She nodded. “He pushed aside the gun just as Bannister squeezed the trigger. And you made the son of a bitch throw away the revolver before he could get off a second shot.”
“You got them,” Des said. “A couple of men escaped in the confusion, but the Turtle delivered three of them, including Bannister. Plus a suitcase packed with twenty pounds of pure heroin. And it turns out that warehouse is owned by the mafia.”
“The mafia?” Tachyon said.
“The mob,” Des explained. “Criminals, Doctor Tachyon.”
“One of the men captured in the warehouse has already turned state’s evidence,” Angelface said. “He’ll testify to everything—the bribes, the drug operation, the murders at the Funhouse.”
“Maybe we’ll even get some decent police in Jokertown,” Des added.
The feelings that rushed through Tachyon went far beyond relief. He wanted to thank them, wanted to cry for them, but neither the tears nor the words would come. He was weak and happy. “I didn’t fail,” he managed at last.
“No,” Angelface said. She looked at Des. “Would you wait outside?” When they were alone, she sat on the edge of the bed. “I want to show you something. Something I wish I’d shown you a long time ago.” She held it up in front of him. It was a gold locket. “Open it.”
It was hard to do with only one hand, but he managed. Inside was a small round photograph of an elderly woman in bed. Her limbs were skeletal and withered, sticks draped in mottled flesh, and her face was horribly twisted. “What’s wrong with her?” Tach asked, afraid of the answer. Another joker, he thought, another victim of his failures.
Angelface looked down at the twisted old woman, sighed, and closed the locket with a snap. “When she was four, in Little Italy, she was run over while playing in the street. A horse stepped on her face, and the wagon wheel crushed her spine. That was in, oh, 1886. She was completely paralyzed, but she lived. If you could call it living. That little girl spent the next sixty years in a bed, being fed, washed, and read to, with no company except the holy sisters. Sometimes all she wanted was to die. She dreamed about what it would be like to be beautiful, to be loved and desired, to be able to dance, to be able to feel things. Oh, how she wanted to feel things.” She smiled. “I should have said thank you long ago, Tacky, but it’s hard for me to show that picture to anyone. But I am grateful, and now I owe you doubly. You’ll never pay for a drink at the Funhouse.”
He stared at her. “I don’t want a drink,” he said. “No more. That’s done.” And it was, he knew; if she could live with her pain, what excuse could he possibly have to waste his life and talents? “Angelface,” he said suddenly, “I can make you something better than heroin. I was … I am a biochemist, there are drugs on Takis, I can synthesize them, painkillers, nerve blocks. If you’ll let me run some tests on you, maybe I can tailor something to your metabolism. I’ll need a lab, of course. Setting things up will be expensive, but the drug could be made for pennies.”
“I’ll have some money,” she said. “I’m selling the Funhouse to Des. But what you’re talking about is illegal.”
“To hell with their stupid laws,” Tach blazed. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” Then words came tumbling out one after the other, a torrent: plans, dreams, hopes, all of the things he’d lost or drowned in cognac and Sterno, and Angelface was looking at him, astonished, smiling, and when the drugs they had given him finally began to wear off, and his arm began to throb again, Doctor Tachyon remembered the old disciplines and sent the pain away, and somehow it seemed as though part of his guilt and his grief went with it, and he was whole again, and alive.
The headline said TURTLE, TACHYON SMASH HEROIN RING. Tom was gluing the article into the scrapbook when Joey returned with the beers. “They left out the Great and Powerful part,” Joey observed, setting down a bottle by Tom’s elbow.
“At least I got first billing,” Tom said. He wiped thick white paste off his fingers with a napkin, and shoved the scrapbook aside. Underneath were some crude drawings he’d made of the shell. “Now,” he said, “where the fuck are we going to put the record player, huh?”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“The Rock in the Park” ? 2010 Peter S. Beagle. First publication:Mirror Kingdom: The Best of Peter Beagle (Subterranean Press).
“Cryptic Coloration” ? 2007 Elizabeth Bear. First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2007.
“The Horrid Glory of Its Wings” ? 2010 Elizabeth Bear. First publication: Tor.com, 8 December 2009.
“The Land of Heart’s Desire” ? 2010 Holly Black. First publication:The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (Big Mouth House).
“Blood Yesterday, Blood Tomorrow” ? 2011 Richard Bowes. First publication: Blood and Other Cravings, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tor).
“A Huntsman Passing By” ? 1999 Richard Bowes. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1999.
“Caisson” ? 2015 Karl Bunker. First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 2015.
“The Tallest Doll in New York City” ? 2014 Maria Dahvana Headley. First publication: Tor.com, 14 February 2014.
“Painted Birds and Shivered Bones” ? 2013 Kat Howard. First publication: Subterranean, Spring 2013.
“The City Born Great” ? 2016 N. K. Jemisin. First publication: Tor.com, 28 September 2016.
“Le Peau Verte” ? 2005 Caitlín R. Kiernan. First publication: To Charles Fort, With Love (Subterranean Press).
“Shell Games” ? 1987 George R. R. Martin. First publication: Wild Cards, ed. George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra).
“Red as Snow” ? 2013 Seanan McGuire. First publication: Hex in the City, ed. Kerrie L. Hughes (Fiction River/WMG Publishing).
“Priced to Sell” ? 2011 Temeraire LLC. First publication: Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow (St. Martin’s Griffin).
“Salsa Nocturna” ? 2010 Daniel José Older. First publication: Strange Horizons, 20 December 2010.
“Weston Walks” ? 2011 Kit Reed. First publication: Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow (St. Martin’s Griffin).
“Grand Central Park” ? 2002 Delia Sherman. First publication: The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest, eds. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (Viking).
“How the Pooka Came to New York City” ? 2011 Delia Sherman. First publication: Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, ed. Ellen Datlow (St. Martin’s Griffin).
“Pork Pie Hat” ? 1994 Peter Straub. First publication: Pork Pie Hat (Orion).
ABOUT THE AUTHORS