The Power Broker

by Nick Svolos

  I didn’t waste any of it. Over the next couple of hours, I called every reporter who’d done a story on one of these protests, the cops or the various other city departments responsible for issuing parade or special events permits, as well as the variety of callback numbers left by the mysterious protest leader. Naturally, I didn’t manage to speak with each person I called, and when I was done making calls, my notes showed more messages left than actual conversations. Even so, a picture began to emerge.

  The woman in the photos used a different name in each city. Jennifer Blake in Los Angeles, Ivy Noel in Seattle, Opal Miller in Tampa, and so forth. She gave reporters a different phone number in each city, and none of them turned out to be legitimate. Either they were made up, turned out to be a disconnected line, or they went to someone unrelated to the protests. Likewise, in the few cases where I could get an answer on who pulled the permits for the protests, a different organization was listed. Groups with respectable names like “Normal Citizens’ Action Front” and “United Chicagoans for Safety”. None of these appeared to actually exist. I couldn’t even find dummy websites for them. The permit fees had all been paid in cash.

  All of this was pretty much what I was expecting. It was actually comforting. If the woman in question was on the level and she was representing an organization with a public face, they’d want publicity and the story would have been easy. Someone else would have already broken it. The fact that none of this stuff checked out told me that I was on to something good.

  I leaned back in my chair and began to consider my next move. While I still had a number of calls out and there was a possibility that I might catch a break, it looked like my mystery lady was pretty good at covering her tracks. I needed a bread crumb to follow. My belly started to rumble and I realized I’d given my breakfast to Panhandler. Helen polished off the rest of the food before I got back to my apartment. I decided I’d better break for lunch.

  We have a tiny break room on our floor, and the only consumable one might find there is stale, burnt coffee, so I walked down to the street to see if a lunch truck was working our block that day. To my immense joy, there was, and it was one of the good ones, the kind that serve up normal food. It’s all the rage nowadays to give food trucks a fancy name and a Twitter account and make weird grilled cheese sandwiches made with, I don’t know, brie or something. I didn’t want my lunch to be an educational experience. I didn’t need to know about palates and “flavor profiles” when all I wanted was a damned sandwich or something. This was a plain, dingy, white and chrome lunch truck from a bygone era. I bought a burrito, a soda and an apple and walked over to the loading dock to sit down and eat.

  As a forklift unloaded giant spools of paper from a truck, I munched and thought about how I’d track down the woman in the photos. It wasn’t going to be easy. I was better at finding superhumans, if for no other reason than I knew who to ask. There were only so many active supers in Los Angeles, and most of them trust me, at least enough to take my calls. Plus, they tended to stick to established patterns—patrol routes, hangouts and known associates—which made them a bit easier to track down or at least get a message to them. Normals, on the other hand, that was a different story. It was like looking for a needle in a very large pile of needles.

  I got an idea and set my burrito down. Pulling out my notepad, I reviewed the dates of the protests, and started building a timeline. I added in the dates, where I had them, that the permit requests were filed. This gave me enough to spot a couple of things. The first was that this woman was working a circuit around the country. The order of the protests, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tampa, New York, Chicago and finally Seattle, all made a sort of circle around the country. They were all cities that had an active superhuman presence, as well. If she kept to this pattern, she’d be hitting a city with an active super in it somewhere along the northern half of the west coast. The only two cities that fit that criteria were San Francisco and Portland.

  I also noted that the protests were about two to four days apart. If she kept to this schedule, she’d be at another protest as early as tomorrow, this weekend at the latest. I jammed the rest of the burrito in my mouth and got to my feet. This just might be the break I needed.

  Back at my desk, I looked up the numbers for the appropriate authorities in both cities, the Police Department in the case of San Francisco and Portland’s Department of Transportation Special Events Coordinator. Even though it was lunch hour and I didn’t expect to get a human being on the other end, I went ahead and started making calls. I figured I’d leave messages, and maybe my luck would hold and I’d actually get a call back. I tried San Francisco first, and after getting bounced around a couple of times, I left a voice message for what I hoped was the correct department. In Portland, I actually got the right person on the first try, and learned that there were no demonstrations planned there.

