"You didn't want to look like your usual shitty self?"
Chuckling, MacAvoy said, "Exactly. You take your wiseass pills this morning?"
"Bite me entirely, Mac."
"Hey, I ain't complaining. I like you better this way, honestly."
"Yeah, 'cause your approval was keeping me up at night," Milewski muttered, looking up at the photos.
"But you got Ambien for that, so you're okay," MacAvoy said with a grin. Then he added: "Oh, and did I call it, or what? I checked in with Zimmerman, and Soohoo's autopsy report hasn't made it to HQ yet—but the fucker's already sent out a press release. It got mentioned on News 6 at 6, and in the Gazette and the Post. He's a tool, that guy."
However, Milewski was now staring at the picture of Komodo Dragon. "Wow. That's a great shot. I can't imagine how the photographer managed that one."
"What's the big deal?" MacAvoy asked. "Prob'ly took it from the adjoining roof."
Milewski shook her head. "Couldn't have. That's gotta be the MooreBuilding they're on—it's the only roof that's got that view of the SC Tower with the courthouse to the left like that."
Squinting at the photo from his seated position, MacAvoy said, "Yeah, okay, I see that."
"Only way to get that shot's to hang out a window on the top floor of the office building across the street—and you can't do it from the roof. You can't get up there." She smiled. "We did surveillance on the MooreBuilding roof in Narcotics a couple times."
MacAvoy had to admit to being impressed. "Not bad, rook. You almost sounded like a detective there."
Whatever Milewski's retort might have been, it was cut off by another buzzing from the desk, but of a slightly different type. This time the receptionist picked up the phone. "Yes? Okay." She hung up. "You two can go back."
Hauling himself up from the couch, MacAvoy said, "About time." He walked to the only door besides the one that led to the hallway, a big metal door to the right of the reception desk. The woman pushed a button, and a low hum came from the door, which presumably unlocked it. MacAvoy opened it and saw only an empty room. No windows, no other doors, just a featureless square room, no more than twenty feet per side, with blank walls.
Turning back before Milewski could follow him through the door into this empty closet, MacAvoy glared at the receptionist. "What the hell, lady?"
"Please go in and close the door, Detectives. You'll be taken to Six Headquarters."
"Mac, go in," Milewski said.
"But—"
"Just do it." Milewski shoved him through the door and then followed. "It'll be fine."
Stumbling forward from his partner's shove, MacAvoy said, "Christ, what're you—?"
"Mac, shut up." Milewski closed the door behind her. The room didn't seem to have any light source, yet MacAvoy could see just fine.
Then whatever the light source was, it got brighter, as the room became almost blinding. After only a second, it dimmed again, and MacAvoy had to blink spots out of his eyes. "What the fuck?"
"Christ, Mac, don't you know about the Six's teleporter?" Milewski asked as she reopened the door.
MacAvoy slowly walked through, only to find himself in a completely different room from the one he was in before. The walls were painted a cheery bright yellow, there were more seats, all of which were in better shape than the leather couch, and there was a big picture window on one wall.
The view out that window was rivaled only by that which you got at the top of the SC Tower. Milewski ran over to it and stared at it like she was five years old. "Will you look at this view?"
However, MacAvoy was more interested in how he got here. "Jesus Christ. I didn't feel a thing."
Without turning to look at him, Milewski asked, "What did you expect?"
"I dunno, but I figured I'd feel something. I mean, Christ, we just went from 75th Street to a mile over the skyline in an instant. You'd figure there'd be something."
"Whatever. Look at this view."
MacAvoy didn't bother. The first time he went to the SC Tower as a kid, he threw up. That was the old one that had been blown up by Dr. Destruction, not the new one the Justiciars rebuilt before they disbanded. Since then, he tended to avoid anything that reminded him that he was very high off the ground.
Instead, he looked around the reception area. Now this is more like it. Instead of a bunch of framed photos, this had a giant flat-screen TV that scrolled through several high-res images of the Six. Some of them were the photos in the street-level office. Others were artist's renderings, including a painting MacAvoy recognized from the cover of Rolling Stone last year.
