They’d made a date to go see a movie.
While Jack was tempted to suggest Bijou, the Monster from Mars!, Louise chose a musical, a monochrome number with lots of dancehall rollicking and a man in top hat and tails, spinning his partner across a landscape that looked like a cinematographer’s gaudy version of nirvana. Louise held his hand throughout, and at one stage she rested her cheek on his shoulder.
Before and after the film, Jack said less than usual.
Too much circulated through his head — most of all, he kept visualizing the Great White Hope’s empty eye sockets, along with special guest star vignettes from Marat in the bathtub and the rolling, decapitated skull of Iffy Bizness.
On top of these apparitions, he was nursing a killer hangover, and gradually the girl got it. Louise adapted to his mood, could probably smell the stale alcohol, and distanced herself.
Following on from an obligatory post-screening coffee, they said their goodbyes without so much as a hug — just an awkward, puzzled exchange.
#129
The Brick was babbling on about some motorcycle while he drove, and he promised to give Jack lessons on the thing the very next morning.
“I’m talkin’ up me Orley Ray Courtney-revamped 1930 Henderson. Rare as hen’s teeth: four-cylinders, 1300 cc — bliss on ten-inch wheels. Fer starters, picture a chassis wrapped in an elegant shell that begins with a rounded nose and grille, like a ’34 Chrysler Airflow, and finishes up on the wee backside reminiscent o’ an Auburn Speedster. Along the way, it’s a Coke-bottle-shaped, goddamned art-deco miracle.”
“You sound enamoured,” his partner mused in the passenger seat.
“With seductive curves like this, what’s not t’love?”
“Think I need to see the thing to get the affection. I’m having trouble imagining it, and looking like a Coke bottle doesn’t sound pretty.”
The Brick was chauffeuring them both across town to meet Pretty Amazonia.
The man drove his car like you probably can imagine — lead-footed — but otherwise played it remarkably safe in terms of plying traffic. The other automobiles were much slower and boxier, and the Brick slid his car between them with a good millimetre or two to spare.
“You’ll be amazed, kid. Lucky also I have the best motorbike mechanic in Heropa, Alex Raymond, t’keep it tuned. Cars’re more my speciality.”
“Like ’60s comicbooks are mine?”
“Vaguely related. Speaking o’ which, I been meanin’ to badger you, kid, somethin’ that reporter Gypsie-Ann brought up. You know there’s a star missing from the Southern Cross on the togs yer wearin’?”
“That’s related?”
“In a roundabout fashion.”
While he was in costume, Jack at least didn’t have to don the mask, seated there in the passenger seat behind tinted windows.
He was wearing rounded 1970s Persol Ratti sunglasses — not for any fashion statement (Jack had no idea about style, brand or vintage), but because he continued to suffer ill-effects from yesterday’s drinking binge and had found the pair in the Big O’s dresser — which still hadn’t been cleared out.
Louise had taken pole position in his battered mind. He’d resolved to apologize, even if he couldn’t explain the nature of said apology. She deserved better and he felt like an arse.
“This isn’t a Kiwi thing?” the Brick rattled on, oblivious. “You know, their flag having had four stars while ours has five?”
Jack realized he had to respond. “Nope, nothing New Zealand about it. I swear.” He marked the shops they passed, along with people on the sidewalk, others crossing the roads, more parking their cars. Joe-average citizens in suits, hats and skirts, hunched over elderly types, and kids with school bags and caps. All of them pursuing a private early afternoon mission, some personal course of action no one else knew about. “I guess it was aesthetics — balance.”
“Y’guess? You dunno? Correct me if I’m wrong, but ain’t that there the Eureka Stockade flag stuck on yer chest? I ‘member from history class the thing havin’ five stars. The one in the middle’s missin’ — ain’t it?”
“I didn’t design this suit.”
“No?” The Brick looked sideways at his partner. “Then who did?”
“I wouldn’t want to bore you, mate.”
“Since when did you worry yerself ’bout that? And, well, hey, I got the time if you got the stamina — we won’t meet PA fer another half hour thanks to this here toddler-gridlock. Takes a lot to get me noddin’ off.”
