"It'll be along shortly," Jay assured her. "Parts of him drift off to other dimensions from time to time, but they usually drift back before too long."
Hastet got to her feet with all the dignity she could muster, and started gathering up her underwear. "Next time, tell him to knock," she said as she padded off to the bathroom. A moment later, he heard the shower running.
Jay pulled on an undershirt and sat on the bed to wait for Quasiman's head to show up and explain. He wondered how the hunchback had managed to teleport himself here. Jay Ackroyd was a projecting teleport himself, but he could only pop things off to places he knew and could picture in his mind. So far as he could remember, Quasiman had never been up to his bedroom before. How did he even know where Jay lived? Hell, he barely knew where Quasiman lived. The hunchback's teleportation must work differently from his own. That was half the fun of the wild card, Jay reflected sourly; everybody got to make up his own rules.
Quasiman's head appeared suddenly and blinked. His eyes were glazed and a thin line of drool ran from one corner of his mouth. "Jay Ackroyd?" he said uncertainly.
"Real good." Jay stood up. "What can I do for you?"
"Father sent me to find you," Quasiman said. "To tell you." His voice trailed off into silence.
Jay nodded. So far so good. Father Squid was the joker pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. Quasiman worked for him, kind of a part-time handyman and part-time gargoyle. When he wasn't sweeping out the vestry he was crouched up on the steeple, staring off at nothing. "To tell me ..." Jay prompted.
"To tell you," Quasiman echoed, nodding.
"To tell me what?" Jay asked.
Quasiman frowned, his brow beetling with concentration. "Hannah," he said. "Hannah got away."
"Real good," Jay said. He didn't have to ask who Hannah was. Hannah Davis: the arson investigator who had exposed the Card Shark conspiracy. She'd taken her evidence to Gregg Hartmann, the former senator, and Hartmann had hired Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations to check out her allegations. They'd managed to confirm enough of it to give Jay a lot of sleepless nights. Then Hartmann got himself killed and stiffed them on the bill.
"The other one got away too," Quasiman said. "The yellow man with the legs. Hartmann."
"Hartmann is dead," Jay told him. Quasiman shook his head. Jay made it a point never to argue with a hunchback. "Does Father Squid need to see me about something?"
"They took him," Quasiman blurted. You could almost see the memory come flooding back into him. His eyes seemed brighter, his manner suddenly animated, even agitated. "They took them all." He vanished suddenly with a pop of inrushing air, the same noise Jay made when he teleported something with his finger, and reappeared just as suddenly across the room. "Mr. Dutton, Dr. Finn, Dr. Clara, Oddity, Troll, everyone who knew. They would have taken me too, but I carried him away and went home. Sometimes I forget but not this time. Only the church was empty. I waited and waited up on the steeple but no one came so finally I went to Father and he said to find Jay Ackroyd so I went to your place but you weren't there and the looking-at-you man said that you were home so I came here."
"The looking-at-you man?" Jay said.
"The stinking badges man," Quasiman said. "The play-it-sam man. You played it for her, you can play it for me."
"Humphrey Bogart," Jay said. He was astonished. Not that Bogie had told Quasiman to look for him at home, that part he'd figured out at once, but Quas knowing all those movie lines, that blew him away. He wondered who or what the hunchback had been before the wild card had changed him. "Who took Father Squid and the others?" he asked.
That was evidently a stumper. Quasiman groped for words, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Distantly, Jay heard the sound of the shower cut off.
"Was it the Card Sharks?" Jay asked.
"Card Sharks," Quas agreed.
"Or was it the police?"
"Police," Quas agreed.
Jay sighed. "Try to remember. Were they wearing uniforms? Did they tell the Father that he was under arrest? Did anyone show you a badge or a warrant?"
"We don't need no stinking badges," Quasiman said, smiling, his memory stuck on Humphrey Bogart. For a moment, Jay wished his junior partner was there, so he could give him a good slap.
"Were any of them aces?" Jay asked, groping.
"Aces," Quasiman agreed. He pointed an angry finger at Jay. "Don't call me Snotman!" he warned.
"Ah," Jay said. Snotman. Well, that was something, anyway. A place to start.
"Card Sharks, police, aces," Quasiman chanted. "Ring around a rosy, pocket full of posey, ashes, ashes, all fall down."
"Eenie meenie minie moe," Jay replied, "catch a hunchback by the toe. No offense, Quas, but the next time Father Squid wants to send me an urgent message, maybe he could consider Western Union."
Quasiman wasn't listening. The hunchback's left hand had disappeared. Quas stared curiously at the end of the arm where it had been just a moment ago. Then he looked up at Jay, his eyes wide and bright and curiously innocent. "Save us," he whispered urgently. "The Black Trump." Then he vanished.
When Hastet returned from the bathroom, wrapped in a terrycloth bathrobe with her hair up in a towel, Jay was pulling on his socks. "Your friend leave?" she asked.
Jay nodded. "Think of all the money he saves on doors," he said. "Where's the mate for this sock?"
"Why? You're not actually going to wear matching socks, are you? Is this some sort of disguise?"
"The whole Ilkazam harem falls madly in love with me and I have to marry the Henny Youngman of Takis," Jay said. He found the matching sock, pulled it on, and looked around for his shoes.
"Where are you going?" Hastet asked him.
"Down to the office," Jay told her. "I have a bone to pick with Humphrey Bogart. Don't wait up."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Ray turned to Poynter in sudden fury. He shook her, snapping her head back and forth like a tree branch in a hurricane.
"How can we help them?" he said between gritted teeth.
"St-st-st-stop," Poynter stuttered. Blood dripped from her mouth as she bit her tongue.
Ray somehow controlled himself. "How can we help them?" he repeated.
Poynter shook her head dazedly. She put her hand to her mouth and looked in stupefied fascination at the blood on it. "We can't," she said. "They're in the final stage. They won't last long."
"Is it the Black Trump?" Ray asked.
Poynter looked at him as if afraid to answer. He let some of his strength flow from his hands as he squeezed her arms again, not caring if he broke them. "IS IT?"
"Yes," Poynter admitted.
He dragged her to the glass cage that held the girl. She lay huddled in a miserable pile. She focused on Ray as he approached. There was no nope in her eyes, only pain and knowledge of imminent death.
Ray had never felt so helpless in all his life. There was nothing his speed or strength could do. He grabbed Poynter by the back of the neck and shoved her face against the glass wall.
"You did this, didn't you? I should break your fucking neck."
She was crying, but Ray didn't care. He felt his fingers tightening on Poynter's neck.
"Wa-wa-wait," she stuttered. She was crying, whether from pain or fear Ray didn't know, or care. "Don't. I can tell you - I can help - "
"Tell me what?" Ray asked.
"Rudo's journal. About the Black Trump - "
"Where?"
She pointed a trembling hand at the desk.
Ray let her go. She moaned and slipped down against the glass until she too was huddled on the floor, a mirror image of the dying girl on the other side of the wall.
"Stay put," Ray ordered as he went to the desk. An orderly stack of papers sat in the center of a dark green blotter. Some were memos, some were letters addressed to Dr. Rudo.