“You did a wonderful job protecting those people during the Cape hostilities. So, what can I do for you, SC-baby? Have you given any consideration to my proposal?”
“You could start by telling me why the hell you’re killing all the Capes of Heropa.”
“Oh ho, and here I was thinking they were doing that to themselves!” the man chuckled.
“Along with giving comfort to gung-ho security types from the real world.”
Wright looked at Jack, head cocked. “Am I?”
“I have it on good authority that, yes, you bloody well are.”
“This ‘good authority’ wouldn’t happen to be a recently-deceased individual with a predilection for the wearing of garish red headwear?”
Ah.
“Personally, I’d ensure I had decent source material before I went about accusing persons of foul play — one thing we learn in the newspaper biz, isn’t that right, Gypsie-Ann?”
“Mm-hm,” the woman beside Jack responded, in a noncommittal tone.
“By the way, baby, how’s the leg?”
Wright looked directly at the Equalizer’s injured thigh. The publisher couldn’t have spotted the injury, given the change of clothes and Jack’s fairly commendable effort not to limp or favour the other leg.
“Fine,” he said.
“Swell. Allow me to show you something of my own. You’ll dig this.”
The publisher reached over and pushed a button that Jack fretted might open up the floor beneath he and Gypsie-Ann, but instead one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases slid aside.
Behind an exposed steel door tagged Lock 41, inside a sterile-looking cubbyhole with a flickering fluorescent light, was a plexiglass tube in which sat a costume atop a chisel-jawed mannequin. There was a red skullcap and half-mask with a big white star, a blue uniform boasting more stars shaped like a v-for-victory across the torso, yellow gloves, red boots, and a red belt on a pair of underpants that rode too high. The kind of get-up the Professor would’ve complained about.
Jack recognized the costume from a picture Pretty Amazonia had once shown him — these were Major Patriot’s threads. While he also felt he’d seen them somewhere else, so far as Wright was concerned? This guy looked way too old.
The publisher apparently picked up on the confusion.
“You know the adage, the one about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Well, that’s a rort. I wasn’t corrupted, I was bored senseless! Do either of you have any idea how ageing boredom can be?”
“I don’t get it,” Jack heard Gypsie-Ann cut in.
“Too much for your fabulous powers of deduction?” Wright chuckled. “Why, oh why, doesn’t that surprise me?”
“You could be generous enough to grant better clues.”
“Tart as ever, too. When will you learn to know your place?”
“Oh, dearie, p’raps I left the knowledge in my other suit?”
Jack glanced at her. “Time for quips later. He’s one of the original Capes — a member of the Crime Crusaders.”
“Crime Crusaders Crew,” Wright corrected. “Why you people always feel the need to shorten things drives me to distraction. Doing so robs them of full flavour.”
“The CCC was well before my time.” The reporter shrugged, but she had a smirk. “I heard they washed up. Not worth doing the homework.”
“Oh, huzzah. A dash of heroic repartee to raise my spirits.”
“So you’re a Cape,” Gypsie-Ann posited. “Big deal.”
“Not quite.” Wright kicked back to place his feet on the desk. “I’m not the same as you people. I didn’t go through all the smoke, mirrors and pulleys they use to keep the safe house safe — you know the place, back in Melbourne. I’ve heard it’s quite a shithole. Five years ago, when Heropa was placed online, I came in through a backdoor, since I was the original designer of this platform.”
Now walking gingerly, hardly disguising the limp, Jack went to a mantelpiece and examined the bust of a black bird he’d seen before. “Mister Wright, you wouldn’t know a Professor Erskine?”
“The creator of Captain America?” This crack came back sticky with sarcasm.
“No. The one here in Heropa.”
“Interesting. Actually, I do.”
Jack glanced over at the man. “Go on.”
“Rather a bright spark, for a phony.
“A phony?”
