The place had corrugated steel on some windows, but similar dressing on the others had obviously been torn away for salvage, and there was a helter-skelter of planks and plastic sheeting stuck on.
The warehouse, too, was a red herring.
The by-now-customary point-man — in this case a middle-aged punk with a misshapen umbrella and a leather jacket that was probably really vinyl and way past its use-by — intercepted Jacob and quizzed him with another teaser, this time pinched from an old cartoon (‘Who was Popeye’s girlfriend?’ — Answer, ‘Olive Oyl’).
The Punk passed on a street number in the same neighbourhood.
Wildish goose chase this may’ve increasingly resembled, but the fact was Jacob had little better to do with his time, and at least the wayward search killed his appetite. He wondered if these watch-people hovered there twenty-four hours a day, if they had rotating shifts, and whether or not they got paid.
At the fourth address the question was dead easy (‘What is Superman’s weakness?’ — Answer, ‘Kryptonite, magic or lead’) and at the fifth obscure (‘When was the first issue of The Fantastic Four published?’ ‘According to the cover, November, 1961’).
Outside address six Jacob stopped, waiting to be accosted, but nobody showed.
Before him was a dilapidated Victorian terrace house, street number 43, two floors of bluestone and perhaps an attic above that. There were a brother and sister joined at the hip on either side, in equally shoddy condition.
The gate was missing most of its pointed bars and let out an almighty creak when he shoved against it. After that he weaselled past an overgrown, very dead bush with zero foliage, and went up five steps to the verandah, where most of the floorboards were absent and the cast-iron ornaments long-since plundered.
Stepping carefully from remaining slat to remaining slat, Jacob reached the heavy-looking wooden door and pushed. Of course it was locked, or barred.
Above eye-level on the warped upper panel where a window probably used to be, there were three sketches of apparent female superheroes done in charcoal or pencil and rendered in a style that would’ve made Japanese kids’ book illustrator Ryōji Arai proud.
Too high to have been done by a child’s hand unless the tyke had a step-ladder, just above their heads was a silly plastic knocker that looked like a lightning bolt — far newer than the ancient door — so he swung it twice, and then a third time for the hell of it.
Nothing happened for a minute or so. Jacob had no idea how long, exactly, since he didn’t own a watch.
“Password?”
The question had come from the other side of the thick door, so soft the boy barely heard it above the ruckus of the rain. “Huh?”
“Password.” That voice, louder now, had a hint of irritation.
“What password?”
“Come on, come on, haven’t got all day.”
“Heropa?” Jacob guessed.
“Bzzzt—! Push off.”
“The Hippy sent me.”
“I don’t care if the Green Lantern gave you an invite. Get lost.”
Jacob walked carefully in a circle out there on the verandah. “Wow, you’re a wanker, aren’t you?” he said in a loud voice as he dodged holes.
The voice inside sounded angry. “Beat it!”
Jacob turned to go. “So much for comic fantasies.”
“—Bingo! Comics it is. Why didn’t you say so before?”
“What?”
“The password: comics.” The voice had taken on a warmer, conspiratorial edge. “Okay, one more question, a doozie, but if you get it, I’ll open up. What was the Red Skull’s real name?”
“Depends. Johann Schmidt, Albert Malick, or George John Maxon?”
“Sheesh, I dunno — I would’ve been satisfied with only Schmidt.”
The door creaked open a few centimetres and another teenage face appeared before Jacob’s glare. This boy had squinty rodent eyes, sunken cheeks, severe acne, and lips looking like they’d recently been employed to suck on a lemon.
“Was there really three Skulls? I just heard of the one.”
“You going to tell me the next address, or do I go home?”
“C’mon, lighten up,” whined that mouth surrounded by the damage — acting as if these two kids facing each other on a reprobate’s doorstep had upped the ante to chumminess. “Your journey’s over! What’re you waiting for? Come on in!”
