"This is my wild card. It makes me a joker-except the condition is spreading upward by degrees, and when it reaches my torso, it will kill me. So I suppose it also qualifies as a Black Queen, albeit slow"
"It's disgusting. Do you intend to make mockery of this court?"
"I intend to display only what exists, your honor. Be it the physical disfigurement of a joker or the emotional and mental disfigurement of bigots who would condemn people for having drawn a wild card."
"I am tempted to find you in contempt."
"You can't make it stick," he said affably. "Jokers may not be enjoined from public display of their traits, unless these conflict with indecent-exposure laws. That's state and federal law; would you like citations?"
Her cheeks pinched her nose. "No. I know the law" He turned to Kimberly, who sat in the box as if she'd just been carved from a block of ice.
"Mrs. Gooding, you've been to court before to get custody of Sprout. What happened the first time?" Anger flared in her eyes. He let himself show a slight smile. Good Elizabeth Taylor. Before her John Belushi days, of course.
"You know perfectly well what happened," she said crisply.
"Please tell the court anyway." He let her see him glance toward the press-packed courtroom. He and Mark had awakened to headlines screaming TRIPS CUSTODY CASE LAWYER EQUATES ACES, DRUG LORDS and ACE POWERS KILL, ATTORNEY SAYS. He wanted her and Latham to know he intended to share the joy.
There was also an article that said President Bush, after specifically pledging not to do so during his campaign, was considering calling for a revival of the old Ace Registration Acts. Didn't have anything to do with this, of course. Just another sign of the times.
She folded her hands before her. "I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time. There was our daughter's condition, and marriage to Mark was not precisely easy on me."
Touche, he thought, not that it'll do you any good. "So what happened?"
"I broke down on the stand."
"Went to pieces is more like it, wouldn't you say?" Her mouth tightened to a razor cut. "I was ill at the time. I'm not ashamed of that, why should I be? I've had treatment."
"Indeed. And how else have circumstances changed from that time?"
"Well-" She glanced at Mark, who as usual was gazing at her like a blond basset pup. "My life has become much more stable. I've found a career, and a marvelous husband."
"So you would say that you can offer a far more stable home environment to Sprout than you could before?" She looked at him, surprised and wary. "Why, yes." He expected Latham to object right then, on GPs, just to break the rhythm of questioning even or maybe especially if he didn't know where it was headed. You aren't infallible after all, are you, motherfucker?
"So you are saying that now you are a suitable parent because you're richer? What you're saying, then, is that rich people make better parents than poor ones?"
That pulled Latham's string. He actually jumped to his feet and raised his voice when he objected. Conower was pounding her gavel to restore order. She was going to sustain, no doubt about it. But he'd seen the flicker in her eyes. He'd gotten the point home. Punched her liberal-guilt button with his customary sledgehammer subtlety.
Christ, I hate myself sometimes.
After lunch break Pretorius asked, "Have you ever used illegal drugs, Ms. Gooding."
"Yes." She was forthright, meeting his eyes, not trying to evade an allegation she knew he could prove. "A long, long time ago. It was in the wind." A half smile. "We weren't as wise back then."
Nicely done. "And did you ever try LSD-25?" A pause, then, "Yes."
"Did you use it frequently?"
"That depends on your definition."
"I'll trust your judgment, Ms. Gooding."
She dropped her eyes. "It was the sixties. It was the thing to do. We were experimenting, trying to liberate our consciousness as well as our bodies."
"And did you ever stop to consider the genetic damage such experimentation might be doing?" He let it ring: "Did you not consider the welfare of your future children, Ms. Gooding?"
The courtroom blew up again.
After Conower called recess Mark was waiting for Pretorius, kind of hopping up and down without leaving his horrible chair, ergonomically designed to conform perfectly to the mass man but to fit no individual. He looked as if his ears were made of iron and had been stuck in a microwave.
"What was all that bullshit about?" he hissed at Pretorius. "Acid isn't a proven teratogen. Not like, like alcohol."
"Alcohol isn't the issue. They haven't gotten around to reprohibiting it yet, at least not in time for the morning editions. Latham wants to make an issue of drugs. So we'll give him drugs good and hard."
For a moment Mark could only sputter in outrage. "Wuh-what about the truth?" he finally managed to get out.
"Truth." Pretorius laughed, a low, sour sound. "You're in a court of law, son. Truth is not the issue here."
He sighed and sat. "Never believe that the days of trial by combat are over. Trials are still duels. It's just that the champions wised up and rewrote the rules. Now we fight with writs and precedents instead of maces, and instead of risking our own lives, all we risk is our clients' money. Or lives or freedom."
He rested both hands on the gargoyle-head knob of his cane. You don't like what I'm doing. Son, I don't either. But I take my role as your champion seriously. If I have to wallow in shit to win your case for you, that's what I do.
"These are witch-hunt times. You want to challenge that essential fact; hell, so do I. But if that's all I do, you lose your daughter. That's why they call it the system, Mark. Because like it or not, it's the way things work. Defy it too openly, it grinds you up and spits you out."
Mark and Kimberly had a date for that night, Friday. She didn't keep it. He wasn't surprised. He didn't even blame her. He felt dirtied by the way Pretorius had treated her, ashamed.
What was worst in his own mind was that he hadn't stopped him.
Saturday the guilty depression got to be too much. Mark closed the Wellness Center early. There was something he had to do. A matter of voices in his head.
The small man stood with one red Adida on the roof parapet, looking at the stop-and-go Third World traffic of jokertown a dozen stories below. He wore a red jogging suit over an orange T-shirt. His face was narrow, foxlike, with a sharp prominent nose and a sardonic bend to the eyebrows. Russet hair blew like flames in the stinking breeze.
He held a hand out before him. A jet of flame spurted from the forefinger tip. It became a ball, jumped from one finger to the next. He rolled the hand palm up. The flame swelled to baseball size, settled in the palm. For a moment it burned there, pallid in the sunlight, while he stared at it, as if fascinated. Then with a roar it shot into the high haze on a gusher of fire that seemed to spring from his palm.
He watched the flame dissipate. Then he drew a deep breath, let it sigh out through a lopsided grin.
"About fucking time," he said, and stepped into space. He let himself fall about fifteen feet, far enough to see a startled face flash by in a window. Then he straightened his body and put his arms out before him like a swimmer in a racing dive and took off flying. No point freaking the citizenry too much. The poor schmucks in J-town had enough on their plates already.
He flew north, toward the park, thinking Mark's really. put his foot in it this time. At least the poor fool hadn't quite had the nuts to make a clean break with the past. Didn't have a cold enough core to pour out his remaining vials of powder and see his other selves swirl away down the drain.
Thank God. It was chafing enough, the half-life he and the others led, like spectators at the back of an old and cavernous movie house where the film kept breaking.
He hated that he only existed on sufferance, only knew his own body, his own flesh, the feel of flight and the wind in his hair, in sixty-minute increments. For a man as full of life as he, that was hell.