by Nick Svolos
While I was lost in thought trying to figure out who fingered us for Hammerblow, the scene got a bit more crowded. Mentalia and Suave arrived in a floating telekinetic bubble. Once they landed, Mentalia made a beeline for Ben. Over his protests, she soon took off with him in her bubble. Whether she was heading for an emergency room or the infirmary at the Tower, I couldn’t say, but she certainly wasn’t taking no for an answer.
The local police arrived while that was going on, and SpeedDamon moved off to speak with them. They quickly set up a perimeter and replaced the flares around the open manhole with traffic cones and sawhorses. I kept my head low, hoping none of the cops would spot me, but they looked more interested in directing traffic or gawking at the superheroes.
Finally, an Angel Security team in a big armored truck pulled up and the team piled out and went to work securing Hammerblow. They placed some kind of shiny metallic helmet over his head and clamped large, gleaming manacles over his hands and feet. They attached the sets of manacles to each other via a thick rod of the same metal alloy. All of this equipment appeared to have some complex tech integrated into it, probably designed to prevent him from using his innate abilities and strength. Once the technicians completed their work, Herculene picked the man up and tossed him unceremoniously into a containment cell at the front of the cargo area. A technician swung the cell’s large alloy door shut and turned on a mechanism that flooded the cell with an eerie orange light. I had heard about nullifier fields before, some sort of high-tech radiation that canceled out most superpowers. I believed I might be seeing one in operation now.
The process took just a few minutes, and once completed, the techs and security personnel piled back into the truck and closed the door. Another Angelmobile arrived while they were doing their work, and once the truck was ready to go, Herculene and I got into the back seat while Suave got into the front. SpeedDamon elected to run alongside the truck on the way back to the Tower. None of the heroes appeared to want to be inside the truck, probably not wanting to risk exposure to the nullifier field in case Hammerblow somehow managed to break free.
The ride back to the Tower began in silence. My neck and arm throbbed angrily, my suit was rumpled, dirty and drenched with sweat, I felt like hell as the adrenaline flushed out of my system, and my bladder was uncomfortably full. My mind mulled over the many questions that remained unanswered. How did Hammerblow know where to find me? What was the connection between a small, family-run trucking company and the bombing? Who was behind the bombing, the assassination of Phoenix Fire and the cape-killer bullets? Was Gail Crenshaw somehow connected to all of this? For that matter, why was her name floating around the periphery of my consciousness, hinting at some significance that I kept missing? Why the heck was my tux at the Tower?
Herculene was the first to speak. “I’m sorry for going off on you back there. I think I mentioned I get pretty wound-up after a fight.”
“Forget about it. Like I said, I’d have probably done the same thing. Besides, I have a knack for pissing people off.”
“Yeah, you certainly do.” After a bit, she pressed a button on the back of the driver’s bench seat and a privacy screen ascended, dividing the compartment. A goofy little smile played at the corner of her mouth. She slung one elbow over the back of the seat, turned towards me and said, “So, what are your plans for tonight?”
That wasn’t a question I was expecting, and my poor brain didn’t have a ready response. Eventually, I managed to get out, “Well, I guess I was thinking of maybe trying to run down Fourstar Transport’s connection to the bomb.”
She shook her head. “Wrong answer, Rube. I think you need a night off. Look, I have to go to this thing tonight. It’s an alumni fund-raising dinner at the college. I can’t get out of it, it’s part of my day job, and I don’t think they’ll take a note from Ultiman. Anyway, it’ll look good if I have a date. Since we ‘like’ each other so much, I’m thinking that’s where you come in. That way, I can kill two birds with one stone. We can get our awkward first date out of the way, and I can keep you from getting yourself killed for a few hours.”
A cartoon light bulb lit up in my head. “Oh, so that’s why my tux is at the Tower.”
“Uh huh. It’s a formal thing. Black tie.”
“Fancy food, hanging out with a pretty girl, what’s not to like?” I grinned. “Sure, it sounds like fun. What time?”
“It starts at six, but I’m thinking we can be fashionably late and get there around seven.” She leaned over and looked out the side window, “If the traffic gods are generous, I think we can do it.”
I lapsed into thought for a moment. “What do you know about Gail Crenshaw?”
“Not much. I’ve met her a few times. She’s very nice. Every time I see her, in the civilian world, she remembers my name. I mean, as far as she knows I’m just a history teacher. She runs Galestorm, gets us our tech and helps keep the lights on, but you know all that. Why do you ask?”
“Did you notice her at the funeral?”
“No, I didn’t see her.”
“Well, I did. She was staring daggers at Ultiman the whole time. You aware of any friction there?”
She shook her head. “No, first I’ve heard of it. You sure you’re not reading too much into this?”
I shrugged. “Possibly. But something tells me it’s worth running down.”
She considered this. “It doesn’t make any sense, but she’ll be there tonight. Maybe you can talk to her.”
“She’ll be there?”
“Yup. She’s an alumna and she’s footing the bill for this thing.”
Well, that was a break. “Cool. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that I’m the kind of guy who’d mix business with pleasure.”
