“What …?”
“They hijacked planes and … the towers have collapsed.”
“No …”
“Both of them,” Jason says, taping the floor between his legs with his index finger. “On the ground. Thousands dead, they figure. The Pentagon was hit, too.”
“With a plane?”
“Yes.”
“God fucking damn,” the old criminal says and pounds a fist on the glass wall. “What the fuck are we going to do about it?
19
Excerpt from Dual Lives: The True Story of How The Five of Clubs Became The Penthouse Man
Written by Vincent Vogelsung and Michael Sil
Published 2005, Atomic Anxiety Press
Winner of the A’noia Prize for Best Memoir
The only time I ever really regretted playing both sides of the superhero fence was on 9/11. I knew something was going on because Fake Out had left a monitor on in another room and I could make out just enough to know something serious was occurring in New York. Then Kid Rapscallion wandered into my igloo unit with a look of disbelief on his face. In hindsight, of course, I realized some of that (probably most of it, the selfish prick) was about the murder of Duplication Girl, but I didn’t know that then and when I asked him what was going on down on Earth, he told me about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I couldn’t believe it. No one could, at first. But as we sat there in silence, I got really pissed at him for just sitting there.
“Why are you sitting there?” I asked him. “Go get the fucking bastards responsible.”
“What do you care?” he asked.
“Fuck you,” I said to him. “Fuck you right up your selfish dick with a horse cock.”
If I’d been anywhere but prison, I’d be on a plane to New York or DC, ready to fuck someone up. I still wanted to do it. I told him to let me out if he was just gonna sit there and be a fucking baby about it.
“I’ll kill those fuckers,” I said.
“You’re a criminal,” he said.
“I’m a goddamn American first.”
20
Nancy Cathall drives in her car to the outskirts of town. She knows it is stupid to be in a car with a criminal driving to meet another criminal, but she wants this story. Already, she regrets calling Jason to ask for his help. He can find out with everyone else — on the news.
Not that he watches except when it’s about him. And even then …
“Turn right up here,” Andres orders in the passenger seat.
Nancy turns right, and then left when they reach a very normal looking one-story house with a Ford Taurus parked out front and a too-racist-for-2001 black lawn jockey by the front door. She parks her own Taurus and her mind momentarily wonders if these two cars were produced in the same factory and sent to the same city and now one of them works for one of the good guys and one works for the bad guys.
She follows Andres inside, and he introduces her to #11, a housewife sitting at the kitchen table and wearing a black t-shirt that reads, “SPACED,” but Nancy doesn’t know what that means.
“Lisa Rallins,” Andres says, introducing them.
Lisa’s hair is wet, her Buddy Holly glasses are next to her on the kitchen table, and she is knuckle deep in a bag of kale chips. “This is a bad idea, Andy,” she says, shaking her head and tapping her foot. “This is a really bad idea.”
“We’ve got to tell someone,” he says. “Christ, #10 is dead. You don’t want to be next, do you? We talked about this last night, remember? I don’t mind stealing credit cards from old ladies but I’m not going down for this terrorist shit.”
Nancy sits down, takes a pad of paper out of her purse, and places it on the table. She has a recorder that’s been running since she got in the car with Andres back at the Grand Vegas. Now that she’s here and she sees how nervous Andres and Lisa are, she starts to feel confident. Reporters get stories by leverage is what Carol had said in New York (good God, she realizes, we had coffee three blocks from the World Trade Center!), and for the first time Nancy feels like she knows what Carol meant by that. With Jason, it’s also less about leverage as it is exchange, but here, sitting with two people who are scared out of their minds and knowing she has the power to make their lives better or worse depending on not only what they tell her, but how she spins it …
Leverage.
21
Nancy feels good for less than five minutes.
She had visions of a Pulitzer coming her way that she could shove in Jason’s face, but these two lowlifes aren’t connected to the terrorist attacks, at all.
“Joey Vamps,” Lisa explains, her hands twitching in ways that tell Nancy she used to be a smoker and now wishes she had a pack on hand. “That was his name. Some guy that used to work for the Penthouse Man. He was on Flight 11, bringing a package with him that we were gonna grab.”
“Andres indicated you were going to collect it, not grab it,” Nancy says.
Lisa shakes her head. “Number 10—”
“Does she have a name?”
“I’m sure she fucking does,” Lisa snaps, “but I didn’t know it.”
“Please continue,” Nancy says politely, deciding she’s gonna make Lisa look really stupid in her story.
“Joey Vamps used to work for the Penthouse Man,” Lisa repeats, “and he’s still in the game. The cops have never caught him.”
“And why do you think that is?” Nancy asks.
“I dunno,” Lisa says, shoving the bag of kale chips across the table, where they drop to the floor. No one picks them up.
“Can you offer an opinion?” Nancy asks, pressing her, wanting to make Lisa crack.
“Well,” Lisa says, holding her arms out wide, “I guess it’s because he’s a fucking vampire. Jesus,” she says to Andres, “where did you find this whore?”
Andres shrugs apologetically. “She used to fuck one of my teammates.”
“Which one?”
