“Another woman.”
“We don’t know.”
“Meaning…?”
“We don’t know. No idea. This Cape was never seen previously, and hasn’t been heard of since. Knocked over a bank and flew into the wide blue yonder. Sir O sent the Aerialist to tail and intercept this person. She died.”
“Jetstarlet sounds like a girl’s name.”
“I never allow things like that to confuse me. Proof comes first.”
“Of which you have none.”
“Currently? You’re right.”
“Can you tell me more about him — about the Big O?”
Gypsie-Ann smiled thinly. “He didn’t like being called the Big O.” She scratched at her left ear. “What is this, two hundred questions? You want a job at the Patriot?”
“Just trying to get up to par here. What was your take on Sir Omphalos?”
The reporter sat down in her chair on the other side of the clutter and peered back at Jack through piles of paper and old coffee cups.
“O was an idealist — you know he helped create Heropa?”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “No.”
“Well, he was one of the chief architects of all this.” The woman waved at the mess. “Not that he was satisfied.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Hardly. O told me he felt the original vision had been tainted —‘polluted’, in his words. That’s why he broke up the Crime Crusaders and rolled out the Equalizers, equal being the key word. By this, he meant equality for all people, not just the Capes.”
“For Blandos too?”
“He hated that word, ‘Blando’.” The woman’s eyes moved around the room and finally settled on the window. “Far more than he disliked being called the Big O,” she added, with another narrow smile.
“Is it possible someone didn’t appreciate his vision?”
“Vision. Nicely put. Are you asking me if that was why he was assassinated?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you’re not the only one who thinks so.” Gypsie-Ann glanced over.
“What was he like?”
“A wonderful man.”
She sat up straight and looked Jack in the eye.
“He had wit — you know the bugger plundered the Equalizers’ lightning bolt logo? Pinched a symbol used back in the 1930s by the British Union of Fascists. The only differences being it’s black-and-white and back-to-front.”
“I thought Israel-someone-or-other did the logo.”
Gypsie-Ann laughed. “Oh, the Israel Schnapps nonsense? Another of O’s jokes. Israel was the birth name of Ira R. Schnapp, who designed the Action Comics symbol and the Comics Code Authority seal you once saw on all the comics from the 1950s. Knowing O, though, I suspect he also decided on this particular banner and rumoured designer combination to remind himself of a path not to follow: Fascism and censorship.”
“That makes me more fond of the thing,” Jack decided.
“Nice to hear. Want to know more?”
“Please.”
“O loved his classic Hollywood movies as much as he did the comicbooks of the twentieth century — not merely American ones, but British and Australian. Hence the commingling here. That said, O decided Heropa was too much skewed in favour of the 1940s golden age of comics. He preferred the silver age, you know, from the ’60s. This imbalance, he said, was the handiwork of his programming partner.”
“You know who that was?”
“O never mentioned him by name. But definitely a man.”
“Do you reckon it may’ve been someone who also became a Cape?”
“Again — I haven’t the faintest.”
Gypsie-Ann sighed.
“You know what I dislike about Heropa? There are no insects. One of the minor details they forgot — or chose to ignore — when they designed the place. Back in Melbourne, my father was an entomologist, so I grew up with bugs all over the house. Until one day he vanished, the house was requisitioned by the State, and the rest of the family tossed out on our ears.”
The reporter turned passive nostalgia on its own ear and stuck an attacking scowl on her mush in the space of two seconds.
“Now…well and truly my turn to conduct a grilling. Things recently have been out-of-whack. Not just Capes being bumped off, but Blandos acting differently, remembering things from the day before. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know, or won’t tell me? I’ll find out eventually, you do realize that?”
Jack believed her. “If you do — can you tell us?”
“I’m not sure you deserve any more intel — our relationship is already heavily weighted in your favour. So, can you tell me who the Capes suspect of perpetrating these murders?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“Honestly? Next to nothing.”
