Loophole (Wild Cards)

Loophole is a character from the Wild Cards series of books, first appearing in volume III, "Jokers Wild." Senior partner in one of New York's most successful law firms, St. John Latham represented a family of companies with their headquarters in the Bahamas and subsidiaries including CariBank and Shrike Music. In reality, these businesses were the legal fronts for a ruthless criminal organization known as the Shadow Fists. Latham had earned the name Loophole as a mercilessly effective lawyer with the ability to wriggle his clients out of any charges. Word on the street was that the wild card had left Latham completely amoral and emotionless - - that, or he was just an ordinary lawyer. Another rumor purported he was one of the rare "reverse jokers," a wild card victim that was originally ugly and became physically attractive after they turned their card. An important figure in the Shadow Fist organization, Loophole also went under the alias Prime as leader/creator of the jumpers.

Whatever the truth of his previously rumored wild card manifestations, it is known that Latham contracted a dose of the virus during the brief outbreak of a wildly contagious mutant strain caused by the Sleeper. Surviving the incubation period, Latham emerged as an Ace with a bizarre ability. Possessing no innate powers in and of himself, Latham could, through sexual contact with others, spread a stable mutation of the virus that endowed the recipient with the power to swap bodies with another. With Latham's taste for teenage runaways and prostitutes (male and female) soon there was a small group of wild card criminals all sharing the same power, committing vicious acts of mayhem and robbery in the body of their chosen victim, then jumping away to freedom.

Thus began the "jumper" arm of the Shadow Fist's triune organization (the other two branches composed of joker gangs like the Werewolves and Asian gangs such as the Immaculate Egrets). Immune to the jumper power he had bestowed on a variety of teenage boys and girls, Latham was content to create as large an army as his criminal accomplices wished. Based on The Rox (Ellis Island), protected by Bloat's Wall, and under the direct control of a deputy leader (first David and, later, Blaise) "Prime" let his jumpers do as they wished for the most part, occasionally selecting one or two of his more expendable creations for special missions.

Once calculating and almost untouchable, Latham's behavior grew ever more risky and erratic after the death of his favorite lover/jumper, David, at the hands of the Oddity. One of his jumpers gave aging Shadow Fist crime lord Kien Phuc the youthful ace body of Fadeout. He made a gift of the famous Bosch painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony to the joker revolutionary called Bloat. When confronted by Bloat about the foolishness of allowing Blaise to jump a high profile figure like Tachyon, he was utterly unconcerned. Latham finally met his end at the hands of the ace Mr. Nobody, known as Jerry Strauss in his civilian identity. Mr. Nobody's brother was the Strauss in the law office of Latham, Strauss. Bent upon revenge after Latham had his brother murdered, Nobody investigated Loophole's criminal activities for months. Shortly after Latham had made Zelda a jumper, Mr. Nobody tracked the lawyer to his hotel room. The ace killed Latham by using his shapeshifting power to stab an elongated fingerbone into his brain and liquifying it.