George Martin - Lowball

The snake put his hands up as ordered. “I’m on your side, man! I was on patrol, and I saw that little fucker peeping in your window!” He pointed right at Gary.

The man turned his attention to Gary, followed by his gun. Their eyes met over the gunsight. But then both of them were distracted by a lightning-fast motion.

Taking advantage of Mr. Trio’s momentary diversion, the snake-man launched himself into the air. A moment later his whole coiled body landed with a meaty thud on the roof.

“Gotcha!” he cried, lunging inescapably at Gary.

Gary shrieked and vanished.

Back in his apartment, cartoonist Eddie Carmichael clutched his misshapen head and moaned. He preferred to bring his creations back to the apartment before erasing them; making them disappear where they were gave him a horrendous pain behind his eyes. But it was better than the alternative. If Gary had been killed-and the descending snake-man would certainly have smashed him to bits-Eddie would never be able to manifest him again.

Shivering with pain and adrenaline, Eddie took a Percocet and a sleeping pill and dragged himself into bed with his clothes on. But, despite the drugs, he lay awake for a long time.

He’d tried to quit peeping so many times. It was wrong and sick and twisted and disgusting, and someday it might get him into real trouble, but no matter how hard he tried he always started doing it again.

It was the only good thing the wild card virus had ever done for him.

The next morning Eddie was awakened by the bell of his cheap-ass landline telephone. “Hello?” he bleated, once he managed to get the receiver to his ear the right way around. The headache was still there.

“Eddie Carmichael?” A male voice, young and hesitant. “The artist?”

“Yeah…”

“This is Detective Black at the Fifth Precinct. We need a sketch artist right away. Are you available?”

“Uh, yeah.” The response was automatic. As a freelance artist, he couldn’t afford to turn down work, and forensic art paid well as contract assignments went. He hauled himself upright. It was ten minutes after eight in the morning. “I can be there by nine.”

“Could you make it eight-thirty?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Eddie hung up the phone, then cursed with great sincerity as he hauled himself from the bed into his rolling desk chair, which he used to scoot himself to the bathroom.

Eddie’s chair was the single most expensive thing in the whole apartment. It had seventeen different points of adjustment, and over the years he’d tweaked them all until the chair fit his twisted, asymmetrical body perfectly. It was the only place on Earth he could be truly comfortable.

The rest of the apartment, all three hundred and twenty square feet of it, was little more than an extension of the chair. He could roll from one side of it to the other with a good hard kick, all of the work surfaces and most of the storage were reachable from a seated position, and even his child-sized bed was higher than normal so he could lever himself in and out of the chair with a minimum of effort.

And then, of course, there were the drawings.

Every single square inch of vertical surface-walls, doors, cabinets, even some of the windows-was covered with Eddie’s drawings in pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, and Sharpie. He added, subtracted, and rearranged them nearly every day, to reflect his latest work and current mood.

Not one of them had anything to do with the endless round of single-panel gags, greeting cards, advertisements, and other illustrations he did to pay the bills. Those lived only on the drawing board, and only long enough to satisfy the client. Once they’d been mailed off, he forgot them as quickly as possible.

The drawings on Eddie’s walls were all of his own cast of characters. Twitchy little Gary Glitch; slick and sleazy Mister Nice Guy; The Gulloon, a bowling-pin-shaped gentle giant; voluptuous LaVerne VaVoom; hyperactive Zip the Hamster; and many more cavorted across every surface. They were crude in every sense of the word, executed quickly with Eddie’s trademark shaky line and generally engaged in activities that would shock most people’s sensibilities.

Sometimes he told himself that the sick, exploitative, sexist situations his characters got into were okay because they were only ink on paper. Just drawings, not hurting anyone. Sometimes he even believed it, a little.

None of Eddie’s cast of characters had ever been or would ever be published. But in some ways they were all the family he had.

Eddie’s mother had been killed by the same wild card virus outbreak that left him a joker. His father had died of a stroke-or the strain of caring for a hideous, deformed child as a single parent-just a few years later. But thanks to his cast of characters, one of the teachers in the group home had spotted and nurtured his artistic talent. Eventually his work brought him enough money to move out of the group home and live independently.

But independence for a freelance artist was always a precarious thing, and he really needed this paycheck if he was going to keep the wolf from the door. So once he had taken care of business in the bathroom and swallowed another Percocet, he gathered his tools and materials, threw on some clothing-keenly aware of the stink of his unwashed body-and hauled himself down the two flights to the street.

With his hunched, diminutive stature, Eddie’s view of the heavy Canal Street pedestrian traffic was mostly butts and thighs. But he could still feel the pressure of eyes on the back of his neck, see the small children who pointed and gaped, hear the disparaging comments … he couldn’t fail to know just what his fellow New Yorkers thought of him. Even his fellow jokers. Did they think the virus had left him deaf as well as ugly, malformed, and in constant pain?

Yes, ugly, even by Jokertown standards. Though he’d been hearing that Joker Pride crap for his whole life, he couldn’t buy into the idea that “everyone is beautiful in their own way” applied to him. His head, one arm, more than half his torso, and both legs were hideous masses of deformed flesh, with lumpy pink skin like an old burn scar and tufts of black hair sprouting here and there. Even his bones had been warped and twisted by the virus into a parody of the normal human form.

And yes, despite his best efforts, he did have an odor. Thank you very much for noticing, ma’am. Was it his fault his warty, craggy, twisted body was so hard to keep clean? Bitch.

As if he needed a reminder of why he got all his groceries and other purchases delivered.

Grimly Eddie stumped onward. His right hand, the good one, gripped his four-footed cane, bearing more than half his weight on every other step. Every few minutes he paused to rest.

Finally he reached the station house, Fort Freak itself. Three labored steps up to the door, which opened even before he’d begun to fumble with his portfolio and cane. A massive pair of legs stepped aside, and a deep voice rumbled, “Morning, Eddie.”

Eddie tipped back his hat and looked up at a furry face, the smile inviting despite its fearsome fangs. “Morning, Beastie.” Beastie Bester was one of the few people in the precinct who didn’t seem to mind Eddie’s appearance.

“Haven’t seen you in a while. What brings you in today?”

“Dunno. I got a call from a Detective Black.” He shrugged. “It’s work.”

After signing in with the winged desk sergeant-and enduring the indignity of standing on a box to reach the desk-Eddie clipped a temporary badge to his lapel and waited. Officers in blue polyester bustled in and out, their belts crowded with guns and handcuffs and other cop equipment.

Daniel in the lions’ den, Eddie thought, and loosened his tie.