“You could have just asked if I was a Meta.”
“And have you lie to me?” He shook his head. “I’m not as young as you. Life’s too short to waste it asking questions you’re likely to not get straight answers to. Besides, this way I’d know, and you’d know I knew. Saves time.” He reached out as if to pluck the bullet out of the air, appeared to think better of it, and withdrew his hand.
“Touching it won’t hurt you,” I said.
“I said the exact same thing to my girlfriend Ginny last night.”
I lowered the bullet, bringing it to a rest primer side down on his desk. A sudden knock on Truman’s closed door startled me. “Everything all right in there?” came a woman’s voice.
Truman stood. He was tall, probably a couple of inches over six feet. “That’s Charity, the accountant next door. She’s probably come over to sexually harass me again. Who can blame her?”
He walked past me and opened the door. The middle-aged woman on the other side had bobbed blonde hair, was professionally dressed, and a little on the heavy side. She was attractive, but more handsome than pretty. She glanced at me, then back at Truman.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I heard a gunshot.”
“And you rushed to my side, sweet Charity? My hero. But no need to worry,” Truman said, “I was merely swatting a fly.”
“With a gun?” Charity’s voice was disbelieving.
“It was a mighty scary fly.”
“Well, as long as everything’s okay,” she slowly said dubiously. She started to turn away when she noticed the signs taped on Truman’s door. Her eyes scanned them.
“Why in the world would you have these idiotic drawings on your door?” She sniffed disdainfully. “This is supposed to be a professional office building, not an art exhibition at an insane asylum.”
“Don’t you see what it says there about how certain people should stay away? I’m using these signs to keep the undesirables out.”
“And yet, somehow, you’re here.”
Truman made a long-suffering sigh. “A woman’s tongue is sharper than a serpent’s tooth. That was in my horoscope this morning. Now I know why.”
Charity shook her head in disgust. “You can’t take anything seriously, can you?”
“Life’s too serious to be taken seriously.”
Charity shook her head again. She turned and walked away. Truman stuck his head out the open door and watched her. “Stop staring at my ass,” Charity’s voice floated from down the hallway.
“Stop putting your ass where I can see it,” Truman retorted. “This is supposed to be a professional office building, not a catwalk.” He closed the door and went back around his desk to sit down. He looked at me somberly. “I think she’s in love with me.”
“She hides it well.”
“Too many do,” he agreed sadly. “So, tell me Mr. Theodore Conley—assuming that’s your real name—how’d you stop the bullet in midair and pull off that little disarming trick with my gun? Magnetism? Metal manipulation?”
“I’m telekinetic.”
“Well that certainly explains where you got the code name of Kinetic from.”
Stunned, I hesitated for the briefest of moments.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I finally managed. It was clear from the sudden smile on Truman’s face that my hesitation hadn’t been lost on him.
“Ah don’t know what you talkin’ about,” he said, repeating my words in an exaggerated version of my Southern accent. He resumed in his normal voice. “I grew up in Georgia. I know a South Carolina accent when I hear one. Unless my ear for accents betrays me, you grew up in western Carolina, probably near the Georgia border. Edgefield County, maybe?”
Edgefield County was only about a ten-minute drive from the farm I had grown up on. “Aiken County,” I admitted cautiously. Though I certainly didn’t want to reveal my secret Heroic identity, saying where I was from seemed a safe enough admission. “What’s where I grew up got to do with anything?”
“Nothing, if I hadn’t seen footage of the Hero Kinetic a couple of months ago. Using his telekinetic powers, he had foiled an attempted warehouse robbery in the wee hours of the night, and the local TV news stuck a camera in his face and asked him for a comment. He didn’t say much before he flew off, but he said enough for me to hear his accent. When I heard it, I thought, ‘Well I do declare! Someone from the Palmetto State is a Hero right here in Astor City. He must’ve come here recently as I’ve never even heard of him before. Bless his heart. Ain’t it a small world.’” Truman had adopted an exaggerated Southern accent again as he recounted his thoughts. “I made a mental note of it. The Heroic community is a relatively small one, after all. I figured I’d run across Kinetic sooner or later, and I’d swap incest jokes and chitlin recipes with my fellow Southerner when I did.
