The kids were all jokers. Some, like the slag-faced hulking giant who stood behind the speaker, were severely marked. Others, like the speaker himself, whose only visible abnormality was a rather attractive pair of feathery antennae that sprouted where his eyebrows should have been, were only touched by what was still regarded as the taint of the wild card, even after all these years.
Fortunato looked at them tolerantly. They were his people. He could have been one of them, if he hadn’t been inhumanly lucky in the cosmic crapshoot. Their expressions, as they looked back at him, ranged from totally blank to utterly hostile.
“I’m just standing here,” Fortunato said, finally answering the spokesman’s question.
The spokesman snorted. “You on our corner, man.”
Fortunato’s eyebrows rose. This was the old game that had been played on the streets for generations. He himself had played it, before he’d gone on to bigger games.
“Your corner?” he asked.
“Yah,” the kid replied. “We’re the Jokka Bruddas, dig, and like I spoke, you taking up space on our corner. You owe us, man.”
“Owe you?” the anger in Fortunato’s gut flared at the gangbanger’s insouciance. “I owned this corner, this street, and all those around it before you were born, boy. You’d best believe that.”
There was no fear in the boy’s eyes. “Yeah? Who are you supposed to be, old man?”
“I’m Fortunato,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence as they all stared at him, then the kid started to laugh and all his followers joined in. “Fortunato!” He shook his head. “You ain’t nothing but a crazy old man. Fortunato, he dead, old man. Been dead many a year. Everybody knows.”
“Knows what?” Fortunato said through clenched teeth, his gut roiling as the anger threatened to explode all bonds.
“He died years ago, before I was born. He flew up into the sky and fought the Devil. They fought all night, throwing lightning and thunder at each other. My daddy told me. He saw it. Fortunato was strong, but the Devil, he stronger. Fortunato fell from the sky like a stone and burned all up and the Devil took his soul to Hell because he was a pimp and a whore-runner.”
“They weren’t whores,” Fortunato ground out, “they were geishas.”
The boy shrugged. “You Fortunato? Go ahead, hit me with a lightning bolt. Fly. They said you could even stop time. Go ahead, old man. Do it. You better have more’n your mouth because we’re going to cap your ass and take everything you have.”
Fortunato’s anger called on the power, but nothing responded. He had shut it away for too long. He had turned his back on it, and now when he needed it, it wouldn’t respond. And Fortunato knew, suddenly and desperately, that he really needed it. The giant whose face was a lava field of pitted sores grinned horrifically, and stepped forward. Fortunato tensed.
“Are you all right, my son?” a deep, concerned voice asked. Suddenly, all around them, was the smell of the sea.
They all turned to see a man in priest’s robes who was not as tall as Fortunato, and more than twice as wide. His skin was a shiny, glabrous gray. His round face had nictating membranes over his eyes instead of normal lids, and a fall of short, constantly twitching tentacles where his nose should have been. His hands, folded over his comfortable paunch, were large, with long attenuated fingers that twitched bonelessly. Vestigial suckers lined his palms. He smelled like the ocean on a pleasant summer day.
“Father Squid,” Fortunato said.
“My son,” the priest of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker, acknowledged with a bow and a smile, “or should I call you ‘my brother’?”
“Whatever you call me, Father, it’s good to see you.”
Though not a touchy-feely person, Fortunato, accepted the priest’s embrace gratefully. Held against his broad chest, the smell reminded Fortunato of boyhood summer days spent at the beach. They hugged for a long moment, then Fortunato backed away.
Father Squid looked at him critically. “You look tired, my son.”
“I’ve been on a long journey.”
Father Squid nodded. “I’m glad to be here to welcome you home.” He gestured benevolently at the bangers standing all around them. “I’m glad that some of my flock has already welcomed you.” There was shuffling of feet and almost inaudible murmurs. “But it might be best if you were to come down the street to my church, and rest for awhile. We can catch up on the happenings of the last fifteen years.”
That suddenly sounded like a good idea. Father Squid was a well-known, well-beloved figure about Jokertown. Or, Fortunato thought, at least he was the last time he knew anything about Jokertown. But something the joker priest said wasn’t right. Fortunato frowned as he glanced at the street sign on the corner.
“We’re across Jokertown from Our Lady of Perpetual Misery,” Fortunato said. For a moment he wondered if his mind was going. If he was starting to forget details of his previous life. “Aren’t we?”
Father Squid smiled behind his fall of nasal tentacles. “The old Lady of Perpetual Misery,” he explained, “burned down almost a decade ago. We moved our premises here after the fire to a desanctified Roman Catholic Church in an abandoned parish.” He leaned forward to speak in a low voice. The odor of the ocean wafted from his ample form “Frankly, the insurance money didn’t go as far as we thought it would, and the real estate in this part of Jokertown is cheaper.”
Fortunato glanced at the Jokka Bruddas still standing around, some shuffling their feet, some glaring, and nodded.
“Right,” Father Squid said, smiling again. “This way.” He paused for a moment and glanced at the youths, taking them all in with his kindly, but penetrating gaze. “I haven’t seen you boys at confession lately. Or, come to think about it, even Mass. I hope you’ll be there this Sunday.”
“Ah, Father,” said their spokesman.
Father Squid’s gaze turned somewhat less kindly. “Carlos.”
The joker hung his head. “Yes, Father.”
The priest looked at the giant with the terrible face. “Ricky, you make sure Carlos makes it to Mass, won’t you.”
“I will, Father,” the giant said in a curiously high, sweet voice, the words of an angel issuing from a Hellhound’s mouth.
“All right,” Father Squid said with a nod. “We’ll see you boys soon.”
Carlos mumbled something as they walked away. To Fortunato it sounded like a slurred threat, but he ignored their words and their unblinking glares, as he went off down the street with the amiable joker priest.
New York City: To St. Dympna’s
On the way down from the Tower, Cameo, said to Nighthawk, “I don’t think I like the sound of St. Dympna’s.” She paused momentarily. “Whatever it is.”
Nighthawk shook his head. “You shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a charity hospital for crazy folks. It’s been shut down for years, but the Church still holds the deed and Contarini uses it as his sort of unofficial headquarters. It’s where the obsequenti have their barracks and Blood his kennel.”
Cameo frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s an awful place,” Nighthawk agreed.
The elevator came to a stop and Nighthawk politely waited for her to exit, holding the door for her and then following her into the lobby with Usher and Magda still at her side. He paused for a moment to look around. Whenever he stood in the Waldorf-Astoria’s lobby, it made him feel as if seventy years had fallen off the age of the earth. And off him.