“We ain’t got a son,” the woman snapped. Jack turned his head towards her.
“Ellie’s barren. We’re alone,” the man said.
“The female in the dress is lying,” Jack Point said without umbrage. “The male on the couch is also lying. Additionally, they are frightened of reprisal.”
Mr. Slycke grunted and stared at Jack Point as if seeing him for the first time. Jack Point’s eyes roved the room, never meeting anyone’s gaze.
“Why, I never!” The woman stomped her foot. “Calling me a liar in my own house…”
Ramona held up her hands, palms out. “Ma’am, please. We know that Walter’s your son. Has he been here? Did he threaten you?”
The couple fell into angry silence broken only by the distorted bleating of the television. Neither would speak first.
“The female is too ashamed to reveal the information. The male feels familial competition with the suspect and thus may betray him out of resentment.”
Like a walrus, Mr. Slycke levered himself to his feet. “You goddamn cracker freak,” he said, brandishing his can of cola at Jack Point. “No man talks to me like that. No man!”
“Sit down, sir. I am carrying a firearm, and I am likely to shoot one or more people in this room if you threaten me again.”
Ramona interposed herself between Jack Point and Mr. Slycke. “Jack! For Christ’s sake, don’t antagonize them. We’re trying to get them to cooperate.”
“Why? I can read them like open books. Walter Slycke was here at least two days ago.” Jack Point stood and walked past the angry old man as if he wasn’t there. He plucked a picture of a young boy off the mantle, holding it in his pink-gloved fingers by the frame’s corners. “See?”
Ramona marveled at Jack’s perceptiveness. In the dim room, he had spotted a thumb-shaped smudge in the dust on the old picture frame. To him, she realized, objects were just as communicative as people.
“Cute kid. Who’da thunk?” Ramona showed the picture to the couple. “Feeling nostalgic recently?”
Without warning, Ellie Slycke spun on her heel and left the room. Her footsteps reverberated in the kitchen.
“That was a long time ago,” Mr. Slycke said into the air of the room.
“Twenty-five years, I’m guessing. Walter has been a metahuman since he was seventeen, correct?”
The man closed his eyes. “What I done to bring down the wrath of God on my boy, I don’t know. Never fought, never drank. I looked after my wife and my boy like a man should.”
Ramona nodded her head when he opened his eyes again. “I’m sure you did, sir.”
“Walter wasn’t a smart boy, but he worked hard at anything he put his mind to. Could have hired him at the body shop. It’s a good job,” Mr. Slycke insisted. “Honest work. Walter wasn’t no criminal.”
Jack Point opened his mouth to speak, but Ramona silenced him with a finger. “That changed, didn’t it?”
“He and his friends were out at the dump. I don’t know why—boys like to act up at that age. He didn’t come back till dawn, and that—stuff—covered him like he’d changed a truck’s oil without a pan. Only it wouldn’t come off with rags or water or detergent. Walter cried like a baby, he was so scared. Every time Ellie tried to comfort him, even put a hand on his shoulder, it slid right off. He could barely stand, he just lay down on the floor.” He pointed at the wall. “Fetched up against that wall because the foundation is shifting towards the backyard.”
“That must have been horrible.”
“I pray you don’t have to see your children like that.”
“Why didn’t you contact Echo? We have specialists to help metahumans deal with their condition.”
Mr. Slycke shrugged. “We just thought he got into some kind of industrial waste. The hospital’s an hour away. Ellie kept trying to wipe it off him…I suppose we should have called someone. But after a day of worry, Walter found he could clean himself just by willing it. He put on overalls and kept the oil under his clothes. Once he did that, he stayed in his room for a week, not talking, hardly eating, just thinking. And then he left.”
“To join the Easy Men.”
“I don’t know. I reckon he just wanted to hide from respectable folks until this ‘condition’ worked itself out of his system. It never did.” He hung his head.
Ramona and Jack Point waited respectfully for the man to gather himself. When he raised his head again, tears glistened in his eyes. “I suppose you’ve come to arrest him.”
