Marvel Novel Series 09 - The Marvel Superheroes

by Len Wein

  “This elevator is generally quiet at this ungodly hour of the morning, and I have urged my men to use the stairs for the bit of business they have yet to complete. But a certain Mr. Molly, who is expected here shortly to collect the payment due him, has been instructed to use the elevator.

  “I owe you. God, how much I owe you! And when this quaint old machine makes its way to this floor, first crushing your skull and then pulping the rest of your miserable body against the top of the shaft, you may consider my account paid in full.”

  The fat man and his short companion turned on their heels, and Daredevil heard the grate of the safety door sliding into place.

  The morphine, or whatever had been in his system, had completely spent itself now, and he was left alone to unimaginable agony. Yet, like the effect that the certain knowledge of approaching death sometimes has on the profoundly religious, with the pain came a kind of calm. He was certain that he would not black out again. And he was more certain still that his suffering would somehow give him additional strength, that he would get out of this when clearly such a thing was impossible. Yet what he was—the fact that he was blind and yet could do the things he could—this, too, was impossible, or it should have been. Somehow, it all seemed to fit.

  Doyle, Burgess, none of them knew about the waves. If they had known he was blind, they would have thought it so much the better. Surely the very slim chance that he could escape this trap, as he had done all the others, would be infinitesimal if he were blind. They would not know about the waves, and how they enabled him to do something that was quite beyond a man with even the keenest vision: with the waves, he could effectively see behind him. He could see the way his wrists strained against each other; he could sense the exact point at which he should exert pressure against the cord. He could feel the knot weakening in a way no one else could. And he could free his hands in less than a minute and a half.

  He forced himself to think about other things and not the way his fingers now dug into the walls of the elevator shaft, groping for purchase in the space between the bricks. He jammed his fingertips into the mortar so hard that he was reminded of how long it had been since his last manicure. He realized there would be blood inside his gloves, and shook himself free of the thought so he could dwell on something else.

  He thought of Foggy, of all the years the two of them had spent sharing a succession of small rooms and big dreams, locked up with the smell of each other’s sweat and never once complaining. He thought of Foggy’s kindnesses over the years, kindnesses extended not to a blind man but to a friend who only happened to be blind. Then he thought of Foggy in a refrigerated drawer, probably right next door to Peter Markesson.

  He thought of Carole, of how his last memory of her was of the mysterious chill in her voice as she closed the door to his office. He thought of his silly romantic fantasy, the one in which he ran to the airport, racing onto the tarmac if necessary, to stop a plane departing for St. Croix. Then he thought about not getting a chance to try the fantasy on for life-size.

  And he thought of the men from Vegas, and the way the veins in their temples had throbbed under the single bulb in his father’s dressing room as they told the old man what he had done to their sure thing. He thought of their granite faces, all of them curiously more askew than his father’s battle-scarred mug, faces livid red above black cashmere coats and white silk scarves. He thought of how their brilliantined hair had been as black and shiny as their limousines. He thought of how there had been five of them. Then in his mind he renamed them: Norback, Perry, Clark, Shaw, and Doyle.

  He thought of all this so he could ignore the terrible things he was doing to his body as he pulled himself up so that his trunk was perpendicular to the safety door. From that position, he was able to reach up with one hand and grab the elevator’s main cable, which his splayed legs straddled. Hand over hand, he pulled himself further up, until his nose was level with his knees, and wondered how in hell he was going to free his ankles from the shackles.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs next to the elevator. Three pairs. He scanned for the heartbeats and learned that Burgess, Rooster, and the whiner were leaving. He had a feeling that they had a rendezvous with Helen Markesson at Lenox Hill Hospital. That left the Owl here alone. Urgent phone calls to the hospital and to the police could solve the problem with Helen. But the damned shackles remained.

  The solution, he considered, might lie not in the shackles but higher up. If he could exert a greater pull on the chains than the weight of his body had done, he might be able to dislodge the spikes from the wall. But how was that possible? And if he pulled with both hands, he’d end up dangling from one leg when the first spike came free.

  He knew a little about the way mountain climbers used their pitons from the research he had done while developing his grappling hook. The pitons were lodged in the face of a cliff at an angle, so as to be resistant to the downward pull exerted by the climber’s line. But they dislodged comparatively easily when the climber reached down from above and yanked them out at the same angle at which they’d been driven in. So the key to his problem lay in getting up to the same level as the spikes, or above them, before pulling on the chains.

  By the time the top of Daredevil’s head grazed the roof of the elevator shaft, it was roughly 7:30. Getting there had been miserable work, and only the prospect of Foggy’s violent death from whatever lay in wait for him at his office had kept Daredevil going. If it really was 7:30, he had less than two hours to deal with whatever would be waiting for him outside the elevator and to get to the office ahead of Foggy.

  He would have preferred being able to use both hands, but after almost five minutes of steady tugging, the spike came loose. He had pulled against it with his foot as much as he could, but he had needed to squeeze the center cable between his knees to maintain his position. From the sound of the spike hitting the top of the elevator car, he knew that the car was still several stories below.