“So, let’s recap what I’ve observed about you today: One, you move and behave like someone who’s had Heroic training. Two, you sound like the same Southern gentlemen I’d seen on the news. Three, not only are you a Metahuman, but you’re a telekinetic, just like the guy on the news. Four—and this one’s the clincher—you look like him. You both have the same build. Kinetic looks like he also often skips leg day. Sure, the contours of your face are different than Kinetic’s, but that’s no doubt because he wears a mask with tech embedded in it that changes his facial features. It’s all the rage with Heroes these days.” Truman’s battered face split into a grin. “You won’t catch me sporting one, though. I’m too pretty to slap a mask on. As I always say, don’t hide your light under a bushel basket.
“That all adds up to the conclusion that you’re the Hero Kinetic. Two plus two makes four.” Truman frowned thoughtfully. “Or is it correct to say ‘two plus two make four’ so there’s subject-verb agreement?” He shrugged slightly. “I’m not sure. I’m a detective, not a grammar nerd.”
I opened my mouth, about to deny it. Truman lifted a restraining hand before I could get a word out. He said, “Before you give me an elaborate song and dance about how I’m mistaken, bear in mind that though I’m no grammarian, I am something of a walking lie detector. As the human body is mostly water, my powers allow me to monitor a man’s perspiration rate, blood pressure, and heart rate, among other things. When I suggested you are Kinetic, your vital signs changed. You got as nervous as a mouse at a cat convention. That tells me you were lying when you denied being him.”
Truman leaned back in his chair and grinned at me again. “So now that I’ve established that you are in fact the Hero Kinetic who grew up in the Deep South like me, let’s get to the important stuff: I like fresh spring onions and red pepper flakes in my chitlins. What about you? And here’s my incest joke: I told my sister I’m into incest. She took it really hard.”
The office fell silent.
Truman said, “No good, huh? That didn’t even get a chuckle. I guess you’re right: One should never joke about having sex with sisters, no matter how much they incest.”
Silence again.
Truman shook his head ruefully. “Wow, that one bombed too? I guess your generation of Heroes isn’t much into puns.”
I was quiet because I was at a loss for words. After all this time in Astor City, no one had made the connection between Theo Conley and Kinetic except for this guy. He came off as a clown, but he had figured out who I was in just a few minutes. I began to understand why Mr. Langley had referred me to Truman and how he had managed to solve Avatar’s murder. Despite his almost non-stop flippancy, there was more to this guy than met the eye. Heck, when I had come in he had been reading the Bhagavad Gita, hardly an easy read. Nobody who was entirely frivolous read something like that in his free time.
And despite his persona, Truman was still a Hero. As I knew all too well, the Guild didn’t hand out a Hero’s license to just anybody.
There seemed to be no sense in further denials. “You won’t tell anyone?” I asked. Truman looked hurt at the suggestion.
�
��Of course not. Snitches get stitches. Besides, it’s against the law to reveal the secret identity of a licensed Hero. I have a well-deserved reputation for following the law. It’s almost a fetish. ‘Lord the Law-Abiding’ is what they call me.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s against the law to shoot a gun at somebody.”
“Well, you’ve got me there. I follow the law, but I’m not a fanatic about it.” Truman melted the block of ice surrounding his gun, making the water flow back into the bowl on his desk like it was a slithering snake. After a few seconds, there wasn’t so much as a damp spot on his desk. He put the gun back into his drawer, and closed it.
“What do you do when your water bowl isn’t handy?” I asked.
“I improvise.” His eyes flicked up to the water-stained tiles of his ceiling. “Before I started keeping water on my desk, I had to bust open the water pipes in the ceiling a few times. My landlord was less than pleased.” He put his forearms on top of his desk and clasped his hands. “So now that I know who you are, are you going to tell me what’s really going on with this Antonio Ricci character? Or are you still going to leave in a huff? If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. I wish I could take credit for the wordplay, but I borrowed it from Groucho Marx. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.”