“That’s our job, sir. Is he here?”
“No.” Mr. Slycke looked at Jack Point. “That’s the truth.”
Jack Point nodded.
“Was he here?” Ramona asked, leaning forward. Her heart raced with excitement.
“Three days ago.”
She ran a hand through her hair, both relieved and disappointed. “What did he say?”
Ellie Slycke’s voice rang out in the quiet room. “That’s between Walter and his kin. Ain’t none of your business.”
“Ma’am, with respect, it’s everyone’s business. Walter may have information pertaining to the Nazi attacks. The sooner we find him, the sooner we can act on it.”
The woman shook her head slowly from side to side. “He didn’t say nothing about no Nazis. He felt bad about what he done, and wanted to make up for it.”
“This would be a good start.”
“You keep away from him!” With sudden fury, Ellie Slycke advanced towards Ramona with fists balled. “Leave him be. He’s been cursed enough already.”
“Ramona, these people don’t know the fugitive’s whereabouts, but they do know his intentions,” Jack Point said coolly. “They are using hostility to deflect your questions.”
“I noticed,” Ramona muttered. She stood up and confronted Ellie Slycke. “I don’t care a whit about your family drama, lady. Those Nazi bastards killed my friends right in front of me.” Her voice rose in pitch. “If one life—one life—can be saved with what he knows, then I’ll track him down like an animal through every stinking swamp in the state. I won’t eat, I won’t sleep, and I sure as hell won’t be intimidated by a bitter old woman!”
Ellie Slycke blinked and backed up. Ramona pursued her.
“Your boy is a convicted criminal. Blame his ‘curse’ if you want, but I have co-workers in far worse shape who risk their lives every day to serve and protect. We’re at war, lady. If Walter is withholding information, that makes him a traitor.” She paused for effect. “And I don’t think you raised a traitor.”
“Damn right,” Mr. Slycke said.
Hands over her mouth, Ellie Slycke regarded Ramona with horror and sadness. “Walter left to meet up with those thieves,” she whispered.
“The Easy Men?”
Ellie Slycke closed her eyes and wept.
“The Easy Men were disbanded a decade ago,” Jack Point said. “However, the female is telling the truth, as best she knows it.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
But Jack Point had already started for the front door of the ramshackle home.
“Hey,” Ramona called to his retreating back.
“What remains to be learned belongs to them alone.” The bang of the screen door punctuated his statement.
* * *
The bland whiteness of the laptop screen mocked her with its lack of information. Each of the five dossiers in the list ended with the same bad news. Current whereabouts: UNKNOWN.
In an act of desperation as much as faith, Ramona ran the names—and aliases—through the FBI database, the Interpol database, the CIA, the IRS, and even the phone book. For the second time. Just in case there was a server hiccup, she told herself, though she knew it was pointless.
With the exception of Walter Slycke, there was no official record on the Easy Men from the last decade. Before Slycke’s capture, the Easy Men had a bad run and disappeared off the radar. Ramona had spent hours cross-referencing unsolved robberies in hopes of recognizing the modus operandi of the remaining Easy Me
n, such as a hyperspeed snatch by Twinkletoes, or an uncrackable safe cracked by Easy Listener. Nothing.
Slycke could be anywhere within four states by now. The Easy Men could be across the world. As helpless as she felt in front of the computer, it beat pounding the pavement in Atlanta.
“You stink,” she told the laptop. “Do my thinking for me!” She closed it with more force than was healthy. With a pang of guilt, she reopened it; cheery light and a logo greeted her. “Okay, okay, sorry. Take a nap for a while.”
Ramona stood, stretched, dug out a cigarette. She opened the window in spite of the air conditioning. The smoke gave her a momentary boost which faded fast, leaving only the comfort of the habitual movements. Smoking did her no good aside from putting her in a reflective state.
“He’s in Georgia,” she said aloud. Her voice functioned as an aural whiteboard. “He’s got to be. Why, I don’t know, but I feel it, and if I’m wrong, I’m screwed anyway.”