She grinned. “Just make sure you do it early. Once they start playing music, you’re mine. I feel like dancing tonight.”
***
We arrived back at the Tower to find a beehive of activity. They’d called in additional security staff to be on hand should anything go wrong while they were holding Hammerblow prisoner down in the basement. Herculene explained that this was standard procedure. They don’t normally hold prisoners, but they had several containment cells down in the basement—she called it “The Vault”—for situations like this where they had to hang on to somebody until the government could pick them up. It all sounded very routine, to hear her tell it. To me, it was a mix of scary and cool. I mean, you got a super-powered lunatic locked up in the basement. Add in a cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis, and you have the makings of a horror movie.
Time was short, so we agreed to meet back in the garage in thirty minutes. I hurried up to my room, showered, shaved and got into my tux. I was pleasantly surprised to see a fresh sling sitting on the bureau, a replacement for the grubby and torn one I wore. As I left, I checked myself in the full-length mirror, affected my best Scottish accent, and said, “Conway. Reuben Conway.” A little ritual of mine. I find it impossible to wear a tux without feeling like James Bond.
I made it back down to the garage in twenty-five minutes. I hung around by the security desk at the elevator, drawing the occasional curious glance from passersby and even an approving smile from the young woman behind the desk. “You clean up nice, Mr. Conway. You must have big plans this evening,” she said as I signed out in the visitor log.
“What, this old thing? I just figured I’d hit the casino for some baccarat.”
“Uh huh,” she said knowingly as she gave her head a little nod towards the elevators. I took the hint and looked over that way in time to see Herculene step out of the elevator and my brain kind of stopped working. She was done up in a floor length, sleeveless, black satin evening gown that gathered at some sort of silver collar at her neck. It had a slit up the left side to just above the knee that showed a flash of leg every time she took a step. She wore brownish-red hair held back behind her head with plenty of length left over to flow down her back and over her right shoulder in a cascade
of curls. The wig was fastened in place with a shiny chain of jeweled flowery kind of things that concealed her hairline. She was not dressed to take prisoners.
In one of her hands, she held a little clutch purse, and as she walked up, she smiled and placed it gently under my chin and pushed my jaw closed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She moved closer, took my arm, and as we walked off she glanced back at the grinning security desk attendant. “Don’t wait up.”
The woman laughed. “Have a good time, you two.”
An attendant had already brought Herculene’s car around, a green, late-model Nissan Altima. I walked around to the driver’s side with her, held the door for her as she got in, and went around to get into the passenger side. “You look amazing,” I said as she pulled us out of the garage and into the street.
“Took you long enough.” She grinned and gave me a sidelong glance.
“Yeah, I had to reboot the speech center of my brain. Took a while.”
She giggled. “I hate when that happens. Last time, there were all these updates waiting to be installed. Took forever.”
That got a chuckle out of me. “That’s why I leave mine on auto-update, but sometimes it backfires and tries to download stuff in the middle of a meeting. Seriously, though, you’re stunning.”
“Surprised?”
“Only that you’re out with a geek like me.”
“Haven’t you heard? Geeks are hot.”
“I’ll have to get that in writing and mail it back in time to myself when I was fifteen.”
“Not on your life. Childhood trauma and social isolation makes you who you are. Maybe it sounds selfish, but I like the final product.”
I blushed. Wow. I didn’t think I’d ever been paid a higher compliment. “Thanks, Herculene.”
“Helen,” she corrected me.
“Thanks, Helen.” As I said it, a shock went through me. “Did you just…”
She was smiling broadly. “Well, I can’t have you calling me ‘Herculene’ at this thing, can I? Try not to get the two names mixed up, OK? If you call me the wrong one at the wrong time, we could both get into a lot of trouble.”
“Got it.” I thought for a second at the risk she was taking in revealing herself to me in this way. “You know, this is a pretty big leap of faith you’re taking. Last night at this time, you didn’t know me from Adam. After I spill a bowl of soup in my lap later, you may want to change your mind about all this.”
“Spilled soup I can deal with,” she said. “So, you really didn’t look me up after I blew my cover?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not information I’d use professionally, and if you wanted me to know for any other reason, you’d tell me. I wouldn’t go behind your back to get it.”
“Wow,” she said in surprise. “See? I knew you were a good guy. As for us not knowing each other very long, well, that’s a valid point. I’m trusting my instincts on this. They haven’t steered me wrong yet. Anyhow, if this thing between us is going to work, you need to understand that you’re dating Helen Kowalcyk. That’s who I really am. Herculene is just a character I play when the world needs saving. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely. To tell the truth, I was worried about all this. I mean, how am I going to take you to the movies or my favorite Chinese joint if you’re always dressed up in your Herculene costume?”
She grinned. “Already planning the next date? I like that. No action flicks, though.”
“Noted. So, what’s our cover story? When people ask questions like how we met, or how long we’ve known each other, we should have the same story.”
“Oh, that’s a good thought. Probably best not to tell them I found your crumpled body on a rooftop by a burning refinery, carried you to a hospital and teamed up with you solve mysteries. You’re the creative one. Ideas?”
