Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

His words caused the grin to vanish from Hannah's face. She felt sick. Rudo's proximity raised the goose bumps on her flesh and brushed icy hands down her back.

Then Rudo straightened and smiled again: at her, at the desk clerk, at the security guard who had stopped halfway to them, at the people watching the confrontation from around the lobby. He began walking away with a casual stride.

"Rudo!"

The man stopped and turned. Alongside Rudo, Johnson glared back at her, scowling.

"It was a mistake, wasn't it?" she asked him. "The fire, I mean. It had to be. That's not the way you people Work. You just recruited the wrong person with Ramblur, someone who echoed your hatred and bigotry in the simplest, most direct way. Tell me. I deserve to know."

"We all make mistakes, Ms. Davis," Rudo answered softly. He regarded her with his cold, light eyes. "That one was rectified. As will be the others," he added.

With that, Rudo left the hotel, nodding politely to the doorman as he passed, the two guards in tow. The Sicilian opened the door of the limousine outside for him; Johnson watched the street carefully. Rudo paused, staring back into the lobby. He nodded to Hannah before getting into the car.

***

She found Quasiman by the kitchen window, staring out into the Jokertown dusk, his twisted, deformed body slumped against one of the cheap metal chairs. A streetlight flickered on, smearing dirty light over the streaked glass. The stuffed tiger sat on the kitchen table, wedged between a catsup bottle and the sugar bowl. Hannah picked up the toy and cuddled it to her chest.

"Quasiman?"

His face turned toward her. His eyes narrowed. "I don't know you," he said. "Am I supposed to know you?"

"I'm Hannah. You saved me again, not many hours ago. You'll remember soon. Just wait a few minutes…."

"I'm not sure," a voice spoke: Father Squid, behind her. Hannah looked at the priest quizzically. "Hannah, I've known Quasiman for many years. In that time, I have never — never — seen him hold onto reality this long or this coherently. I don't think we can understand the strain that was for him: trying to keep you in his head, trying to maintain coherency and some semblance of why any of this was so important. You saw him over the last several days — he was getting worse, losing more and more of what had happened and what you were doing. The poor man … It was a valiant effort, but it was also a battle he was doomed from the start to lose." Father Squid sighed, the tentacles over his mouth quivering. "He's been like this since he came back. I guess I've been expecting it. I don't expect his mental state to change — not soon, maybe not ever. I'll be surprised if he manages to come bash, to nus for that long again."

Quasiman had been listening, his head cocked as he stared from the priest to Hannah. For all he reacted, they might have been discussing someone else. "It's not fair," Hannah said.

"It's the way the wild card remade him," Father Squid answered.

Hannah shook her head. "Quasiman …" The joker looked at Hannah. "What's my name, Quasiman?" she asked again. "You can remember it. I know you can."

Quasiman's mouth opened. His brow furrowed. "I don't know you. I don't remember …"

"I just told you, a few minutes ago. Try."

Quasiman shut his eyes. Opened them again. "I can't … It's not there … Who are you? I want to remember." He looked at her desperately. His hands were fisted, beating uselessly on his thighs.

Hannah knelt down in front of him. She placed the stuffed tiger on his lap and took his hands in her own. She kissed them softly: one, then the other.

"I'm Hannah," she told him. "Your friend. And I'll remember for you."

"Who can you trust?" Marilyn had asked me.

"No one's going to believe you," Rudo had said.

Funny … I'd solved the case, after all. You'd have thought that I'd have felt some sense of satisfaction, of closure. I didn't. I felt soiled and dirty and still very scared. Maybe the way Marilyn had felt for years….

I convinced Father Squid that we had to leave his apartment and stay somewhere else that night. We were lucky — because that same night, someone broke in and trashed the place. If any of us had been there … well, you can figure that out as well as I can. I figured that each day we held onto our little treasure trove of tapes and notebooks was just one more day they had to find us. I knew we had to make our decision and act on it.

I had the evidence in my hands. Hard evidence, real evidence. Right there. With my tapes and the transcripts, with what Marilyn had given me, I had enough to make people take us seriously if — if — the right person brought it forward. The very fact that Rudo wanted it so much told me how valuable it could be, no matter what he claimed. But in one sense, he was right. Who to give this to? If we chose the wrong person, if this material landed in the wrong hands, it would all get buried. There might be a series of new deaths, more accidents and suicides, and everything we'd brought into the light would be lost again, maybe permanently this time.

Burned maybe. Cremated in another convenient fire. That'd be poetic justice, wouldn't it?

One thing all this has taught me is paranoia. For a long time, I couldn't think of anyone I felt certain had the power and the inclination to do something about this. Father Squid and I talked about it, endlessly. Quasiman … well, Father Squid was right. Even when we told him everything that had happened, he'd forget it all again an hour later. The Sharks had been willing to kill me in Vietnam, where Quasiman and I would have been "innocent bystanders" slain by an act of political terrorism. Here, they tried to be more subtle until it was obvious that we were going to keep digging. Now they'll use the sledgehammer approach, and none of us are big enough to dodge that. We can't go to the police or the FBI or the CIA — in one way or another all of them are compromised. We need to give this to someone with the same kind of clout the Sharks have. This is bigger stuff than any of us realized when we started. It needs someone bigger than me to handle it. I can't go any further than I have, not alone. Rudo's still out there, with Faneuil and Durand and Battle and Van Renssaeler and God knows who else….

Then I realized …

I'm not exactly a wild card historian, but you're one person who has always come down squarely in the joker's camp, even when it wasn't to your advantage to do so. You're one person who has always tried to bring some sanity to all this, to make peace. You've spoken out against the violence; you've been visibly shaken by it. I mean, my God, you lost a hand to the wild card and you're still fighting for the rights of those infected by the virus.

In the end, we had to trust someone. That's why I've spent so much time talking with you about this and giving you the whole story. I feel good about you. I don't think you have any evil in you at all.

So I'm handing all this to you. Please, look it over carefully … I know you'll see the same things I've seen. And then do something about it. Do what none of us have the connections and power to do.

Don't disappoint us, Senator Hartmann.