She wished Mercurye was listening to her. A silly urge, because he hardly struck her as a deep thinker, yet in explaining Slycke’s movements to him, she might talk herself into some grand insight.
She remembered the German’s posture as he spoke rapidly to the metahuman criminal: urgent, desperate, tensed and waiting for a killing blow. Whatever the man had done during World War II, her mental image of him in his last moments was that of a self-sacrificing hero. It was too much to reconcile.
The humid Atlanta air crowded into her apartment, making the cluttered mess feel even more vile. Ramona knew a detective who thought best while cleaning, and prayed every day to become that person. Alas, she thought best when mournfully studying her mounting trash piles.
“This is why you’ll never hook up with that man. You’re a slob.” She caught herself—why were her thoughts drifting to Mercurye like an infatuated schoolgirl? In this time of crisis, it was selfish and childish. But thinking about him did make her feel better somehow.
She put the godlike metahuman out of her mind. Too many lives depended on her ability to suss out Slycke’s whereabouts and get him in an Echo interrogation room. If they could hold him still. A memory came back: Southwind, the gangling, hairless, pale metahuman, dashing Valkyria into the ceiling and saving Ramona’s bacon. All of the Four Winds—the survivors, anyway—had varying degrees of telekinesis. A psychic hand could hold a greased pig far better than a physical hand.
When I find Slycke, I’ll make sure Southwind is there for backup. After losing his partner, he’d probably appreciate a chance to be a part of the solution.
She ground out the cigarette. Purposefulness filled her: she remembered one very strange resource that she had not considered until now.
Her desk was far more chaotic than the room around it, as though it were the wellspring of all disorder. The piece of paper with the important phone number had been torn from a Vogue magazine. The unceremoniously beheaded underwear model on the other side was clear in her mind. For an hour, she rooted through the drawers, working from the smallest to the file folders filled with scraps of paper and inaccurate dates. Her stomach began to claw at her in hunger and anxiety.
“Oh, come on.” She wished with all her heart that she had undertaken to organize her desk…five years ago.
At last a tanned hip flashed at her from a pile of Post-its. Ramona pounced on it and then laughed in triumph. She hadn’t thrown it away after all.
She dialed the number labeled “BFH” on her cell. The number rang for two solid minutes as she chewed on her fingernails.
“It is good to hear your voice again, Ramona.” The voice was delicate, breathy, low and carefully neutral.
“You knew it was me. I should have figured.”
“It’s my job. I know why you’re calling, too. My prices have increased since you last used my services.” A pause. “I want fifty thousand dollars for the information you are going to ask me.”
She whistled. “That’s a lot of benjamins, Benjamin. Can’t Echo just write you a check?”
“No checks. No companies. No reimbursements. I only accept real money from real human beings. If you want my information, you have to bleed for it.”
Fifty thousand dollars? “For Christ’s sake. I don’t carry that kind of cash around. Even if I had it.”
“That’s the price for what you need to know. I recommend that you hurry. Your bank closes in forty-five minutes.”
“Wait. How do I know—”
“I’ll call you when you have the money in hand. One-hundred-dollar bills, unmarked. Paper bag.” The line went dead.
* * *
Ramona’s cell rang in time with the swish of the bank’s revolving doors spitting her out. She stuffed the paper bag into her purse, feeling conspicuous about holding her life savings in a vulnerable physical form.
“Hello?”
“Walk two blocks north. Cross the street. Half a block and take a right into the alley next to the package store, before the sidewalk ends.”
“Classy as always, Benjamin.” The line went dead. So much for witty banter, she thought.
With one hand on her purse and one hand on her holster, Ramona walked briskly down the Atlanta street. Aside from sporadic commercial zones like this one, it was rare for there to be enough sidewalk for a pedestrian to get around. People standing on the streets seemed to be waiting for the next riot. Tension was in the air, and more than one bystander gave her a predatory once-over.
The city really has changed, she thought. Where are these lowlifes coming from?