A pleasant synthetic female voice sounded over a speaker. Unlike the intercom in the office, this sounded like it was coming from someone standing next to MacAvoy. "Welcome to the Superior Six's flying headquarters. Someone will be with you shortly. Please make yourself comfortable."
"You know what I don't get?" MacAvoy asked as he went to sit in the couch—which was not only in better shape, but considerably more comfortable than the one down below.
"Would me saying I don't care stop you from telling me?" Milewski still was staring out the window.
"No."
Now she turned around, smirking at him. "Then what don't you get?"
"These guys have a gadget that can transport you instantly from one place to another with no side effects. It obviously works pretty good, since they took us up here with it. Their insurance is probably through the roof. But what I don't get is—why the hell don't they market this? That's what the Tiresome Trio does. The Six could bankroll their whole operation just by patenting that thing. Wouldn't even need Zim's boyfriend's big wallet."
Milewski opened her mouth to reply, but then her eyes widened, and her mouth stayed open, making her look like a fish.
Before MacAvoy could point this out to her, a deep voice explained her sudden shock. "I'm afraid we can't do that, Detective."
Turning, MacAvoy saw Spectacular Man.
In pictures, MacAvoy had always thought Spec Man's outfit was silly. A skintight outfit—red top and gloves, blue pants—with a blue mask covering the top of his face and a red cape that matched the shirt, it didn't look like anything a sane person would wear.
But standing there looking at the man himself—freakishly tall, shock of wavy blond hair sticking out from above the mask, cape flowing elegantly behind him, muscles bulging through the outfit—MacAvoy realized that it didn't matter what this guy wore, he'd look incredibly intimidating. And the advantage of the outfit was that nobody would mistake him for anyone else. Not that there were a whole lot of stupid-tall guys with muscles like that, and who didn't so much walk as stride...
Milewski was still all goggle-eyed, so MacAvoy got to his feet and held out a hand. "I'm Detective MacAvoy, and the lady doing the piscine impersonation is my partner, Detective Milewski."
The insult shocked Milewski out of it, and she shot a look at MacAvoy before saying, "It's a pleasure."
Spectacular Man returned MacAvoy's handshake. His grip was firm, but friendly. The gloves were surprisingly thin, and MacAvoy could feel hands that were smooth and un-callused, which was a neat trick for someone who spent most of his time punching things. Guess it pays to be invulnerable.
"The pleasure is mine," Spec Man said. He even sounded like he meant it, which was more than MacAvoy expected.
"Why can't you do that?" MacAvoy asked, breaking the handshake.
"Do what? Oh, you mean market the teleporter? It's alien technology."
Milewski said, "So you can't re-create it?"
"Oh, no, we could—but the design's proprietary. This particular teleporter was given to us three years ago as a gift from a grateful planet that we saved called Zagnar. But if we did as Detective MacAvoy here suggests, we'd be breaking Zagnari law." He smiled, and MacAvoy noted that his teeth were, of course, perfect. "We'd each of us be sentenced to three years in a Zagnari prison."
"That doesn't sound too bad," MacAvoy said.
"Zagnar
's rotation around its sun takes a hair under a century, Detective. That prison sentence would be two hundred and ninety-six Earth years."
MacAvoy found he had nothing to say to that, so instead he said, "We're here to ask about the Claw."
"Are you two the detectives assigned to the case?"
"Yes," Milewski said, "and we'd appreciate you sharing anything you can about him."
"I'm afraid that there's nothing we can share, Detectives. But I can assure you that the Superior Six are devoting every resource to apprehending the Claw. He won't kill again, I can tell you that."
Christ, he's worse than the City Hall flacks. Aloud, MacAvoy said, "Not to put too fine a point on it, chuckles, but you guys haven't done such a hot job catching this guy in the past. In fact, one of his victims was one of your guys."
"And another was one of yours," Spec Man said, now staring down at MacAvoy, a look that was positively scary, despite the fact that MacAvoy couldn't see his eyes through the mask. "He won't escape our clutches this time."