“Well, that’s unfair. I blather on and you suck it all up, only to play dumb when the tables are turned. How about next time letting me know in advance that you’re intending to give me the short end of the stick?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry? You’d make a good reporter. Get out of here.”
#123
At the chief reporter’s prompting, Jack changed into costume before he went to the archive — she said it’d give extra-added kudos to her request to allow him permission to see the files.
Spot on.
The middle-aged guard very nearly bowed down to the ground when he saw a Cape alight from the lift, and his hands were shaking as he accepted the letter.
But Jack found nothing in the archives, even after five hours’ sifting.
Gypsie-Ann was right — there would never be enough time in a week to find what he searched for, especially given the slipshod manner in which filing of fatalities had been done. There were thousands of names in there, sometimes listed alphabetically by first name rather than family name, and often files were thrown in without any order at all.
Having a surname alone was next to no use.
Jack wondered if it would be a good idea to quiz the Professor — he’d know his son’s given name and perhaps a specific date of death. But wouldn’t that make him suspicious? And, on second thought, the guy couldn’t recall his own first name.
What exactly was it Jack was trying to uncover here?
After checking the physical files, he turned to older newspapers over the past six months, preserved on 35-millimetre microfilm, using a clunky, motorized 16/35mm roll film reader.
While the Equalizer researched, he grabbed several paper cups of coffee and had to roll up the lower half of his mask to drink. Now he understood why heroes like Batman, Daredevil and Captain America opted for the half-masks that exposed their mouth and nose — it was far easier to drink, eat and breathe. Jack, Spider-Man and the Black Panther had it hard.
When he settled up for the day and locked the door to the archive, a younger guard awaited. This individual appeared to be less deferential, almost bothered.
“Mister Wright wants to see you,” he announced.
“Who?”
“Mister Wright — the owner of this paper and the archive you just ransacked.”
Jack looked at the guard for a moment. “So, what does this mean to me?”
“It means you go to his office and you pay your respects.” Touchy.
“All right.” Jack didn’t have anything planned till he was supposed to meet Louise at eight. “You friendly enough to give directions?”
#124
The quarters of Donald Wright were a stark contrast to Gypsie-Ann Stellar’s.
For starters, they were plural — several rooms joined together — with the main office ten times the size of his employee’s. Jack guessed Wright had taken over two entire floors. He checked in through a receptionist named Mavis, a personal assistant (Smedley), and then another couple of security guards.
The plaque outside this head honcho’s personal abode was glistening gol
d, the door made of cedar — with intricately cut, gorgeous patterns that hurt Jack’s eyes.
When he opened it up he found a stadium-sized space with a sweeping spiral staircase to the next level wrapped around a three-metre tall mess of twisted nuts, bolts, steel and rubber on a marble pedestal and the title ‘Clobber Creation’ on a brass nameplate.
Otherwise this was full of smaller knickknacks: statuary, paintings, rugs, tapestries, chandeliers, antique sideboards and well-dusted sofa chairs. Over by one grand window was a tall, antique wooden stand that had six identical black bowler hats propped at random angles.
Half of a wall, the one to the right as you entered, was crammed floor to ceiling with 1960s memorabilia. Attached to the plaster were old vinyl 45s by Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, the Animals, the Easybeats, Dionne Warwick, Horst Jankowski, Nancy Sinatra, the Peanuts and Cilla Black. Hung from a curtain rail was a large plastic ‘Twister’ game mat, sandwiched between one of Twiggy’s miniskirts (signed by the model in black texta), a poster for the World War I film The Blue Max starring George Peppard, and a framed DC comic of Showcase #4 featuring the Flash — with the subtitle “whirlwind adventures of the fastest man alive.”
Opposite that was a contrasting diorama covering two walls, sourced from the 1930s and ’40s, articles like old shop signage, a vintage taximeter, Japanese matchbox labels, pages torn from old newspapers with comic strips like Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Ginger Meggs and Li’l Abner.
