by Various
There was a pause and they both started chuckling.
“You’re joking,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe a little. I’ve mostly gone digital.”
“Like most people.”
“But don’t be such a stranger, Cass. It’s been a lovely visit. Lovely.”
“Yes. Nico, I…I wanted to say, I’m really happy to see how you’ve turned things around. I know…I was not supportive of you. Everything…everything with Barry I mean.” She said his name in a whisper, like he was Voldemort.
“Eh, you was just a girl, weren’t you? I mean, we was kids. How could you know, yeah?”
“The night before…I never told anyone this. Um. The night before…what happened.”
“The bomb.”
“Right. Sorry. Jim left a message on my phone. He told me everything. I mean, about Barry and the other kids. I didn’t get it until way after I got out of the hospital you know, for my appendix. By then, it was all over. I was so very wrong about you. Part of the reason I didn’t go to the funeral was that I couldn’t even look at you.”
“Well, after the bomb, a lot of people couldn’t look at me,” Tink chuckled. “Nah, look. It’s all right.”
“I was so ashamed!” she gurgled, crying now. “Sometimes I think…I was responsible. I mean, if only…I had gotten the call. If only I had told someone.”
And then the sobbing was muffled. Jim eased himself down the stair and peeked. They were in each other’s arms. She was crying into his shoulder, her long blonde hair tumbling down the middle of her back. She was wearing a long gray leather jacket, and from the bottom, her calves swelled and tapered into elegant ankle boots. Tink’s chin was over her shoulder, and his eyes flitted up to the stairs and frowned sharply at him as she lifted her head and parted.
He slid back out of sight.
“Like I said. We was just kids, luv. Don’t torture yourself. That arsehole Barry’s dead in his grave. Now look, you better shift it before somebody runs your license plate and the vultures start circling. We’ll be on the front page of the National Snoop. ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”
“You’re not a beast, Nico.”
“Ah, go on. You can’t tell, but I’m blushing. I swear.”
She laughed.
Her boots chopped to the door.
Rattling as it opened.
“And don’t forget about the gig. I’ll make sure I’ve an opening in me schedule.”
“I won’t! Look, here’s my card. That’s my personal number. Call it.””
The door shut.
Jim flew into Tink’s room and went to the ceiling. He lay there, staring out the window, watching her walk down the front to her waiting car, a silver Audi.
Tink came up the stairs, looked in his room, turned all around, and spotted him.
He leaned in the doorway.
The Audi turned on the street and drove off.
Jim could still smell her in the house. Lilacs. Different from what she’d worn when they were dating, but underneath, still her.
“Oi!” said Tink. “Get the fuck off my ceiling before I get the broom. Always leaving footprints up there. What’s the cleaning lady to think?”
Jim dropped down and craned his neck, watching the silver car till the taillights glowed and she turned off.
“I bet she fucking forgets,” Tink muttered, going downstairs.
EIGHT
“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been…”
“Never since your last confession,” Father Eladio said through the screen. “You pray like a damned Protestant. What the hell are you doing here, Jim? You’re going to get us both into a lot of trouble.”
“It’s been three weeks. Are they still watching you?”
“Well, I haven’t seen anybody,” Father Eladio quipped. “But I would assume so, yeah. Don’t you watch the news?”
Lance Lattimer was on trial. It was the second time this year a high profile case bearing on public interest in chimeric disturbances had gripped the nation. Like the Anchor City case involving that old chimeric-killing Marine and the unfortunate incident that followed with the Red Wraith, the whole Tantrum case was being televised, too. It was sickening. Lattimer was a mass murderer, yes, but who could tell just how much control he had when he became Tantrum? He definitely had no idea what was happening to him in court. He was swimming in tranquilizers, propped up on a dolly behind the defense table, chained and covered with machineguns throughout the proceedings. His arms sprouted intravenous tubes. One fed him a steady dosage of catatonia-inducing drugs, the other was poised to pump a lethal payload of sodium thiopental into his bloodstream at the touch of a button. As they marched the tearful family members of his victims past him, his eyes bobbed in his skull like neglected beta fish. When a woman spit in his face he didn’t even flinch, and the prosecution said it was evidence of his lack of remorse.
