Joey leaned forward.

“Okay,” he said. “So I’m hearing there’s something about the way they got offed? Something about aces?”

“Everybody’s buying up aces. Mafia, Shadow Fist. Everyone,” Jerzy said. He wasn’t so stupid, thank God, that he didn’t know to keep his voice down.

“Okay, but it’s not like the ones the Mafia hired are gonna queer a Mafia deal, right?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Jerzy said, waggling a bushy eyebrow. “Thing is, a couple of the guys that died? They shouldn’t have. It’s like they were hurt, but not so bad they woulda died. You see what I’m getting at?”

Joey scowled and shook his head. Talking to Jerzy was about as much fun as talking to Lapierre.

“People hiring aces?” Jerzy said, his hand moving in a little circular come-along motion. “Guys dead for no reason?”

“Hey Jerzy. How about you fucking tell me?”

The woman in the ski jacket glanced at them, scowling.

“Shouldn’t yell,” Jerzy said. “We’re in public.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. It’s the wrists thing. Pain makes me jumpy.”

“Demise,” Jerzy said and sighed. “Find whoever hired Demise, you’ll find the shit.”

“Demise,” Joey said, nodding. “Great. And, ah, what about the percidan?”

“I can hook you up next week. You got enough darvon to hold you ’til then?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What? What is this with the long face?”

“It’s just the darvon pills are all pink,” Joey confided. “They make me look like a faggot, you know?”

Randy McHaley lived in a basement apartment with six other jokers. Two of them were there with him when Demise and Phan Lo got there. They were happy, though, to give the three of them a little privacy.

The place looked like the worst of the 1960s left to rot for a couple decades. Beaded strands substituted for doors, old psychedelic posters of the Lizard King yellowed and cracked on the grimy wall. Sandalwood incense mixed with something close to wet dog. And Randy slumped on the low couch with his hands between his knees.

The wildcard hadn’t been kind to Randy. His greasy brown fedora rested on a forest of spikes like a hedgehog. His pale, fishy skin wept a thin mucous, soaking his clothes. Tiny blind eyes opened and closed along his neck and down behind his shirt, some staring, some rolling wildly. Demise could see the distaste in corners of Phan Lo ’s mouth and it made him want to draw the conversation out.

“I don’t know anything about it,” the sad joker said again, wagging his head.

“Okay,” Demise said. “Let me clear this up, fuckhead. A piece of shit like you can’t-cannot-set up a hundred thousand dollar horse deal in this town without us finding out. Okay? Where’s the meet?”

“I swear guys, you’ve got the wrong fuckup. I mean look at me,” the joker smiled desperately. “Look at the place I live. I’m not dealing with that kind of money.”

“You’re a junkie,” Demise said. “You and your buddies could blow that kind of money up your arms in a couple weeks.”

“I swear to Christ, you guys got it wrong. I’m really sorry. I wish I could help, but…”

“Could we just do this?” Phan asked.

Demise sighed and nodded. It had been fun while it lasted, but business being business…

Phan Lo stepped forward, drawing a pistol. The little joker squealed and pulled back, but Phan leaned in, pressing the barrel under Randy’s chin, forcing his head up. Demise stood, shot his cuffs, and leaned in close. When their eyes met, Randy was caught like a fish. Demise let the pain of his own death, the sick feeling of spiraling down into darkness, the visceral knowledge of dying flow into the joker for a second, two, three… and looked away.

Randy drew a long, grating breath like a diver who’s been under too long, then bent over and retched. Phan Lo danced back, disgusted. Demise sat down.

“The meet,” Demise said.

“Bryant Park. Noon tomorrow. She’s supposed to bring a sample. Please don’t kill me.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. She calls me.”

“You believe him?” Demise asked.

Phan Lo shrugged.

“The buyer’s a Brit. Looking to export. He’s gonna be wearing an Aerosmith t-shirt and reading the Wall Street Journal.”

“Probably won’t be two of those,” Phan said.

“Please,” the joker whined. “That’s all I know. I swear to God that’s all I know.”

“You know, Phan. I think that’s all he knows.”

Phan nodded and crossed his arms.

“You want to kill him, or you want me to?” Demise asked. Randy looked from one to the other, his jaw working silently, then curled up in a ball on the couch and started crying. Phan curled his lip and shook his head. Demise frowned and nodded toward the weeping joker. Phan shook his head again.

“If she’s not there tomorrow, we’ll be back,” Phan said, holstering his pistol. “You understand?”

Randy wailed wordlessly, his shoulders shaking. Demise stood and followed Phan out through the kicked-in front door and up the steps to the midnight-dark street.

“What the fuck was that?” Demise asked.

“It’s better for the mystique if some of them are alive and scared shitless,” Phan said.

“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Phan shrugged and walked to the car.

“You felt sorry for him, didn’t you?” Demise accused.

“Fuck you.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“No. Get in the car.”

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1987

The morning was warm for February, and the where the city didn’t stink of car fumes and urine, it smelled like the threat of snow.

He’d called Mazzuccheli with his information about the killer ace, and Mazzuchelli had come up with an address that fit with it. It was teamwork. For the first time since it all got fucked up, he was really working with the team.

He hated it.

For weeks, he’d been down. Even after the wounds in his arms were pretty much healed up, he hadn’t been able to focus or sleep through the night. He kept seeing his boys sprouting arrows, watching them die. And every day he couldn’t pull himself together, he felt the respect of the family dropping. No one said anything-not to his face. But he knew. And now Mazzucchelli was helping him out when what he really needed was to show that he could handle it without. He didn’t need a hand doing his work.

He stopped at the corner bakery for a pick-up breakfast before heading south toward Jokertown-the tastes of greasy, sweet pastry and bitter, hot coffee competing pleasantly, the chill of the morning pulling a little at the skin of his face. Joey pictured what it was going to be like.

He’d walk in to a restaurant, go over to Mazzuchelli’s table. He’d sit down. They’d talk a little, then Joey would pass over the satchel with the drugs and the money. And then, in a separate little bag, he’d have the right hands of all the fuckers he’d killed getting the stuff back. Mazzuchelli would grin and welcome him back. And Lapierre, the little fucker, would be somewhere in the background boasting about how he could have done just as good, only no one’s gonna believe him.

It was a pretty good daydream, and it got him to the flop. He dropped the nearly-empty coffee cup and the wax paper still dusted with powdered sugar into the trash and went down the steps to the basement apartment, flakes of rotten concrete scraping under his feet.

The door was open. Joey took the beretta out of its holster and went in. The place had all the marks of being left in a hurry-empty dressers, a half-eaten sandwich in the bathroom. The big stuff-the television, the old stereo-was still there, but anything portable was stripped and gone. The lights were all burning even though there was more then enough leaking through the windows to see by.

So it looked like Demise knew he’d been spotted. He and his Fist buddies had gotten scared and skipped. Joey smiled. It was nice having someone scared of him again. He put away the gun and took the rattling orange bottle out of his pocket and popped a darvon to celebrate.