A centrepiece spread was a black-and-white movie poster for Joan Crawford and Walter Huston in Rain, with these words dashed across it: ‘You Men! You’re All Alike! Pigs! Pigs! I Wouldn’t Trust Any of You!’.
Stretching across both walls, at head height, were a series of framed original comicbooks including Action Comics issue 1, from June 1938 — featuring the first ever appearance by Superman — and All Winners Comics No. 1 (summer 1941, price ten cents), showcasing Captain America, Bucky, Sub-Mariner, a duo of Human Torches, and two other male heroes Jack couldn’t place. Strangely stuck in the centre of the golden-age row was something else Jack didn’t recognize: Speed Comics issue 17 (April 1942), with an all-star cast of nobodies named Black Cat, Shock Gibson, Biff Bannon, and a hero on the cover that was the spitting image of Captain America — yet also wasn’t, since he had a red skullcap and mask instead of blue, and some sort of yellow shoulder decoration.
Above the comics there was a Soviet-style image of workers raising their fists, placed in the centre of a scattered collection of postcards showcasing vamping Hollywood actress Jean Harlow.
But the main feature in this room was a wraparound desk as big as a small bus, boasting a marble surface that was clean and tidy aside from burnished silver inand out-trays, a hefty Ming vase on the side, a bust of some composer like Beethoven, and a double-lamp on a curving stand.
In the centre of the wraparound sat a middle-aged man in a leather throne that boasted enough space for three people. It was backed by a curving headrest, itself a frieze looking like a ripped copy of the Elgin Marbles.
The man had a black moustache above a taut scar of a mouth and was smoking a cigar wedged in a cigarette holder. He was on the phone. His scalp, hairless, was as polished as the desktop. Somewhat more bizarrely he had a nervous-looking squirrel monkey leashed to his shoulder with a lollipop stuck in its gob.
“Wright talking! My answer is no! I will not lend your bank any more money!”
The man slammed down the receiver, puffed on his cigar, looked up, and discovered Jack in costume. His fury vanished in an instant.
“Ahh, you must be that new fellow Southern Crossed.”
“Cross.”
“Perfect, perfect. That’s wonderful. Well, don’t just stand there! Come on in.”
Jack walked over and stood to attention before the desk.
“Relax, baby,” Wright crooned, in a patronizing tone his guest didn’t appreciate. “I like the stars — they’re sweet. Take a chair.”
So he did.
“I’m Donald Wright — among other things, the publisher of this newspaper. This here is Miami Beach.” He nodded to the twelve-inch monkey perched on his shoulder. “You look thirsty. Me too. Parched. Pointless business dealings with tardy financial types. What’s your poison?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, the ’60s or World War II.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“Which era do you prefer?”
“Are you talking comics?”
“I’m talking up comicbooks, baby. Don’t you know comics are the funny ones?”
“Then, I guess I’d say the ’60s.”
“You guess? Thought as much, but you don’t sound so convincing. Me? I’m partial to the period too, as you can see from my collection of curios — but the late 1930s and the decade after offers more to catch my fancy.”
“Four times more,” Jack observed.
“Indeed.”
The ringing phone interrupted Wright’s flow. He scooped up the handset with an angry flourish.
“Haven’t I told you never to interrupt me when I’m talking business?” he barked at somebody on the other end of the line. “When will you learn to know your place?” Straight after, the man hung up. “Now, where were we?”
“The ’30s and ’40s.”
“Of course, of course. This was the golden age of newspaper strip comics as much as the comicbook, the time they begot Buck Rogers, Batman, the Flash, Captain Marvel, you name the iconic hero. The Soviets and fascists were taking on the capitalist West, the cars were superb, the men’s fashions sweet and, ahhh, the noir: Chandler, Hammett, Cain.” Wright seemed, then, to remember his manners. “Can I buy you a drink, kid?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Sure about that?” The publisher absent-mindedly stroked his pet.
