Hero

by Mike Lupica

  “Yeah, man.”

  Zach’s mom said fine with her, she had some calls to make anyway. Uncle John promised he wouldn’t keep Zach too long. Then Elizabeth Harriman kissed them both on the cheek and she was gone.

  It was in the elevator when Uncle John turned to Zach and said, “This isn’t about going for ice cream.”

  “Didn’t think it was.”

  “We need to talk,” Uncle John said.

  They walked up Fifth when they got outside. Once they were out of earshot of the doorman, Uncle John got right to it.

  “I don’t know what kind of nonsense the old man has been feeding you about picking up where your father left off,” he said. “But you’re not ready to do that.”

  “How do you know that the old man has been feeding me anything?” Zach said.

  “It’s my business to know things,” Uncle John said, “ whether you want me to know them or not.”

  “You never told me I was supposed to let you know every time Mr. Herbert dropped in on me,” Zach said.

  “And you, young Zachary, should have enough common sense not to have to be told.” He put his hand on Zach’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

  “Maybe I would share more things with you if you weren’t so hard to find.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” Uncle John said.

  “Same,” Zach said.

  “It doesn’t change the reason we’re having this talk,” Uncle John said. “You’re not ready.”

  “For what?” Zach said.

  “You’re too smart to play dumb with me, Zachary. You know what I’m talking about. You’re not close to being ready to be the kind of game changer your father was. Someday, yes. But not now.”

  “Mr. Herbert says the two of you have never agreed on anything. Him and you, I mean.”

  “Finally,” Uncle John said, “we agree on something.”

  They had taken a right turn, were walking the short block toward Madison.

  “But you made it sound like more than just a disagreement, Uncle John. You said he was the enemy.”

  “In my world, Zachary, the enemy is anybody I don’t trust. Your father always trusted ‘Mr. Herbert’.” He air-quoted the name with his fingers. “I, on the other hand, never did. He always said he was on your father’s side. I never believed that for a second. I frankly always thought his endgame was trying to convince your father to work for the other side.”

  “For the Bads?”

  “Yes. For the Bads.” He put quotes with his fingers around “Bads.”

  “You both make them sound like some kind of army,” Zach said.

  “And wouldn’t be wrong,” Uncle John said.

  “Do they have some top-secret headquarters?” Zach asked.

  Now they were walking south on Lexington. But somehow this didn’t feel like aimless wandering to Zach, a knock-around night.

  They were going somewhere with this.

  “You mean, where are they?” Uncle John said. “They’re everywhere. Everywhere in the world that there’s trouble. Or an opening. Everywhere they think they can get an edge, from sea pirates to the Middle East. Everywhere they think they can replace a good leader with one of their own. Or put weapons into the wrong hands.” He shook his head, annoyed. “Everywhere where they can make their mischief. Only it’s not simple mischief. Most of the time it’s life and death. And there have been too many times when the old man has been in the middle of it. I don’t believe in coincidences, Zachary. And neither should you.”

  “Do they . . . do the Bads have guys who can do what I do? What my dad did? Do they have game changers?”

  He was asking as many questions as he could, not sure when he’d get another chance like this.

  “Probably,” Uncle John said. “I don’t know for sure. I can only speak for our side. And even though it sounds like some fable, something that should involve a sword in a stone, on our side there’s only ever been one hero at a time.” The same thing Mr. Herbert had said.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  Uncle John looked at him. “For a very long time.”

  “And now it’s my turn.”

  “Eventually it’s your turn,” Uncle John said. “Not now. Perhaps I should have told you these things before, but I’m telling you now because I care about you. And I want to protect you.”

  “Mr. Herbert says I’m ready now.”

  “Mr. Herbert doesn’t know you like I do!” Just like that, Uncle John, who almost never raised his voice, was shouting. “All he’s ever been interested in is helping himself! But this time I’m not going to let him. I won’t allow him to put you in harm’s way. I wasn’t able to save your father. I can’t even think about what would happen to your mother if anything happened to you.”

  They kept walking in silence down Lex, past delis, hip-hop sneaker stores, fruit stands and bars. On the next corner was a new Carvel. Uncle John asked if Zach wanted to get an ice cream after all. Zach said no.

  They hooked a right, headed back toward Fifth Avenue.

  Zach said, “What if Mr. Herbert is right, and something terrible is about to happen, and I might be able to help stop it?”

  “Zachary . . . ,” Uncle John said.

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? You still won’t be ready,” Uncle John said. “There will be dragons for you to slay someday, Zachary. Just not now. Just because you have the physical weapons doesn’t mean you’re ready to use them. There are consequences. And for what it’s worth? I think he’s making the whole thing up. I told you that night in the hospital not to believe a word he said and I’m telling you again now.”

  Uncle John turned, put his hand on Zach’s shoulder again and said, “This isn’t your fight. Not yet, anyway. Take some time and enjoy being a kid. You’re fourteen, for cripes’ sake.”

  Zach had one more question.

  “There’s something I need to know, Uncle John. It’s been bothering me for a while. I’ve never asked Mr. Herbert, but I’m asking you: if my dad was an orphan, who passed on his powers to him?”