MacAvoy blinked in astonishment that the costume actually used the word "clutches" in a sentence, but before he could comment, Milewski spoke. "Do you at least have an idea where he—?"
She was interrupted by a voice that sounded from the same all-over-the-place speaker that the voice welcoming them to the blimp came from. "Yo, SM, we've got a call."
Turning, MacAvoy saw that the image on the screen had changed to that of the Bengal. He wore a tiger's head helmet that covered his entire face, save for his mouth, which was visible through the open mouth of the tiger.
"What is it, Bengal?"
"The Brute Squad's tearing up the post office." MacAvoy saw a smile between the tiger teeth. "Guess they're pissed about the price of stamps going up again. The other four are en route."
"I'll be right there," Spec Man said. After the Bengal's image faded, to be replaced by the Rolling Stone painting, the hero turned to look at Milewski. "I'm sorry, Detectives, duty calls."
"Funny, how you're 'devoting every resource'," MacAvoy said, "yet you're all taking on the Brute Squad."
"The SCPD is still solving other crimes, yes? Well, we're still handling other cases. You can take the teleporter back to the office, Detectives. We'll let you know when we capture the Claw."
With that, Spectacular Man strode out of the room. It's like he's exiting stage left in a goddamn Shakespeare play.
MacAvoy turned to look at his partner. "Well, that was a total waste of time."
Milewski looked like a kid who'd accidentally let go of her balloon and was watching it float away from her. "I don't believe it. I mean, okay, I wasn't expecting us to team up or anything, but—"
"Really?"
"Yes, Mac, really. I'm not as stupid as you think I am. But—" She sighed. "I wasn't expecting him to be quite that much of a flaming asshole."
9.10am
Paul Fiorello tried and failed to stifle a yawn as one of the Superior Six struck Brute #4, the largest of the six-person Brute Squad, in the jaw. His neck cracked as his head lolled back a bit, and pins and needles went up and down his arms. This always happened when he worked a triple, his body cried out for more sleep—and they were still only in the second of three shifts. Wouldn't have been so bad working Monday night through to Tuesday night if he hadn't spent all of Monday afternoon with Sheila—or was it Gia? Something ending in an A, anyhow. There was a reason why Fiorello tended to refer to whatever woman he was with at any given time as "babe." In any case, she called saying she was lonely and Fiorello just couldn't resist.
Brute #4 went crashing into a (thankfully empty) water tower. The hero who threw the punch was probably Olorun. It was a large African-American man, in any case—and since Olorun was named for a Yoruban god from west Africa, the term "African-American" was even more apropos than usual.
O'Malley chuckled as Fiorello put his hand in front of his mouth. "We keepin' you up, Paulie?"
"Sorry." Fiorello rubbed the grit out of his eyes with his right thumb and forefinger. "Ain't been sleepin' much lately."
O'Malley scowled at him, then. Fiorello knew his partner was self-conscious about Fiorello's successes with women, and so he tried not to rub it in.
Well, not too much, anyhow.
Brute #6—the only current female member of the Brute Squad—had the one dressed like a meerkat—was it Suricata?—in a headlock, but then the latter did a backflip that broke the hold. She kicked Brute #6 and sent her careening right toward Fiorello.
He flinched as Brute #6 crashed into the force field that was set up about two feet in front of him, creating a massive light show, but stopping Brute #6 as readily as a brick wall might have. The air crackled and started to smell of ozone.
Two weeks ago, Bennett, one of the lab geeks, came into roll call and excitedly demo'd the FF36—a force field generator, which was to be used for crowd control. The generator was a gift from the Terrific Trio, created by Ms. Terrific based on some extra-dimensional technology, or so she said. Bennett had downplayed that, trying to make as if he'd invented it, but everyone knew he had trouble operating the coffee maker in the lab, much less coming up with something like this.
Each cruiser was issued an FF36, and the one belonging to Unit 2202 was on the sidewalk of 12th Street about half a yard from Fiorello's feet. It projected an energy field of some kind that turned the air around the massive edifice of the Super City Post Office an orange color. Baptiste and Fontaine were across the street with their own FF36.
