at the Flamingo Club. It makes him sick to see me getting ahead. The only way to beat men like Dekker is to beat them completely.” “Okay, maybe he does hate Jews. I’m sure he hates lots of people,” Alan said. “But what about me?”
Jimmy’s hand tightened into a fist. “Nah, you could be his goddam nephew for all he knows... except you’re in business with a Jew.” Scott snorted a laugh. “And you’re in business with a shuckster.” Jimmy looked over at Scott. “Oh yeah? How so?”
Scott shrugged, realizing he was letting on too much about his worries over the bridge design. He, too, wanted to beat Dekker and his bridge design was their trump card. But Scott wasn’t sure about how soundly it would stand under maximum stress. He covered this doubt with smooth talk and his easy, convincing manner. If Dekker had gotten this contract, Alan and Jimmy would have been frozen out of years of work, perhaps driving their business to bankruptcy.
Alan tried to change the subject. “Let’s just drop this whole thing about Dekker. It’s ruining my naturally cheerful demeanor.”
But Jimmy’s face stayed grim. There was nothing funny in what he was thinking.
In the pre-dawn light the train continued to snake down the tracks towards the bridge. Scott leaned back in from the window of the locomotive and turned to face Jimmy. “Well, I’ll say it one last time—I think you’ve got this blown all out of proportion.”
“Yeah? How about what’s going on in Europe. Is that paranoia too? It don’t take much for someone to kill off a bunch of people in ‘self interest’.”
“That’s war, Jimmy. This is business,” Alan reminded him. “Dekker's not going to let us off the hook that easily.”
“Boy, do you need a break.”
Jimmy’s grimace didn’t change. “Maybe so.”
Scott reached into his pocket and pulled out two packets and handed one to Jimmy, who looked at Alan questioningly.
“Plane tickets,” Alan said. “1 figure we’ve earned an airplane flight back to Gotham for a couple days.”
“What about... ?”
“The crew can go ahead without us. Look at the date.”
For the first time in days, Jimmy cracked a grin. “Alyssa’s birthday.”
“You can be back in time to give her that dress you picked up for her in Denver.”
A shadow crossed Jimmy’s face. “Does this have anything to do with Irene?” Another grin from Jimmy, this one mocking.
“That’s twice in less than five minutes you’ve smiled,” Scott said, “Your face ain’t use to it. Go easy... a ripe melon like yours just might crack wide open.”
But Jimmy wasn’t through with his needling. “C’mon partner. You’ve been awfully distracted lately, kinda absent and now like you’re walking on air. She pop the question to you?”
“You’ve got that a little wrong—it’s the guy who does the asking,” Alan said.
“Not as far as that one’s concerned,” Jimmy laughed. “She’s one dame who knows what she wants and goes after it. You may be in over your head.”
“I just want you to have a little time with your daughter,” Alan said.
Scott offered a smoke to Jimmy.
“We’re coming up to the bridge.”
Scott leaned out—in the breaking dawn he could see the slight curve of the rails and the girder bridge spanning the ravine. Scott felt good that the work was done and that he was literally moving on to greater things. His fretting about the bridge and Jimmy’s concern about Dekker would all be put to rest in a few minutes.
Scott peered at the queer-looking lantern, Jimmy’s lucky charm, that he held in his hands. “What the heck is up with this thing? It’s green!”
“Something, ain’t it? I got it from a relative. This crazy uncle—I mean really crazy-made it for me. The thing’s unbreakable. Go ahead, try denting it.”
“Is this like the time you told me to take a swing at you to show my how quick you were?” Alan said.
Jimmy frowned. “I don’t remember that.”
“You shouldn’t-I knocked you out cold. And I’m not going to ding up your family heirloom.”
Jimmy took the lantern from Alan. “Okay, I’ll show you.” Casually but with great force, Jimmy took the lantern and hurled it against the locomotive boiler—it bounced off heavily and landed on the deck, rolling with the motion of the train.
Scott picked it up and looked—not a scratch. Jimmy nudged him. “C’mon strong man—I’ll buy you a steak dinner back in Gotham if you so much as scratch it.”