“Okay, how’s this? You were swimming in the ocean, got caught in an undertow and swept out to sea. Just as you thought all was lost and your exhausted limbs were about drag you under, you saw me, swimming out to save you. You blacked out, and when you awoke, I was giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but not at all in a creepy way. You looked up at me as the sun was shining behind me, forming a halo behind my long, flowing hair. Drying seawater glistened on my sculpted chest, and you looked into my piercing blue eyes and knew instantly that I was your destiny.”
She cracked up long before I finished. When her laughter subsided, she said, “Let’s call that “Plan B”. Pitch me another.”
“I rescued you from the Death Star?”
“It’s been done. Besides, I’d probably be saving you.”
“Hmmm, this is harder than I thought. Believe it or not, if I was good at fiction, I wouldn’t be a reporter. Okay, let’s approach this methodically. How long have we known each other? When was the last time you saw someone who might be there that you would have mentioned a new beau to?”
“About a month.”
“Cool. Let’s go with three weeks, then.” I thought for a minute. “Do you like Kurosawa flicks?”
She nodded, “I’ve only seen Ran. It was good, though.”
“OK, well, the Nuart had a double feature of Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai a few weeks back. Maybe we met there. Do you go to movies alone?”
“Sure, sounds like something I’d do.”
I smiled, feeling like we had a good start. “Bingo. What were you wearing?”
“A green cashmere sweater, a pair of jeans and running shoes.”
“I like it. Now, if I saw you and wanted to meet you, I’d probably do something completely stupid and clumsy like spill popcorn on you.”
She gave me an incredulous look. “Seriously?”
I shrugged. “I believe we’ve already established that I’m an idiot.”
She let it go. “Hmm. Point taken. Butter or no butter?”
“No butter, of course. What kind of monster do you take me for?” I joked. “I didn’t want to give you a dry-cleaning bill. I just wanted a chance to talk to you.”
She narrowed her eyes and regarded me suspiciously again. “Sounds like you’ve put some thought into this. Is this how you normally meet women?”
“My hand to God, I’m making this up out of whole cloth. Work with me on this.” I’m completely guilty of spilling popcorn on people, but never on purpose. I’m just clumsy.
She got back into our little improv. “Okay, so I’m, like, choosing a seat in the theater. I’d noticed you at the concession counter and kinda hoped you’d talk to me, so I was looking for two seats together. The house was pretty full, but I found two toward the front.”
“Good. I see you there and make my way to the empty seat next to you. I ask you if the seat was taken.”
“And I say, ‘No’ and flash you the prettiest smile you ever saw,” she said, and then proved her point by doing just that.
My heart skipped a beat. “This, I believe. So, I sit down, my heart is pounding in my chest and since the ice is already broken, I scrap the popcorn ‘accident’ part of my plan and ask if you’d seen these movies before.”
“No. I watched Ran on Netflix last week and thought I’d check out some of his earlier work on the big screen.”
“I tell you that these two are my favorites. As the coming attractions start, I ask if you’d like to share my popcorn.”
“I try a bite, ugh, no butter?” She actually went through the motion of putting popcorn in her mouth and grimacing.
“So, I get up, go back to the concession stand, and put butter on the popcorn. I come back and say, ‘Try it now.’”
She gave me a look, “You’d do that for me? Aw, you just won my heart!”
“Then it was all worth it,” I grinned. “We enjoy the show and afterward I ask if you’d like to go get some coffee.”
“Is it a weeknight?”
I thought for a moment. “Yeah, a Wednesday if I remember correctly.”
She frowned. “Darn, I can’t. I’m teaching a summer session course in the m
orning. But I tell you I’d like a rain check and give you my number.”
“I take it and tell you I’ll call you. I walk you to your car if you let me.”
“I do.”
“Nice. So this gives me a chance to find out what you’re teaching, which is?”
“Mesopotamian Pictograms and Cuneiform,” she said.
“Holy cats! Okay, well, at least nobody will fault me for getting that wrong. So we’re at your car and I tell you I’d like to see you this weekend, if that’s not too soon.”
“I scream, ‘You cad!’, slap you and storm off.” She giggled. “No, seriously, I tell you I’d like that.”
“So, I call you the next day and the rest is history. Sounds like we got us a story.”
“That was fun!” She laughed, and asked, “Are we going to have to make up all our dates?”
“Lord, no. Improv’s too exhausting. How ‘bout we just go on a bunch of dates to make up for lost time?”
She smiled as she gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “It’s a deal.”
IX
Our little role-play session came to an end as she drove the Nissan onto the USC campus. In typical LA fashion, our plan to arrive fashionably late was pretty popular, and the valet station was backed up several cars deep in an array of Mercedes Benzes, BMWs and other high-end automobiles. There was even a classic ‘62 Bentley Continental. It was copper with chrome trim, had a right-hand steering wheel and was absolutely adorable. I checked the sides of my mouth, out of fear I might be drooling.
Helen noticed the object of my affection. “Beautiful, isn’t it? That’s Gail Crenshaw’s car.”
“Being a CEO sure has it’s perks,” I observed. “You know they only made about two thousand of those? What I wouldn’t give for an hour alone with that thing.”