Strangely enough, prior to oblivion settling back in to roost, the Equalizer had a flash and thought he remembered the name of the whistled tune: Ary Barroso’s 1939 number, ‘Aquarela do Brasil’.
“Kid! Kid!” the Brick’s voice pleaded, somewhere very distant. “Goddammit, are you awright—?”
6 ° 0F TREP1DAT10N
#147
Louise Starkwell had been happy.
For the first spell in any time she could recall, contentment had channelled her way. Then again, Louise supposed she’d been happy in the past, but any experience of that kind remained strangely removed.
This often left the girl wondering if some illness — dementia, Alzheimer’s, attention deficit disorder or a variation of it — were playing havoc with her brain. She’d heard that symptoms of ADD included forgetting things on a daily basis, misplacing keys, locking oneself out, and leaving the lights on — none of which she did.
But chronic forgetfulness in general? Most certainly this, and there was the subconscious procrastination about leaving her job.
Yet things she’d evidently studied, like art and accounting, also the basic act of whipping up a pasta dish off the top of her head, remained fresh and accessible. Louise wished she could remember having boned up on these in the first place.
There was a time, close to the moment she met Jack, when things that happened the day before were shrouded in mystery. The feeling had declined as their relationship bloomed, and it was only the more distant past that was now beyond her.
A time involving a husband who appeared in dreams — even if she was not so sure this man was Lee. There were no pictures to check, no memories to tick off, nothing to compare or contrast.
Not that this mattered.
None of it did.
The recent bout with happiness? Short-lived — as usual, it had all too quickly decamped. While she felt a fool, worse still she had this uncontrollable melodramatic belief that her heart had been mashed beyond repair. Louise thought about slapping herself. She had stupidly trusted Jack, believed in him, loved the man. A vacuous rollercoaster that was over inside two weeks — some kind of new record.
Damn it, Jack, she mulled, why couldn’t you be honest?
Was she to blame for that? After all, she’d brought up Lee’s death at the hands of other Bops. No wonder he didn’t want to mention his career choice. And it wasn’t his fault he was naturally reticent and shy — that’s what she liked about him in the first place.
But what were those more recent awkward moments, his thoughts obviously elsewhere, and the lie about his parents?
At least, she believed it was a lie. Jack had been safe-harbouring too many secrets, not allowing her to glimpse his real self, and then one major truth exploded onto the front page of a newspaper. She had every right to react the way she did. He couldn’t be trusted. He’d lied. Hadn’t he?
The Prof always said it took two to tango.
Who was it that moaned her dead spouse’s name in the middle of a particularly poignant moment? Louise closed her eyes. No wonder the guy acted strange.
And she’d played the jealousy card by paying too much attention to Karl Burgos at the restaurant, had seen Jack squirm. Now she felt disgusted with herself. He’d behaved almost…human.
When a relationship goes right, she decided, everything sparkles. Life is so grand you could carve it up and generously give portions to the needy. When a relationship goes wrong, every niggling doubt shoves its way to the surface. You close up shop, embrace bitterness, and denounce the world.
Louise looked up, shook away the vacillating debris, and held up a hand to order a glass of Bollinger from the waiter. She then produced cigarettes from her bag.
Flicked one out of the pack, grabbed it with her teeth and struck a match. Breathed in hints of sulphur and burning wood along with the tobacco smoke.
Exhaled in the direction of the ceiling, with it’s gorgeous French-style chandelier, thinking as she did so — and saw the middle-aged gentleman standing there between dinner tables, dressed in a long raccoon coat, a black bowler hat between his hands. While his shiny scalp was unadorned with hair, the man had a fine moustache, was passably handsome — and he was staring straight back at her.
“Hello, Mitzi.”
Louise glanced over her shoulder at the other patrons, even while knowing the man had addressed her. “I’m sorry? Are you speaking to me?”
