Wildcards

The black cat she had seen before came up to Bagabond and began rubbing against her. She stroked its head and murmured incomprehensible sounds.

"Please talk to me. I want to get you food. I want to get you a good place to live." Rosemary held out her hand. The ring on her third finger glittered in the sun.

The woman on the ground drew her legs up against herself and clutched the plastic trashbag filled with her treasures. She began rocking back and forth and crooning. The black cat turned to look at Rosemary and she flinched against its glare.

"I'll talk to you later. I'll come back and see you." Rosemary rose stiffly. Her face tightened, and for just a moment, she felt like crying to ease the frustration. She only wanted to help. Someone. Anyone. To feel good about something.

She walked away from Bagabond and back toward Central Park West and the subway entrance. Her father's war council had frightened her. She had never liked what he did, and her entire life seemed to be a search for escape and redemption, atonement. The sins of the fathers. Rosemary wanted peace, but whenever she thought she could get it, it retreated beyond her grasp. C.C. had been a last chance. So was each one of the derelicts she failed to help. There was a key to reaching Bagabond. There had to be.

Rosemary descended the steps, waited, dropped in her token, walked down the second stairway onto the platform in a daze. The blast of cool air entered the station followed by the AA train. Rosemary barely glanced up from the floor and moved stiffly toward the nearest car.

As she was about to step onto the train, her eyes widened and she stepped back into the crowd, drawing glares and a few curses for breaking the flow. That last car. It had more of C. C.'s lyrics painted on the side in a shade of red that reminded her of blood. C.C. had always been something of a manicdepressive and Rosemary had always known her mood by what she wrote or sang. The C. C. who had written these words was depressed beyond even Rosemary's experience:

Blood and bones Take me home

People there I owe People there go

Down with me to Hell Down with me to Hell

Approaching the car, Rosemary saw words she knew had not been there seconds ago.

Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie Leave this place Forget my face Don't cry Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie

"I'm going to find you, C. C. I'm going to save you." Rosemary again fought to get into the car she now realized was covered with fragments of C.C.'s songs, some that she recognized, others that had to be new. Once more the car rejected her. Breathing hard, eyes wide, Rosemary watched the car move into the tu

"Holy Mary, Mother of God…" Rosemary absurdly remembered the stories of saints from her childhood. For just a moment, she wondered if the world was ending, if the wars and the deaths, the jokers and the hate, truly prefigured the Apocalypse.

It was noon.

American B-52s were bombing Hanoi and Haiphong. Quang Tri was shaky, as the North Vietnamese were on the march. In Washington, D. C. , politicians exchanged increasingly frantic phone calls about a recent burglary. The question in some quarters was, is Donald Segretti an ace?

The midtown Manhattan rush was ferocious. At Grand Central Station, Rosemary Muldoon looked for raggedy shadows she could follow into the darkness of the under ground. A dozen blocks north, Jack Robicheaux plied his regular trade, clattering through the permanent darkness on his small electric cart, checking track integrity in tu

Noon. The war beneath Manhattan was starting.

"Let me quote to you from a speech given once by Don Carlo Gambione himself," said Frederico "the Butcher" Macellaio. He grimly surveyed the groups of capos and their soldiers gathered around him in the chamber. In the '30s, the huge room had been an underground repair facility for midtown transit. Before the Big War, it had been closed and sealed of when the IA. decided to consolidate all maintenance yards across the river. The Gambione Family had soon taken the space over for storage of guns and other contraband, freight transfer, and occasional burials.

The Butcher raised his voice and the words echoed. "'W'hat will make the difference for us in battle will be two things: discipline and loyalty."

Little Renaldo was standing off to one side with Frankie and Joey. "Not to mention automatic weapons and H.E.," he said, smirking.

Joey and Frankie exchanged glances. Frankie shrugged. Joey said, "God, guns, and glory."

Little Renaldo commented, "I'm bored. I wa

"

Joey said a little louder, so the Butcher could hear, "Hey, are we goin' to roust some rummies, or what? Who's fair game? Just the blacks? Jokers too?"

"We don't know who their allies are," said the Butcher. "We know they wouldn't act alone. There are traitors from among our own race helping them for money"

Little Renaldo's manic grin widened. "Free-fire zone," he said. "Hoo-boy." He tugged his boonie hat down snug. "Shit," said Joey, "you weren't even there."

Little Renaldo gave him a thumbs-up. "I saw that John Wane movie."

"That's the word from the Man, huh?" said Joey.

The Butcher's smile was thin and cold. "Anybody gives you problems, just waste 'em."

The groups began to move out, scouts, squads, and platoons. The men had their M-16s, pump scatterguns, a few M-60 machine guns, grenades and launchers, rockets, riot gas, sidearms, knives, and enough blocks of C-4 to handle any kind of heavy demolition.

"Hey, Joey," said Little Renaldo. "What you go

Joey slapped a magazine into the AK-47. This weapon wasn't from the Gambione armory. It was his own souvenir. He touched the polished wooden stock. "Maybe a 'gator."

"Huh?"

"Don't you read any of them rags that's been talking about the giant alligators down here?"

Little Renaldo looked at him doubtfully and shivered. "The jungle-jokers are one thing. I don't want to go up against no big lizards with teeth."

It was Joey's turn to grin.

"No such things, right?" said Little Renaldo. "You're just shittin' me, right?"

Joey shot him a jaunty thumbs-up.

Jack had lost all track of time. He knew it had been a long while since he'd shunted his track maintenance vehicle off the main line onto a spur. Something was wrong. He decided to check out some of the more obscure routes. It was as though a piece of ice pressed against a spot just north of his tailbone. He'd heard trains, but they had passed at a distance. The tu

Jack sang. He filled the darkness with zydeco, the bluesy Cajun-Black mixture he remembered from his childhood. He started with the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" and Clifton Chenier's "Ay-Tete-Fee," segued into a Jimmy Newman medley and Slim Harpo's "Rainin' in My Heart." He'd just pulled the switch and slid the car onto a spur he knew he hadn't checked in at least a year, when the world blew apart in a flash of red and yellow flame. He'd had time to sing one line of "L'Haricots sons pas sales" when the darkness fragmented, the pressure waves slammed against his ears, and the car and he took different, spi

All he really had time to say was, "Wha' de hail-" as he fetched up against the stone of the tu