Just through the entrance was a long passageway, one so dimly lit it was impossible to see the high ceiling above. Water dropped onto Jacob’s shoulder when he stepped inside, having fallen from somewhere high up there in the darkness, and that reminded him.
“He had a daughter, too, who used the Red Skull name.”
“Huh?”
“Sinthea Schmidt. Look into it.”
“Oh, you’ll fit right in. Follow me — or, as Igor would tell his master Frankenstein, ‘Walk this way’.” The other boy pretended to drag his left leg as he went ahead.
Jacob followed the Rat on squeaky boards. He noted a succession of tiny rooms, with people in them — dead or asleep, he couldn’t tell — lying on chesterfields and covered by tatty space blankets. Each individual had two small machines beside him or her, an IV drip, and something that looked vaguely like a lunch bag.
Cabling linked the machines, burrowing from one room to the next. Often, accommodating this communal technology, there were holes crudely punched through the brick walls.
The place looked like an opium den Jacob had seen in a Sherlock Holmes comic published by Dell — what was it called? ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’, he remembered.
“These people high, or something?” he asked, louder than he’d planned.
“Or something. Ohhh, really something.”
The two of them trudged up a steep set of wooden steps, several of which were worn smooth or broken, and on the next floor entered a small living room with battered furniture.
The only other decoration that clung to one wall was a tattered poster for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, rendered in some kind of cubist hand.
“I’m not sure that’s the best sales-pitch for what you’re trying to hawk,” Jacob observed, eyes on the poster.
“Dunno what you mean.”
The opposite wall to the adjoining house had a door — apparently, they were linked.
“Take a seat, tiger,” the Rat suggested.
Still suspicious, Jacob sat down.
#115
Ten minutes later, there was an addition next to the Rat.
This man had a black overcoat on its last legs, a Ralph Steadman-designed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas t-shirt, black pants gone in both knees, and fourteen-hole Doc Martens wannabes. Thirtyish, with long, green-dyed hair and a faraway look. Jacob decided straight away to label him Gonzo.
The Rat had pulled up an ancient red and white handle-backed diner chair, a simple mix of 1950s rusted metal and vinyl, but Gonzo settled on an overturned maroon plastic milkcrate.
“So, what shall it be?” Gonzo inquired.
“Here.” Jacob took out an old pink satin purse that had belonged to his mum.
“Kinky,” the Rat decided.
Jacob scowled. “Not the purse. Jeez. This.”
He extracted a twice-folded sheet of yellowed A4 paper and carefully flattened it out on the scratched and beaten coffee table between them.
This was a lead pencil drawing of an upside-down superhero without a cape, with little details written in blue ink, arrows pointing this way and that. It said ‘Southern Cross’ in bigger letters on the upper right-hand side of the page, next to more detailing in cerulean blue: two boxes that showed a stars-and-stripes logo for the front of the costume, and a boomerang motif of the hero’s initials, SC, supposed to go on the back.
“Swanky.” That was the Rat again.
“Any special name?” Gonzo asked, wiping green wisps away from his eyes.
“Like it says there.” The boy pointed at handwritten text at
the top of the picture. “Southern Cross.”
“Southern Cross? That’s a bit tacky, isn’t it?”
“Think it’s been done before too, boss,” the Rat piped up — to which Gonzo hung his head.
“I’m not your boss. How many times do I have to hammer that into your oblivious skull? Boss, no. See? Easy.” The man lifted his eyes back to Jacob. “And you want this exact costume?”
“Pretty much.”
Now raising his eyebrows, Gonzo pushed surprised. “Even the ’80s boomerang-style font for the back of the duds?”
“Passé,” the Rat agreed.
“Well, we can ditch that. The flag’ll do — unless you think it’s dated too.”
“Flags are always old hat, which is why they work. And I think we’ll go for cerulean blue instead of navy.” Gonzo squinted as he turned the piece of paper over. “There’s no mention here of powers.”
“Hadn’t thought about that.” Jacob shuffled nervously on the sofa, Brave New World still in his field of vision. “Listen, this is the real deal, right? Not some sort of cult that preys on losers like me?”
