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Jokertown: The Jokertown Clinic
Fortunato woke if not a new man, at least feeling like one. He didn’t know how long he had slept. It felt like days, but it couldn’t have been. He sat up and removed the drip line from inside his right elbow and stripped the other tubes and wires from his arms and chest. He swung his feet over the side of the hospital bed and put them on the linoleum floor. Like all hospital floors everywhere, no matter what time of the year, it was cold on the bare bottoms of his feet.
He was still sitting on the side of the bed, considering this koan-like factoid, when Dr. Finn came flying into the room at a gallop, followed by a pair of nurses wheeling in the heart starter.
They all came to a skidding halt, Fortunato watching curiously as Finn leaned against the metal railing at the foot of Fortunato’s bed, breathing heavily. The doctor didn’t look happy.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “you scared the crap out of us. Again. Why did you disconnect your heart monitor?”
“Oh.” Fortunato turned and looked at the machine hanging above the bed, which was showing a disconcerting flatline. “My apologies, doctor. I wasn’t thinking. About my own condition, anyway.”
Finn sighed. “Tachyon always told me that dealing with aces drove him nuts. Now I know why.” His gaze suddenly narrowed. “Wait a minute. Let me look at you.”
“I feel fine, doctor.”
“Yeah, and you shouldn’t. That’s why I want to look at you.” Finn clattered around the bedside and tilted Fortunato’s head so that he could see the right side of his face better. “Amazing. Not only is the swelling gone, but the bruising has disappeared as well.” He unwrapped the bandage around Fortunato’s forehead. “The cuts and abrasions have all healed.” He looked thoughtfully at Fortunato and prodded him in the abdomen with stiffened fingers. “Does this hurt?”
Fortunato shook his head. “No.”
“Well, it should. Your spleen was bruised.”
“Was, doctor,” Fortunato said. He stood and stretched. Everything felt fine. He rotated his shoulders experimentally. Even the knots of pain that had been in his shoulder blades for months had vanished. “It seems as if my powers have—”
He never finished the sentence. The window of his private room suddenly blew inward, showering Fortunato, Finn, and the joker nurses in a storm of sharp glass shards. One of the nurses was clipped on the back of the head by the blind’s valence and fell to the floor with the blinds draped over his unconscious body. Finn reared in sudden fear, nearly slipping on the tile floor despite the little booties he wore over his hooves.
Fortunato stood, cognizant of the glass shards that littered the floor like sharp-edged diamonds, and looked out the window. A smirking figure, floating in the sky outside, spoke. “You can run and hide, spawn of the Devil, but your evil cannot escape my righteous wrath.”
Fortunato grinned without humor, his lips peeling away from his gleaming white teeth. “You speak in clichés,” he said. “Whoever you are.” He stepped forward, elevating himself off the floor to avoid the scattered slivers of window glass. “Stupid ones, at that.”
“I am the Witness to the Revelation,” the Witness said. “My truth overshadows your lies, demon-bred.”
“Whatever.” Fortunato drifted towards the shattered window. “I’m betting you have something to do with my son’s kidnapping. I’m glad you tracked me down. We have some business to attend to.”
Finn, stooping over the unconscious nurse, looked up to see Fortunato, dressed in his white hospital gown, glide out of the clinic through the shattered window into the dusk. The ace waiting outside had an eager, welcoming expression bordering on the ecstatic.
Fortunato drifted out into the night, forty feet above the Jokertown street. The Witness glowed like an incandescent bulb, already attracting the attention of passers-by. A crowd formed on the street below, their faces turned up to the night. People pointed, eagerly waiting for whatever weirdness was about to happen.
It was just another summer evening in Jokertown.
Fortunato wondered if any one of them remembered the last time two men had faced each other over Manhattan in wild card combat. Not the strange stories that had become part of the fabric of Jokertown life, but the real facts concerning the confrontation between him and the Astronomer in the sky over the city.
He settled into the lotus position while the Witness looked on, sneering. It was a lot more comfortable sitting on air than it was on the hard floor of the meditation hall, even if his ass was hanging out of the back of his hospital gown. But that was all right. Fortunato wasn’t modest in regards to his body. He rested his forearms on his crossed legs and looked at his opponent across the street.
“Comfy?” the Witness asked.
“Yes,” Fortunato replied calmly.
“Then die, Hell-spawn,” the Witness said through clenched teeth. His eyes glowed green and he brought his hands down, parted them, then brought them up again in a circular motion, starting the gesture to release his spasm of destructive force.
Fortunato remembered the lesson he had learned from his battle with the Astronomer. When that combat had started he’d put up multiple layers of protective shielding which the Astronomer had burnt away with fireballs he’d pulled out of his crazed mind. When it had been time for his own offensive thrust, Fortunato had chanced all on one blow. He’d gathered nearly all the energy he possessed in a single pellet that he concentrated to a pinpoint behind his navel. When he’d released it, it had blown through the Astronomer’s body like a high-powered rifle slug, but it hadn’t killed him or even injured him. It had barely inconvenienced him.
He’d only defeated the Astronomer by becoming a void. By becoming a vacuum that accepted everything the Astronomer threw at him, which he’d let pass through like a meteor flashing harmlessly through the sky.
Now his sixteen years of Zen training enabled him to become that much more empty. That much more of a waiting target, expression composed, eyes closed, and utterly unhittable.
If the Witness was surprised at Fortunato’s passivity, he didn’t show it. He hurled a massive bolt of power at the indifferent ace. It struck Fortunato and passed through him without ruffling his white robe, and spattered on the stone wall of the Jokertown Clinic behind, punching in windows and dislodging casements from the first to the upper floor.