Some days, Fiorello wondered what happened to FF1 through FF35.
Behind Fiorello and O'Malley across 12th was a phalanx of blue-and-whites, which formed a more visible barricade to keep the general public away from the FF36s—which were expensive to maintain and difficult to replace—as well as another step removed from the fighting.
"What," O'Malley said at Fiorello's flinch, "you don't trust the gadget?"
"Says the guy who always gives me shit about using the damps."
"That's 'cause the damps don't always work. But this contraption's worked okay every time."
"Hope so," Fiorello said as Brute #6 took two ray-guns out of holsters at her side. He hadn't even noticed the black holsters on the brute's all-black costume. The only way you could tell them all apart was the number stenciled on the foreheads of their face masks. Fiorello would've found them ridiculous if they hadn't proven to be so dangerous over the years.
O'Malley stared at him. "You okay, Paulie?"
Fiorello shook off another yawn. "Yeah, just hate working days. Don't get me wrong, the OT's great, but I really could use some sleep, y'know?"
"Yeah, well, try sleeping alone some time. Might work wonders."
Fiorello just gave him the finger, even as Spectacular Man grabbed Brute #2 by the arm and tossed him right into Brute #6, who—up until having one of her teammates thrown at her—had the hero who looked like a bird lined up in the sights of her ray-guns. The impact spoiled #6's shot, and her ray-beam fired at a metal trash can on the corner of 12th and Kurtzman.
The can glowed and turned into a pile of ash.
The two brutes crashed into the force field, and this time there was a beeping noise and sparks flying from the FF36.
Then the air stopped being orange.
"Oh, that's bad." Fiorello heard a clunking sound behind him—it sounded like something hitting off one of the cruisers. He whirled around, but didn't see anything.
The air near Baptiste and Fontaine across the street was still orange, so it was just their unit. Fiorello was trying to remember what Bennett's instructions were for shoring up the force field, and he was about to call out to Fontaine to ask her.
But then, a second later, the beeping stopped and the air turned orange again. The two brutes got up, shook it off, and ran back into the fray.
"Looks like it's okay," O'Malley said. "We better give this back to Bennett when we get back to the house, though."
"Yeah."
O'Malley frowned. "Hey, the g
irl—number six."
Fiorello gave him a sidelong glance. "You find dirty pics'a her online, too?"
"No, I mean look at her. She only has one ray-gun. What happened to the other one?"
"Who the hell knows? And who the hell cares? The Six'll take care of it, and then we can get dinner."
Staring at his partner, O'Malley said, "It's still morning."
Fiorello shrugged. "We been on for ten hours, far as I'm concerned, it's dinner."
"We're still going to need to turn in our FF36."
"Whatever." Right now, he just wanted to head to the diner so they could get some food—and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
Looking up, Fiorello saw that Brute #1 was about to get the drop on the guy in the bird suit. "Jesus, fly out of the way!"
"You think he can hear you?" O'Malley asked with a laugh.
Spectacular Man flew in to grab Brute #1 before he could cause any harm.
Fiorello shook his head. "That's the second time one of the Brutes almost took the bird guy out."
"That's Starling," O'Malley said in the long-suffering voice he always used when he corrected Fiorello about the costumes. Fiorello figured that he didn't need to keep track of them, since O'Malley did anyhow, but that didn't stop O'Malley from being an asshole about it.
"Right, him. You think he's off his game or something?"
"Who the hell knows? Whaddaya expect from someone named after a wussy little bird like that?"
"I think that means he's lithe and athletic and stuff. I mean, c'mon, he's not about to call himself 'the Pigeon.' People actually like starlings."
Spitting on the pavement, O'Malley said, "All starlings're good for is annoying Puck."
Komodo Dragon took down two of the brutes as Fiorello chuckled at his partner. "I thought your dog was named Scooter."
"That's the mastiff. Puck's the golden retriever."
"Wait, I thought it was a keeshond."
"No, that's Murphy."
"And people wonder why you can't get laid." Fiorello shook his head. "You're like those crazy old cat ladies, except with dogs."
Case of the Claw Page 8