Jack of Spades Read online

  JACK OF SPADES

  ALSO BY JAMES HANKINS

  Brothers and Bones

  Drawn

  JACK OF SPADES

  James Hankins

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © James Hankins, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  For information and inquiries, contact Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, One Union Square West, Suite 904, New York, NY, 10003, or e-mail Michael Bourret at [email protected].

  Author’s website: jameshankinsbooks.com

  Cover design by Asha Hossain

  ISBN 978-0-9883775-7-8

  This book is for my parents, Mary and Frederick Hankins, who taught me the difference between right and wrong. Any errors I have made in my life choosing between the two have been my own fault and not the fault of their patient efforts. I love you, Mom, and I miss you every day, Dad.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  JACK OF SPADES

  ONE

  Peter Lisbon woke to the sound of a voice. It was a strange voice. Unnatural. The strange voice spoke again. “Wakey, wakey, Peter.”

  There’s something really wrong with that voice, Lisbon thought. It was the only thought that came to him. He was having trouble forming others. His mind was…foggy.

  “Open your eyes now, Peter,” the voice said. “You have to wake up now. You’ve got some thinking to do. A difficult decision to make.”

  What’s wrong with that voice? It was high pitched and nasal, slightly tremulous and…mechanical or robotic or…something. It was just very, very wrong and it did not belong in his bedroom.

  Lisbon opened his eyes and realized he wasn’t in his bed, where he should have been. He wasn’t even lying down. He was sitting in a chair. He lifted his head, which weighed far more than it should have, and blinked a sleep haze from his eyes. Though the lights in the room were off, he could see that he was still in his bedroom, sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He couldn’t see whoever had spoken.

  “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Peter,” the voice said in its weird vibrato. It sounded like a cross between a robot and one of the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. “But I don’t have the time to answer them for you. In the interest of moving things forward, though, I’ll bring you up to speed. I’ll start by telling you that you are bound to that chair by duct tape. Strong stuff, wound several times. You can’t free yourself.”

  Jesus, Lisbon realized as he tried to move, it was true. A thick band of silver duct tape ran around his chest. His arms were securely taped to the arms of the chair, his legs to its legs.

  Holy shit, he was taped to a chair.

  He was completely helpless.

  And that voice. It was so close to Lisbon, right behind him in the dark room.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering how you ended up in that chair,” it said, its high-pitched tremolo sounding both terribly strange and strangely familiar. How was that possible? How could a voice like this be familiar to him? “Well, I’ll tell you how you got there,” the voice said. “You were sleeping like an angel in your bed when I held a rag soaked with chloroform to your nose, and when you lost consciousness, I sat you in that chair and taped you there. And now here we are.”

  Lisbon had a flash of memory, memory of something soft held hard against his nose, a sickly sweet smell, then nothing.

  “I’ve left the lights off for your sake, Peter. I thought it would be easier for you if we worked our way into this gradually.”

  Wan moonlight floated lazily through the windows, barely shedding light on the bedroom’s landscape, doing nothing to illuminate the shadowy figure now stepping right in front of Lisbon. The man was thickly built and his head, which Lisbon saw only in silhouette, was…dear God, it was shaped so strangely. Too big. Too wide at the cheeks. And there, where the eyes would be, did he see a pale-green shine?

  Lisbon tried to speak, to ask what the man wanted—if the figure was a man at all—but discovered that his mouth was taped shut.

  Peter Lisbon was not a fearful man. In the past six months alone he had made his first solo parachute jump and, perhaps unwisely, fended off an armed carjacker. He didn’t frighten easily. So the cold, clammy sweat now dampening his skin, the chilly fingers teasing their way up his spine, were new sensations to him. But who wouldn’t be frightened by this? A figure who appeared in the dark of his room, a stranger with a strange head and a strange voice, a voice so unnatural, so terrible, so—

  So damn familiar? How could that be? Surely he’d remember a voice as alien as—

  That was it. He remembered.

  “So I’ll turn on the light now, if you’re ready, Peter.”

  He knew where he’d heard the voice before. But this was crazy. That voice didn’t belong here in his room. It didn’t belong in the real world.

  The man stepped toward the far side of the room, his movements accompanied by a small metallic sound, very faint, like two knives rubbing gently together. He reached out and flicked the switch on the wall. Light filled the room and Lisbon saw the face of his captor, and the strange voice began to make sense, though nothing about this really made any sense at all.

  Standing in front of him was a figure dressed all in black, from his black running suit to his black sneakers. Lisbon’s eyes barely registered this, though. What grabbed his attention was the man’s head. It was completely bald. It was also impossibly yellow in color, almost neon, in fact. The cheeks of the face were stretched wide, far too wide, in a huge, cheerful, gap-toothed grin. Above the mouth was a cute little button nose. The eyes were a brilliant, sparkling green, the irises filled with reflective emerald specks. From the otherwise smooth forehead protruded two stubby growths with little knobs at the end. Antennae, of course. There were no ears. The face, as strange as it was, was instantly recognizable. It belonged to Galaxo, Starboy Avenger! The exclamation point wasn’t in Lisbon’s head; it was in all the advertising for the popular cartoon alien.