“I’m sure.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Alrighty. Let’s get straight down to the practical details, parched or not — nasty business, these killings.”
Jack looked over the desk, in the publisher’s remote direction. “Which ones, sir?”
“Well, the Capes, of course. Everyone is a suspect. Do you good people have any leads to pursue?”
“No concrete ones I’m aware of.”
“There’s a pity, SC-baby. Do you mind if I call you that? People gossip, you know, when there’s an information vacuum.” Wright flicked through a thick dossier in front of him. “Son, I need a friend. A reliable person on the inside, an extra-vigilant cat, keeping an eye on activities as they transpire, and all that kind of shenanigans.”
Jack stared at him. “You mean like anonymous source material — or a spy?”
“Neither. More an observer, seeing the wood for the trees, or in spite of them. Plus, I’ll loan you the axe.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Jack stood up again. “I don’t believe that’s my job.”
“Is that so?”
“So, indeed.”
“Then what, may I ask, do you believe your job to be?”
“Helping people.”
“Good Lord, baby — you’re an idealist!”
“Another one. Is there a problem with that?”
“No, but it is rather astonishing. Say, don’t get all tense and soft. I suppose I should have guessed from the flag there on your chest.”
“D’you mind if I ask — are you a Cape or a Blando?”
The man guffawed. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Yeah, I would, actually.”
“Spare me the details. They are for lesser men…like you.” Straight after, Wright waved his hand as he returned attention to the ledger. “All right, Southern Cross, you’re dismissed now. Get out — there’s a good kid.”
For a few seconds, Jack entertained a mad impulse to hop up on the ink blotter, swat the monkey, yank over the publisher, push him to the desktop, and peel down his shirt collar to see if there was a letter ‘p’ there. Surely, in this body, he had the strength t
o wrestle an old man and his bulging-eyed pet.
But the impulse passed and he ran along as requested.
#125
That night, Jack and Louise found themselves again in the girl’s large bedroom.
The door to the passageway was closed, but the blind at the window remained at half-mast and this allowed in a certain amount of street illumination and moonlight.
On the windowsill were an assortment of small, hand-carved figurines of gods and their associated hangers-on. Jack recognized a clear lead glass Virgin Mary and a rotund, rosewood Buddha. Their cohorts on the sill were carvings of Takehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto, a Shintō summer storm god, and the elephantine Hindu deity Ganesha.
Louise obviously liked playing it safe, regardless of spiritual persuasion.
There was a big-framed painting on the wall above the bed, an unusual one displaying World War I-era biplanes indulging in a dogfight amidst gloomy-looking clouds.
“My father was a pilot,” Louise said, as she got undressed. “That picture belonged to him.”
To the left of the window, in the large space leading to the bedroom door, was a bookcase jammed with classic hardbacks: Moby-Dick, Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, The Old Man and the Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, The Age of Innocence, The Crows of Pearblossom — and, yes, The Well of Loneliness.
Otherwise, there wasn’t all that much in the way of furnishings except for suitcases, wooden crates and boxes. A vanity table, made up of slapped together old pieces of wood, was cluttered with cosmetics and perfumes.
On a small table by the bed, between the fish tank with seahorses and a loud, ticking chrome clock, was a vase with wilted yellow roses. A wind chime, made of shards of bamboo tied together with wire, dangled from the overhead chandelier.
“You’re so beautiful, Jack.”
Louise kneeled on the carpet beside the bed on which he sat. She was dressed only in a beige chemise — having removed her earrings, glasses and stockings.
Jack placed a hand on each of her cheeks and moved in to kiss the girl’s mouth. She stood again, leaning into him, blonde hair falling across his face. Her breathing quickened as he daringly moved his fingers down her neck, across her chest, and on over the flimsy material that covered her stomach. In return, her hand rubbed the bruising on his back.