by Rob Rogers
Eli leaned back against the doorframe of Cain’s office. “She seemed to realize it would take more than that, but admitted that you would have had to be stupid to break Zhdanov out the way she was broken out, given all the other methods you could have used given your authority.”
“So you think she’s going to back off?”
He shook his head, running his fingers through his wavy hair. “No,” he said. “She seems to think you are that stupid. Or were seduced into it.”
“To which you said?”
“That you are the smartest man I know, that you are the most rigidly controlled man I know, and that there was no possibility that you would have acted improperly with a patient, because A, you know how stupid that would be, and B, you have never been that impulsive in your life.”
Cain smiled at his friend, but images pulsed in his head. Handing an eightball to a Baptist minister and taking cash in return. Shooting a hole in 5-D Binot’s belly. Shoving Jazz. Holding his mother at gunpoint. Climbing a building and attacking the superhuman Scion. Transforming into a winged devil. Not impulsive? He shook it off. “I appreciate the support,” he said.
Eli leaned forward again. “Yeah, well,” he said, “I also told the detective that if she left you alone, I’d sleep with her.”
“And?”
“She’s considering it.”
“Glad to hear it,” Cain said. He wondered how much more trouble Daigle would be. With luck, he’d be able to bring Zhdanov back to Holingbroke and that would be the end of it.
But Eli’s penetrating, gold-flecked eyes registered dozens of questions. He stared at Cain for a few seconds. “Darren said you came in the other day with your face cut,” he said. That was Eli’s way. The long pauses. The carefully chosen topic shifts that really prodded back at the issues at hand from different angles. The casual statements that were really questions. Cain tried to place the name for a moment. Darren. Then he remembered. The security guard. The “hockey fan.” Eli’s other questions went unspoken. Why didn’t Cain’s face look cut right now, he wanted to know. Why had the most rigidly controlled man he knew arrived at Holingbroke before dawn with blood dripping from his face?
Cain shrugged. “Scalp wound,” he said. “You know how they bleed.” He gestured at his desk. “I should be catching up with my patients who haven’t escaped. I appreciate your dropping by, Eli.” He smiled at his friend, but Eli was still giving him the curious stare. Despite his assurances to the detective, there was some small part of Eli that doubted, that suspected there was something wrong in Cain’s life. “I’d do the same for you,” he said. Cain’s next statement went unspoken, too. He’d respect Eli’s privacy. He expected the same.
After Eli left, Cain could feel his friend’s eyes staring at his office door, deep in thought. Somewhere under Cain’s skin, his wings itched.
It’s just damned unfair. Carnivals aren’t exactly traveling gold mines, you know. It takes back-breaking hard work to come out a little above breaking even. We were doing okay—not great, but okay—when the guys in the sideshow and my electrician ran off with a bunch of my trucks and just disappeared. That nearly crippled me, but then they showed up as some kind of hired criminals and killed a superhero, and then suddenly everyone knew that they used to work for me. The police were all over me, and the FBI, and we got this little surge of rubes—excuse me, customers—coming to see us just in hopes of getting a glimpse at the freaks, but then that dried up and suddenly everyone was staying away in droves. Like I was the one who killed your Doctor Camelot. It put my carnival right out of business. I’m just another victim here, you know?
— From an interview with Justin Ma, former owner of Ma’s Spectacular Amusements traveling carnival, airing on WVCTV News, Vanguard City
Chapter Forty-One
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Nine days after the deaths of the Storm Raiders
3 p.m.
Hector Nelson Poteete—Hector Hell—didn’t like going out without his costume, but sometimes he just had to do it in order to keep from drawing too much of the wrong kind of attention.
He needed to go talk to the Robber Baron, and the chance to drive Tony Ferazzoli’s little red Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder—now his little red Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder—made the sacrifice of having to wear such pedestrian clothing as a white golf shirt over khaki pants worthwhile. Zero to sixty in about four seconds. The top down, air conditioning blowing, the wind rushing through his hair. On a bridge over Chien Jaune River, he topped a hundred and twenty miles per hour, weaving around a school bus on one side and a gas tanker heading in the opposite direction. He chuckled to himself when both drivers honked at him. Maybe he wanted attention after all.