“Lazlo.”
Nancy coughs. “Let’s stay focused. What did Joey Vamps have that you were going to grab from him?”
Lisa shakes her head. “That’s just it, man. He didn’t have anything.” She regrets having shoved the kale chips aside. “Do you know how 20SD works? We sit at a table with masks on and our leader — #1, of course, before you fucking ask — comes up with a plan and then rolls out a die. Whichever number comes up is the person tasked with that mission.”
“That sounds very random,” Nancy suggests.
“Well, now you know how fucking dice work. Congratulations. So #1 rolls the die, we get our missions, and then he comes to us later on the side and gives us more details. Number 10 thinks she’s grabbing a package, but I’m told Joey Vamps is the package. It’s not the best run organization,” Lisa admits.
“It’s really not,” Andres adds. “I mean, I’m a college dropout, ex-baseball player. Lisa here is an accountant. I just don’t get how we’re supposed to be any good.”
22
“Do you know what the problem with you is?” Vincent asks Kid Rapscallion. “No fucking sense of the big picture.”
23
Nancy leaves the ordinary house with the ordinary people posing as silly super villains and on the drive back to work, tries to figure out how to salvage this story.
24
Her producer sends her home. The networks have taken control of the airwaves and the station’s 30 minutes are going to be devoted to local faces recapping what national faces have spent the past twelve hours telling the American people: two towers down, the Pentagon hit, a plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
Nancy pulls her Taurus into her apartment complex and heads inside. She has only just moved into this place and there are still boxes everywhere.
“Hello, Nancy.”
Her body freezes. There are three women sitting on her couch. They were different clothes but their faces are the same.
“Duplication Girl?” she asks.
“It depends how you define
that,” one of them answers.
“What do you want?” Nancy asks.
“It’s what you want,” the DG on the left says. “Do you wan to get high?”
“Do you want to get fucked?” the one in the middle asks.
“Or do you want to win a Pulitzer?”
25
“What have you got?” Belle Flower asks as she leads Jason into the monitor room where Becca was going through the Grand Vegas’ security feeds.
“Thirty-seven,” she says, pointing at the wide array of images sub-divided across the room’s three large monitors. Each small box has a picture from a security camera of Duplication Girl exiting the Grand Vegas from a multitude of locations.
“Thirty-seven what?” Jason asks.
“Thirty-seven different Duplication Girls,” Becca explains, shaking her head. “I didn’t know she could extend that far.”
Jason moves directly in front of the monitors, looking carefully at one of the duplicates before moving to the next one.
“Did you know she could do that?” Becca asks.
He shakes his head. “The most I’ve seen is twenty or so. Are you sure they’re all different?”
“Reasonably so,” Becca nods, pointing to the corner of one screen. “They all left your suite at roughly the same time so any witnesses inside the casino would likely only have seen one. They — or someone, but given what happened and how fast it happened, I’m guessing it was just one of them — erased the Grand’s security feed. I was only able to recapture this by using some of the Revo’s time loop technology.”
“Geez,” Belle says. “If Eagle finds out …”
“We’ll worry about that when we get to it,” Becca answers, turning to Jason. “Do you have a tape of what happened inside the room?”
“No.”
“This might be the only time I would be in favor of hearing you were actually a bigger pervert.”
26
“Duplication Girl is dead,” one of the duplicates says. “Murdered. By one of us.”
“One of you?”
“One of the duplicates. There’s forty of us now, with no host body to go back to. We’ve all been set free, thanks to Jason.”
27
“It’s not a stretch to surmise that one, or more, of the duplicates killed the original host,” Belle Flower says. “The question is, how do we figure out who did it. From what the Revolutionaries have on file about her abilities, there is no difference between duplicates. Their fingerprints—”
“We won’t be able to use science,” Jason says, coming around. “At least not the kind of science that depends on differentiating them at a physical level. But if we can talk to them … they have different personalities now,” he says, feeling energized by the hunt. “It’s like when one comes out now, it’s Deege’s silliest self, or dirtiest, or the most interested in cooking. I bet … unnnngggg.”
28
“It’s like when blah blah blah blah blah blah blah …”
Belle Flower cannot stand listening to him. His girlfriend was murdered. The country is in full-panic mode. And here Jason stands, almost cold to it all.
As he rattles on about cooking, she steps in behind him, and punches him in the side of the head, knocking him out.
29
Nancy talks, listens, asks questions, takes notes, and when the three duplicates in front of her are ready, she sets up a camera and interviews them.
When they are finished, Nancy is convinced she will win some kind of award. Not a Pulitzer, probably, but something to add to her shelf. She feels good.
That lasts for two hours.
She never wins any award because her story never runs — after handing it off to her producer, the interview tape disappeared and none of the duplicates would talk to her a second time.
Duplication Girl’s killer is never publicly acknowledged.
30
Jason awakens inside a glass cube inside an igloo inside a building on the moon. There is a note left on his chest. It reads:
“I’m sorry, Jason, but you need to stay here until we discover DG’s killer. It will aid in getting you off the drugs, too. —Belle.”