“It’s real enough, buster,” Gonzo said, all prickly.
“Better quality than the flyer?”
“Depends which one.” Settling back on his crate, the green-haired man looked Jacob over. “Tell you what, let’s give you plasma blasts. The last Cape using them, the Faceless Phantom, quit six months ago. Arsehole was a beer-killer, and no one will notice. Anyway, he used his eyes.”
“If this person was faceless,” Jacob piped up, “how could he have eyes?”
“Don’t worry yourself about that,” Gonzo replied. “We’ll endow this power to the right hand. In your hour of need, all you need do is aim at a target, think about unleashing the power, and—”
“Hey, presto!” announced the Rat. “Va-voom!”
“Right,” Gonzo agreed, even if his expression betrayed annoyance that some thunder had been stolen.
“Can I have any power?”
“Within reason, yes. But only one. And each has its Achilles’ heel. Yours is the fact that plasma blasts can go through anything, except for bombastium.”
Jacob felt his left eyebrow raise itself. “Bombastium? Something like adamantium, I’m guessing.”
“Stronger. Nothing beats it for elasticity and strength, since this is a vibranium/adamantium mix. Also, did I tell you no one can fly in Heropa? Nup? It’s one of the golden rules — no Cloak of Levitation here. Unless you sneak past that rule with the available technology, which some unruly people have done.”
“Can I opt instead for invulnerability?”
The Rat shook his head. “Nobody gets invulnerability.”
“Mate, you won’t be needing it where you’re going,” added Gonzo. “Capes never die. Only the Blandos give up the ghost.”
“Only the stupid Blandos!” came a squeaky echo.
“In Heropa?”
“Heee-bloody-ropaaa!” The Rat pumped his fist.
TWILIGHT 0VER H0B0KEN
#116
Jack went back to the Warbucks & Erewhon Union Trust Bank, on Fawcett Avenue, a couple of days after his unplanned rendezvous with Bulkhead.
The incentives for doing so were to pass on his gratitude to the teller, Miss Starkwell, and make sure she was okay. A Blando she may’ve been, but Jack kept remembering the girl’s eyes and her heroics with the typewriter.
In fact, the eyes were the real reason for this visit — thanks be damned.
He wore something new, a grey wool suit with red and ivory pinstripes that he’d been fitted with by a tailor in the suites of Equalizers HQ. On the back of his head Jack had a gun-grey felt fedora.
When he arrived, though, Miss Starkwell wasn’t at her desk. Jack asked the old guy, Mister Winkle, to have her paged.
While waiting, he pretended to do some browsing, even if — in actual fact — he was steeling his nerves.
The wall Bulkhead crashed through was completely repaired and looked like it’d never been scratched. Instead of appearing brand spanking new, the wallpaper there had deteriorated with age. Jack moved on, to study an oddball lump of metal on a perch over near the main entrance.
“Twilight Over Hoboken.”
“Huh?”
Jack jerked about to find himself face-to-face with Louise — Miss Starkwell — and her cat’s eye glasses. Once again, he found it difficult to breathe.
The girl was decked out in a sleeveless, knee-length flapper dress in varying blues divided by a diagonal ivory lightning bolt. There didn’t appear to be any injuries to her body. She had a small, business-like smile, but there was no hint of recognition in her glorious, emerald eyes.
She was merely being friendly and informative to a customer.
“The sculpture you’re admiring, sir. It’s called Twilight Over Hoboken. By the famous Italian-American artist Pierre Picolino — do you know him?”
“Can’t say I do. I don’t see it.”
“What don’t you see?”
“The twilight.”
“This is an abstract piece. You’re supposed to imagine it.”
“Still.”
“There’s always something there, sir, if you look closely enough.”
Jack, somewhat overwhelmed, gazed at the girl’s face. “I’m beginning to realize that. Please, call me Jack.”
“All right. You’re the gentleman who asked for me?”
“I am. I wanted to say thanks for the other day.”