Despite the stifling humidity, it felt good to be back in Louisiana, back in America. He was tired of running from country to country, looking over his shoulder. He’d spent years waking up in the middle of the night, terrified that the Storm Raiders had finally caught up with them.
The call from the Robber Baron—lord knows how he’d tracked them down to Calcutta—had been a thrilling relief. “Come to my city,” he’d said. “Give me your loyalty. An alliance with me will bring your team many rewards, not the least of them being a home. All of us will benefit as a result.”
And then they’d come to the city, and the worst of his fears had come true. Some reporter had figured out they were there, and the Storm Raiders had come looking for them.
But it hadn’t turned out so badly after all.
“Fuck ’em,” Poteete said to himself, tapping on the brakes and bringing the car down to ninety, zipping around a string of early-afternoon commuters. “They came after us and we killed them. Fuck ’em.”
Some other hero teams were making noises about coming after the Cirque d’Obscurité, but the Robber Baron had told them not to worry about it. “They won’t make it far into my city,” he’d said with a smile. “Didn’t you hear? The mayor has asked anyone else to keep from interfering. Stay out of sight for a while and they’ll back off.”
The other teams weren’t what scared Poteete the most, not after what had happened to the Storm Raiders. What scared him was this new woman calling herself Doctor Camelot. “She might as well have named herself Doctor Here-in-Devil’s-Cape-to-Kick-Some-Cirque-d’Obscurité-Ass,” he said. Serious revenge issues to watch out for, no doubt.
He had to slow down more now—down to seventy—as he got close to the south end of town and the business district. The Lamborghini shuddered from a gust of hot wind as he ran a red light and shot across Cap de Creus Street.
“Better keep it down,” he said, slowing the car down a little more. It would be stupid to get pulled over. A complication.
He turned on a CD Osprey had made for him as a joke for his birthday. Fire songs. “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis. “Light My Fire” by the Doors. “Comin’ Under Fire” by Def Leppard from the Pyromania album. Half a dozen others. She’d ended it with “Kumbaya” by Peter, Paul & Mary. Sasha was pretty damned funny when she put her mind to it, when she wasn’t busy slicing people up with her knives.
Bruce Springsteen was singing “I’m On Fire.” Poteete grinned to himself and cranked the volume up. By the time the song was over, he was approaching a set of docks on Lake Borgne and could see the Robber Baron’s palatial riverboat up ahead, sitting smooth and level in choppy waters.
He swung the car into a small parking lot, where a valet in a white jacket, white shirt, and white tie nodded at him politely, waited until he climbed out, and then drove the car away to another parking lot with a quick squeal of the tires.
“No tip for you,” Poteete said, walking down to the dock and the small motored skiff that would take him over to the riverboat.
The valets and skiff operators were a courtesy provided by the Robber Baron, but they were actually more for his own convenience. The small lot was too close to busy roads, too small, and too isolated from other parking for any convenient, manageable surveill
ance by police. And the valets quickly stashed the cars out of sight in a private garage that the police would need a warrant to observe. It didn’t actually stop the police from keeping tabs on who visited the Robber Baron, but it made the whole process more difficult to accomplish, especially without him knowing about it. It seemed a little overly choreographed to Poteete, but at least the covered garage would keep seagulls from shitting on the Lamborghini.
He nodded at the skiff operator, dressed identically to the valet, and climbed aboard. The air smelled of salt and dead fish, but it wasn’t too unpleasant. The skiff’s motor was nearly silent; the loudest noises he heard on the brief trip were the crashing of small waves against the bow and the cries of seagulls.
