"She sent a hired assassin to Atlanta," Jay said. "Damn," Digger said. "Damn it. Yeah, it figures. She knew the score, but I guess' she just couldn't stomach it no more. If we exposed him, we were dead meat, he'd warned us about that. She must of decided to kill him first."

"Maybe she just couldn't live with the idea of Leo Barnett as president," Jay suggested.

Digger looked at him oddly. "Barnett?" he said. "What does Barnett have to do with it?"

Jay just stared at him.

"Not Barnett," Digger said quietly. "Gregg Hartmann." "Hartmann?" Jay said, incredulous.

Digger nodded.

The office was hot, airless, but Jay felt cold fingers tracing a path up his spine. "Maybe you better start at the beginning," he said.

"Fadeout," Brennan said into the phone.

There was a short silence, then a voice that Brennan remembered quite well said, cautiously, "Speaking."

"How did you find me?" Brennan asked.

There was another silence, then Fadeout said, "Good to hear from you so soon, Cowboy. Or should I call you Yeoman?"

"Call me whatever you like. Just tell me how you tracked me down."

"A little bird told me you were at the church."

"Lazy Dragon?"

"Exactly. I had him covering the funeral just in case anything interesting happened. When he told me you were there, I thought I'd avail myself of your offer to discuss things, so I had him deliver my message."

"I'm glad you did," Brennan said. "I didn't think a Shadow Fist captain would want to talk to me."

Brennan had infiltrated the Shadow Fist Society to gather evidence to bring Kien to justice. His scheme probably would have worked, but he had been forced to blow his cover to save Tachyon's life when the Fists had taken over Tachyon's clinic.

"I'm not one to dwell in the past," Fadeout said expansively. "You caused me a few problems, but, as I said, I think we can help each other."

"Uh-huh. What would Kien say to all this?"

"Well…" Brennan could picture Fadeout's insincere smile. "He doesn't know every little thing that I do. We should talk in more detail. Not over the phone. Actually, we missed an opportunity to discuss things yesterday. That was you at Quinn's, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Sorry I didn't hang around, but I wasn't sure of the reception I'd get."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about me. I think it's very possible that we can be a big help to one another."

"I see." Evidently Fadeout was an ambitious man. He might make a helpful, if not totally trustworthy ally. Brennan checked his watch. He desperately needed a few hours' rest, then he had the will reading to attend in the evening. "I'll call you about midnight with a place where we can meet." There was a long pause as Fadeout thought it over. "All right," he finally said.

Brennan hung up, sighing tiredly. He leaned back on the sagging hotel bed and rubbed his eyes.

"Can we trust him?" Jennifer asked.

"Not too far. It sounds as if he wants to move up in the organization and he thinks I can help him. That gives us something of a basis for working together. He doesn't know everything the Fists do, but he's high enough in the organization to know about something as big as Chrysalis's murder."

Jennifer nodded. "He can give us a line on Wyrm. Bludgeon's been eliminated as a suspect, but there's still Quasiman and the Oddity.", "I have an idea how we can deal with Quasiman," Brennan said thoughtfully, "but the Oddity's still a problem."

"There's nothing to link him to Chrysalis, other than the fact I caught him in the Palace after the murder."

"Rummaging through her closet."

Brennan shook his head. "I can't see Chrysalis hiding anything important in such an obvious place." He shook his head in bafflement. "And were forgetting someone. Doug Morkle. Whoever he is."

Jennifer massaged the knotted muscles in Brennan's shoulders and neck. "It's not getting any clearer, is it?"

"No. And I have the feeling that if we don't catch the killer soon, he'll be long gone and out of the reach of any earthly justice."

"Hartmann's an ace," Digger began. "I knew it the minute I met him, at the press conference before that WHO tour took off."

"How?" Jay demanded.

Downs touched the side of his nose with a thick finger. "The smell," he said. "I got this thing, my own little ace in the hole. I can smell wild cards. Aces, jokers, latents, it don't matter, they all smell the same. Kind of spicy sweet. Nats don't have the scent. I'm never wrong. The nose knows, and it's gotten me some big stories, too. Anyway, when I got a whiff of Senator Gregg, man oh man, I figured I'd just hooked the mother of all bylines. A secret ace in the U.S. Senate, with one eye on the White House!"

"So I started asking some questions. Chrysalis got wind of it, and before long we were working together. We dug up a few interesting rumors, but nothing hard, nothing I could go to press with. Until Gimli dropped the whole story right into our hands."

"Gimli?" Jay said skeptically. "Not a real reliable source where Hartmann is concerned." The joker terrorist's hatred of Hartmann had been common knowledge.

"I know, I know. Just listen up, it all makes sense. This was last year, just a few weeks after the tour came home. Gimli meets secretly with Chrysalis. In Syria, when the Nur's sister slit his throat, all kinds of bullets were flying. One of them richocheted off the Golden Weenie and clipped Gregg in the shoulder. Went right through, a clean wound, but they had to strip off his jacket to see how serious it was. The jacket got left behind when we pulled out. Well, that was what Gimli brought to Chrysalis, that jacket, with a bullet tear in the shoulder just soaked with Hartmann's blood."

"Gimli wasn't anywhere near Syria," Jay pointed out. "He was in Berlin, conspiring to snatch Hartmann later in the trip. How the hell would he get hold of Hartmann's jacket?"

"From Misha," Downs explained. "After she gave her brother that second smile, she couldn't believe what she'd done. She got the jacket and had some blood tests run. They told her what I already knew. Senator Gregg's an ace. She came to the States incognito, with her evidence. She was working with Gimli."

Jay gave the three-inch-tall reporter a dubious look. "With Gimli?" he said. "We talking about the same Gimli now? Real name Tom Miller? A joker dwarf with a nasty disposition and a big mouth? I thought the Nur's people all hated jokers."

"Yeah, yeah, the abominations of Allah, don't ask me why they were working together. They were. They wanted revenge but they knew nobody would believe them. So Gimli gave the jacket to Chrysalis. He wanted her to check it out and then go public with it. She had the credibility they didn't, right?"

"I'm with you so far."

"Yeah, well, Gimli got croaked right after that. They found his skin in an alley and he wound up stuffed and mounted in the Dime Museum. Meanwhile, Chrysalis had some tests run on the, quiet, and they confirmed everything the little asshole had said. The blood type matched Gregg's, the jacket was his size, and the test showed the presence of the wild card in the blood. We had him dead."

"So why didn't you go public?" Jay asked.

Downs looked unhappy. He got up off the stapler, stuck his hands in his pants pockets, paced restlessly around the pizza, then glared up at Jay. "Okay, okay, we got too fucking smart for our own good. The thing that Gimli didn't realize was that Chrysalis had her own priorities. She didn't want to destroy Hartmann, she just liked the idea of maybe having a little leverage over our next president. And me, I got to thinking, too. I mean, I write the story, it's a big sensation, maybe I win a Pulitzer, but a year from now, who cares? Maybe there was a better way. Presidents need press secretaries, right? I could do that, get a little respect. I wouldn't have Tachyon pouring drinks over my head or irate boyfriends punching me in the mouth. I might even get a decent table at Aces High." He sighed. "You got to remember, we knew Hartmann was an ace, we even guessed he had some kind of hinky mind control, but that was it. So maybe he made Kahina slice her brother's throat from ear to ear that day in Syria, so what? Better his neck than mine, right? And the Nur was going to off all of us."