  So, that left me waiting for a call from the cops in San Francisco. I wasn’t likely to hear back in the next hour, if at all, so I needed something to do. I decided to switch gears a bit and work on Panhandler’s problem while I waited. Referring to my notes from that morning, I started a couple of searches on the Jorgensens. One of the results was from a career-oriented social networking site, and it looked like the father worked down in Redondo Beach, so I took a leap and called the company. The company had a voice directory, which I managed to successfully navigate and actually got a live voice on the line.

  “Accounting, Erik Jorgensen speaking,” the voice said.

  “Hello, Mr. Jorgensen. My name’s Reuben Conway. I’m a reporter with the Los Angeles Beacon. Do you have a moment?”

  There was some hesitation on the line. “Uh, what’s this about?”

  It’s pretty normal to go on the defensive when a reporter suddenly interrupts your lunch break, but something in his tone told me there was something deeper. I put on my best friendly voice and replied, “Well, I’m not even sure I have the right person, but I was wondering if Karl Jorgensen is your son.”

  The line went dead. I decided to try again. Maybe the call just got disconnected. It happens. I got his voicemail. I sighed and left a message, knowing I was probably wasting my time. If I wanted to talk to him, I’d have to do it in person. The social site had a picture of the man, so I shot a copy of it to my phone in case I decided to go down there and try to catch him after work.

  I dug through the search results some more, but wasn’t able to come up with much on Laura, the mother. There were quite a few Laura Jorgensens, but none that were both local and of an age that fit with a fifteen-year-old son. I checked my watch again and decided to take a gamble and try visiting the home address that Panhandler gave me. I felt lucky, and maybe she was a stay-at-home type. I had too much nervous energy to sit around waiting for callbacks, anyway.

  I packed up my gear, set my desk phone to forward my calls to my mobile and left the office. My pleasant morning walk to the Beacon cost me some time now, because my transportation was still sitting at my apartment. I was borrowing one of my old man’s salvage trucks, a beat-up 1972 F250. It was ugly as sin, boasting worn, fading upholstery and an AM radio. It was noisy and drank gas like cheap beer, but it ran well, and seeing as how my own car was in various stages of reassembly, the beater saved me the expense of renting a car. I walked the four blocks back to my place at a quick pace and a few minutes later I was firing up the old beast and driving to the address Panhandler had given me.

  The Jorgensens lived in a nice part of town where most of the sizable lots had been converted to inexpensive—at least by Santa Monica standards—two-story townhouses. There was a minivan in the driveway, giving me hope that my gamble had paid off. I found a place to park and walked to the door. My press of the doorbell was answered a few seconds later with the door being opened a bit, security chain still in place, and a suspicious “Hello?” from a petite blond woman. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties.

  I presented a business card. “Good afternoon, Ma’am. My
name is Reuben Conway. I’m a reporter with the Los Angeles Beacon. Are you Laura Jorgensen?”

  She took my card and inspected it cautiously, like I’d just handed her a stick of dynamite. After a bit she replied, “Yes. How can I help you, Mr. Conway?”

  I measured my words carefully. “A friend of Karl’s reached out to me this morning. He’s been staying with some people down at the beach. Sometime last weekend he went missing. I was hoping he might be here.”

  Her face became a battleground as fear and grief fought for control of her features. She looked away and shut the door. From where I stood, unsure of my next move, I could hear her body sag against the door. The sounds of her sobbing came through, muffled by the thick wood. She was hurting, and it made something inside me ache.

  I waited a moment before trying again. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Jorgensen? I’d like to help, if I can.”

  A quiet, sad voice responded, “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

  “I can try.”