“That’s what we called common folk before ‘Blando’ became de rigueur — hence the letter ‘p’ you’ll find on the back of their necks.” Wright mirrored Jack’s visit to the mantelpiece, to straighten up the avian statuette. “I had Erskine do me some technical work a few years back — the humdrum things I was too busy to worry about.” Wright frowned. “He started getting idiotic notions, ideas beyond his call. I’m a very sensitive fella and had to let him go.”
“As one does,” Gypsie-Ann said.
She was looking at the costume in the secret compartment, the smirk still on her face, but her comment appeared to incite her boss.
“Will you stop with that incessant prattling?” he demanded.
“So, why’d you quit being a Cape?” Jack said, playing for time. “Why the whole Donald Wright sham?”
“Playing for time is not going to help you.” Wright’s eyes held onto Jack’s. “Don’t you realize you stand no chance?”
“So indulge the poor kid,” Gypsy-Ann sighed.
“Yes, why not?” Skipping back to his desk, Wright pushed aside some paperwork and sat down on top. “In the early days, one had free range. This was a brave new world, baby. When I established this secret identity, it didn’t make sense to be a menial reporter like Clark Kent or Gypsie-Ann here — no offence, darling.”
“None taken.”
“Anyhow, I elevated myself to publisher. We ran the place then, everything, riding roughshod over the hoi polloi. And then Sir-bloody-Omphalos came along with these ridiculous notions of changing Heropa, of making it a ‘better place’, as he ranted to anyone that’d listen. Better for whom, I ask you? He broke up our Crime Crusaders Crew, cavorted with phonies, and set up the Equalizers. Installed that arrogant oaf the Great White Hope as second-in-charge, while I didn’t receive any invitation at all.”
“Hence the sour grapes.”
“Far from it. As I say, I was bored. The change suited me. I settled into my new alter ego, starting to manipulate things from here.”
“And now you’re killing Capes.”
“As the dear old GWH would have said, boring me to tears: ‘Par for the course, good fellow, par for the course’, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Then you admit it?” Gypsie-Ann cut in, her fingers playing with the steel catch on her bag.
“But — hang on,” Jack said as he held up a warning hand to his colleague. “Surely you still have to play ball by the same rules as us. If the safeties are off, what’s to stop me blowing you through yonder window?”
“A twenty-one storey drop.”
“Unless you hit something on the way down.”
“Decidedly messy,” Wright mused.
“Right you are.”
The publisher stood up, opened one of the multitudes of drawers lining his massive bureau, and took out a squareish Colt M1911 automatic — the standard-issue sidearm for American military types from 1911 to 1985. He racked the slide, switched off the safety.
“Alternatively, I could do the chore myself.” Having lined up the rectangular silver barrel by his right temple, Wright prepared to pull the trigger. “BANG!” he shouted.
Jack and Gypsie-Ann jumped; the man roared with laughter.
“What?” he finally managed, drying tears with a floral hanky. “Did you seriously think I’m some kind of suicidal nutcase?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Jack muttered.
“To shame!” Wright then spun the revolver with an adept nod to Western gunslingers, and this time the barrel stopped between his jaw line and throat, pointed upwards — which was when he really pulled
the trigger.
“Crap!” Gypsie-Ann yelped.
Jack didn’t get to squeeze out any sound. Probably he was stunned, since his face had been redecorated with the older man’s blood and brains.
“Also messy, as you can see.”
Another Donald Wright slunk into the room, wearing the exact same faux military outfit, his grey matter intact, and sat on the edge of the desk to survey the suicide diorama.
“Gore everywhere. Not pretty at all. Oh, I’m sorry, baby — did I mess up your suit?”
This second Wright was watching Jack’s distress with an amused expression, so Gypsie-Ann pulled herself together. “Not mine,” she said. The reporter pursed lips, studying both Wrights in return, dead and alive. “Twins,” she deduced.
Wright tut-tutted, wagging a finger her way.