“That true?”
“Well, a bit.”
They detoured round a timber W-class tram that hogged the middle of this particular thoroughfare, but again got caught up in traffic.
Jack glanced up at the hopper windows on the side of the tram and saw a bunch of passenger faces running the gamut from annoyed to asleep. The driver, in his peak cap and white gloves, seated behind a round cornered windscreen at the front, focused somewhere dead ahead — presumably at the backside of a grey, metal-clad van that had the words ‘Mitchell Armored Truck Co.’ stencilled across it.
“You ever been to Richmond District, Brick?”
“Not since they locked-down the place.”
“Two years ago I busted in there — pretty easy thing to do when you’re desperate and scavenging,” Jack mused. “You get to know the breaches in the fence and you’re up on the clockwork patrol routes by security. Either that, or you end up in the clink.”
“At the very least — they don’t like people breakin’ their li’l rules. Much as I hate t’play the age card…what were yer folks doing durin’ these bloody risky high jinks?”
“Arrested. Taken away.”
“Any reason?”
“Sedition.”
“Ah. That classic. How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Seen ’em again?”
“What do you think?”
The Brick nodded at the road ahead. “Got’cha. Go on, kid.”
“Well, yeah, I found this weatherboard house in a back-road in Richmond, name of Duke Street, if I remember right. The area was a shit-hole, like the rest of the neighbourhood, this house no different. Leaning to one side, about to collapse, just like its brothers. Nothing special.”
“Presumin’ yer gonna fill me in to the contrary, lemme hop in first — why then bother takin’ a look-see?”
“Funny thing. The house had a corroded brass nameplate screwed into the woodwork, beside the front door, barely readable, but I could make out the name: ‘Deaps’.”
“The hell, you say.”
“The hell, I do. Figured anything to do with Wolram E., the big banana running Melbourne, shouldn’t be sneezed at.”
“One hundred percent agreed. What’d you find?”
“Initially? Sweet FA. After jacking the bathroom window and attempting to prowl the deserted place, I stuck my foot through the floor, plus a door fell over when I pushed too hard. Came across a stack of rotting mail behind the door, years and years old, addressed to Alice and Patrick Deaps. Nothing with ‘Wolram’ on it. Figured the name was a coincidence.”
The Brick eased the car into a corner. “Guess.”
“When I was snooping round the back, I got caught in a real heavy downpour, so I busted into this ramshackle shed they had in the yard. Inside, wrapped up tight in several sheets of blue tarp, protected from the rain, the snails, and also probably the decades, were boxes of old comicbooks from the 1960s. Hundreds of them.”
“Man, oh man, what a natty discovery!” the Brick enthused — Jack could see the dollar signs in his eyes. “DC? Marvel? Dell? Not Harvey, I hope an’ pray.”
“No Harvey. Silver-age Marvel. Plus black-and-white reprints of their stuff, in a British rag called It’s Terrific, some Dell titles, an old issue of DC’s The Flash, when Barry Allen wore the costume. Batman too.”
“A treasure trove. Sounds like one o’ them archaeological digs they used to indulge in, like the one with King Tut.”
br />
The Brick had taken out a Big Boss Cigar, started chewing, and then chucked it out the window. Instead, he slid a bona-fide cigar into his mouth, something Cuban from the looks of it. He bit off the end and lit up.
“‘Scuse the smell. I’m still listenin’. How’s this relate to the costume?”
Jack tried not to cough, did anyway, and wound down his window. “Getting there,” he said, breathing in fresh passing oxygen mixed with automobile exhaust. “Sandwiched between issues of Thor, I found this letter addressed to someone named Wally Deaps. It had Marvel’s company address in New York on the stationery, along with a picture of Spider-Man and a U.S. stamp, but the postmark was illegible. Inside the envelope was a note signed by the secretary to Stan Lee—”
“Get outta here? Now, I reckon yer pullin’ me leg.”
“Nup. It was there, all right, along with a folded up, hand-drawn picture of a superhero.”
“Stan Lee done his own art? Thought the guy was scribe only.”
