Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

"Yes," Quasiman said. He was gripping the railing of the bed, and Hannah, fascinated, watched the metal bars bending under the pressure of the joker's fingers. Whatever Quasiman's other problems, he was incredibly strong. "There's a lot we need to know. Start with the movie," he said. "You have to."

"I don't think so," she told him. "I'm sorry, but we're not going to catch our torch by looking up a thirty-plus year old plot. I have a lot of leads to follow, good ones — "

Quasiman was suddenly right in front of her, those horribly strong hands on either arm of her chair as he leaned in at her. Hannah could hear the wood-grained Formica of the handles cracking as she pressed her spine against the back of the chair. "Jesus, get away from me!" she shouted, but she couldn't escape. His breath touched her, warm and sweet, but it was the breath of a joker , of someone infected by that awful virus. She would have pushed at him, but she couldn't bring herself to touch him. Hannah started to shout once more to call the nurses and security guards, but Quasiman's face stopped her. There was no menace there, only a soft, pleading concern. "This is very important, Hannah," he said, and the use of her name was startling. "I know . Please."

"Quasiman," Father Squid said from the bed. "You're frightening the young woman."

"Oh," the joker said, as if startled. "Sorry. It's just — " He lifted his hands up suddenly and gave Hannah an apologetic smile. He scuttled away from the chair and Hannah slowly relaxed.

"Just what?" Hannah asked shakily.

"I know that you need to start there. With the movie."

"You keep saying that," Hannah answered. "You 'know.' I don't understand." She looked from Quasiman to Father Squid; it was Father Squid who answered.

"Another by-product of Quasiman's affliction is limited precognition," he told her. "One of the places his awareness seems to go during his episodes is the future. The vision is very erratic, and he can't control it, but it's there. God has seen fit to grant my friend occasional glimpses of what is to be."

"Yes," Quasiman agreed. "I've seen you, Hannah. I've seen us. I've seen other faces. I'm going to try very hard to remember."

"Great. That all sounds very convenient. Now just tell me who started the fire and I'll have him arrested and we can all go home. In fact, with that kind of evidence, we can probably just do away with the trial, too." She wouldn't look at either of the jokers. She stared at the cracks Quasiman's fingers had left in the chair arms.

Father Squid's reply was as gentle as ever, and made Hannah's sarcasm seem even more vitriolic in comparison. "Ms. Davis, I wonder how many comments were made in your office yesterday?" he asked. "I wonder how many people said that there s no way you can find this murderer?"

"What's your point, Father?"

"I just wonder if you're letting your preconceptions blind you right now. After all, how much is Quasiman asking of you? An extra interview? An hour of your time?"

There'd been comments. Hannah had even half-heard some of them. "Even granting that there's something to what you're saying, this supposed plot is ancient history. Half the people involved must be dead." Hannah said. "I don't know who to contact or where to start."

"I do," Father Squid answered. "If you're willing. If you can bring yourself to talk to another joker."

The priest's barbed comment brought up Hannah's eyes. She looked from Father Squid to the hunchback. She knew he was pushing all her buttons, but she wasn't going to be called a bigot. She sighed. "All right," she said. "I can give you an hour."

"Mr. Tanaka? Chuck Tanaka?"

Hannah had already decided that the atmosphere of the Four Seas Seafood Delivery Service, placed precariously between Chinatown and Jokertown, would probably put her off fish for months. The tiny office in the small warehouse was dingy, looking as if it had last been redecorated somewhere around World War II. From the look of the desk, the file cabinets, and each available horizontal surface in the place, every last scrap of paper that the business had generated had found a home here. On the wall were dusty, cheap frames holding faded prints that were just as cheap; behind the desk, a larger frame held a collection of baseball cards. They looked old, too, and there was a spot in the middle of the frame where a space had obviously been reserved for a card.

"You're the one called Chop-Chop?" Hannah asked.

The joker behind the desk looked up, and from his appearance and the grimace on his face, Hannah realized that the question didn't need an answer. The joker was a walking cliche of every bad comic-book depiction of an Asian. He squinted at her from behind coke-bottle bottom, black-rimmed glasses. His myopic eyes were almost comically slanted, the epicanthic folds stretched and exaggerated. He was horrendously buck-toothed, his upper front two teeth extending entirely over his bottom lip, and his ears stuck out from under jet-black hair like twin handles on a jug. His skin was a bright, chrome yellow.

I'd kill myself if I ever become a joker , she told herself. I wouldn't allow myself to be such a mockery of what I'd been.

He sighed. "Yes, I'm called Chop-Chop. And you're …?"

Hannah introduced herself and showed Tanaka her identification. "Father Squid gave me your name," she said as she took her tape recorder from her purse. "Do you mind?"

Tanaka shrugged, though he looked uneasily at the recorder as Hannah set it on a pile of old invoices. "Sit down," he said. Just move those files off the chair. … You know, I don't know anything about the fire. Just what was in the papers and on the tube. Why Father would send you to me..?" He shrugged thin shoulders.

"It wasn't exactly this fire that he thought you might know about," Hannah said, and with the words, she saw something move in Tanaka's face, a twitch of muscles around his mouth and a slow blink of both eyes. She softened her voice, tried to smile at him — there was something there, and she didn't want him to think he had to hide it. "Father … he said to tell you that you could trust me."

"How is he? I heard he got burned."

"He'll be fine. He's lucky — minor burns and some smoke inhalation. They'll release him from the hospital in a day or two."

Tanaka nodded. His skittish gaze moved away from her, as if he weren't comfortable looking at her. Which is about the way I feel about you , Hannah thought. "That's good. That's real good. I like the Father. I … I almost went to mass that night. Got stuck here instead; a problem with a shipment. I manage the place now. Have for a long time …" His voice seemed to run down. He looked at the pictures on the wall, at the file cabinet.

"Father Squid said I should ask about a movie," she said, and that brought Tanaka's head around as if she'd reached out and turned it back herself. The eyes blinked again, like an owl's.

" Jokertown ," he said, flatly. It wasn't a question, but Hannah nodded anyway. "I don't know why you should be interested in that. It was just a movie."

"Exactly what I said. But Quasiman insisted that I ask. He seems to think that the fire wasn't just a random hate crime." Hannah bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair. "Look, I think this is probably just a dead end. Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry to have interrupted your busy day. …" She started to reach for the tape recorder.

"They were really all wrong, you know," Tanaka said.

"I'm sorry?"

"About the movie. They were all wrong." Tanaka looked at her through the thick windows of his glasses. "I was there. I know the truth. Did you see it? Did you see the movie? …"