Hospital Centers" on Federal reserves in the western US.
The only reason - the real reason - for moving the wild cards into the camps was so that, at the right time, they could be dealt with all at once.
Faneuil had demonstrated how, back in Africa, then again in Central America.
"I think I should come to Washington," Herzenhagen said. "We need to meet in person."
"Who with?"
"The General and Rudo are in Europe. I should see Peggy, so that she can liaise with Rudo. Is Hughes still in town?"
"Yeah. He's doing some discreet lobbying for us while he's supposed to be concerned over the transportation bill."
"Where will you be staying?"
"The Statler. As usual. Tell Peggy I'll be in tomorrow."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Shad stood outside Mr. Gravemold's Jokertown apartment and hesitated. The scent wafting from under the apartment door was tomato sauce and cheese.
Already? Shad thought.
He looked over his shoulder, made certain no one was looking, then covered himself in darkness and used his key.
A brown-haired white man in his thirties was in the kitchen eating store-bought lasagna from its white microwave tray. Two frozen pizzas, visible through the glass door of the oven, were beginning to bubble. A half-eaten gallon of ice cream, the spoon still stuck in it, sat on the counter.
The man looked up and saw Shad's cloud of darkness.
"Oh, hi," he said casually. "Thanks for leaving all the food."
Shad had put Croyd in the Gravemold apartment on the assumption that it wouldn't tell Croyd any more than he didn't know already.
"I knew you'd be hungry when you woke up," Shad said. "You are who I think you are, right?"
"I'm Croyd Crenson, if that's what you mean. Join me in some pizza?"
"It's a little early for me." No point in reminding Croyd that he hardly ate anyway.
"Yeah? What time is it? And what day and month while you're at it?"
Shad told him. Croyd seemed impressed. "I usually sleep longer. But it varies, you know." Croyd's eyes narrowed again as he tried to peer at Shad. "Uh, is there a reason you're clouded up like that?"
"Do you recall the last moments of our previous meeting?"
"Oh." Croyd seemed a bit shamefaced. "Well, yes, I do. But I wasn't quite myself at the time."
"The point is, am I still redefined as enemy?"
"No. I'm in my right mind now, and I don't hold that business on the docks against you." He seemed amused. "So you're Gravemold, huh? How do you stand the smell?"
"Various methods. Usually I snort a whole bunch of cocaine."
"Yeah?" He screwed up his face. "I used to use that stuff, but I gave it up. You sure it's safe?"
"You're a speed freak, and you're giving me advice about drugs?"
Croyd shrugged. "Each to his own, I guess. Which reminds me - about this Gravemold business. If you're around me when I've been speeding - well, I get paranoid and irrational, and you should probably avoid me if I'm crazed. I don't hold a grudge, but when I'm speeding I see things differently." He shook his head. "Boy, that last joker body was a wrench. No feelings, no real thoughts even, just priorities and calculations. It must be what Mr. Spock feels like all the time."
"Figured out what your power is this time around?"
"Well, I don't fly or levitate, I don't make things move with the power of my mind, I don't walk up walls, I can't cook the frozen pizzas with my heat vision, and I can't read minds or control people with my thoughts."
"How do you know about that last one?"
Croyd smiled thinly. "I just tried."
"How about strength?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to wreck your nice furniture."
Shad let his darkness drain away. "The question is," he asked "have you retained your prime directive from your last body?" Croyd looked quizzical. "Rudo," Shad said.
"Oh, that kraut-eating bastard. Absolutely. I should have killed him forty years ago." Croyd took a few bites of lasagna. "How about your little nemesis? Gregg Hartmann?"
"Taken care of."
"Already? You sure work fast. What was it he did to you, anyway?"
Shad told him. By the end of the story Croyd had finished the lasagna and gotten halfway through the first pizza. Croyd shook his head.
"Boy," he said. "I coulda sworn Hartmann was a nice guy. Not that I ever knew him particularly well." He turned melancholy. "Not, for that matter, that I ever really get to know anyone particularly well."
"Hartmann was working with the Sharks. I found that much out. My guess is that he was threatening to expose them just so they'd pay him off somehow. Or maybe it was something more complicated than that, some elaborate game the Sharks were playing."
Croyd's eyes turned cold. "The Sharks."
"Rudo's a Shark. Hartmann was working with them, even if he wasn't a Shark himself. It's all part of a package. And you know what I'm thinking about the package?"
"You're thinking it's time to bury it."
"Six feet under."
Croyd smiled. "Might as well start with Rudo. You know where he is?"
"I called his office at the UN. He's inspecting sanitary conditions in - I think it was Kirghizia. But he works right here in New York, so he'll be back sooner or later."
"There are other Sharks," Croyd said. He took a thoughtful bite of pizza.
"You know how the Sharks work, right?"
"Know how they work? Shit, man, I was inside their heads! Raney and Shannon - what a cold couple of bastards. They were gonna kill us with some bug, just like that Faneuil did in Guatemala ..."
"The point is, nobody knows who they are. There's no visible connection between the Sharks and their victims. There's no apparent motive for what they do. And they set up others to take the fall. There's no way any of this could go through the courts - everything's too deniable."
"My guess," Croyd said with a mouth full of pizza, "is that you're not planning on taking it through the courts."
"You know we can't."
"You're going to do it to them."
"Their own medicine. Their own style. Yes."
"You'd like my help."
"Help, yes. If you're willing. But I'd also like your advice."
Croyd blinked. "Sure."
"I mean moral advice."
Croyd began coughing on his pizza. Shad pounded him on the back. "I'm not exactly Fulton J. Sheen, you know," Croyd said finally.
"Listen. We're going to be hurting people. Messing them up bad."
"I thought that was the point. I thought that's what you were good at."
"I am good at it." Shad reached for words, found some that would do. "But that man was Puppetman's doing - he's responsible for a lot of it. And ... this is kind of funny - I really don't know who I am anymore. I refuse to be Puppetman's creation. But what does that leave?"
Croyd was thoughtful. "I can see this being something you wouldn't want to go to Dear Abby about."