  “Your father always wanted to know that, too,” John Marshall said. “Who his real father was. He used to say that even Superman knew who his father was. But not Tom Harriman.” He pointed a finger at Zach and said, “But I always felt the old man knew, even if he swore he didn’t.”

  “How could he?” Zach said.

  “Because I believe he and his people killed him.”

  34

  HE said that?” Kate said.

  “Sure did,” Zach said.

  “Uncle John told you that Mr. Herbert is the one responsible for your dad being an orphan? But didn’t you tell me that Mr. Herbert found your dad when he was an orphan?”

  “Welcome to my world,” Zach said.

  “Wow.”

  “Uncle John said that he didn’t have any proof, but that he never believed my dad had just been left at the hospital as an infant, which is what he’d always been told. He believed that if Dad had these powers, then so did his father. And that only someone who wanted control of the next generation would have killed the father to get to the son.”

  “Like some kind of royal succession or something.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Like that.”

  “What he’s really saying is that Mr. Herbert did to your grandfather what somebody did to your dad.”

  “Nice, huh?”

  They were in Kate’s room, Kate sitting cross-legged on her bed, Zach sunk into the beanbag chair on the floor. Both eating popcorn.

  “So how do you find out if he’s right?” Kate said. “Uncle John, I mean?”

  “Well,” Zach said, “it’s not like the next time the old man pops in on me, I go, ‘By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what did you do to my real grandparents?’”

  Kate smiled. “You don’t think he’d make a full confession at that point?”

  “I asked Uncle John if he ever shared his theory with my
dad. He said he did—once. And that he and my dad had gotten into the biggest argument they’d ever had in all the years they’d been friends. He said my dad refused to hear anything bad about the old man. My dad obviously trusted Mr. Herbert. But Uncle John said it was that trust that killed him.”

  “So what now?” Kate asked.

  “I have a plan,” Zach said.

  Senator Kerrigan’s speech in the park was a week away, and had completely hijacked life in the apartment.

  Along with Zach’s mom.

  Even Zach and Kate had gotten swept up in the anticipation, both of them volunteering to make phone calls to potential voters, urging them to attend the rally and send a message to the rest of the country.

  It had been Kate’s suggestion for them to join the effort. She thought it might be good for these calls to come from young voices, since there would be so many teenagers who would be voting for the first time in the November election.

  “You’re hired!” Elizabeth Harriman had said that night at dinner. “Both of you.”

  “Feels more like I’m being drafted,” Zach had said. Then he’d pointed to Kate and said, “She likes talking on the phone.”

  “C’mon, you stiff, it’ll be fun,” Kate had said.

  And then his mom had reminded Zach that he’d be doing his part to help elect somebody in whom his father had believed so strongly.

  “Oh, nice, Mom. Play the Dad card.” Because enough time had passed that they could joke about his dad sometimes.

  “Who knows,” his mom had said, “maybe someday you’ll want to go into politics yourself. If you do, you can tell people about how your first campaign was for a friend of your father’s.”

  It was late June, and school was out by then. So each morning Zach and Kate would get their lists and set themselves up in the dining room, which had been turned into a Kerrigan war room. Then for a couple of hours they’d make calls on the senator’s behalf from opposite ends of the long dining room table, wearing the cool headsets Zach’s mom had provided.

  When somebody would say to either Zach or Kate that they sounded pretty young, they had a scripted response, and a good one.

  “Old enough to care about America,” they’d say. “And about our future.”

  Then in the afternoon, Zach would go to the park and wait for Mr. Herbert to show up again.

  Zach had asked him after their day in the park, “How can I find you if I need to reach you?” Mr. Herbert had said, “If you really need me, I’ll know, Zacman. And I’ll find you.”

  Zach had been with the guy exactly four times in his whole life, twice at the crash site, once in the hospital, once in the park. Still, he felt as if the guy was somehow running his life, as he kept running Zach in circles. With Uncle John telling him to run the other way. It was crazy, so much of it seeming unreal.

  Yet there was no denying it: his powers were real.

  Like his sixth sense for things.

  It had been kicking in more and more lately, without warning. Not something he could summon, not some kind of crystal ball he could use to gaze into the future.

  Just part of who he was now, what he could do.

  Zach had first started noticing it at school—little stuff, like knowing when a pop quiz was coming. The week before, his mom had come home a day early from a trip to the Midwest, wanting to surprise him. Only he hadn’t been surprised. He’d known walking home from Parker that she’d be waiting for him in front of the building.

  Maybe, he thought, this was something that had started the day his dad had died. That feeling he had sprinting across the park that day. Knowing something was wrong, just not knowing what. Or knowing how bad it really was.

  Maybe it was this same sense, this same feeling, that kept drawing him back to Central Park.

  So he was back in the park today, on the rocks above Conservatory Pond, suddenly sure the old man would show up.

  “Zacman.”

  No sound of footsteps, no warning. Mr. Herbert, sitting next to him as if he’d been sitting there all along, staring out at the water the way Zach was.

  “Did you train my father here?” Zach asked.