  Lisbon recognized Galaxo because, well, everyone with a child under the age of ten knew him. In fact, Lisbon doubted there was a person in the country who didn’t know Galaxo. The alien had a hold on America’s youth unseen in recent years, surpassing every other childhood media creation—talking dinosaurs, talking sponges, talking trains, whatever. First, there was Galaxo’s Saturday-morning cartoon. In no time there were books, T-shirts, pajamas, vi
deo games, action figures, backpacks, bedsheets, a theatrical movie, and anything else the merchandisers believed could suck weekly allowance money from kids’ pockets, as well as money from the wallets of loving parents eager to please their children. Lisbon couldn’t begin to imagine how much he himself had spent on Galaxo stuff for his own son, Toby, most of which the boy kept at his mother’s house.

  The weird voice made perfect sense now. It belonged with the mask. On TV, Galaxo spoke in that strange, high-pitched voice with the weird vibrato. Lisbon recognized the mask as the same type he’d bought Toby for Christmas last year. It fit over the entire head and came in one size that, with the adjustable strap inside, could fit anyone from age five to adult. The mask contained voice-changing technology—a microphone inside and a speaker cleverly concealed in the gap between Galaxo’s two front teeth. Having purchased other characters’ voice-changing masks for Toby over the years, Lisbon knew the technology had improved vastly of late and the voice that came out of Galaxo’s mouth was virtually unrecognizable as that of the person wearing the mask; rather, to the delight of children and the dismay of parents everywhere, it sounded remarkably like the cartoon alien.

  And now someone was standing in Lisbon’s bedroom wearing that mask. For the first time since his divorce, Lisbon was glad he’d lost the custody battle for Toby. Otherwise, his son might be bound in a chair next to him, and God only knew what this sick bastard had in mind. Lisbon tried to speak again, but remembered his mouth was taped shut.

  “You’ll get a chance to talk,” Galaxo said in that creepy, squeaky, alien voice. “You have to. You’ve got a choice to make. But first, the ground rules. The first rule is, no screaming for help. When I take that tape off your mouth, you’re going to want to scream for help. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame you. But I have to tell you, if you do that, I’ll stick this in your throat.” He held up an ice pick. “So you’re not going to scream, right?”

  Lisbon hesitated, then nodded. What the hell else could he do?

  “Good. Now, the second rule…this one applies to me. And you, I guess. Here it is. I’ll try not to kill you, but I’ll kill you in a heartbeat if you make me. So don’t make me, okay?”

  Lisbon had no intention of making Galaxo kill him, so he nodded again.

  “Okay, rule number three. This is the biggie. I’m going to give you a choice to make. I warn you, it will be a bitch of a choice. But you have to choose. From the moment I pull off that tape, you’ll have one minute to decide. If you don’t choose in that time, I’ll treat it as if you’ve chosen both options. But I promise you, Peter, you won’t want to do that, not after you hear your choices. So for your sake, I really hope you’re able to choose. You with me so far?”

  Lisbon nodded yet again and the movement shook loose a drop of sweat from his hairline. The cold drop traced its way over his forehead, lingered for a moment at his right eyebrow, then fell onto his lap. Galaxo watched the sweat drop’s progress to its completion before continuing.

  “Just so you know I’m playing fair, this will be the official timer.”

  There was a very soft snick of metal as Galaxo knelt down slowly before Lisbon and grabbed a small gym bag from the floor. He lifted it and placed it on the bed beside him, unzipped it, and began rummaging around inside. As he did, Lisbon heard metal clinking and caught glimpses of nasty-looking things with sharp metal ends and serrated edges and pinching claws. Gooseflesh rose on Lisbon’s skin. Galaxo rooted around in the bag some more before finally producing a shiny red apple. A black line ran horizontally around its middle, with numbers and corresponding little vertical lines along it. A kitchen timer.

  “I’ll set this for one minute, give you your options, start the timer, then take the tape off your mouth. You understand?”

  This couldn’t be happening. There couldn’t be a cartoon alien in his bedroom threatening to stab him in the throat with an ice pick, babbling in his creepy alien voice about a choice he had to make. This was too surreal.

  “I asked if you understood, Peter. Respond somehow or I’ll hurt you very badly.”

  He would, too. Lisbon believed him. But he just couldn’t make himself respond in any way.