“You’re on.”
Scott hung the lantern on the hook, and picked up the coal shovel. Standing back, he swung at it with all his might, the shovel blade bouncing off the lantern with a mighty clang.
Scott took it off the hook and held it up—nothing. “Your uncle really knows how to build a good lantern.”
“It’s good luck. Been that way for-”
Then there was a roar and the ground fell away and everything went black.
Leaning against the pine tree, Scott blinked out of his memory to the grim present. It wasn’t the ground that fell away. It was the train. Was there an explosion? Did the train slew sideways? As he resumed his climb, he looked back up at the broken trestles. Was it the footings? The soil? The beams splitting? Was it a derailment? There must have been an explosion—or was it the roar of the crash that he remembered hearing?
He thought of Irene. He saw her profile, riding on a streetcar. Her expression was pleasant but neutral as she looked ahead to see if this was their stop. He remembered now that this image was his only thought of her as he had awaited his death-not a glorious kiss, her longing looks, none of that. It was simply her face with a look of casual expectation.
And because that was the most he’d thought of her, he was ashamed and vowed to do something about that if he ever saw her again.
Scott could feel the heat from the fire below. Soon the bridge structure would be engulfed in flames. He had only a little time to investigate the bridge’s failure.
The broken trestles, splintered like giant twigs, accused him. He began climbing the tarred, broken wood. As he neared the top of the trestles he smelled the sharp, biting odor of cordite. He followed the smell to the critical point of collapse. Leaning in, he saw the charred fracture where a small explosive charge had detonated, weakening the bridge enough to cause it to collapse under a heavy load. Someone knew the stress point of the bridge and set an explosive charge to weaken it.
It was clear that the bridge had been sabotaged.
CHAPTER
5
Alan Scott awoke to a hangover to beat all hangovers.
He found himself awash in the rumpled sheets and dirty laundry of his bed. He sat up and scanned the dusty, littered bedroom, silently cursing the sunlight bleeding through his shot blinds, feeling like an exhausted vampire.
How did he get home?
He lay back in bed, still reeling from the nightmare of a terrible train wreck, then salvation from a lantern, of all things. He had dreamed that it gave him magic powers, even the ability to fly faster than anyone had ever flown, so fast that it brought him home to Gotham in a matter of minutes. He remembered flying through the sky all the way home. It must have been a dream! It all seemed terribly real.
He sat up and swung his legs off the bed, dug around under the laundry and found a reasonably clean pair of boxers to wear. His head pounded as he tried to put together the last twenty-four hours, but found that he could not get past the vivid nightmare.
Scott stumbled around his apartment, trying to get dressed. He knew he had to be ready for a morning flight and he was doing his best to sift through the clutter, past the single leather chair and overflowing ashtrays and memorabilia from around the world: topographical maps, aerial survey photos, matchbooks with girls’ names, soil samples, pictures of bridges he and Jimmy had built. The apartment wasn’t so much a home but storage and a drop-off point for Scott.
But as he shook the cobwebs out of his
possessions and his head, he couldn’t quite shake the nightmare he had had about the trestle bridge. It seemed as real to him as a kiss’s memory.
In fact, Scott couldn’t remember where he’d been last night, or last week for that matter. Trying to dress and remember at the same time was too much for Scott, so he sat down in his underwear, one sock on his foot, the other in his hands, and tried to recall the last solid memory he had.
It was the night before they left for Colorado, He and Jimmy went to the bar at the Flamingo Club to drink themselves silly in celebration of winning the contract for the trestle bridge. And who should send them a bottle of Cristal but Dekker, who was sitting with his sycophants across the room, at his reserved comer booth.
A bit spooked at the coincidence of his presence, Jimmy and Scott drunkenly, civilly tipped their fluted champagne glasses and nodded thanks to the dignified industrialist. Dekker smiled back warmly, but his eyes were as dead and cold as a rattlesnakes. The two men drank down the champagne with gusto, not knowing or caring that it was fifty years old and the best the restaurant had to offer. They
were in it to get drunk and as with so many other things they pursued, they would not be denied.