“I thought they forgot about me,” said Jim. “The Brown Thrasher’s back in Atlanta and A-Frame’s in court in case Lattimer busts loose again.”
“They want you to think they forgot about you. That’s how they work, chivato. You were doing good keeping under the radar, but in case you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t exactly a lot of blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boys hanging out in this neighborhood. What’s the matter? You need something?”
“No, I mean, not really. I guess.”
“Don’t tell me you’re risking the heat just ‘cause you miss it.””
Jim bit his lip. The truth was, he did miss it. He hadn’t even gone back for his suit in the past two weeks. He’d been going stir crazy in the house all day with Tink. They had both been climbing the walls, snapping at each other. Then Tink had got the call he’d been waiting for. He was shooting a guest spot on Capes. Some kind of villain role, that if it went over well, could end up a recurring part. He’d been doing sixteen hours the past two days, and Jim had gotten bored and fled the coop, at first only going down to the Army and Navy to buy a throwing knife to replace the one he’d lost, but eventually taking the train down here.
“Look, Jim. It’s a bug, I know. But think it out. You went from El Niño Eterno to a lot of cholos and pornographers to Pan on the national news. I’m not sure who wants your culo the most. TCA, the Rogers’ owners, or child protective services. Believe me, they’ve all come around here asking about you.”
Jim snickered.
“I’m not kidding, man. People take their baseball pretty fuckin’ seriously in this town.”
Then the blind priest laughed a little himself.
“Alright, look. Say five Hail Marys and meet me in the basement before somebody sees you.”
“What’s a Hail Mary?”
Father Eladio hissed and passed the rectory keys through the screen to him.
#
Fifteen minutes later Father Eladio had doled out the last reconciliations to his penitents and ushered the last of the bums dozing in the back pews out onto the street, pressing money from the poor box into their gritty hands and making them promise to spend it at the flophouse and not the corner liquor.
Jim sat in the basement that served as the parish rectory, at a little card table, sipping a Modelo.
“Hey, who told you you could drink my beer, man?” said Father Eladio as he came shuffling down the steps and shut the door behind him. “Somebody walks in they’re gonna bust me for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
The light from the naked bulb made sunbursts in his dark lenses.
“What happened to the fridge you had down here? This tastes like piss,” Jim said.
“Little Bonifacia Gutierrez had her baby and she couldn’t afford the formula. It was my shower gift, along with a breast pump.”
“TMI, Father,” Jim grimaced.
“Facts of life, guero,” said Father Eladio, feeling for the open case, sliding out a beer, and coming over to the table to sit across from h
im in his vestments. ““Everybody’s got to grow up.”
“Every boy but one,” Jim intoned.
“Cut the crap, man. Why’d you really come?”
“I just needed to talk to somebody.”
“I ain’t just somebody.”
“Well, I can’t get into a bar to talk to a bartender, so that leaves you.”
“So spill it.”
“Cassidy came by our house the morning after Chinatown.”
“Cassidy Hollis? From Capes? Your lady?”
“Yeah.”
“I like her. On the show, I mean. The writing’s kind of bullshit though, isn’t it? She find out about you?”
“No. No, she didn’t see me. But it was like…she said she had an idea it was me. Pan was me.”
“The girl’s in touch with her heart. Que malo! That’s hard, man. So what do you think?”
“I think I’m exactly the kid I appear to be if I’m still thinking about her this way.”
“Except she’s thinking about you, too.”
“Yeah. I guess so. Which is fucked up.”
“It is.”
Jim swallowed and took the plain business card he’d taken off the fridge where Nico had pinned it under a magnetic banana.
“I’ve got her number here.”
He’d even programmed it into his phone. Coded the contact name, just like he did all the others in the list. Tink was Slightly. Cassidy was Wendy.