“It’s been a long time, baby. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
The mention of long-term memory gaps gave the girl pause, but the name ‘Mitzi’ still threw things. “I think you have me confused with someone else,” she decided, presenting the kind of smile she usually gave to customers in the bank. “My name is Louise.”
“Of course it is. My mistake.” The man responded with his own artificial beam. “And yet the likeness is uncanny. So — are you, or aren’t you?”
“Am I, or aren’t I, what?”
“A phony.”
Louise dragged on her cigarette. Something about this individual was unsettling — likely it had to do with being labelled a phony — but curiosity won out. “What do you mean?”
“Well, now. Would you mind if I sat?” He indicated the vacant seat on the other side of the table.
She’d only recently broken a scoundrel’s jaw. Why not? “Sure.”
The gentleman took off his coat to place it on the next chair over, depositing his hat on top. Beneath, he wore a tailored black jacket, grey vest, and dark-grey satin ascot tie, in the centre of which was a flashy diamond. He settled down opposite the girl, reached into a jacket pocket, and took out a fat cigar that was wrapped in cellophane and the words Coronas del Ritz.
“Would you overly mind if I smoked, Miss Louise?”
“Just Louise. And go ahead — I am. Or was.” The girl stamped out her cigarette in a glaring white plastic ashtray that had on it mystical-looking mountains and the words ‘Shangri-La’ in an Asiatic-style typeface.
“Cigar?”
“No, thank you.”
“I could order you another glass of champagne, or better yet the entire bottle. What are you drinking there, kid — Moët?”
Louise placed her hand over the flute. She despised Moët. “I’m fine. Thank you. I don’t mean to sound unappreciative, but weren’t you going to tell me something?”
“Oh, yes — of course, of course, of course…” The ‘of courses’ trailed away as the newcomer lit and road-tested his cigar. He sat back, slid his right leg over his left thigh, and smiled again. “So lovely to see you.”
The smile came across less than affable and quite a distance sinister. This man knew something, was playing a game. Louise held his eyes, maintaining a placid expression, something she’d mastered while working with Henry Holland.
Lighting up another cigarette gave a few seconds to consider options.
It would be easy to walk out of the restaurant without further word — either cough up the cash on the way to the front door, or leave this strange visitor to foot the bill. He looked rich enough.
But there was a possibility he genuinely knew something about her past, something she’d forgotten or lost grip on.
Louise also sat back. “I’m still waiting.”
“Yes, so you are. Excuse the manners.”
The man placed his cigar on the ashtray, took out an ivory cigarette-holder, and proceeded to squeeze into it the end of the cigar, which was too big. Finally, the slightly bent thing sat in precarious fashion in the holder. That accomplished, he leaned closer on one elbow, eyes glittering.
“You could easily be her,” he murmured softly, appraising the girl anew. “Change the hair colour and style, tweak the makeup, get rid of the silly glasses. Slap some exaggerated confidence into your expression.”
“This Mitzi you mentioned.” Louise ashed her cigarette.
“That’s right, baby.”
“Who was she?”
“Oh, a complete bitch.”
Having
killed the ciggie and emptying her glass, Louise then slid the packets of Paul Jones and matches back inside her purse and stood up.
“Well, well, look at the time,” she announced.
The stranger smiled more. “Must you go, Louise?”
“I do. To be honest — I’ve had enough of strange arseholes in my life and, while I don’t mean to be rude, would you go find some other patsy to mess around?”
The girl didn’t look back as she strode away. Nor as she went to the cashier’s desk, certainly not while waiting for change, and she looked straight ahead in the process of walking out of the restaurant. She waltzed down the street at a leisurely pace, pretended to admire shoes in a shop window, and then turned the corner.
Only at that point did Louise fall back against a brick wall, out of breath, feeling faint, and light up another cigarette. She took off the glasses, to rub her eyes with her left hand — mascara be damned.
#148
Captain Robert Kahn sat slumped at his desk in the cluttered premises of police headquarters, a place buried in the basement of City Hall, and he was also unhappy.