  “Among other places.”

  “Uncle John says that Dad trusted you.”

  A sad look crossed the old man’s face, taking Zach by surprise.

  “Not completely,” Mr. Herbert said. “Never completely.”

  He gave his head a quick shake, then gave Zach a light whack on his back and said, “Something else is on your mind. Spill.”

  Zach wasn’t surprised. “You told me that something bad is going to happen in New York. Do you think it could have something to do with Senator Kerrigan?”

  Mr. Herbert smiled. “Using that sixth sense, are you?”

  “I guess so,” Zach said. “But his speech would obviously make a good target, with so many people in one place.”

  “And with the senator such an influential person these days . . . ,” said Mr. Herbert. “So influential, in fact, that it makes a person wonder . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Zach shot back. “Wonder about what?”

  “I’m just saying,” Mr. Herbert answered. “It’s like that line from Spider-Man, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ It’s true.”

  “That would have made it true for my dad, then.”

  “And now for you,” Mr. Herbert said.

  “Do you have any reason to distrust Senator Kerrigan?” Zach asked.

  “I have reason to distrust most people,” he said. “But I’m not the one the good senator has to worry about, am I? Like I told you earlier, the Bads are always looking for an opening. Evil is smart, boy. Never forget that.”

  Zach was certain he wouldn’t.

  35

  THEY decided to train for a couple of hours. Zach found himself doing things he had never imagined. Like catching small rocks thrown by Mr. Herbert as though the old man had turned into a pitcher with a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball. Like following the flight of a bird from tree to tree, half a mile away. Finally, the old man stood, nodded and turned to leave without a word.

  “Wait,” Zach said.

  Mr. Herbert stopped, turned slowly back toward Zach.

  “What you said the other day . . . you really think I’m ready?”

  “Seems to me you’d better be,” Mr. Herbert said.

  He tipped his baseball cap to Zach, a small gesture, the way baseball pitchers do to the crowd when they are taken out of a game. Then he walked off.

  Zach walked toward Fifth Avenue, occasionally looking over his shoulder, watching the old man walk across the Great Lawn in the direction of Central Park West, toward the West Side buildings that framed that side of Central Park.

  Then he followed him.

  It was easy.

  Zach never worried about letting him get too far in front of him, having totally sharpened his long-range vision the way Mr. Herbert had taught him, knowing that if he had to, his eyes could track the old man all the way to the Hudson River. When he concentrated, it was as if everything peripheral melted away, all the cars, buildings and people.

  He couldn’t believe he hadn’t tried this before, tried to find out where Mr. Herbert went and who he talked to, where he lived.

  Who he really was.

  Maybe I am learning, Zach thought.

  The old man walked south on Central Park West, taking his sweet time, as if enjoying the early summer afternoon. And Zach was sure that even if he had turned around, he would never have noticed the kid in the long-sleeved Knicks T-shirt a hundred yards behind, because that was another one of the things Mr. Herbert had taught him, how to be a blur when he wanted to and not just when he had to, making himself disappear as he went from one place to another.

  Making himself invisible.

  Mr. Herbert walked past the Museum of Natural History on 81st Street, Zach wondering if he’d ever gone inside to check out the dinosaurs. Or maybe they didn’t hold any fascination for him. Maybe he was as ol
d as they were.

  The old man headed west from there, walked over to Broadway, stopped inside a Starbucks, came out a couple of minutes later with a cup of something hot, sipping gingerly as he walked.

  Then he turned downtown, walking all the way to 72nd Street—a wide, loud, busy street with traffic going in both directions. From there Mr. Herbert headed east, walking back toward the park now.

  Zach wondered if they were just going to keep circling this way for the rest of the afternoon. But then Mr. Herbert stopped before crossing Central Park West, stopping right in front of the Dakota, which Zach knew was a New York City landmark. John Lennon had lived there and was shot to death just inside the gates. The building towered over this corner of the West Side like some elegant old castle.

  Mr. Herbert pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch, approached the doorman and spoke to him briefly. The doorman went inside a little booth, made a quick call from inside, then came back out. One set of iron gates opened, then another set behind them, and the old man walked through.

  Zach could have made it across 72nd and through the gates before they closed if he’d wanted to.

  But he didn’t.

  He knew why the old man was here.

  And it wasn’t to see where John Lennon had been shot.

  He was here to see another John who had lived here for as long as Zach could remember:

  Uncle John.

  36

  ZACH stood on the south side of 72nd, staring at the gates of the Dakota, where the shooter had been waiting for John Lennon that night. Uncle John had shown him the spot one day.

  Zach briefly tried to talk himself out of any conspiracy theories. There were a lot of people who lived in that building, right? Just because Uncle John lived at the Dakota didn’t make it automatic that Mr. Herbert was here to see him.

  But he was.

  Zach’s sixth sense told him so.

  All along he had listened to both of them, smart enough to know that some of what he was being told had to be the truth. What was harder to figure out was which parts. And which were lies? Now he wondered if the bits and pieces that both of them had been feeding him had been their way of playing a kid, and that all of it was one gigantic lie.