Lula was right. She generally is. Not everybody believes Jack at first when he says that. He'll usually have to admit, make some concession, most of what she says is speed-talking, designed to amuse or to comfort herself and those around her. It's one-hundred-percent true, too. She could do that professionally, make a career of it, probably be considered one of the best in the world. But when Lula stops? When she actually chooses to offer advice, and chooses the words to phrase it? Then she's generally right.
Like when she told him intercontinental larceny was no basis for a relationship and they might have to skip back a step or two and do the dating thing, that has worked out for them. And when she corrected his French, from je suis chaud to j'ai chaud, again, she was right. It explained some of the nasty looks he'd been getting too.
She was right when she told him he shouldn't have much difficulty finding Petey and Quinn. He had to go no farther than the ground floor of the palazzo for that information. One of the friendlies in the trattoria was even then telling the story of the bizarre arrest he'd witnessed on his way home last night. It didn't cost much more than a slice of pizza to have him point out one of the police officers he saw involved, and not much more than the bread to go with it to have him walk up to the man and keep him talking.
It was a very old-fashioned pull; the cop's notebook was in a holder at the back of his belt. Flip open the snap on approach, slide the little book free on the pass. You're never right behind the man you're robbing. He can always see you over one shoulder or the other, and doesn't believe you could be picking his pocket. Too easy, almost, way beneath Jack's skillset. He's found it to be that easy with law enforcement all over the world. Something complacent about them, maybe, something that makes them think the law will protect them, even as they watch it fail to protect other people every day. He's really never felt all that bad about stealing from cops, and could tell you cheerfully about this one time he and a small group of like-minded souls emptied the trays at a doughnut shop right before opening and…
And he's supposed to be better than that, these days, really ought to stop telling that story, supposed to have moved on, not supposed to be proud of his pulls anymore, or the lifts, the B-and-Es…
Giving a strictly professional account, it was not difficult to get the notebook and not difficult to find last night's hasty, urgent notes. And, given that Italian is one more language where the word for 'clown' is all too familiar, it wasn't difficult to get the hotel address they gave.
Which brings Jack safely back to the perfectly legal point he was making, Lula was right when she said it would not be difficult.
Whether or not she was right when she told him to go remains to be seen.
He's been sitting on the windowsill of their hotel room for the past twenty minutes. That was actually another great piece of work – the side of this building looks flat, to the untrained eye. Really, if you've never had to climb, you'd never find a way to climb it. And even if you did, to raise the old-fashioned sash window from outside, you have to know what you're doing. Maybe, maybe, you could describe how to do it to a smart and willing pupil, but for Jack's money, experience is the only teacher worth a damn. Consider especially that his right hand is still stiff and aching, still won't open or close entirely. Consider all of this and tell him he didn't do a really great job… A great job of breaking and entering…
That's when he calls her.
"I'm just waiting so I thought I'd check in, see how you-"
"Uh-huh. What'd you do?" He can hear clanking pipes, water pounding into the tub, hissing steam. And he can hear too that she expected this – something else for her to be right about.
He sighs, "Picked a cop's pocket and snuck into another hotel room?"
"And?"
"…And… And nothing, that's it."
"That's it? That's it? Wah, I used a skill I have to do what we needed to get done, oh, I'm so guilty, wah!"
"Lula, come on…"
"What? You are in a clown's hotel room and you can't think of anything more interesting to talk about? Disappointing, Wilder, not going to lie, massively disappointing."
Games. It's the same principle as distracting a kid who's getting their shots. Play games until the painful part has passed. At best they never know it happened, at worst they've forgotten within minutes. It doesn't always work. Depending on his mood, and how deep the guilt has gotten before she tries it, sometimes it offends him. But tonight she's doing it for herself as much as him. And, if he's totally honest, he'd been about to start sending her pictures anyway. His restraint lasts a millisecond longer before he snaps, "Lula, there are three rubber chickens tucked into the bed, like it's the three bears or something, and there's an eyebrow comb covered in blue dye next to the bathroom sink, and I'm pretty sure if I open the bedside drawer a bunch of those joke snakes would jump out at me."
"Do it!"
"No, I feel bad enough being h-"
"Do it now, do it while I'm on the phone, or I'm not going to believe you. They wouldn't have put them there if they weren't hoping somebody would, so you have to do it."
So he opens the drawer. No snakes, but a jester jack-in-the-box with a cruel grin and a handstitched look to its bobbing head. Jack tries not to so much as touch it while he's putting it away again. Then, at her request, he checks the closet and finds several costume changes – matching tuxedos, for instance, differentiated only by their patterned, whirling bowties. Bert-and-Ernie striped shirts. The Chinese robe that allowed them to hide at the busiest tourist spot on the planet. And Jack feels better. Nothing has changed, and he hasn't forgotten the route he took getting here, but he feels better. What clears a dark cloud from your mind better than having someone tell you they couldn't care less? What Jack thinks of as transgressions are too minor to even register with Lula, especially once he tells her there's an equipment case in the corner by the window.
"Open it."
"No. No, I'm drawing the line, the other stuff was all visible, I'm not going through their stuff."
"You're supposed to be here taking care of me."
"Thought you weren't holding that against me?"