And sucked in by the awful vortex of power that he created, the Witness was pulled towards Fortunato like iron filings to a magnet. Fortunato opened his eyes right before they collided. He reached out and grabbed the Witness by the lapels of his cheap suit and said, “Fall.”
And they did.
They plummeted thirty-five feet, Fortunato atop the screaming Witness. The spectators on the street below saw them coming and scattered. The two aces hit the ground like sacks of cement and Fortunato felt the Witnesses’ body burst like a water balloon dropped from a three-story building
He stood and looked at the Witness’s wrecked and leaking body. The ace was either smiling or grimacing. It was all the same to Fortunato. The Witness managed to make a come closer gesture with his right hand, and Fortunato kneeled down and put his ear close to his foe’s bleeding mouth.
“There are two... Witnesses in Revelation,” the ace gasped, his chest laboring to bring air into his punctured lungs. “I have... a brother.”
Fortunato nodded serenely. It was not welcome news, but not totally unexpected. He knew that this affair was far from over. His astral form had lingered at the chaotic rescue at the country store long enough to know that the strange woman who called herself the Angel was, for whatever reason, taking the boy to Branson, Missouri. He was certain he could find them there easily enough. Just as he was sure there would be more minions of the Witness who would try to stop him. The only way to save the boy was to do what he’d done to the Astronomer’s conspiracy. Take off its head. It wasn’t a prospect that he relished, or even anticipated, but he was committed. There was no other way to save his son.
Fortunato stood looking down at the Witness, and watched him die. It didn’t take long. When he was sure that the Witness was no longer breathing, he looked up at the crowd that had assembled around them. All kinds of people had gathered in the mob. Young, old, Jokers, a few nats. White, Hispanic, Asian, and one old black man who wore a glove on his left hand, perhaps, Fortunato thought, hiding a joker deformity.
“Tell your children,” he said to them, “tell your family, your friends, your loved ones, and those evil ones you fear, that Fortunato is back from the dead.”
They all watched as, clad in his white robe, he ascended silently into the Heavens.
New York City: the Waldorf-Astoria
The Cardinal had had enough of St. Dympna’s, but neither could he force himself to enter the room of his Waldorf suite where the Cameo fiasco had occurred. Fortunately, the suite contained other rooms suitable for a war council, and Contarini had gathered Dagon and the Witness to hear Nighthawk’s report on the attack on the Jokertown Clinic.
Everyone had already heard a garbled account of events on the television, so they were prepared for the bad news that Nighthawk bought.
“And you could do nothing about it?” the Cardinal asked when he’d finished his report. Contarini used his iciest voice, which had reduced more than one bishop to helplessness over the years. Nighthawk, who had heard similar tones from the mouths of over-seers and slave owners, was used to it.
He shrugged. “The Witness chose to attack him thirty feet above the ground. I wasn’t in any position to help him. When they finally crashed to the sidewalk, the crowd was too thick to get through. By the time we I did, Fortunato had already ascended into the Heavens.”
The Cardinal made a bitter-lemon face at Nighthawk’s choice of words. “Why did he choose that tactic?” Contarini asked quietly, almost to himself.
Because he was vain and stupid, Nighthawk thought. He said aloud, “Because he craved glory, wanting it all for himself.”
Contarini fixed him with a killing stare. “We are not in this for self-glory.”
Nighthawk bowed his head, mainly to hide the smile that threatened to break out. “As you say, Cardinal,” he murmured.
Contarini continued to look as if he were sucking bitter lemons. “Well, no matter. We know where the Devil and his bitch is. We know that his powers have returned and that she is going nowhere for now. I’ll have them watched.” He steepled his fingers, tapping the tips together in rhythmic order. “We also know where their spawn is. Or at least where he’s going. For now he is out of our reach.”
Nighthawk turned, and gestured to Usher. The big man came forward carrying an old duffel bag.
“Earlier today I sent Usher upstate to look around,” Nighthawk said. “And he found a couple of interesting items.”
The Cardinal perked up, at least momentarily. “Such as?”
“Such as Blood, and his brother, skulking in the forest, afraid to come out. Fortunately hunger drove them into the open.”
“Where are they now?” Contarini asked in a voice that showed he was eager to mete out suitable punishment.
“Usher took them to St. Dympna’s, to await your pleasure.”
The Cardinal nodded.
“But before you punish them too severely,” Nighthawk said, interrupting Contarini before he could issue any foolish orders, “consider this.”
Usher passed over the old duffel bag and Nighthawk offered it to Contarini as if it contained jewels precious beyond number. The Cardinal sniffed dubiously.
“Yes, an old bag of clothes.”
Nighthawk nodded. “Clothes belonging to the one who calls herself The Angel.”
“Barnett’s whore?”
Nighthawk nodded again. The Allumbrados had been spying on Barnett and his organization for a long time. Sometimes Nighthawk thought that they knew more about what was happening in the Peaceable Kingdom than Barnett did.
The Cardinal smiled. Like most of the expressions that wormed their way across his patrician features, it was sinister.
“I begin to see the possibilities,” he said. “All we need is for her to stay in one place for awhile for Blood to track her down.”
Nighthawk nodded. “He’ll have a wide area to search. We know what roads she’ll probably take to Branson, but still, it will take some doing.”
“Yes.” Contarini thought for awhile. “But this time I’m taking no chances. Nighthawk, you and your team will await her at their final destination. Just in case they to elude my Allumbrados once again.” Contarini looked at Butcher Dagon and the Witness, who had the grace to look mildly abashed. “But that’s not going to happen this time, is it?”
Nighthawk watched Dagon and the Witness shake their heads vigorously, while Magda looked on stoically and Usher coughed to hide his smirk.
“And just to ensure our success,” the Cardinal said, “I’ll attend to this personally.”