Jack frowned. “Well, no, maybe I said that wrong. They were returning a picture this Wally Deaps had sent them.”
“Ahhh.”
“Anyway, after lugging these boxes back to my place — it took several trips — and somehow not getting nabbed by the cops, I read through every issue. A few times. I lost count how many times I’ve done so since then. But it became clear that the artist of the drawing in the Marvel envelope, this Wally character, had nicked his image from the cover art of Captain America 102 — originally concocted by Jack Kirby and Syd Shores.”
“Can’t say I know it.”
“One of the comicbooks in this Richmond stash, a 1968 issue in which Cap is tossed aside by a Nazi robot, the Sleeper, while Agent Carter looks on, dismayed.”
The Brick sighed in loud fashion. “Yer losin’ me precious attention span, kid. What in Sam Hill are ya on about?”
Jack laughed — somewhat abashed, as they put it in old tomes. “Well, yeah, yeah, I know. You’re right. Not important. Comicbook stuff.”
“Glad we got somethin’ straightened. Remind me to bore you more to death about cars — fair’s fair. But go on.”
“Okay, I’ll get to the point — this plagiarist did a pretty good job. He reversed the cover and changed the costume. The new outfit was supposed to be darker blue, with the white-starred flag from the Eureka Stockade stuck on the chest — minus the centre star, like you and Gypsie-Ann picked up on. He also had a mask covering all the face aside from the eyes — made him more like the Black Panther than Cap. ‘Southern Cross’ was scrawled at the top. So, when I came here and they offered me the option to be anybody, I gave them that picture. Besides, the concept struck me as funny.”
The Brick furrowed the cobbling shaping his brow. “Lemme remember —‘cos all the smog an’ rain and shitty weather in Melbourne’ve eliminated any sign o’ the real constellation it’s named after — like ya already mentioned.”
“That, plus I was nicking someone else’s design they’d, in turn, nicked from a great artist — Jack Kirby. Bet this Wally kid never pictured a living, breathing version of his pirate copy.”
THE CR1ME CRUSADERS
#130
“Before the Equalizers came into being, there were two rival crime-fighting groups plying the trade in Heropa,” Pretty Amazonia said. “One of them was the Felon Fighters, run by Capitol Hill, the other the Crime Crusaders Crew, helmed by Major Patriot.”
She tossed a picture onto the linoleum surface of the small table around which the three Equalizers sat. They were in a crowded bar called the Kublai Khan.
“This is a group caricature of the Felon Fighters — done by another Cape, Kid Drawalot.”
The Brick swivelled a drawing that looked like it’d been composed by Thomas Nast, all puny bodies, overlarge heads and insanely big grins, to get a better look. “Neat-o,” he muttered.
It went without saying that three Capes in full regalia drew stares from the other patrons — but Jack wasn’t sure whether this was because (a) Capes were increasingly rare, (b) the customers fretted about the place coming under attack from other, rival Capes, or (c) they didn’t like these superpowered cretins they labelled Bops.
Jack was certainly feeling cretinous. He had a dull pain in the back of his head and felt like half the grey-matter in his skull had been vacuumed out — the useful bits at any rate. Having a hangover in a virtual-reality world simply wasn’t fair.
He peered about the room over the top of people’s heads.
There was a wall, next to the bar proper, upon which was pasted a huge, reproduction sixteenth-century map titled ‘The Kingdome of China’. The bored, dark-haired barman beside it sported a pencil-thin moustache, a bowtie and a tuxedo — making him a dead-ringer for Mandrake the Magician.
“Could we get a drink?” Jack asked a nervy waitress hovering nearby in a tight silk qípáo dress, and then he turned to the other Equalizers. “Beer?”
“Yep — gimme three. Brick Lager.”
Jack sat back. “You have your own brewery?”
“Nah, it’s a Canadian drop. I like the name.”
“Figures.” Pretty Amazonia raised a hand. “I’m in too. Don’t worry — I won’t play recondite like Mister B and order gallons of Amazon Beer. Just the one Mountain Goat will do.”
“Three Bricks for him and a Mountain Goat for her,” Jack told the waitress, “and I’ll have a sarsaparilla with a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Cheers.”