"Well, I won't, if you-" He loses her for a second, distracted by the sound of footsteps out in the hall. Other people have passed before now, but alone, or if in a group then only talking in that half-scared mumble you associate with the corridors of half-star hostels by Termini station. These steps now come stomping in heavy boots, every tread creaking in terror that they might go crashing straight through. That's just one set, there are others following behind, drowned out and indistinct. Above all of it, a voice lifted up loud. For just a moment, Jack listens to that instead of Lula. Then switches back. Though he moves quicker and more sharply, he makes sure she doesn't hear the slightest change. Certainly she hasn't noticed up until now, "-probably just juggling clubs and stuff like that but we will never know if-"
"Even if I would have done it, I can't. I think they're coming."
Lula gasps. Then, hushed as if she were in the room and edging away behind a curtain, "Okay, bye, call me right after, bye, by-"
The sound of the key in the lock cuts her off. It slides in okay, but rattles and scratches instead of turning. Then, the loud voice again, the one that belongs to the little clown who would, Jack is certain, have broken his arm if it had to, "Hang on a second, there's a knack to this."
When Jack heard it before, that voice was trying to warn him. It was announcing, for the whole hotel to hear, "Cap, I'd tell you you're barking up the wrong tree, but I feel like you're in the whole wrong forest. Even if he knew we were here, Wilder wouldn't come and be waiting. That's crazy. Now, if you were hanging on to his arm right now and expecting to find me and Petey, well, okay, because we're crazy, but Wilder ain't crazy, and this is crazy, so I really think you've got it backward, chief."
Now it's faking a titanic struggle with the key, giving Jack just enough time to weigh his options.
Really, he's only got the two. One is the window again. He could slip back out and climb in either direction for a complete escape. He can't close the sash behind him, though. If that attracts attention, and whoever this Cap may be decides to look, he'll be spotted easily on the sheer face of the building. There is also the very real risk of being spotted from the street. But he could still get away.
His second option is the bathroom door. This option does little more than close him inside a tiny box with paper thin walls and a noisy tile floor with no windows, no exit and his chance of a clean getaway narrowed to zero. But he still needs those clowns, and what they know.
Quite apart from that, that voice at the door is still rattling commentary, "What do you expect in a fleapit like this? Here, big guy, you got it open earlier, you try it." Every word trembles. From the way the key slips in a new hand, Petey is shaking too.
Jack shuts the window and closes himself behind the bathroom door.
He jumps, and Petey and Quinn both cry out, when Cap gets tired of waiting and thumps the door hard. "Even in my day," he declares, a rich old voice that makes Jack think of nothing so much as the guy on the Monopoly board, "this bit was older than God-"
"Well, you would know, you were around."
"– Open the damned door, one of you!"
A second of scolded silence. The lock clacks.
The door is allowed to swing open with a creak before anybody steps inside. Even then, they come slow and shuffling at first. Jack follows them by their presences and energy, the size and weight of them. Enough time passes for eyes to sweep the room twice and once more to be certain. Then, changes; the biggest shape, Petey, sinks with relief. One rounder and more suspicious does nothing at all. Quinn, for its part, flings itself onto the bed, making the old springs squeal. Pouting now, "We like old bits, Cap. Vintage is big this season. Me and Petey are bringing some of the old stuff back."
"Mmh, caught your little conga line." Jack virtually hears Cap rolls his eyes. He has long since decided on his least favourite clown.
"Laugh it up – or rather, don't – but you caught it on Youtube, Cap. This time next week, me and him'll be a viral sensation."
"Viral indeed; just these few brief minutes together, I already feel under the weather."
Jack tenses, pushing back from the door. By the sound of his voice, he knows Cap turned toward him just now.
He knows he turns away again too when Quinn balks, "Hey!" That's when Jack realizes he's being protected. "Hey, what're you so hung up on this Horseman for, anyway?"
"Your father wants to see him."
"What for?"
"He wants all of them."
"But what for?"
"Ours not to wonder why, little clown. You'll never get anywhere in this organization asking silly questions."
"Oh, well, excuse me, but considering one of them came hair-close to getting murdered last night-"
Barely a murmur, but he's an inch from the other side of the door and Jack hears it as clearly as if it were right by his ear, "And if it wasn't for you meddling kids…"
There is no disbelief. Nobody questions the Captain, no one asks what he could possibly mean, no one is hoping they heard him wrong. Jack doesn't need to see them to know that Petey and Quinn are only staring, lips parted, that some part of their world has crumbled. He knows this because he feels it and because he feels absolutely nothing, doesn't care at all, when Cap reaches back to tap the bathroom door, "He's right behind me. I can hear him seething now."
A precise little bark, "Petey, go!" and though Cap tries to stop him Quinn jumps up from the bed and slams him out of action. Over the scuffle, the crash of Cap's weight against the bathroom door, "Run! Get May, wait for me, I'll call."
That's as long as shock and Quinn's minimal weight can hold the Captain. It grunts at being thrown off, an awkward landing, but the second Cap straightens, Jack can open the door.
He finds himself looking at the tip of an umbrella. The oddness of it freezes him for just a heartbeat. "Wilder, no!" but Quinn's yell comes too late to be a warning. A fine cloud of gas puffs from the chrome, blooming damp over his face.
Jack hits the ground already sleeping.