I hesitated. Though I was still in no mood to appreciate his banter, I was warming up to Truman. If he could figure out I was Kinetic without breaking a sweat, surely he could find Antonio for me.
“Will you keep everything I tell you a secret?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not like there’s Hero-private detective privilege the way there’s attorney-client privilege or priest-penitent privilege, but I can tell you I won’t be running my mouth about what you tell me. A detective who goes around repeating what a potential client tells him soon has no clients, potential or otherwise.”
That settled it. I walked back over to Truman’s desk, using my powers to pick the chair I had knocked over back up. I sat down again. I told him everything I knew about Hannah and Antonio. I started with how I had suspected Hannah was a victim of abuse when we first met, included my and Isaac’s encounter with Antonio in his apartment, and ended with how I had discovered Hannah’s body and had been searching for Antonio ever since. Truman listened intently, interrupting only to ask a few clarifying questions. Honestly, it felt good to talk about all this with someone other than Isaac. It seemed these days that I spent a lot of time keeping secrets from people: from Isaac, I kept the truth of how we had both passed the Trials and how I knew it was Mechano who had attacked me during them; from Bertrand, I kept the truth of what Isaac and I spent our nights doing; and, I kept from everyone the fact that I was Kinetic. It was a nice change of pace to tell someone the unvarnished truth without evasions or outright lying.
“Now I understand why you’ve got such a bee in your bonnet over this Mad Dog character,” Truman said when I had finished. “You feel guilty about Hannah’s murder because you think you triggered it by bracing Antonio in his place.”
“Don’t you think I did?”
“Maybe. Hannah being killed shortly after you confronted Mad Dog is a coincidence that can’t be ignored. But assuming you’re right that he killed her, it’s not like you forced him to do it. We’re all responsible for our own actions. If I leave my gun out, that doesn’t mean you have to pick it up and shoot someone with it.”
“But if I did, wouldn’t you feel responsible for stupidly leaving your gun out where I could grab it?”
“A fair point,” Truman said. “So now that all your cards are on the table, I’ll ask you the same question from before: If you hire me to find Antonio and if I do indeed find him, what are you planning to do with him? And don’t tell me again you’re just going to have a chat with him. I didn’t believe you the first time you told me that tall tale, and I certainly won’t believe you now.”
I was on an honesty roll, and I wasn’t about to stop now. Having someone I could come clean with felt cathartic. “I honestly don’t know. I figured I’d find him first, and then cross that bridge when I got to it.”
Truman studied my face. For a moment, he looked uncharacteristically serious.
“You want some free advice from an old hand at this Hero business? Don’t let anger guide you. It clouds your judgment and makes you do things you shouldn’t. We’re too powerful to let our emotions sway our decision-making. Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else. You usually only wind up burning yourself.”
“That’s quite poetic. Who said that?”
Like a spring shower, Truman’s seriousness was gone as quickly as it had come. “Me. Just now. Weren’t you listening?” Disbelief must have been on my face because he rolled his eyes. “Fine. You’re too young to be this cynical about what your elders tell you. It’s a Buddhist saying.”
My anger, partly toward Antonio and partly toward myself, was a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want it to go away. I wanted it to fuel me until the job was done. “Well I’m not Buddhist.”
“And I’m not an electrician. That doesn’t prevent me from using a light switch. You don’t have to be something to use the fruits of that something.”
I shook my head. “I’m not looking for philosophy or for moral guidance. I’m looking for Antonio. Are you going to help me or not?”
“Now that you’re telling me the truth, yes. Assuming you can pay my fee, of course.” He told me how much he charged and how much of a retainer he would need for him to begin work. I gulped. Paying him would take a healthy bite out of the money I had saved. I shooed the dismay away as soon as I felt it. I would empty my bank account completely out if that meant Antonio was brought to justice.