Jimmy was carrying a faint sense of melancholy and doom that Scott, even in his drunkenness, could sense. He leaned in to his friend, a little too close, and stared at him, breathing heavily in his face.
“What’s up with you, pal? Why the long face?”
Jimmy flopped the latest edition of the Tribune on the bar. It was filled with news stories about the Nazis marching into Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Jimmy stared moodily at the paper, his glass in hand. “I’m sick of it.”
“What?”
“Watching innocent people get the shaft.”
Scott grinned. “Then you must be sick of living on this planet.” “Maybe so.” Jimmy tossed back another shot. He looked at Scott. “You ever think that maybe we could do some good?”
Scott squinted at his friend. “Whattya mean? Build an orphanage or something?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Jimmy, there’s no money in orphanages. We ought to know.” “You never felt like giving something back?”
“I don’t have enough to give. When I have what that lizard in the comer booth’s got, then I’ll become a regular Andrew Carnegie,” Alan said.
“If it’s that easy, it don’t mean nothin’.”
“I don’t follow.”
Jimmy chomped down on ice from his drink. “It ain’t sacrifice if you can’t feel it.”
“Jimmy, we’ve been sacrificing since we could walk and talk. I can’t believe you’re thinking of that being anything but a crock. Let’s take care of business first. Then we can do some good, okay? This is our first crack at the major leagues. We do good here, we can build a hundred orphanages.”
“God damn it Alan, you’re missing the point— “
Before Jimmy could drive his point home, a hand came down heavily on Scott’s shoulder, interrupting the debate. Scott turned to see the round, jovial face of John Tellum, the owner of Apex Broadcasting networks and Irene’s boss at his WXYZ, Apex’s flagship radio station. Scott was glad to see Tellum, whose relentlessly cheerful demeanor would be welcome relief from Jimmy’s gloomy mood.
Tellum vigorously shook Scott’s hand. “Where the hell’s Irene?” “It’s a stag night, John. Pull up a stool.”
“I’d love to, but I got the in-laws in town and we got tickets to see some Shakespeare play with backstabbing royal people and their silly shenanigans.” Tellum rolled his eyes. “Heard the great news about your bridge contract—when do you head out?”
“Three days.”
“And you left Irene at home tonight?” Tellum wagged his finger in the “naughty boy” gesture.
Scott grinned, embarrassed. “It’s not me-she’s covering some gangland shooting.”
Tellum nodded. “The best thing I ever did was give that girl a shot in radio. And to think she started out as a receptionist.”
Scott downed his drink and waved the bartender over for another. “Yeah John, that’s some real Horatio Alger fodder.”
Tellum missed the sarcasm. “Irene’s about as crazy for a good story as she is for you. But you’re the only one who can make her happy, even though good crime to cover runs a close second.” Scott stared into his fresh drink. “I wouldn’t know where to begin, John. She’s her own boss—you of all people should know that.”
“A force of nature, to be sure,” agreed Tellum.
“If you got a way of getting her to settle for me, I’m all ears.” “What do you need, a blueprint? One of those—what are they called—schemes?”
“Schematic. No, look, I just don’t know what the point would be,” Scott said. “Between my work and hers, neither of us is home. Who’ll do the dishes?”
“Look, quit this goofy gig, blow off this loser here,” Tellum nodded at Jimmy with a wink to Scott, “and come work for me at the Apex. Radio is the future Alan, and Apex Broadcasting will be at the tip of that spear of progress.”
“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?” Alan said with a smile. “I’m just looking out for your happiness: come work for me and then you can settle down with Irene.”
“Get out of here, you crazy bastard.”
Another wink from Tellum told Scott it was a joke, but then he leaned in and whispered. “I’m serious about working at Apex-I’ve got an opening at WXYZ. Just say the word and it’s yours.”
Scott turned and smiled goofily at Jimmy, but Jimmy was sitting deep in thought, ignoring Tellum. That put Scott back into a funk as well, this time about Irene and his confusion about their on-again, off-again relationship.