Father Eladio sniffed. Then he reached across the table and slid Jim’s beer bottle a few inches away from him.
“This isn’t really my area of expertise, but I listen to enough TV to know drunk dialing’s a bad idea.”
“Is that all you’ve got? At least Tink offered to get me a prostitute.”
“Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree here with that,” said Father Eladio raising his hands. “Let’s be real. I can’t really offer you advice on this, Jim. I doubt this situation has ever arisen in the whole of human history, so when you figure it out, let me know so I can cite precedent for the next poor cabron that comes along.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I could tell you to follow your heart, if you want. But I don’t think that’d be what you want to hear. I could tell you God has a plan, but the way you pray, I don’t think that’d be very comforting either. I could say, sometimes a man or a woman has a path laid out before them, a greater purpose than what most people feel. And then the things other people take for granted, like love, seem a monumental, unattainable treasure denied to them.”
“So basically, superheroes go alone,” said Jim, reaching for his beer and slipping Cassidy’s card back in his pocket.
“Actually I was talking about priests and nuns, but sure, okay.”
They drank their beer, smiling.
“There’s the kids too, Father,” Jim said after a minute. “How many are getting hurt while I lay low?”
“Don’t develop a messiah complex, kid. You could drive yourself crazy thinking that way. I mean, what about the children down in Juarez? Or Manila, or Hackensack, New Jersey? Evil’s everywhere, and you can’t be everywhere at once all the time. There are guys out there doing the same job you’re doing. They were doing it three weeks ago and they’re doing it now, and they’ll be doing it three weeks from now, God willing. You won’t be able to help anybody if they catch you, right? Just keep it cold. You’ll be back in it eventually. Listen, I did ask you, have you been watching TV?”
“Yeah, but there hasn’t been anything about me. I found some old Peter `N Wendy fans going apeshit on Reddit, but…”
“Shit, you do have a messiah complex,” said Father Eladio, shaking his head. “Don’t Protestants teach the Beatitudes? It’s the meek who inherit the earth.”
“Well, I mean…”
Father Eladio held up his hand.
“I’m kidding. I meant have you been watching Lance Lattimer’s trial?”
“Oh. Yeah, off and on. It’s kind of a circus. He’s all drugged up, just sitting there while people cry and scream at him. I almost feel sorry for him.””
“Maybe you should. Have you heard about the bullet yet?”
“Bullet?”
“Yeah the defense brought it up this morning. They found a high-caliber bullet wound in Lattimer’s upper arm.”
“Well, there were a lot of cops shooting at him.”
“Yeah, except what happens when you shoot Tantrum? You were there.”
“Well, usually nothing. The bullets just…sort of melt.”
“Right. So if there’s a bullet wound in Lattimer, and nobody shot him after you broke a bat over his head…”
“Then…he must’ve been shot before he changed?”
“Right again. And why is Lattimer so pumped-up full of juice? To keep him calm. Because when he’s agitated, Tantrum comes out.”
“I don’t get it. So somebody shot him and he changed? It was an accident?”
“I don’t think there’s any question it wasn’t an accident. Lance Lattimer was a pendejo, we know. Insider trading, cheating on his wife, Wall Street prick. Okay. But if he was as outright evil as people have made him out to be, we would’ve seen a lot more of Tantrum in the last two years since New York. I think he’s been on the run, hiding. Trying to stay calm. And a man who keeps something like that in check, he might not be a good man, but he’s not an evil man. He’s not a supervillain.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” Jim emptied his beer. “So, Jesus, somebody shot him and he lost it. Was it a mugging or something? Robbery?”
“Nobody holds up a guy with a bullet like they pulled out of Lattimer. The defense says it was a high-powered rifle round. They found it in the pavement out in front of Federal Station. Had to use a Geiger counter to sniff it out. It had radium in the tip.”
“Radium?”