“Oh! I’m so glad I could be of assistance.”
Jack could see she had no clue what he was talking about, but she covered nicely.
“Yeah, well, it’s always nifty to get good customer service these days, you know?” Jack, on the other hand, covered poorly — he had to stop the ramble in its tracks. But there was one more thing to pursue. “Listen, what time do you finish here?”
“The bank closes at four, and I usually stay on an hour after that.” Those eyes darted his way. “Why do you ask, sir?”
“Jack.” He swallowed with difficulty. “And I’d like to take you out for a drink.”
“A drink?”
“Tame stuff. Coffee only. I’ll be a complete gentleman, I swear. We can talk about Twilight Over Hoboken.” Was that panic in his tone? God, he hoped not.
“I don’t know. This is highly irregular.”
“Go on — be a devil,” Jack dared.
“A devil?” The girl laughed softly.
It was a joy to see some of the veneer flake away. She peered over at Mister Winkle, and then nodded the smallest fraction. “At five o’clock, then.” “On the dot.” Unbelievable, crossed his mind.
#117
They were perched on maroon-and-cream hound’s-tooth pattern cushions, atop barstools made from rosewood and gleaming chrome, inside a diner pretending to be a streetcar. The place was called Quality Street.
Since the evening was pushing chilly, Louise had donned a tight sweater, a red and gold cotton scarf, and a chocolate-brown beret. Jack did notice she’d added red to her lips as well, but he was more preoccupied trying to stop his right leg from jigging nervously.
“What do you want to know about Pierre Picolino?”
“Who?” Jack had gone completely blank.
“Twilight Over Hoboken.”
“Ahh — the artist!”
“Your excuse for whisking me off here.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Miss Starkwell took a small bag off the stool beside her to place on the table. After clipping it open she whisked out firstly a small paperback, Run for Love, and then a packet of Paul Jones blended cigarettes and an ostrich skin-covered cigarette lighter. The girl flipped the lid of the lighter and rotated the flint wheel with a dainty thumb to create flame. Jack was mesmerized.
“You can’t smoke here,” he finally managed to utter.
“Really?” Louise glanced about. “Oh, I’m sorry — I didn’t see any signage.”
“No, I mean you can’t smo
ke here. In Heropa.”
Louise looked at him with wide eyes that suddenly sparkled in merriment, and she laughed in a boisterous manner.
“Oh, go on! Next thing, you’ll be telling me our chain-smoking mayor’s introduced some kind of tobacco-prohibition! God forbid!” The flame hit the end of the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, and she quickly inhaled. Smoke drifted out lazily a few seconds later. “I needed this. My boss drives me crazy. I only smoke at night, you know.”
“Mister Amsterdam, was it?”
“Holland. Henry Holland. The man cannot keep his hands to himself.”
“Yep, I noticed.”
Jack sipped at his coffee, when in actual fact he wanted to try one of the cigarettes. The iconic character on the packet — some joker in an admiral’s hat — was gazing at him from the table. Jack wasn’t sure. Perhaps this rule against smoking applied only to Capes?
“So,” Miss Starkwell mused, the cigarette gently held between teeth before she snatched it away with her fingers, “are you really interested in art, Jack? Or was there some other reason for inviting me here? I’d hate to find out you’re casing the bank.”
This was a surprise. The longer the evening wore on, the wilder the girl became — and they hadn’t yet got to any alcohol. He began to wonder if she could break those rules as well.
“No, no, I’m not really the bank robbing sort. Bad with guns. Never touched one, actually. I did want to talk art, which I do dig — though I haven’t brushed up before against this Picolino fellow. I’m into a painter called Roy Lichtenstein.”
“The pop artist?”
Jack froze mid-sup. “You know him?”
“Sure. Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl is famous — snatched, as it is, from a twelve-cent girls’ comicbook.”
Louise did a quick sketch of the painting on a paper napkin; it took her less than a minute, but she skipped the added-extra ukiyo-e waves and dialogue bubble.
Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? Page 8