  The second spike was almost out when he heard the elevator start up. It had to be the certainty that time had run out, and the surge of Adrenalin that came with it, that gave him the final burst of strength he needed. As the car approached the floor beneath Doyle’s, Daredevil grabbed the cable in both hands and prepared to swing into the safety door. Even if they hadn’t taken away his billy club before they strung him up like a sacrifice at a Black Mass, he would have had to do it the way he did. There would not have been time to use his line. He picked the spot on the safety door where he wanted his heels to land, gritted his teeth, and prayed. He swung. The soles of his boots struck the door hard, and he almost screamed with the pain. The door buckled a bit; that was all. He had to try again.

  On the second try, the door groaned and fell over into the corridor. Daredevil landed atop it just as the elevator car creaked to a stop behind him. He did not pause and scan to learn who, if anyone, had come up. The shackles were still around his ankles, and the chains he dragged behind him set up a deafening clatter as he ran for the far end of the corridor. For a wild instant, he thought of Marley’s ghost. He knew that if the sound of the door caving in had not been enough to bring Doyle, the rattling of the chains would be.

  He heard the double doors at the end of the corridor swing open as he ran toward them. It was Doyle. The corpulent, ponderous figure paused for a moment in the doorway, bewildered. That was all the time Daredevil needed to scan for the top of the door frame. As he leaped upward, the silhouette image of the Owl fully registered: he was holding a thick cylindrical object in one hand.

  Daredevil’s fingertips clamped onto the tiny ledge along the top of the door frame, and he swung forward into Doyle. He heard the chain snap and the fat man’s howl of horror and pain as his head jerked back. The object he had been holding dropped to the floor a split second before he did. Daredevil smelled the odor of blood and realized that quite without meaning to, he had caught Doyle in the face with the end of one of the chains. Possibly in the eyes. He picked up a sil
houette image of Doyle writhing on the floor, his hands clutching at his face.

  Doyle was a resourceful man, and he had adjusted well to the limitations imposed on him by his sensitivity to light. After living with his handicap for over thirty years, Doyle had grown comfortable with it. Now—or up until now—Doyle was able to maneuver through a barely lighted room effortlessly. Indeed, he could see in such a room almost as well as Daredevil could function in his total darkness.

  Daredevil and the Owl had been well but not equally matched. For, despite his namesake, not even Doyle could see in the dark. This time, there had not even been an opportunity to test the match. It all seemed pointless.

  Daredevil crouched to retrieve the fallen object and found his billy club. He knelt there for a moment, listening to Doyle’s whimpering. In spite of all that Doyle and Doyle’s men had done to him, Daredevil could not help the pang of regret he felt at what might become of Doyle. Daredevil could not be certain of it, but from then on Doyle’s concern with shielding his eyes from light might have become entirely academic.

  At the sound of movement behind him, Daredevil rose quickly, holding the club behind his back as he turned toward the doorway. He scanned in the direction of the sound and sensed a man who approached and then stopped less than four feet away. In the silhouette of his hand was the silhouette of a .357 Magnum, its barrel level with the bridge of Daredevil’s nose.

  “Less fancy than a Molotov cocktail,” Daredevil said, “but easier to keep under control.”

  “Huh?” the man said.

  “You’re the Molly I’ve been hearing so much about, right?” Daredevil snorted. “Molly. Molotov cocktails. Cute.”

  The man waved the Magnum in the direction of the doorway. “Back inside,” he said.

  Daredevil remained where he was. Behind him, Doyle moaned. Daredevil sensed the man’s head jerk sharply in the direction of the sound. Immediately he brought up the club and hurled it at the man’s hand. The club was an effective projectile when it wasn’t dispensing cable, if one knew how to throw it properly. Daredevil knew how to throw it properly.

  The Magnum hit the floor and blew a hole the size of a silver dollar in the ceiling. Molly was about to say something when he was interrupted by Daredevil’s fist in his face. It was like punching eggshells.

  Inside what he took to be Doyle’s office, Daredevil found several feet of the same cord Doyle’s men had used to tie his hands. He also found enough tapes of what he assumed to be telephone conversations to keep the DA’s office working overtime for a week.

  He tied up Doyle and Molly, back to back, then found a telephone. He called the hospital and was connected with its director of security as soon as he identified himself. The police were somewhat less cooperative until he told them where he was calling from and what he was doing there. They said they would send a detail over to Lenox Hill and another to Doyle’s loft. Daredevil requested an ambulance for Doyle.

  When he opened a window, he knew it was 8:15. Even if Daredevil had interrupted Doyle’s men in the act of planting the bomb, there had been more than enough time for them to finish the job after he had been taken out. This morning would be just like any other morning to Foggy Nelson. So unless Daredevil or Matt Murdock was there to do something about it, in less than one hour Foggy Nelson would walk into his office and die.

  He alighted on the roof of the building at approximately 8:45. Doyle’s loft had been in the heart of the garment district, and Daredevil had had less than fifteen blocks to cross to get to the midtown offices of Nelson and Murdock. He went in through the stairwell on the roof, as Doyle’s men had done, and proceeded downstairs with great caution. He made it to the front door and inside without being seen as Daredevil. Fortunately, he did not need the key which was inside, in the pocket of Matt’s trousers. Doyle’s men had seen no reason to lock the office behind them.

