Wild Cards: Death Draws Five by George R.R. Martin, John J. Miller Page B

jaw, no chin, and drooping ears that could have belonged to a hound dog. His skin was unfurred, but sallow, blotchy, and unhealthy-looking. His expression was not intelligent.
    “Let’s go, Blood,” his handler said.
    The joker looked at him, snuffling eagerly.
    “Home, boy. Let’s go home. There’s a nice steak waiting for you. Nice and raw and dripping.”
    Blood drooled, grinning idiotically, and walked on four limbs toward the store’s back wall, and then through it in a tunnel that suddenly appeared the instant before his nose would have touched the wall. They all followed him. Jerry was totally mystified, wondering what the Hell was going on.
    It was cool and quiet on the other side of the tunnel, which opened into a small room built of naked stone. The room had no windows to the outside and was lit by a single unreachable bulb dangling from a naked fixture in the ceiling. The only door leading out of it was iron, with a tiny barred window. The small chamber smelled of ancient sickness that seemed to have soaked into the very stones of its walls and floor. Jerry didn’t know where they were, but suddenly he was afraid.
    Blood howled for his meat.
    ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
    New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria
    John Nighthawk watched Contarini stare at Cameo as if she’d just hooked a quarter from the collection plate, or done something equally unforgivable. Usher and Magda looked on with interest. Usher’s seemed mild. He really had no dog in this fight. Nighthawk knew that he was along just for the paycheck. But Magda’s expression was hurt compounded with fury.
    If there’s trouble, Nighthawk thought, it’ll come from her.
    Magda looked at Cameo as if she’d expected the Second Coming to occur right before her eyes and instead had been given a third rate vauDeville act. (Which, Nighthawk realized, was pretty much close to what had happened.) The nun looked from the transformed Cameo to Nighthawk, to Contarini, searching for a clue as how to react. Cameo posed no immediate threat to the Cardinal or anyone else. But, obviously, things hadn’t gone right. The Shroud should have produced Jesus Christ. Instead they’d gotten... someone else. It was clear that Magda had no idea who Cole Porter was, but Contarini, whom Nighthawk knew was a well-educated sophisticate, quickly showed that he labored under no such handicap.
    “I don’t understand.” The Cardinal’s voice sounded like cracking ice on a frozen lake in the Italian Alps. “What... where is Our Lord? Why do we have this, this degenerate writer of, of degenerate popular songs instead of Our Lord?”
    Nighthawk, who knew a little about music, couldn’t agree with Contarini’s assessment of Porter’s talents and was also more than a little amused that the Cardinal’s fury had made him almost tongue-tied. More importantly, he had an explanation regarding Porter’s unexpected appearance.
    “It seems,” Nighthawk said quietly, “that we may have been a little impetuous in insisting that Cameo do her reading here instead of her usual room in Club Dead Nicholas.”
    Everyone, even Cameo channeling Porter, looked at him with interest.
    “What do you mean?” the Cardinal asked.
    Nighthawk shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Look around. This is Porter’s apartment. When he was in New York he lived in the Waldorf-Astoria, since, when?”
    “Nineteen thirty-four,” Porter said. “Though I did move once, from another room in the hotel to this very apartment. It’s so much more spacious than my old flat.“
    ”Did you brought your furniture with you?” Nighthawk asked.
    “Some,” Porter allowed.
    “Like the chair you’re sitting on?”
    “Yes,” Porter said. “It’s a very comfortable reading chair. Naturally, I brought it along for my library.”
    Nighthawk looked at Contarini and spread his hands in a silent, there-you-have-it gesture.
    “Are you saying,” the Cardinal said in his low, dangerous voice, “that somehow the spirit, the