George Martin - Ace In The Hole

"Kids in the den?" Tony asked, taking a step toward the next room.

"Yes. Playing cards, I think. Would either of you like some coffee?" She looked at Tony and then at Spector.

Tony looked over at Spector, who shook his head. "No thanks, Shelly, we just had a big meal." Tony gave her a pat on the shoulder and went into the next room. Spector smiled weakly and followed.

They were sitting at a card table. The little girl, older by a few years, was pretty except for her arms. Up and down them were rows of what looked like rose thorns. The boy sat across from her, holding his cards in his prehensile feet. He had no arms, but his head was several times larger than normal. It was supported by a metal brace attached to the back of the wheelchair.

"Hi, Uncle Tony," they said together. Both seemed more interested in their cards.

"Hey, squirts." He sat down at the table with them. "I want you to meet a friend of mine. His name is Jim."

"Hi, kids," Spector said. He felt completely out of place and would have been more comfortable with a broom handle up his ass.

"I'm Tina," said the little girl, turning over a card. "Jeffrey." The boy didn't turn to look at him. It looked like it wouldn't be easy to do, anyway. He flipped over his card and laughed. His jack took her eight. He put both cards on the bottom of the deck. Jeffrey's stack was a bit bigger than Tina's.

"Playing war?" Spector asked. "Joker war," corrected Tina.

Tony looked up. "It's the same, except that jokers beat everything. And a black queen kills the other person's card." Tony smiled. Spector couldn't imagine why the fuck his friend was so happy.

Jeffrey took another trick. " I think he's got your number, Tina," Spector said.

Tina wrinkled her nose and gave him her best killing look. Spector took a step backward, pretending to be scared. Jeffrey didn't seem as miserable as he obviously should be. Spector wanted to kill him and save the kid a lifetime of hell, but that wasn't, as they say, in the cards.

"Mommy says we can watch a movie later," Tina said. She turned her cards over and let Jeffrey collect them. "The Manchurian Candidate is going to be on."

Tony sighed. "Politics, mind-control, and assassination. Not the kind of thing kids should be watching. I'll talk to Shelly and… "

"Don't do that Uncle Tony," Tina pleaded. She looked over at Spector. "Mister, don't let him do it. Mommy promised."

Spector shrugged. "Don't want to have to get rough with you, old friend."

Tony threw up his hands. "Democracy at work," he said, walking back toward the living room.

"Yay," said Tina.

"My queen kills your last ace." Jeffrey fanned the cards with his toes. " I win."

"Congratulations, kids," Spector said. "Sometimes that's what it takes. Just remember that."

After the crash, after he'd landed right in the middle of the piano and then driven through the floor to the function space on the lower level, the thing that surprised jack was that he started to float upward again through the hole he'd just made.

Hiram had made him lighter than air. Crap.

Before he could float out into space again, jack grabbed some of the twisted rebar that had been supporting the atrium floor. He hung upside down. Flashbulbs dazzled him. A TV floodlight drilled between his eyes. The pianist was lurching about like a drunk. From out of the burning light he could see Hiram peering at him out of his doughy face.

"There's an assassin loose!" he yelled. "Little guy in a leather jacket! He's a wild card!"

"Where?" Hiram goggled at him. "The senator's floor!"

Hiram turned dead-white. He spun and ran, arms and legs pumping. The crowd dissolved into pandemonium. "Hiram!" Jack yelled. "Worchester, goddamn it!"

He was still lighter-than-air. And he was the only one who knew what the assassin looked like, and how to stop him. The pianist danced before him in his white tuxedo. He pointed at Jack. "He tried to kill me! He threatened me earlier!"

"Shut the hell up," said jack.

The pianist turned white as his tux and faded away. Hiram's shot of antigravity diminished in a few minutes, and jack tried to run for an elevator. He was still very light and he bobbled like an astronaut on the moon. He kept jumping across the atrium without going near the elevators. Security people were in the process of barring all the doors, which wasn't going to do very much to stop someone who could walk through walls. Some stranger finally led jack to the elevator by the hand.

As jack shot upward, he tried not to think of the skinny hunchback sitting up on top, slicing the cables with buzz saw hands. The security was concentrating on the hallway leading to Hartmann's apartment and HQ. Billy Ray was prominent in his white suit, flexing his muscles in front of a battery of gray-suited Secret Service. Some of them were carrying their Uzis in plain sight.

Shaking pulverized concrete dust out of his ruined clothes, Jack walked up to Ray and gave him a description of the assassin, including the fact he could make himself insubstantial. Ray took his job seriously for once and didn't give Jack a single sneer. He passed on the information with his radio and asked Jack to step into another room for a debriefing. Jack asked if he could change first-his clothes were ribbons. Ray nodded.

Jack headed back to his room. As he stepped through the open door, he realized that he hadn't bothered to tell anyone that this was where the fight had taken place.

He headed for his bedroom and his foot hit something lying on the carpet. He looked down and saw part of Sara's shoulder bag. He bent down and shook it open. One-third of a laptop computer slid out, along with scraps of paper that fluttered to the floor.

Jack reached down and picked up the papers. There were several sheets stapled together and cut neatly off near the top, a press handout giving Leo Barnett's appearances for the days leading up to the campaign.

Another was the top of a yellow legal sheet written in scrawled blue ballpoint. "Secret Ace," it said, underlined several times.

Below were just doodles, a row of crosses, a tombstone. The next sheet was a photocopy on old-fashioned slick photocopy paper. It was obviously some official document.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, it said. DOD#864-558-2048(b)

The rest was sliced off.

Jack stared at it for a long moment.

The secret ace, he thought, might not be secret much longer.

Spector was relieved when it was time to leave. Everyone said their goodbyes, except Armand, who didn't look like he could say anything. Tony slipped Shelly an envelope as they stood in the doorway. Spector figured there was a check in it. Shelly waved goodbye and closed the door. Spector and Tony headed down the stairs toward the car.

"You see what they're like if you give them half a chance," Tony said. "Oh, son of a bitch." He was looking at the car. Someone had spray painted "BARNETT. FOR PRESIDENT!" in six-inch yellow letters on the Regal.

Spector didn't say anything, but figured that the Hartmann stickers on Tony's car had made it too much of a temptation for the jerks with the spray paint. "What do you bet it was those shitheads in the Chevy?"

"Good guess." The voice came from behind them. Spector and Tony spun around. There were seven of them, clad in sweat-stained T-shirts and denim jeans. The largest had on a brown leather flight jacket. "We don't much like being called shitheads, though. I think we need to teach you some manners." There were grunts of approval from the others.

Spector had seen and heard it all before, but this time it was different. He couldn't just kill these punks, or Tony would figure out he was an ace. Seven to two was lousy odds. They were going to take a beating.