He stretched the muscles in his shoulders, heard a couple of bones crack, and then leaned back in his creaky leather swivel chair to stare at the files and boxes assembled haphazardly across a nearby tabletop. Ten different cases, apparently related, all of them still open, unsettled, ongoing. He sipped from a mug of thick black coffee, which had turned lukewarm while he pondered.
“How many now, boss?” Detective Forbush asked, from his miniature desk diagonally opposite Kahn’s larger one. The officer was supposed to be composing a report, but had obviously noticed the other cop’s distraction.
“Ten.”
“Double figures it is, then. Ten Bops. Half a pack of ciggies’ worth — the list grows bigger.”
“On a daily basis.”
“No wonder we’re bloody busy.”
“Let’s hope the guilty parties take a weekend off.”
Kahn checked his calendar. Eight in the past week alone. No suspects, no decent lead. The Capes were falling like flies while he dogged down dead-ends.
Detective Forbush had been chewing on a toothpick that he carefully laid on a dish. “Me an’ the boys, we’ve been talking about the Bops. ’bout how to deal with the ones that’re left, the stragglers — unofficial-like, I mean.”
“I won’t have vigilantes on the force, Irv. You hear me?”
“Sure, boss.”
“Tell me you’re not involved in these deaths.”
“Our hands’re clean, I swear. But what about the Bops? They’re the vigilantes from Hades.”
“They don’t wear a police uniform or a badge.”
“So if I put on a pretty costume and mask, it’s okay?”
“Of course not.” Kahn sighed. “Right now, we need them. It won’t always be like this.”
The other cop picked up his bent, saliva-logged toothpick and began masticating again. Kahn wondered how much longer the thing could last.
“I guess all we’ve gotta do is wait for them to polish off each other. Equalizers, dumb-arse Rotters — I don’t care. But if it’s the Equalizers that win, we’re in luck. In case you lost count, there’s only three of them now. Dunno about you, boss, but I’ve been waitin’ a long time to take down the bastards.”
Kahn frowned. “Don’t be in such a rush. We need the Equalizers, Irv. Who else can stand against the Rotters? We don’t have the firepower.”
“Which is why we wait, like I says. But you’re wrong. We do have the firepower.” Forbush lifted a well-fingered piece of paper. “In the evidence-room armoury, all the leftovers from Bop fights — nutty things like an atom igniter, a Vacutex, remote-control gravi-polar-izers, an MCD99 pistol, demolo and negato guns, a cosmic rod an’ cosmic cube, and something grandstandingly calling itself the ultimate nullifier — whatever the heck that is.”
“You’re forgetting the vibra-gun and several pairs of x-ray specs.”
“Oh, yeah. Different list.”
“And you have instruction manuals for them?”
Forbush looked down as he folded the paper into quarters. “No.”
“You realize you could vaporize half the city with any one of those gadgets?”
“I guess. ‘Nother coffee?”
“Sure. That’s safer.”
Detective Forbush got up, headed to the tiny kitchenette, and started manhandling a large blue, orange, white and red tin of Maxwell House roaster fresh.
While he was thus occupied, Kahn allowed his eyes to wash over the assembled desks and the other officers — good people, all of them, but worked to the bone.
Typing up something nearby was Inspector Rudd, for example, a fine man with a family of six hungry kids he never saw. The ever-restless, unacceptably long-haired Officer Norrin Radd had shelved plans of quitting the force to pursue his dream of a professional surfing career — for what? Some miguided loyalty to his mates here?
And Detective Dan Carey, who sat on the other side of the room, loading and unloading his police pistol with an agitated look, an expression he’d nurtured since his wife Marla had eloped with a man calling himself Albino Joe.
Too many cases, generating myriad personal problems, without sufficient boots on the ground. Yet still the mayor talked of cutbacks.