I pulled out my checkbook and wrote Truman a check. As I wrote out the dollar amount, it occurred to me that working for a newspaper and being a Hero on the side was a sure path to the poorhouse. Being a Heroic private detective was where the money was.
I put the completed check down on Trump’s desk and slid it forward toward him. Before taking my fingers off it, I realized I was letting a golden opportunity to kill two birds with one stone pass me by. The Sentinels had hired Truman a few years ago to investigate Avatar’s murder. Maybe he could tell me something about them and Mechano that would help me decide what to do about Mechano’s attempts on my life.
I pulled my check back. Truman looked at me with amusement.
“Firing me already?” he said. “You wouldn’t be the first client to do it, but you’re certainly the fastest.”
“I may need to hire you for more than just this Mad Dog thing. Rumor has it that you were offered a membership on the Sentinels after you solved the mystery of Avatar’s murder. Is that true?”
“It is. And they took their sweet time about it too. You’d think they would have offered me a spot the moment I passed the Trials. Instead, it was over a decade before they got around to inviting me. They were probably afraid I’d upstage them.”
I ignored most of what he had said. If I continued to spend time around Truman, I realized I would have to do that a lot.
“And yet you turned them down.” As far as I knew, Truman was the only person to ever have turned down a membership offer from the Sentinels. A Hero turning down an offer from the Sentinels was like a judge turning down an offer to be on the United States Supreme Court.
“And give up all this?” Truman said, gesturing expansively at his run-down office. I wondered what Truman spent his considerable fees on. It certainly wasn’t his decor. “Why are you asking about the Sentinels?”
“Because Antonio Ricci isn’t the only person in this city who’s a killer.” I told him about Mechano’s attempts on my life during the Trials and how I needed to find out if he was also connected to my father’s death.
And do you know what the strangest thing was about me telling Truman that a member of the world’s greatest team of Heroes had tried to kill me?
; He wasn’t even surprised.
CHAPTER 12
“I’ve been quite the busy beaver the past couple of days,” Truman said. He was behind the wheel of his car, driving us to someone he said could help me figure out what Mechano had against me. The city’s night lights flicked by as Truman drove. Though it was almost midnight, I was well-rested. I had caught up on some much needed sleep since I’d turned locating Antonio over to Truman.
“I should hope so. I’m certainly paying you enough.” Between paying Truman to look for Antonio and for helping me untangle why Mechano had tried to kill me, my savings had taken a major hit. We drove through a traffic light. The green lights briefly illuminated Truman’s clothing: black jeans, a button-down untucked blue and white dress shirt, and brown cowboy boots. “I thought PIs wore fedoras and trench coats. And whoever heard of a detective tooling around in a Nissan Altima?”
“You watch too many old movies. I don’t drink, call women dames, or describe their legs as gams, either.”
“One by one, all my cherished illusions are being shattered.”
He shrugged. “Welcome to adulthood. Now stop interrupting while your elders are talking about the fruits of their labor. I looked into Antonio’s background, hoping it would give me a clue as to where he disappeared to. One thing I found out is that if your boy Antonio isn’t in the running for a Bad Guy of the Decade award, he should be.”
“That bad, huh?”
“When he was eighteen, he went to prison for a few years for arson and possession with intent to distribute cocaine and PCP. He has a juvie record too, but of course those records are sealed. I wonder what kinds of shenanigans he got into when he was a kid. Setting little girl’s pigtails on fire, maybe. Anyway, him going to prison at eighteen apparently is where he got hooked up with the Espositos.” Truman shook his head. “The problem with our prison system is that people enter it with a bachelor’s degree in crime, and often graduate with a master’s or a PhD. Antonio was no different. Him hooking up with the Esposito crime family transformed him from a young knucklehead who slung a little dope and recreationally set fires into an adult douchebag who breaks legs and gouges eyes. Over the years since he left prison, he’s been arrested at various times for assault, battery, arson, sexual assault, kidnapping, animal cruelty, obstruction of justice, and murder. His rap sheet is as long as Santa’s Christmas list, but it’s all naughty, no nice.”
Sentinels Page 12