  As he stepped inside, it occurred to him with a mixture of annoyance and dread that Miss Meyerson had sometimes been known to come in as early as ten to nine in order to make her coffee that much more lethal. So he made a point of going to his office to dress as Matt Murdock.

  He stripped off his red leotard and felt a sensation of coldness across his abdomen as it was exposed to the air. His wounds were bleeding into the bandages. He would keep his jacket buttoned and hope that if Miss Meyerson came in, there would be no red stain seeping through what showed of his dress shirt to cause her to scream.

  His telephone began to ring as he walked briskly toward Foggy’s office. He ignored it.

  He stepped into the office and conjured up the memory of the sounds and shapes of Doyle’s men, and the spatial relationships between him and them, them and the room itself. It had been nine hours since he had last been in this room. It seemed like nine years. He noticed he was limping as he walked toward Foggy’s desk. His brutalized nerve endings were playing the same ugly theme with some nasty new variations. He realized he was running out of endurance as well as time.

  He forced himself to tune out the telephone which refused to quit ringing in the next room. He sat at Foggy’s desk and tried to concentrate.

  Arthur Norback and the rest of Helen Markesson’s former employers—or whoever was behind them—had panicked when the Markessons decided to blow their cover and go public with their suit against the Justice Department. They had hired the Owl to arrange a hit to prevent what Helen knew from coming out at the trial.

  Owl and his clients suspected—and rightfully—that the Markessons had told Foggy some, if not all, of what they knew. But just how much, and whether it was enough to risk a second hit, they didn’t know. They had sent a man in to look for whatever evidence Foggy may have had, not realizing that Foggy wasn’t stupid enough to commit any of the highly volatile information to paper or tape. Without any assurances that Foggy was harmless, Owl and his men had felt they had no choice but to kill the lawyer as well. Now, somewhere in this office, there was a bomb either timed to go off at a specific moment, or set to be detonated when Foggy performed a certain function.

  It was unlikely that the Owl knew about Foggy’s compulsive arrival at the same time each day, so an explosive with a timed fuse could be ruled out—for the time being, at least. The charge was probably wired to something in the room, something Foggy was likely to handle in the course of the day.

  He began to pull out the drawers of Foggy’s desk, ever so carefully, tentatively scanning each one with his radar. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  He was checking the closet in the corner behind the door when he noticed again that his phone was ringing. It hadn’t stopped. The ringing was playing havoc with his concentration; it had been over twenty-four hours since he had really slept.

  Cursing, he ran into his office and picked up the phone. A dial tone. The call had been placed to his apartment and automatically switched over. He punched the warmest button in the row of buttons below the dial.

  “Murdock.” He had almost answered in Daredevil’s voice, but checked himself at the last second. Until he heard himself speak, he had not realized how tense he was.

  “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask what side of the bed you got up on this morning,” Carole said in a mock put-upon tone. Her voice was shrill, edgy. She was trying to keep it light, and failing miserably.

  “Carole, please, what is it? I’m very—”

  She cut him off. “Busy? Must be monkey business, I’m sure. I’ve been calling since before six. You must be deaf, too—”

  He was neither too tired, nor too preoccupied to notice the “too.”

  “—not to have heard the phone. Nobody sleeps that soundly. Unless you weren’t sleeping.” She was talking almost as rapidly as Matt’s heart was beating. “What’s today, some kind of holiday? It’s almost nine o’clock. What are you still doing at home?”

  “Carole, for God’s sake, I’m at the office. Will you get to the point?” He wondered why in hell he didn’t just hang up on her.

  “You can’t be. At the offi
ce, I mean, I’m across the street I didn’t see you come in . . .”

  He had to fight to keep his voice under control. “Carole, I’ve been here since . . . very early. Look, it’s a long story—”

  “I have to talk to you. It’s very important. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right up. Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything. Please.” She hung up.

  He slammed down the receiver with a burst of profanity and returned to Foggy’s office. It would be the capstone of a life that had not been without its cruel ironies if the woman he loved should be responsible for the death of his closest friend, perhaps getting both herself and him blown up in the process.

  He stood where he had been when Burgess had first jolted him with the miniature cattle prod, and concentrated. They had been in front of him, in the corner near the pole lamp. On the left were the huge windows which flooded the room with so much light Foggy didn’t even use a desk lamp. He certainly never needed the pole lamp during the day.

  To the right of the pole lamp was a potted rubber plant and to the right of it, on the wall, the old clock . . .

  Matt took two steps toward the clock and turned toward the doorway as Carole literally ran in.

  “Matt, what are you doing in here?”

  “Carole, please, go away. I can’t talk to you now.”

  “You’ve got to. It’s important, more important than you know.” Her voice was quavering. She paused. “What in God’s name have you been doing? You look like hell.”

  He ignored her and sent the waves out toward the clock. He could not read the numerals on its face without touching it, but he hoped—and it was only hope, for he had had little experience with clocks—that there was enough substance to the hands for him to get a silhouette image.

  “Carole, what time do you have?”