The Robber Baron’s riverboat, named the Bloody Dirk after the masked pirate St. Diable’s favorite ship, was huge, decorated like the classic riverboats of the nineteenth century, including a working, retractable paddlewheel, yet equipped for high-speed travel with a hydrofoil design the baron had once seen employed on China’s Yangtze River. The Bloody Dirk had three decks, one for the bridge and operations, one for entertainment—the Robber Baron hosted a masked ball on board every year at Mardi Gras—and a third for the Robber Baron’s own use. The riverboat glistened with fresh white paint and red trim. As often as not, her trappings were plated with gold.
Poteete met the Robber Baron in a covered porch area at the front of the boat. It was netted off with fine silk mosquito netting, but again Poteete wondered if the netting weren’t there less as protection against insects and more to keep the Robber Baron’s meetings private.
The Robber Baron’s gaucho hat hung on a peg on the wall. Gray threaded his black hair. “What can I pour you?” he asked.
Poteete shrugged. “Mint julep,” he said, lowering himself into a padded wicker chair.
The Robber Baron smiled, walking over to the bar, pulling a frosted silver mug from a freezer and gently crushing mint leaves inside. “A Southern cliché,” he said. He added ice and raw sugar and a splash of water, then poured in a slug of Kentucky bourbon.
Poteete smiled back. “You try getting a decent mint julep in Gdansk or Gaberone,” he said. “I did without them for a long time.”
The Robber Baron handed him the drink and sat. “I’m not sure I can allow you to stay in Tony Ferrazzoli’s mansion for much longer.”
Allow. Poteete watched as the frosty sheen on his mug began to turn translucent from the heat in his hands. He thought of the moment he’d blasted the Storm Raiders’ plane, fire arcing out of his hands, coating the plane’s metal skin, sinking inside and igniting the fuel. He thought of watching the plane blow up, the thud he felt in his chest from the force of the explosion. He thought of Raiden, the hero who controlled lightning, and how he’d been torn to pieces because of Poteete’s flames. He looked at the Robber Baron, whose face looked narrow and lined behind his mask. Allow.
“We like it there,” Poteete said.
Their eyes met. The Robber Baron’s were blue-gray, intent. There was an edge there, as though he knew the kinds of thoughts going through Poteete’s mind. The Robber Baron was at once amused, unafraid, and scornful.
They continued to stare at each other for a few seconds, Poteete increasingly feeling the weight of the other man’s gaze, the power of his presence.
Poteete looked away first, consciously trying not to flinch.
“Be that as it may,” the Robber Baron said, “these new players who showed up at the building collapse add a random element. Keeping you in place in an affluent area such as Doubloon Ward would be flaunting my influence. I don’t flaunt.”
Poteete looked around the porch area where they sat, at the gilded fixtures, the silk brocade on the partitions, at the Robber Baron’s clothing. “Uh huh,” he said.
The Robber Baron chuckled. “Well, yes,” he said. “I suppose I do flaunt. But only within certain parameters. Keeping you in that building might be tempting fate.”
Poteete sipped the mint julep. The heat from his hands had melted the ice and ruined it. He set it down. “So we’ll lay low,” he said. “It’s not like we’ve been throwing block parties.”
“Your presence there is known.”
“By Costas Kalodimos. Who you invited there.”
The Robber Baron sighed. “That might have been an error. Costas has been loyal to me for many years, but he hasn’t taken well to your presence here, to our alliance.”
Poteete pictured the mansion, the down quilt he’d taken to using at night. “Tony Ferazzoli was a problem, too,” he said. “And we fixed that problem.”
The Robber Baron stared out into the waters of Lake Borgne, a lagoon, actually, that connected to the Gulf of Mexico. He sighed. “He’s been a good soldier,” he said. He drummed his gloved fingers on his chair. Finally, he nodded. “Stay in the mansion for now,” he said. “Lay low. Be on guard. We’ll give Costas a few days to come around. Or to hang himself.”
Dress casually for Zorba’s and wear comfortable shoes in case you have to wait to get inside. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations, but usually even the longest lines mean no more than a half-hour wait.
— From A Devil’s Cape Traveler’s Guide
Chapter Forty-Two
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Nine days after the deaths of the Storm Raiders
8:45 p.m.