The Penthouse Man is laughing at him.
31
TRANSCRIPT FROM TARNISHED LEGACY: THE SECRET LIVES OF CAPES
Season 1, Episode 5 (S01E05): “Kid Rapscallion”
JASON KITMORE / KR
(old interview from 2004)
(off-screen interviewer asks, “So what were you doing on 9/11?”)
Fine, you want to know? I was investigating 20-Sided Dice. I didn’t even know about what happened in New York and Washington and … and … that field until 9 o’clock that night. 9 o’clock Vegas time, I might add. The media, the public, lower forms of life like Kira Erdrich, no one wants to hear anyone say, “It’s not my fault,” but I’ll say it. 9/11 was not my fault. If I’d never done a gram of coke or if Deege and I spent all our time doling out soup to the homeless — which we did plenty of times, you’re welcome — 9/11 still would have happened. President Bush snorted his share of coke back in the day, too, remember, and no one blames him for the attacks.
I was investigating 20-Sided Dice and I was tracking down a lead when Duplication Girl was murdered by Duplicate #38.
(off-screen interviewer asks, “So you were not locked up in the Fort?”)
Hell. No. Swear. To. God. I never set foot in the Fort on 9/11.
PART
SEVEN
2015
1
“As I live and breathe, Kid Rapscallion!”
The booming voice cuts through the bells and whistles of the slot machines that dominate this area of the Grand Vegas’ casino floor. Jason does not need to turn to know who it is that has called out to him.
Mr. Monster.
Turning with a forced smile on his face, Jason holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Please don’t hit me,” he says, exaggerating a winced expression.
“Ha!” Mr. Monster says, slapping Jason on the back before sitting down at one of the slot machines. “What are you doing here, Kid?”
Jason rubs his eyes. “Are we going to fight? Because I don’t want to fight.”
Mr. Monster laughs. Back in the day, he used to sometimes paint his face green and wear bolts on his neck because it turned out he had something of a sense of humor, but usually he just wore a suit and kicked the hell out of heroes. Toweringly tall at 6’10” and 625 pounds of extra-dimensional mass that gave him his strength, Jason thinks he now looks like an ex-wrestler. Maybe if Monster hadn’t gotten powers, he would have turned out to be the Undertaker or Kane. His hair and chin goatee are dotted with gray and there’s a weathered quality to his face, but he still looks like a guy no one wants to go one round with, let alone ten.
“We’re not gonna fight,” Mr. Monster laughs, straightening out the black tie on his black-on-black suit. “I’m respectable now. Head of Security and everything. Now,” he says, leaning in and whispering (which still manages to sound like a sonic boom full of gravel), “if Nancy wants me to rough you up a bit, I’m all for it.”
“Are you still souped up?” Jason asks, leaning against the back of a stool two slot machines down from Mr. Monster. Absently, he sees they’re sitting at a bank of Belle Flower machines and silently curses the gods. “Because I’m totally off the juice. You could probably break my arms with your thumb and index finger.”
Mr. Monster gives that a moment’s thought and then nods his head. “You’re probably right on that, Kid, but I don’t think we’ll have an issue. The boss wants to see you Monday morning and if you don’t show for that, well, then we’ll have an issue that might need settling all physical style, but if you’re a good boy, you won’t need to be spanked. Not that you’d mind that, if Duplication Girl is to be believed.”
“Ugh,” Jason groans through a smile. “Which one?”
“Hell if I can remember,” he laughs. “I think seven or eight of them have written an autobiography. O
ne of them said you like to spank during sex. The other one said you like to be spanked. Which is it?”
“Yes,” Jason says.
“Ha! Gotta be careful with dames,” Mr. Monster says, as if he is sitting alone atop the world and doling out advice only he is privy to.
“I wasn’t careful about much in those days,” Jason smiles sadly.
Crooking his thumb towards the slot machine on his left. “Shoulda stuck with Belle, huh? I had a feeling I’d find you by her machines. You know, she’s not even getting paid to have her likeness plastered all over these machines. Rumors are she’s in space, and if you’re not around to enforce your copyright, any schmuck can come along and exploit.” Mr. Monster narrowed his large eyes. “Know anything about Belle being in space, Kid?”
“You were looking for me?”
“Like I said, boss wants to make sure you go see her come Monday,” Mr. Monster shrugs, then changes the subject. “I heard you were in space, too.”
“Yeah, for like five years,” he admits, glad to be on happier ground.
“With Jula?”
Jason rolls his eyes. “The best of times, the worst of times.”
Mr. Monster raises an eyebrow. “The worst of times? I woulda thought that was when you were busted for that B&E at Flack Farma trying to steal the drugs that made you special.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Or Rapscallion’s trial,” Mr. Monster continues. “Those were some dark days.”
“It’s been a long time since then,” Jason says, looking around for an escape.
“Relax, kid,” the Head of Security says, standing up and re-buttoning his jacket. “I’m not here to send you spiraling, though I do owe you a few rounds for LA. Didn’t do me any wonders losing to a sidekick. Seems like every two-bitter looking to build a rep decided to come after me after that.”
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 12