  “Peter…” the perpetually smiling alien said, though it was more of a warning. Lisbon nodded. “Good. Now, let’s see, what to offer, what to offer…” Galaxo stroked his yellow chin in a mocking simulation of deep thought. He tapped his yellow temple. “How about this? I’ll either smash your knees with a hammer, or I’ll…hmm…I’ll cut off all your fingers, one by one. It’s your choice. What do you think?” Then the strangest sound of all came from that friendly cartoon face, a burst of vibrato that, after a moment, Lisbon recognized as a chuckle.

  A pounding at the door gave Lisbon a brief instant of hope before he realized the sound was in his head, the pounding of blood in his ears. He tried to swallow but his throat was a dry sponge. This guy was nuts.

  Suddenly, panic seized him. He remembered the second of the lunatic’s ground rules. Or was it the third? Whichever, he had only a minute to answer or else…what was it?…oh, yeah, shit, Galaxo said it would be as if he had chosen both options. Galaxo would smash his knees and cut off his fingers. Jesus Christ!

  But wait. Galaxo hadn’t started the timer. He hadn’t pulled the tape off Lisbon’s mouth. Lisbon looked up at Galaxo, who was still smiling, of course, always smiling, and who was once again tapping his temple.

  “No,” he said, “that’s not very good. Forget that one.”

  Lisbon sucked a lungful of air through his nostrils and let it out again. But his relief didn’t last long.

  “Wait, I’ve got it,” Galaxo said. “Oh, this is good. Here we go. Here’s your choice, Peter, so listen carefully. I’ll either pour hydrochloric acid all over your face, or—” Galaxo paused dramatically “—or I’ll cut off both your feet. That’s it. The choice is yours.”

  For a moment, Lisbon’s mind went completely blank, like a television screen after someone has yanked the plug from the wall. He barely processed the images he saw, the sounds he heard—Galaxo turning the top half of the apple timer, the ticking that followed, Galaxo placing the apple on the bed, Galaxo reaching for the tape covering his mouth, Galaxo saying words he couldn’t, in that frame of mind, understand. It was the sharp sting of the tape ripping skin from his lips that jolted him back into the moment.

  “Peter, I hope you’re trying to decide. You don’t want the timer to go off before you’ve made your choice. It would be a tragedy to lose both your face and your feet when you have the chance to keep one or the other, don’t you think?”

  Lisbon was paralyzed. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. He was shaking, though, uncontrollably, as adrenaline coursed through him.

  Galaxo glanced down at the timer on the bed. “Ten seconds gone, Peter. Only fifty left.”

  Lisbon sucked in a great gasping breath, then tried to speak, but that ability hadn’t yet returned to him. The ticking seemed impossibly loud. He strained against the tape holding him to the chair, trying with every ounce of his strength to pull himself free. He couldn’t move his arms an inch. His gasps became louder, his exhalations more forceful.

  Galaxo looked down at him, shaking his freakish head. “Bad time to panic, Peter. I really don’t want to have to take your feet and your face.”

  Words finally exploded out of Lisbon. “Then don’t, for Chrissake!”

  “Ah, good, you’re talking now.” Galaxo seemed genuinely pleased. “That’s a start. Forty seconds left now, though. I really hope you’re giving this difficult choice due consideration. Obviously, your decision will have a profound impact on the rest of your life.”

  Lisbon started to speak, emitted a panicked grunt, cleared his throat, and said desperately, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Galaxo shook his head. “This is really disappointing. You simply do not have time for questions, not with a decision like yours hanging over your head. I strongly urge you to think about your options. You ha
ve less than half a minute left.” He sounded so calm, so reasonable, yet he was threatening to maim Lisbon in unspeakable ways, the threat made all the more horrible coming from that permanently grinning cartoon alien face, in that squeaky tremolo that delighted millions of children every day.

  Oh, God, oh, God. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

  “Please,” he said, “please don’t do this. I have a son. Please.”

  “Almost down to twenty-five seconds. I assure you, I have a container of acid with me. To be honest, I left it in my car, but I could be back with it in a jiff. Or…” He turned to the gym bag on the bed and pulled out a short handsaw, its sharp, ugly little shark teeth making the gorge rise in Lisbon’s throat. Those teeth looked sharp enough to cut through bone.

  Lisbon’s eyes bounced wildly around the room, as if hoping to see someone standing in one of the corners, someone who could save him, someone who, until then, had been waiting for the right time to make his move. But there was no one, of course.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick…

  “Fifteen seconds left now, Peter,” Galaxo said. “What’s it going to be? Are you going to make me go back out to my car for the acid, or are we good to go with this saw here?”

  Lisbon’s breath was gone again. And he couldn’t suck in another. He was trying like hell but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. He tried to speak but managed only a pathetic croak.

  “Oh no, Peter, bad luck here. You’re hyperventilating. It will be hard for you to make your choice clear in that condition. Please try to relax. You may not believe me, but I truly don’t want to make you a faceless, footless freak. That’s a lot for any person to bear. One or the other you might be able to handle, but both…I just don’t know.”