Dead Mans Hand

He drank his coffee and considered what to do with this good early start he'd made. He had his list, down to four names now: Wyrm, Quasiman, the Oddity, and Doug Morkle. It had to be one of them. So why didn't he believe it?

The problem was, none of his four finalists seemed real tied in with all this other crap that kept turning up, the assassins and eskimos and imposters, and the agile little homunculus that Jay had chased futilely through the Dime Museum.

He sat nursing his coffee until the bathwater was tepid, but all he came up with were more questions. It sure as hell looked like he was dealing with at least two different killers, the strongman who'd done Chrysalis and the chainsaw psycho who'd butchered Digger's neighbors just for the hell of it. Were they working together? That suggested a conspiracy.

Or maybe it was just one lunatic with lots of different powers, like the late, great Astronomer. Someone ought to go dig up the old mais grave and see if he was still in it. But it wasn't going to be Jay; he'd been there the night the Astronomer dropped by Aces High to have dessert and kill a few people, and he was perfectly willing to let someone else swing that spade.

Besides, if he started considering dead suspects, he'd wind up checking where Jetboy had been the night of the murder.

Chrysalis had hired George Kerby to go assassinate Leo Barnett. If Barnett had found out, maybe the killers were working for him. Except what ace in his right mind would work for Leo Barnett? Quasiman? Presuming he could even remember that Barnett had saved his life? Okay, so somehow Quasiman stayed smart long enough to do Chrysalis, so what about the chainsaw man and the body in the trash bag that Elmo had left for the neighbors last year, who was that, Friend o' Quasiman? Jay tried to picture Father Squid whipping a chainsaw out from under his cassock, but the thought just gave him a headache.

Digger Downs was the key. But Digger Downs was missing, maybe dead. It was a real big city out there, and a bigger country beyond it. He could be anywhere.

On the other hand, there was sure as hell one place he wasn't, and that was here in Jay's bathroom. He took one last swig of ice-cold coffee, grimaced, set the cup aside, and climbed out of the tub to towel himself dry.

9:00 A.M.

When Bre

He sat up and swung his feet off the bed, planting them on the threadbare carpeting of the cheap hotel room.

It didn't matter. He couldn't leave until he'd found Chrysalis's killer. He was clear of the murder, but now Elmo was the patsy. He couldn't trust the police to get it right. Of course, Ackroyd was also on the case, but Bre

He felt cool hands run gently over his shoulders and glanced backward. Je

"How's your back?" she asked him.

He shrugged experimentally, then grimaced. "Sore. But I can deal with it. How about you?"

"Sore," she said, "but trying to deal with it."

She moved away from him, lay back down on the bed. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Je

"You're right."

Je

Bre

"Then the voices we both heard could be, what? Mimics? Her ghost?"

"Could be…" Bre

"Then what's on for today?" Je

He looked down at her. "Her funeral is this afternoon. I thought we should attend."

Je

"Now?"

Je

11:00 A.M.

It was begi

His secretary stared at him with her mouth puckered in a round little O of surprise. Her name was Oral Amy and her mouth was always puckered in a round little O of surprise.

The manager of Boytoys had given her to Jay after he'd figured out which of the employees was putting the pin holes in the French ticklers, and he'd installed her at the front desk by his answering machine. She didn't take dictation, but at least she was blond.

"I've got a real bitch of a headache," he told Oral Amy. She looked at him with her face all wrinkled up in sympathy. Well, either sympathy or a slow leak.

All morning he'd been dialing the phone, asking for favors, and calling in old markers. All morning he'd been lying and shucking and posing as people he wasn't to convince reluctant voices on the other end of the line that they ought to tell him what he wanted to know.

The good news was, there was no one fitting Digger's description in the morgue or any of the city hospitals. The rest was bad.

Digger hadn't booked a flight on any airline Jay could find. He hadn't taken Amtrak or Greyhound either. He carried a MasterCard, two Visas, and a Discover, but the last charge on any of them was a Friday-night di

Of course, he might have bought a plane ticket under an assumed name, and paid cash. Or boarded the Metroliner to D.C. and bought a ticket from the conductor. Or escaped to the wilds of Jersey on a commuter bus out of Port Authority, exact change only. Or walked across the goddamn Brooklyn Bridge. There were eight million ways to leave the naked city, and some you just couldn't check.

There were eight million places to stay in the naked city, too. Jay called a half-random, half-cu

He did find Digger's aged mother in Oakland, who told him that she hadn't heard from Tommy since he sent the flowers on Mother's Day, but she was still real proud of her boy the journalist. She kept scrapbooks with every word Tommy had ever written, even the little articles he used to do for his high-school newspaper, and said Jay was welcome to look at them the next time he was in the Bay area. Jay thanked her very much and left his number in case she heard from Tommy. Mrs. Downs read it back to him very carefully and suggested he might phone Peregrine, seeing as how she was Tommy's girlfriend and all. Jay mentioned that this was news to him. Mrs. Downs said it was a secret, on account of Peregrine's image.