“I can take you to him,” Des replied. “When?”
“Now,” Tach said. In an hour or two, the sleeping policeman would awaken and go straight to Bannister. And say what? That Des and a man in a chicken mask had been asking questions, that he’d been about to arrest them but suddenly he’d gotten very sleepy? Would he dare admit to that? If so, what would Bannister make of it? Enough to move Angelface? Enough to kill her? They could not chance it.
When they emerged from the dimness of Freakers, the crane had just lowered the second police car to the sidewalk. A cold wind was blowing, but behind his chicken feathers, Doctor Tachyon had begun to sweat.
Tom Tudbury woke to the dim, muffled sound of someone pounding on his shell.
He pushed aside the frayed blanket and bashed his head sitting up. “Ow, goddamn it,” he cursed, fumbling in the darkness until he found the map light. The pounding continued, a hollow boom boom boom against the armor, echoing. Tom felt a stab of panic. The police, he thought, they’ve found me, they’ve come to drag me out and haul me up on charges. His head hurt. It was cold and stuffy in here. He turned on the space heater, the fans, the cameras. His screens came to life.
Outside was a bright cold December day, the sunlight painting every grimy brick with stark clarity. Joey bad taken the train back to Bayonne, but Tom had remained; they were running out of time, he had no other choice. Des found him a safe place, an interior courtyard in the depths of Jokertown, surrounded by decaying five-story tenements, its cobblestones redolent with the smell of sewage, wholly hidden from the street. When he’d landed, just before dawn, lights had blinked on in a few of the dark windows, and faces had come to peer cautiously around the shades; wary, frightened, not-quite-human faces, briefly seen and gone as quickly, when they decided that the thing outside was none of their concern.
Yawning, Tom pulled himself into his seat and panned his cameras until he found the source of the commotion. Des was standing by an open cellar door, arms crossed, while Doctor Tachyon hammered on the shell with a length of broom handle.
Astonished, Tom flipped open his microphones. “YOU.”
Tachyon winced. “Please.”
He lowered the volume. “Sorry. You took me by surprise. I never expected to see you again. After last night, I mean. I didn’t hurt you, did I? I didn’t mean to, I just—”
“I understand,” Tachyon said. “But we’ve got no time for recriminations or apologies now.”
Des began to roll upward. Damn that vertical hold. “We know where they have her,” the joker said as his image flipped. “That is, if Doctor Tachyon can indeed read minds as advertised.”
“Where?” Tom said. Des continued to flip, flip, flip.
“A warehouse on the Hudson,” Tachyon replied. “Near the foot of a pier. I can’t tell you an address, but I saw it clearly in his thoughts. I’ll recognize it.”
“Great!” Tom enthused. He gave up on his efforts to adjust the vertical hold and whapped the screen. The picture steadied. “Then we’ve got them. Let’s go.” The look on Tachyon’s face took him aback. “You are coming, aren’t you?”
Tachyon swallowed. “Yes,” he said. He had a mask in his hand. He slipped it on.
That was a relief, Tom thought; for a second there, he’d thought he’d have to go it alone. “Climb on,” he said.
With a deep sigh of resignation, the alien scrambled on top of the shell, his boots scrabbling at the armor. Tom gripped his armrests tightly and pushed up. The shell rose as easily as a soap bubble. He felt elated. This was what he was meant to do, Tom thought; Jetboy must have felt like this.
Joey had installed a monster of a horn in the shell. Tom let it rip as they floated clear of the rooftops, startling a coop of pigeons, a few winos, and Tachyon with the distinctive blare of Here-I-come-to-save-the-daaaaaay.
“It might be wise to be a bit more subtle about this,” Tachyon said diplomatically.
Tom laughed. “I don’t believe it, I got a man from outer space who mostly dresses like Pinky Lee riding on my back, and he’s telling me I ought to be subtle.” He laughed again as the streets of Jokertown spread out all around them.
They made their final approach through a maze of waterfront alleys. The last was a dead end, terminating in a brick wall scrawled over with the names of gangs and young lovers. The Turtle rose above it, and they emerged in the loading area behind the warehouse. A man in a short leather jacket sat on the edge of the loading dock. He jumped to his feet when they hove into view. His jump took him a lot higher than he’d anticipated, about ten feet higher. He opened his mouth, but before he could shout, Tach had him; he went to sleep in midair. The Turtle stashed him atop a nearby roof.
Four wide loading bays opened onto the dock, all chained and padlocked, their corrugated metal doors marked with wide brown streaks of rust. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED said the lettering on the narrow door to the side.
Tach hopped down, landing easily on the balls of his feet, his nerves tingling. “I’ll go through,” he told the Turtle. “Give me a minute, and then follow.”
“A minute,” the speakers said. “You got it.”
Tach pulled off his boots, opened the door just a crack, and slid into the warehouse on purple-stockinged feet, summoning up all the stealth and fluid grace they’d once taught him on Takis. Inside, bales of shredded paper, bound tightly in thin wire, were stacked twenty and thirty feet high. Tachyon crept down a crooked aisle toward the sound of voices. A huge yellow forklift blocked his path. He dropped flat and squirmed underneath it, to peer around one massive tire.
He counted five altogether. Two of them were playing cards, sitting in folding chairs and using a stack of coverless paperbacks for a table. A grossly fat man was adjusting a gigantic paper-shredding machine against the far wall. The last two stood over a long table, bags of white powder piled in neat rows in front of them. The tall man in the flannel shirt was weighing something on a small set of scales. Next to him, supervising, was a slender balding man in an expensive raincoat. He had a cigarette in his hand, and his voice was smooth and soft. Tachyon couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. There was no sign of Angelface.
He dipped into the sewer that was Bannister’s mind, and saw her. Between the shredder and the baling machine. He couldn’t see it from under the forklift; the machinery blocked the line of sight, but she was there. A filthy mattress had been tossed on the concrete floor, and she lay atop it, her ankles swollen and raw where the handcuffs chafed against her skin.