A pair of armed guards bearing shotguns smoked cigarettes outside the package store. Ramona spied the coiled snake insignia of Blacksnake, the security contractor. The men ignored her scowl as she passed them.
I can’t begrudge the store owners for providing for their own safety, even if it’s through those scumbags. Hell, guarding package stores is all they’re qualified for. Should just pay them in liquor.
Trash stank up the entryway to the alley. Ramona breathed through her mouth and stepped gingerly over broken bottles.
“Calling Benjamin Franklin Hotline,” she announced to the empty alley. “Inquiring minds want to know about their futures.”
The alley’s walls caught her words in a wash of sharp echoes. She peeked in doorways as she passed them.
“Hello? Anyone home?”
Without ceremony, a slouching figure appeared in the mouth of the alley. Two large plastic buckets, one set into the other, dangled from a hand hidden by the overlong sleeves of a gray-cloth greatcoat too warm for the Atlanta summer. A floppy brimmed hat hid a pale, wrinkled face in shadow.
Benjamin Franklin Hotline separated the buckets, overturned the empty one and sat on it. “Money first.”
“Nice to see you, too.” Ramona opened the paper bag to reveal the sheaf of bills. “There you have it. I’ll be working in McDonald’s when I’m sixty thanks to you.”
“Echo pays you plenty. Drop it in the bucket.”
She removed it from the bag and started forward. Benjamin Franklin Hotline held up a palm. “Bag too.”
Ramona shrugged and did as he requested. She loomed over him. “Didn’t bring a seat for a lady?”
“Ask your question.”
“I have a few.”
“I’ll answer one.”
Ramona gaped. “I just paid you fifty grand! You should be writing me a goddamn novel! What the hell’s happened to you?”
Benjamin Franklin Hotline didn’t look up, but his head swayed in acknowledgment. “Fair enough. I’ll stop you from asking the wrong question.”
“Christ. Fine, Mr. Genie from a Bottle.” She lit a cigarette. “Let me think.”
“He’s alive and safe, but that’s not the man you’re after.”
“What, Slycke? He’s—”
“Echo OpOne, code-named Mercurye.”
Her cheeks burned. “You read my mind.”
“I read everyone’s mind. That’s my job. Walter Slycke is the question here.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, yes, yes! Where is he?”
The psychic paused. Street noise filled the air around them.
“Well? Is that the right question?”
“It is. I can give you an address.”
“The Easy Men, right?”
“What remains of the Easy Men. He will not be there long, I wager.” Benjamin Franklin Hotline leaned over his open bucket and reached inside. The sound of sifting papers reached her ears. He never looked at the papers, but eventually the hand came up with a scrap.
How appropriate, she thought.
“Here,” he said. “I strongly recommend you arrive there before six p.m. tonight.”
The address was unfamiliar: Osierfield, GA, in Irwin County. That made it two hours away by car.
“What happens at six?”
“I can’t answer that question without another payment.” He stood and dropped the open bucket into the one he used for a seat. “You’re better served making haste.”
“Right, right. Thanks.”
“I don’t require thanks. You paid for it.”
“Then don’t spend it all in one place.” She opened her cell as he hobbled away. She needed a team, and fast.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Ramona stood in the parking lot of the last team member’s current location, and it was not a place she had ever expected to be. Her call to Echo had produced a helicopter and a pickup squad: Flak (Mercurye’s squad leader, but Ramona put that out of her mind), Silent Knight, and the mind reader she requested, Pensive. One team member that worried her was the new Damage Control Officer, Belladonna Blue, who was on probation for flouting procedure. And Southwind, on whom the operation hinged, had gone AWOL.
Well, AWOL here.
“I have to have a telekinetic. I’ll settle for Carrie, or get me Mintohk from Williams Street, or some teenager’s poltergeist. Anyone.”
“Southwind’s the only one,” the dispatcher had assured her. “He’s your man, if you can call him that.”
Ramona didn’t know if it was a crack about Southwind’s sexual orientation or his alien appearance. “I have an hour and a half to nab this perp and he’s the only one who can do it.”
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