Pulling another piece of chicken and a bit of onion from the skewer and popping them in his mouth, Costas Kalodimos stared across the table at the Russian woman. Her hair was tied up in a scarf, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses, but she was still strikingly beautiful. This was the woman who sucked the life out of her enemies with a touch?
The two sat alone together at a booth at the back of Zorba’s, his brother’s restaurant, filled to capacity with the dinner crowd, with a dozen people standing outside waiting to get in. Costas ate there often, as did several members of his organization, but they never did business there.
Yet he couldn’t meet the woman in one of the places where he usually did business, as he suspected that they were probably under observation—if not by the Robber Baron himself, then possibly by one of the law enforcement agencies that wasn’t being paid to stay away. And he couldn’t meet her somewhere he never visited, because his departure from routine would arouse suspicions. So he had broken his word to his brother not to bring his business to Zorba’s and met her here. A small thing, he thought, breaking his word, compared to the pressures weighing upon him.
He nodded at her. “The avgolemono soup is good,” he said. “Egg and lemon and rice and milk. My brother adds a touch of cream. You should try some.”
She nodded, leaning forward and spooning some up, her eyes on his from behind the shaded lenses of her glasses.
He took another bite of his chicken souvlaki, dipping his fork down to his plate to get just a little more lemon butter sauce into his mouth. Costas was a heavy man with gray hair that he kept slicked back. His eyes were such a dark blue that they were nearly black, like a shark’s. “I have read your police files,” he said, “and those from the institute.” He said this casually, as though he was privy to such things as a matter of course. The police records had been no problem at all. A phone call. And while he had been unable to obtain the files of Zhdanov’s psychiatrist, his contacts had acquired copies of Zhdanov’s records at the Holingbroke Psychological Institute for less than the cost of a tank of gasoline.
“The soup is tart,” she said, turning up her mouth. But she swallowed another spoonful readily enough.
Costas tapped his fingers on the white tablecloth. He had thick hands with sparse gray hairs. He wore a thick wedding band on his left hand, a heavy gold signet ring and a pinkie ring on his right, the pinkie ring glittering with four dozen diamonds. A gold Rolex was wrapped around his left wrist, a thick gold chain around his right. Midas’s hands. “These files indicate to me that you are intelligent and stable,” he said. “When you want to be.”
She shrugged. “I
t is a matter of perspective,” she said. “You can trust me if you like.” A stray hair had fallen free of her scarf and she brushed it back inside. She was a wanted fugitive, but when she cast her eyes around the room, it was with casual disinterest.
He watched her hands. They looked normal enough. Slender, pale, the nails cut short and unpainted. But they could turn a person into a corpse with a touch. The files he’d seen had included crime scene photos. Costas feared little in this world, but he was glad for the table between them, the Luger he kept under his jacket. “My employee told you what I want.” He leaned forward. “We don’t need to speak of it directly.”
Zhdanov slurped loudly at another spoonful of soup, burped softly, and covered her lips with her fingertips in an exaggerated expression of dismay. “Please excuse me,” she said. She was mocking him.
Costas’s expression turned cold. He squeezed at his knife handle in irritation, cutting off another bite. “Do we have an understanding?”
She took her time sipping some water before answering. “Your employee is an interesting man.”
Julian was more than an employee, of course, but Zhdanov didn’t need to know that. He wondered sometimes if he’d still be alive without his nephew’s assistance and power. He was fortunate, he knew, to have someone with Julian’s abilities by his side. The two of them had kept the boy’s abilities secret from the rest of the family, the rest of the organization. When it became time, for political reasons, for Costas to make it known that he had a superhuman working for him, they had invented the Scion identity.
Costas had often wondered if his nephew Jason had similar abilities, though Julian had long denied it. But Julian had never let him pursue the matter. “I will work for you,” Julian had told him once, his jaw set. “I will be your good and loyal soldier. But Jason and Pop are off limits. Forever.”