On the wall next to a sagging mantelpiece crowded with plastic Tiki gods and a pair of kissing dolls, on the other side of a legit picture of public enemy #1 Hogarr Ditko, there was a hand-drawn poster with a black silhouette of a Cape crossed out, and ‘CAPE-FREE ZONE’ written above in a thick red texta. Near that, an Equalizers logo had been converted into a dartboard — haggard from overuse, currently with a yellow plastic dart dead centre, skewering the lightning bolt, it sat next to a poster for a local bout that announced ‘Fight!! Karnak vs. Krushki!’, with betting odds beneath.
He should have taken down all three things days ago. But better to have this shit out in the open than festering somewhere private-like.
Kahn had his reason for sticking up for the Capes — the Big O saved his life.
Copped a bullet meant for him, fired from his blind side by some low-life gutter monkey robbing a grocery store; the Cape took it in his stride, obviously hurt, but disappeared into the sky after first knocking the crim senseless. Kahn had seen the hero’s blood on the street, never got a chance to thank him.
The funny thing was that he remembered this, when not so long ago no one else would.
There was a time everyone — bar himself — forgot everything on a daily basis. He’d rise and shine at four a.m. before work, look out the window at dawn, and see a brand new Heropa City that sparkled — all and any damage from the previous day’s shenanigans restored. And he noticed, whereas none of his friends or co-workers batted an eyelid. For a long time, he believed Capes did this overnight as a kind of service, like the elves and the shoemaker story.
Kahn told no one. Didn’t wish to rock the boat or disquiet other people. Briefing his officers on the same cases every morning — with nobody recalling a goddamned detail — could be a drag, but it was the way things were. He knew no differently.
Recently, however, there was no need for the morning briefings. Kahn felt a hole in his routine, it made him uncomfortable.
Recently, everyone else did remember, and that was when this Cape backlash got in full swing and well out of hand.
The meeting the day before at Mayor Brown’s office, upstairs on the thirty-ninth floor, was supposed to be a briefing about the case.
In front of the mayor, Chief of Police O’Hara, District Attorney Paul Garrett, State Prison Warden Williams, and financial bigwig Donald Wright — along with Garrett’s secretary Edith, who took minutes — Kahn gave an abridged rundown on the progress of Cape killings, their hypotheses (unfounded guesswork) and police-artist sketches of the bodies that could still be sketched. In the case of Kid Kindle it was a charred skeleton — ironic, since the teenager’s talent was manhandling fire.
After the detective finished his speech, the chitchat swivelled on an oily dime to one of recrimination.
The mayor had put on a song and dance about what a nuisance the Capes were, how they threatened public safety. The fact that elections neared probably prodded the man into action.
“Things were better when Sir Omphalos was in charge — at least he kept them in check,” Garrett said. “Now it’s chaos out there, only a matter of time till those people do something very, very stupid. And civilians pay the price.”
“You need some kind of control mechanism,” Wright piped up, looking at no one in particular as he rubbed his bald head. “A leash, if you will.”
“How? I don’t have the resources,” Chief O’Hara complained.
“When you’re ready to outsource, and trust me on the matter, I believe I have the appropriate contacts.”
“And what will this cost us?” asked the mayor, ever the penny-pincher — aside from his infamous personal budget.
“Well, these things don’t come cheaply,” Wright said, feeding a lady finger banana to a small monkey he’d brought along in a cage. “Let me get back to you on that issue, Mayor Brown.”
Once the meeting was adjourned, Kahn had walked with Chief O’Hara back to the elevators.
“Needless to say, what was said in that room remains there,” the chief advised, all cautious tone. “I understand you have a soft-spot for the Equalizers, and I know they’ve done us their fair share of favours. But the Capes’ time is over, Robert. You need to remember that — remember whose side you’re on.”
“Yes sir.”
“May I have your hand on it?”
They shook, just as one of the elevator’s doors opened and dinged.
“There’ll be a bigger playing field for the police force once we clean out the old order. More space for people like you and me to move up.”
“Yes, sir,” Kahn had repeated by rote — his worries increasing every damned second.
#149
Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? Page 21