  “Have you spoken to my husband?”

  “I tried to. He hung up on me when I asked about Karl.”

  The sobbing stopped, leaving silence in its absence. I started to wonder if she had walked away, although I didn’t hear any footsteps from her side of the door. I was about to try a third time when the security chain rattled. She opened the door, dabbing at the tears that streamed down her face.

  “Come in. There’s something you should see.” Her voice was still sad, but stronger somehow, as if she’d come to a decision.

  I followed her through a tastefully decorated living room. It looked like something out of a furniture catalog, clean, neat and a little on the pricey side, maybe a little south of Crate and Barrel but well north of Ikea. I guessed accounting paid better than I thought it did. Framed photos lined the walls. I spotted Karl, Laura and Erik in the photos as well as a little girl I hadn’t seen before. They must have a daughter.

  Laura didn’t say a word as she led me up the stairs to a child’s bedroom. The walls were pink and covered with stickers and posters, Dora the Explorer and My Little Pony. A little girl lie on the bed, hooked up to an IV, fresh bandages covering the top of her head. Golden curls cascaded out from beneath the gauze wrappings. She might have been eight or nine years old.

  “Two months ago, the children were playing in the den. Karl and Melinda always played so well together…” She drifted off for a moment. “There was a loud crash and we heard Karl shouting for help. We ran in and found her on the floor. Her head was ... there was blood and she wasn’t moving.” Laura’s voice cracked as she held back a sob. “Karl was crying. My husband, Erik, shouted at him to get away from her. We bundled her up and drove to the hospital. She’s been like this ever since. The doctors say there’s severe brain damage. We’re hoping she’ll get better, but the doctors.…” She broke off as she collapsed into a chair by the bed and began to cry.

  I reached down and touched the child’s hand. It was warm and limp and still. Far too still for a child her age. I didn’t know much about medicine, but I was pretty sure if the doctors thought there was any hope for this child, they would have kept her in the hospital. I couldn’t imagine the grief this woman must be feeling. I had no idea how to console her, and so I just stood there like an idiot and listened to her cry.

  When the weeping subsided, I asked, “Did you know Karl was developing powers?”

  She nodded. “There were signs. His bedroom door came off its hinges. Broken furniture. We didn’t know for sure, though. We didn’t know what to do about it.” She sobbed again and added, “We just hoped it would go away.”

  “I understand. I take it Karl ran away after the…incident?”

  “Erik was always too hard on him. But, the way he shouted at him when we found Melinda, I’d never seen him like that. So full of rage. When we got back from the hospital, Karl was just gone. I called the police, of course, but they said he’d probably just come back on his own in a day or two. When he didn’t, they said they were looking for him, but nothing’s come of it.”

  A couple things clicked into place. “Your husband blames himself for this, doesn’t he?”

  She gazed down at her daughter and nodded slowly. “He’s so full of guilt, it’s eating him alive.”

  “I see. I don’t know if this is any comfort, but for the last two months Karl’s been living down at the homeless encampment on the boardwalk. A hero by the name of Panhandler’s been training him to control his abilities.”

  Hope briefly crossed her features as she looked up at me, but it quickly faded. “But he’s not there now?”

  “No, Ma’am, I’m afraid not. That’s why I’m looking for him.”

  She started crying again. “Bring him home, Mr. Conway,” she implored. “Promise me you’ll bring him home. I want my boy back.”

  I knelt next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her my word, feeling like a fraud because I had no idea how I’d make good on it.

  ***

  The walk back to my truck felt a lot longer than it should have. I felt deflated. The Jorgensen family had lost two children in one night. I feared that, even if I managed to find Karl, I wouldn’t have good news to make things better.

