The joker had turned at the sound of Gregg's voice, his eyes trapped in the blue-black, rubbery skin peering at the darkness where Gregg huddled between two closed and boarded storefronts.
"If you're who I think you are," Jube said slowly, "I don't understand why you're still hanging around Jokertown."
"I'm not Battle."
Jube took a careful step away from him and stopped. He moved his papers from one arm to the other and pushed his porkpie hat back on his head. In the light of the streetlamp, bright orange passionflowers wrestled on the aching blue backdrop of his short-sleeved shirt. "I doubt there are two yellow caterpillars around here," Jube said. He was backing away again, his voice sounding falsely jovial. "Though I remember a joke along those lines: What'd the doctor say to the joker woman after she gave birth to triplets?"
"Jube, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not Battle."
Jube looked like he was about to bolt, but he waited. "I'm actually Gregg Hartmann," Gregg continued. "I was jumped into this body. I need to get into contact with Hannah Davis and Father Squid. It's very important."
Jube blinked. He took another step away. "Please," Gregg said.
"I heard that was what you were telling people, a couple months ago, back before you killed Rudo," Jube said. "That's a pretty unbelievable tale, considering no one's been jumped in years, not since the Rox went down. Not that it matters. I was never much impressed by Gregg Hartmann. I wasn't surprised that he sold us out at the end."
"Damn it, he - I didn't!" The word came out as a screech and Jube jumped backward, a few papers scattering to the ground. "It wasn't me. I'd already been jumped."
Disbelief pulled at the thick skin of Jube's face. He was backing away again, and Gregg scuttled out from his hiding place before the joker decided to turn and run. "Jube, you have to believe me. What I have to tell them is urgent. I need - "
They both saw the squad car turn the corner and head down the street toward them at the same moment. Jube looked once at Gregg, then at the cruiser. His hand started to lift. "Jube, no," Gregg said, but the joker stepped out from the sidewalk, waving the cops down.
Gregg didn't wait to see any more. He fled.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Ellen?"
"Who are you? This is an unlisted number - who gave it to you?"
"Ellen, please, just listen for a minute. When the Hartmann estate was settled, you were the prime beneficiary. There was also a safety-deposit box at First Manhattan Trust - about $20,000 worth of bonds in there. The will specifically mentioned an old grandfather clock that Gregg had kept as part of the divorce settlement, which was to go back to you. You and Gregg bought the clock in Germany during the WHO tour, just before Berlin - Sarah Morgenstern was along, too, remember? She was the one who saw the clock first, sitting in the dusty rear corner of that old antique shop."
"How do you know all this? Who are you?"
"Ellen, I'm telling you all this so you'll believe me. I know what was in the will because I wrote it. I'm Gregg, Ellen. Gregg. I need your help. I know I don't have any right to ask you, but ... Ellen? Ellen? Hello ...?"
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Furs was a long-time companion. The lion-maned joker had been on various of Gregg's staffs for years, had been campaign manager for New York when Gregg had run for president. Even though he'd drifted from politics to general media consultation in the years since, he still had worked with Gregg on various joker's rights committees and organizations, which was why Gregg had gone to him for help with the Peregrine show.
Furs knew him. Furs had connections.
For Jokertown, Furs lived upscale. The apartment building had a doorman, a burly joker with long, rubbery arms and a decidedly suspicious demeanor. Gregg decided not to risk the front door, not after his previous experiences. He waited until night, scaling the side wall of the building like a large yellow limpet, peering through windows until he found Fur's fourth-story apartment. He could see a television tossing light at the walls, but no one was watching and the sound was off. The window to the living room was unlocked; it opened when Gregg pulled it up. He scrambled over the sill and into the dark room with a thump, the curtains swirling. He looked around the room - Furs was here; a beer, the head still foaming, stood on the coffee table in front of the couch, and Gregg could smell his presence somewhere close by. Gregg moved into the room.
"Stop right there."
The voice came from the bedroom. Gregg turned to see Furs standing in the open doorway, sighting down the short barrel of a handgun gripped in both hands.
"Furs," Gregg said softly. "I'm not going to hurt you. I need to talk." As Gregg took a step toward Furs, the fingers tightened around the weapon.
"I know who you are. I also know what you can do to this." Furs waggled the gun. "Take another step, and I won't wait for you to get close enough. Now, back up into the corner over there. That's it - nice and slow."
As Gregg retreated, Furs moved into the room, going over to the phone. His gaze still fixed on Gregg; he reached down for the receiver. "Furs, please listen."
"You're a Shark, Battle - "
"I'm not - " Gregg started to interrupt, but his tiny, high voice had no hope of carrying against Furs's booming bass. "Shut up. You're a murderer. You helped destroy the Rox. I have nothing to say to you." Gregg couldn't see well enough to tell what he was dialing, but Furs only hit three numbers: 911, then. He was calling in the cops.
Gregg wasn't going to wait for that. "Furs," he said desperately, and then words simply failed him. There was nothing to say. Furs wasn't going to believe him any more than the others he'd tried.
Furs let go of the gun with one hand, to pick up the receiver. With the motion, Gregg leapt for the open window.
The sound of the gunshot was deafening. Something hot and powerful slashed across his rear body segment, the impact making Gregg's body tumble. There was no pain, only the sensation of heat and the horrible smell of gunpowder, and then the blinding surge as metahuman automatic reflexes kicked in. He heard himself screaming, and found himself tearing around the perimeter of the living room as a stunned Furs whirled hopelessly behind him.
Gregg saw the window on the second circuit. He turned in mid-air and half-fell, half-scrambled down the side of the building.
He ran through the streets of Jokertown like a demented banshee until he blacked out.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
He came back to consciousness, as he expected, back in the sewers. His body had healed, though there was a long scar in the yellow skin. It was warmer, at least. He wondered how much time had gone by, and then realized that he didn't care. In the sewers, it was easy to feel despair.
"I can't live this way," he told the dripping walls. "I won't live this way."
The walls declined to answer.
"I don't want to be a joker," he said into the dripping, odoriferous darkness. Only the varied, pungent smells of the city's waste returned to him. He almost wished that the voice would sound in his head scolding him and mocking him - at least it would be something.
But he sat in unyielding darkness and silence, and he knew there was no refuge for him - not with Hannah or anyone else. If he stayed in this body, he would spend the rest of his life running. The murder of Rudo would always be hanging over him: that was the lesson he'd painfully learned over the last weeks. He would spend the rest of his life in hiding, or he would find himself in the hands of the criminal justice system - for a murder he didn't commit, for the death of a man who wasn't Pan Rudo, but some stranger. In the maelstrom of his despair, Gregg could think of only one way to get out of the body in which he found himself trapped - a way he'd already tried unsuccessfully once before.