The Brick choked on the dregs in his glass. “A spider? Junior, sometimes you worry me.”
“Hey, I need time to recuperate from that last dabble with alcoholic excess. The trick is how I’m going to tuck into a spider while wearing this bloody mask.”
“Bah! Costumes…tights…That’s kid stuff. Who needs ’em?”
PA had perked up. “You’re still suffering?”
“God, yeah.”
“Brick, how about you?”
“Never better.”
“I’m thinking the Reset’s given up the ghost.” Jack rubbed his eyes. “My back is still black and blue from the other day, and twenty-four hours has not in any way helped my hangover.”
“But Mister B is okay.”
“He’s the Brick. He doesn’t feel anything.”
The craggy Equalizer feigned a broken heart —“Mebbe I should go get sensitivity lessons,” he whined — and then gratefully accepted his replacement beers.
Jack returned attention to the picture on the table.
“You people never bothered to invest in a camera?”
Brick put chunky hands in the air. “Not us — them. Me’n PA came later.”
“I like it,” Pretty Amazonia decided. “Old-school vibe and all. The artist captured them pretty well. This is one of Heropa’s edicts — photos are out. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Not exactly true. I’ve seen cameras.”
“But have you spotted any happy snaps?”
“No,” Jack admitted.
“Precisely. The rule gets scuttled when it comes to TV and cinema — you can’t exactly make animation without a camera, and we don’t have computers with which to create CG. But no still-photography.” PA moved on, unfazed, “Here we have, from left to right, Escape Goat, Doc Fury, Air Gal, Capitol Hill, Vic Torrious, Crimson Skull — he’s the one kneeling there — and Mer-Maiden.”
“They look chirpy.”
“Chirpier times. Here’s another sketch, this one of the Crime Crusaders, done round the same timeframe.” The picture was laid down with more care but still had the ridiculous proportions.
“Some of these guys look familiar,” Jack observed.
“So they should. The original Crime Crusaders were Sir Omphalos, Bullet Gal, Big Game Hunter, Milkcrate Man and the Great White Hope, along with Major Patriot here, in the centre, acting as big boss. When the Felon Fighters moved on to better pastures and the Crime Crusaders disbanded, the Big O, Milkcrate Man, Bullet Gal and the GWH set up the Equalizers — at which time
Bullet Gal also changed her costume and name to the Aerialist.”
The Brick yawned.
“Big on their gals, eh? Yeah, yeah, I know the history.”
“SC doesn’t. And there is a point to this little rehash — look at the picture again, both of you. Three of the four founders of the Equalizers are dead.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You reckon there might be a link?” Jack asked.
He was staring at the tumbler of black fizziness before him, in the midst of which rolled a scoop of white.
“I’m not sure what I think,” PA confessed.
“Can’t I take off my mask for a couple of minutes?”
“No. Roll it up if you need to appease your stupid sweet-tooth.”
“Hardly the same — that’s just mean.”
“Nah,” the Brick was saying, still focused on the picture. “Milkcrate Man? No way.” He leaned on the table and of course it tilted, very nearly flipped, spilling some of his precious beer. “Oops — tarnation!” he muttered.
Luckily, PA hadn’t noticed the misdemeanour. “Maybe. Verdict’s in the air. And what happened to Big Game Hunter and Major Patriot?”
The woman sat back on the bench seat to take in both her partners.
“Remember — the Major was leader of the Crime Crusaders Crew, yet he wasn’t a shoo-in for the Equalizers.”
“Prob’ly both o’ ’em got bored an’ left,” the Brick suggested.
“Maybe.”
“Wish I scored a dime fer all the maybes we’re liberally sprinklin’ about. Y’know, I heard tell that the Big O an’ Major Patriot were two o’ the original programmers, the designers of Heropa. Dunno if it’s true, tho’.”
Pretty Amazonia finished her beer and scoffed.
“Let’s steer clear of hearsay. We need some kind of lead here, and I’m saying that Milkcrate and Patriot are two people we should check into — for their safety, if not some connection to the murders.”
“Why? As I says, they prob’ly done a runner.”
“Even so.”