  I tried to shrug it off. Perhaps I was just being pessimistic. The fact was, the vast majority of kids who went missing were recovered alive within the first seventy-two hours. Upwards of ninety percent, according to the data I found as I did a little research on my phone. My guess was that Karl hadn’t been found because he wandered down to the homeless encampment, and the cops leave those folks alone for a variety of reasons, mostly city politics. Since the cops didn’t know where he’d been, they couldn’t know that he’d gone missing again. I thought my best course of action might be to go to them with what I knew. I turned the key and wrestled the big Ford onto Olympic Boulevard.

  Down at the police station, it took me a little while to find someone from the Missing Persons Unit who’d talk to me. They treated me cordially enough, but once they found out I was a reporter, the walls came up. I took it in stride. Cops know they need to be on-guard when dealing with one of us. It’s too easy for an off-the-cuff remark to land them in hot water. So, I played the game politely and persistently, eventually managing to get a sit-down with Sergeant Irina Canales.

  “I’m not sure how I can help you, Mr. Conway. I’m not authorized to release information to the press on an open case,” she said as I sat down on the hard wooden chair next to her desk.

  “I understand that,” I said. “Actually, I’m here to provide information.”

  Her deadpan cop mien momentarily broke as she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh? Okay, what do you have?”

  “Let’s make sure I’m talking about the right kid.” I pulled up the photo Panhandler sent me on my phone and handed it to her. “That’s Karl Jorgensen, right?”

  She compared it to something on her computer’s monitor. “Yeah, that looks like him. He’s been at the homeless camp?” She handed the phone back.

  I nodded. “Up until last Sunday, yeah. He’s gone missing.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He was already missing. So, you’re telling me he’s even more missing.”

  “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  She updated the computer file with a few quick keystrokes and said, “Okay, we’ll look into it.”

  “Uh, that’s it?”

  “That’s it,” she said with professional detachment. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  I did my best to squelch my growing irritation. “Do you want me to send you this photo? Seems like a more up-to-date picture might be helpful.”

  “Sure.” She gave me an address, and I forwarded the image file. Once it went through, she did something else on the computer. I decided to be generous and assume she was updating the file. “Thanks again. We’ll look into it.”

  I didn’t know what I was expecting. It wasn’t like my information was likely to prompt the departmen
t to launch a city-wide manhunt, but I kind of hoped to see something. “I’m getting the feeling that ‘We’ll look into it’ doesn’t mean you’ll actually be doing that.”

  “As I said, I’m not at liberty to discuss our progress in the case with you, Mr. Conway.”

  She was in bureaucratic robot mode and I felt a wave of exasperation rising in my throat. I fought down my emotions and kept my tone professional. Two can play at this game.

  “‘We’ll look into it,’” I repeated as I wrote her statement down in my notebook. I took an exaggerated look at her name tag. “Sergeant Canales,” speaking her name aloud as I wrote her name under the quote.

  “Hey, wait… What?” she stammered. Her eyes looked like the emoticon for “What the hell just happened?”

  “Hmm? Oh, just making sure I get the quote right for the article I’m writing on the case,” I replied off-handedly. “Stories about the homeless sell big time this time of year. You know, Thanksgiving’s coming up and all that.”

  She fixed me with a cop glare that could have melted titanium. “What’re you trying to pull, Conway?”

  I returned her glare with my own. “I’m not trying to ‘pull’ anything, Sergeant. I’m writing a story about a missing kid. I’d like to report something to let all those soccer moms and bleeding hearts out there know that Santa Monica’s finest are on the job and give them some hope that the kid will be enjoying a nice big turkey with his family in a couple of weeks. You know, the sort of confidence that keeps them from hassling the city council or the police commission. Personally, I don’t think ‘We’ll look into it’ is the sort of quote that’ll do that, but if that’s all I have, that’s all I can write.”

  She didn’t need to tell me what a jerk I was. Her eyes said that for her. I didn’t care. She hadn’t met Karl’s mother. She hadn’t seen her pain. I knew this because, if she had, she wouldn’t be sitting here behind a desk telling me they’d “look into it”.