Prior to Irene, Scott had no time for women in his life—he was too mobile and never saw the need to settle down, although women loved him. Irene was the only woman Scott met who captured his attention and respect. She was smart, brave and sure of herself. But it was those very same qualities that kept them apart: they both had too much ambition and drive to give in to the needs of the other. So it went.
Women went after Jimmy, too, but he didn’t take notice either. Since his young wife had died, Jimmy’s love of his life was his eight year-old daughter. Alyssa was yet another catalyst for Jimmy becoming a man at such a young age. When he had gotten his teenage girlfriend pregnant, he opted to marry Beth and become father to his daughter, even though he wasn’t much more than a kid himself. He knew what it was like to grow up without parents, and he would be damned to have Alyssa struggle the way he did. And since his Beth’s horribly premature death, his love for Alyssa had only grown stronger.
Jimmy threw a few bills on the zinc bar top and heaved himself off the barstool. “Okay, good night.”
“Where are you going?” Alan asked.
“Home. I got a lot to do before we can leave.”
“One more,” Alan insisted.
Jimmy took Alan’s hand off his arm. “I gotta get up early—I promised Alyssa we’d go for a carriage ride through the park.” Scott dropped his hand. Alyssa was Jimmy’s ace in the hole and an argument that he knew he couldn’t counter.
Jimmy smiled tightly. “What can I say—it’s our ritual before I head out.”
“Yeah, I know”, Scott said. “Get out of here.”
As he watched Jimmy leave the bar, in a brief, sober moment, Scott wondered how it would feel to love someone unequivocally. He found the idea fearful because he would then be vulnerable. Loving someone completely was to have a weakness because it was impossible to keep anyone safe from the world. For that reason he could never give himself completely to anything or anyone. It was why he did not think he could ever love Irene enough.
And now, the morning after a terrible dream, with days and possibly weeks missing from his memory, Scott sat alone in his apartment, disoriented, trying to piece it all together. Time, experience, premonition, fantasy and reality, seemed elastic. Did he really fly through the air
with a green lantern in his hand? How could someone do that and be certain it happened without being certifiably nuts?
The only thing he was certain of in that moment was that he needed to take a monster piss.
As he made his way across the cluttered room to his bathroom, his foot kicked something hard, making it fall over with a heavy thump.
Picking it up, he saw that it was Jimmy’s green lantern.
Last night’s dream came back to him, but this time as a memory. Scott began to sense what was real, and it made him very nervous.
The lantern was dusty, not from lack of use but from dirt. Fresh mountain dirt.
It struck Scott that the dream wasn’t a dream. He checked his body—not a scratch. The wreck and the lantern hadn’t been a nightmare.
It was a memory.
Scott dressed as fast as he could.
The building superintendent was lost in the mind-emptying work of mopping the marble foyer in neat, concentric circles when he heard footsteps. Looking up, he was startled to see Scott standing before him, a lantern in his hands.
“Moses, who left this?” Scott’s tone was frantic.
“Mister Scott-you’re here!” the super stammered.
“Where else would I be?”
“But the news-”
“What news?” Scott asked.
The super pulled a copy of the Tribune from his back pocket. He held it in front of Scott, staring at him as if he was looking at a ghost.
Scott snatched the paper and snapped it open. At the bottom of the front page was a new story about the trestle bridge disaster. Scott checked the date on the paper—the disaster had happened yesterday.
“The paper said you were missing,” Moses said. “How did you get back so fast?”
Scott stared into the old man’s gentle eyes. “I flew.”
The newsroom at The Apex Broadcasting Company was dingy, messy and alive with the sounds of people gathering news: ringing phones, clattering typewriters, incessantly chattering teletype machines spilling out rolls of wire copy, and the din of voices-shouting, questioning, laughing, the comforting, never ending chaos of the newsroom.
Scott stumbled through this sea of cluttered desks manned by unkempt, deadline-harried newsmen, past filing cabinets overflowing with paper. He was oblivious to the activity around him and got an occasional curious glance.
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