“Right. That’s how they found the evidence of a wound in the first place. Radium bullet slows a chimeric’s regeneration, if they have it. So, who shoots Lance Lattimer with a radium bullet from a high-powered rifle?”
“I don’t know. Who?”
“I don’t know, either. But I do know that back when I was Angelus, a TCA chimeric named Ursus was killed in front of the Montana State Capitol by a bullet just like that. Six months ago we might have said it was that Hathcock guy they put on trial, but he’s dead now. And a bullet like that never turned up again, as far as I know, until now.”
Jim peeled the label off his Modelo thoughtfully.
“So why would somebody shoot Lance Lattimer with a radium bullet? They had to know who he was.”
“And what would happen if they didn’t shoot to kill. Snipers don’t generally aim for the arm.”
“Maybe somebody spoiled his shot,” said Jim.
“Or maybe the shooter wanted Tantrum to come out and play. Maybe the same guy who popped the Red Wraith after the Hathcock trial incident. Maybe another player, who knows?” Father Eladio drained his beer and plunked it down. “Anyway, that’s what the defense is saying now.”
NINE
It was dusk when Father Eladio got up to prepare for Saturday evening Mass. He encouraged Jim to stay, but Jim begged off. He didn’t get much from church and the Mass was in Spanish anyway.
He pulled up his hood and lowered the brim of his cap as he walked out into the street, upstream of the tide of elderly Mexican ladies fingering rosary beads and tired-eyed men in mesh back caps and cowboy hats and wailing brown babies.
He saw the big guy in the white Stetson and smile pocket shirt on the corner, one boot heel propped up against the lamppost he was leaning on. Those boots were size 20, easy, and the cowboy’s bucket jaw and linebacker shoulders made him look like a tall tale come to life. He was big enough to reach up and bat the streetlight with one huge hand, probably put it out like a candle. He was no LF cowboy with a curled snakeskin hat and pastel blue and black bowling shirt. His huge boots were scuffed and worn, his ha
t sweat stained, the brown Western shirt as un-ironic as a wad of Skoal. His skin was a shade lighter than the neighborhood might’ve produced, but with his black hair and dark eyes he might’ve passed unnoticed, except for the fact that he was heads taller than anybody else in a four-block radius.
And the big fellow picked him out of the parishioners as easy as Jim had made him.
That boot slid down the lamppost and the heels started clopping heavy as Clydesdale hooves on the concrete.
Jim’s first thought was to duck back into the church, but he didn’t want to bring Father Eladio any more trouble, or risk a destructive fight around so many people.
He knew the cowboy was a chimeric, and suspected who he was.
Pecos. TCA’s own homegrown-aw-shucks-t’weren’t nothin’-ma’am-Texas-good-old-boy. Wade Sixkiller was his name. A part-Cherokee who’d been discovered wrestling bulls in a little traveling rodeo outside El Paso at the age of eighteen. So he hadn’t gone home to Texas after all.
Powers. He didn’t know Pecos’ powers exactly. Just knew he was supposed to be pretty strong and tough, and he had once brought down a Cessna with a cable steel lariat he didn’t appear to be carrying.
Jim turned and quickened his pace down the street as Pecos reached the curb.
“Hey, ‘pard! Hold up a sec!” he boomed over the heads of the Mexicans headed for church.
Some of them looked at him, the women and girls lingering.
Father Eladio appeared in the door of the church and called out, smiling.
“Is that Wade Sixkiller I hear? Didn’t realize you were a Catholic, Wade!” And then, in rapid Spanish, he fired off an announcement to his parishioners, the only word of which Jim caught was ‘Pecos.’
Suddenly everybody took an interest in the big cowboy. They mobbed him, the little kids running up and hugging his tree trunk legs, the girls crowding in close to sneak a feel of his hard pectorals, the men breaking into gold-capped smiles and coming in to slap his back, to touch him for luck, or just to say they had. He was a celebrity. A bona fide superhero.
Jim smiled but didn’t look back, as he heard Pecos mutter.
“God dang it, Angelus.”