A woman at the street end of the alley. She stood there a minute, waving at Natya, until a toddler ran up beside her and took her hand. Both of them skipped toward Natya, who had come down the steps toward them. He recognized the woman. Minal, the prostitute who once worked for Twitch.
Friends, Marcus thought. Of course she has friends. That’s okay. Doesn’t change anything. I can tell them both what I did for Twitch. Maybe they’ll both …
Then a guy rounded the corner. He took in the three greeting one another for a moment, and then walked toward them, saying something that Marcus didn’t catch. Oh, shit … Marcus had seen this guy before too! In the precinct. A cop, detective or something. He wasn’t in uniform but he’d been there, talking on the phone and drinking coffee. He was black, young, and sort of goofy-looking. He had ears like Will Smith. The guy’s cap didn’t so much sit on his head as ride atop those ears. He also had a body kinda like Will Smith. He was no slouch, which Marcus couldn’t help noticing when Natya slipped her arms around his lean torso and kissed him.
Marcus was so stunned he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He just stood, silent, feeling light-headed. What the fuck just happened? Watching them walk away, Natya with her arm around Minal and the other hand gripped in the toddler’s, Marcus felt the truth slide home like a bullet loading. He was alone. He couldn’t count on anybody. He couldn’t dream his way into a better life. The sooner he stopped thinking he could, the better.
He stretched for the nearest fire escape, grabbed it, and pulled himself free of the ground. He let the flower fall from his grasp. It twirled down to land in the snow.
Forget her, he thought. Just be IBT. Be Infamous Black Tongue. Be a hero.
He went looking for an ass that deserved kicking. That, he knew he could find.
♣ ♦ ♠ ♥
Faith
Part 5.
DECEMBER, 2010
THE RED SANTA CLAUS suit, much worn over the years, still fit Father Squid, though barely. It was ragged and much patched, and worn shiny at the elbows and knees, but it still had Lizzie’s familiar, beloved scent. Its warm smoothness still felt like the caress of her fingers.
Father Squid waited in the wings, watching the action on stage as he did every year. He never tired of the pageant. This was his thirtieth. He’d only missed the one, back when he’d gone on the WHO tour around the world, with Chrysalis and Tachyon and Hartmann and good old Xavier Desmond. Could they really all be gone?
This one was as good as most. Old Dorian Wilde, fat and florid, sat in the front row, alternately nodding and clenching at his somewhat less thick head of hair. He updated the script every year, adding the topical reference or two, but the basics stayed the same. Yes, it had its own peculiar Jokertown sensibilities, a touch of sarcasm but never cynicism. Father Squid had seen to that. This was about peace and love, brotherhood and sharing. It was a story that had been told time and time again, and needed to be told time and time again to offer up some hope, however slim and transitory, to an audience who lived lives burdened by hopelessness.
When the end came and Baby Joker Jesus—played this year by the Ramirez twins bundled together in the same swaddling clothes, since thankfully there was currently a dearth of two-headed babies in Jokertown—Father Squid was ready to come forward as Santa and deliver presents to children in the audience.
He hoisted his sack over the shoulder, and stepped onto the stage.
“Ho ho ho,” he began … but stopped when Leo Storgman stepped forward, the owl mask that he had worn in his role as Melchior pulled up to expose his face. He looked grim.
“Leo,” said Father Squid. “What is it?”
“I know the truth,” Ramshead replied.
It was only a matter of time, the priest thought. Sin will out. “Will the truth change anything, Leo? Can the truth raise the dead?”
“No,” Storgman said, “but the guilty should be punished. It’s what I do.”
“It’s not what I do,” Father Squid said. “I’m in the forgiving business.”
“That morning at the Rathole,” said Leo, “the scene was horrific. Blood, gore, bodies everywhere. Yet you remained so … detached as you viewed it.”
Father Squid nodded. “I’d seen bodies before, many times. Some in much worse condition than those in the Rathole. And, as you may note, my face is not terribly expressive.”
“Yes, I suppose. Because of your experiences in Vietnam.”
“In part.”
“I checked around, looking into your past. It took some doing, because … well, no one knows your name, do they?”
“My name is Father Squid.”
“I mean your real name.”
“That is my real name.”
“Is it? Then who is Robert St. Cabrini?”
Father Squid closed his eyes, opened them again.
“There was a Robert St. Cabrini in the Joker Brigade. A joker foundling, originally from Salem, Massachusetts, brought up in the St. Cabrini orphanage. Eventually drafted into the army. Sent to ’Nam. Made sergeant four times. Busted down each time. Wounded in combat twice. When he wasn’t killing Viet Cong and winning medals, he spent half his time drunk and the other half in the stockade. Must have been some career. The records say he was called Sergeant Squidface. Want to see his photo?”
Father Squid shook his head.
“He went MIA. No record of him after that, although apparently someone matching his description joined the Twisted Fists. Joker terrorists. You know about them, of course?”
Too much, thought Father Squid. Forgive me, O my Lord. “That was another life, another man,” he said. “That was before I found God.”
“That was before you found Lizzie Wallace and knocked her up,” said Ramshead. “A bastard child would have destroyed the good Father Squid, so you whistled up Sergeant Squidface one last time, didn’t you? Deedle took the fall for that, and for thirty years you thought you were safe. Then, when it seemed as though someone was about to look into the Rathole again, you panicked and hired Joe Twitch to destroy the records. Only Joe got greedy, tried to blackmail you, so you had to pay Lu Long to silence him, and that blew up in your face when IBT saw the hit go down.”
Father Squid’s throat was dry. He did not answer.
“Robert St. Cabrini,” Leo Storgman intoned, “alias Father Squid, alias Squidface, I arrest you for the murder of Lizzie Wallace and four other persons at the Rathole diner on the night of December 16, 1978.”
The church had grown deathly quiet. Father Squid could feel the blood rush through his ears. For some reason, all he felt was a sudden, great relief.
DECEMBER, 1978
Father Squid sank down into his chair behind his rickety desk.
Deedle, he thought. Deedle did it. He killed Lizzie. He killed our child. He says he is innocent, but they all say that, don’t they?
If he was innocent, then someone else had done it. Perhaps someone who had been pushed into a bloody rage by Father Squid’s own actions, by his pride. That could not bear thinking about.
If he is innocent, he should prove it in a court of law. Father Squid rooted through the top drawer of his desk and came up with a card with a name and a telephone number on it. Deedle was guilty. He was lying. He needed to be back in police custody, to answer for his crimes.
The priest dialed the number. Someone picked it up after the first ring.
“Detective Pleasant,” Father Squid said, reading the name off the card. “I know the whereabouts of someone you may be looking for…”