“Oh, far more than double-trouble. Duplication is my signature gift. One of me dies, another takes right up and continues the charade. Rather like the HYDRA terrorist organization in Marvel Comics: ‘If a head is cut off, two more will take its place’ — one way in which I’ve been able to wear so many professional hats. I’ll admit it’s spread my intellect rather thin, however — you see, the power is supposed be a temporary trick, not permanent. There are numerous copies, and I have my rather schizophrenic moments — but that adds to the challenge, and levels the playing field a fraction for you cretinous people.”
“Humility is obviously something you don’t have to worry about,” Jack said, back on top of his wits and clearing his eyes with a sleeve.
“You should try sitting in on the humbug’s three-hour divisional meetings — end of every bloody month,” Gypsie-Ann responded.
“Complaints, complaints. This is all I hear.”
“When you complicate things, of course you’re going to have complaints running interference.”
“It’s actually all very simple.” The elderly man took out a cigar, unwrapped the thing, and coerced it into his cigarette holder. “If you really knew your comicbook history — I mean really, not just the 1960s Marvel fodder you seem so enamoured with, Southern Cross — you’d have figured this out already. You’d know about a hero named Captain Freedom.”
That name snagged Jack’s attention, just as he finished wiping down his face. He glanced over to the wall covered with 1930s and ’40s junk. At one of the old, framed collectibles —Speed Comics issue 17, the one with the unnamed Captain America rip-off individual on the cover.
Wright noticed the Equalizer’s look. “Right on, baby. In primary-colour glory, on that cover there. I modelled Major Patriot on Captain Freedom. Of course, to my mind a Captain wasn’t authority enough —‘Major’ has a much nicer ring to it.”
“Yeah, well. I guess once Captain America hit the big time, copycat patriotic heroes became abundant,” Jack said.
Wright looked at him, all straight face. “Pot-Kettle-Black.”
“Whatever. But your costume’s slightly different from the one in the picture.”
“The good Captain had a few wardrobe switches over the years, depending on the artist. This was my favourite.”
Gypsie-Anne glanced at her boss. “You didn’t have the imagination to conjure up your own?”
“I was a hero, not a haberdasher.” Wright chuckled. “Allow me to provide a brief history.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes,” said the publisher, Mark II, as he swept up the Colt pistol from the Mk. I on the floor. “Captain Freedom was first published in 1941, through to 1947, by a little-known company called Brookwood Publications, and then Harvey Comics.”
“Quality. The home of Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost,” deadpanned Gypsie-Ann.
Jack produced a tentative smile. So — she did know her comics. “And let us never forget Baby Huey and Wendy the Good Little Witch.”
“Absolute classics,” the reporter agreed.
Wright now squirmed a fraction. “Whatever. You know, it’s likely your artistic hero Jack Kirby designed that cover there, alongside Joe Simon. The duo was reputed to make use of the alias ‘Jon Henri’. Can you see it in the lower left-hand corner? So, laugh all you will.”
The picture was crude, ugly stuff — Jack marvelled at how much better Kirby’s work had gotten by the height of the swinging ’60s. Still, the old comicbook was likely a collector’s item, worth a king’s fortune in the real world.
“I hear nobody laughing,” he said.
“Then shut up and allow me to finish my rant. Newspaper publisher Don Wright, physically perfect and blessed with incredible willpower, dons a mask to fight the Axis enemies. When AC Comics briefly revived the character in the 1980s, Captain Freedom also became a set of clones.”
The man lit his cigar and puffed.
“I’m positive you both would’ve noticed him, if you weren’t goddamned narrow-minded in your choice of hero-worship. As for the ‘Patriot’ part of the name, I wanted to give some hint as to who I might be — since I run a paper called the Patriot. But no one picked up on the clue. How mundane.”
“So you’re a nihilistic clown,” Gypsie-Ann decided.
“Sticks and stones.”
“With a dire range in come-backs. No wonder you prefer geriatric golden-age comics, chopped together when things were much — simpler.”
“You want simple? You have no idea how many of me there are, or where we all might be at any given time. Getting down to the nitty-gritty, you can’t hope to stop us.”
Jack had finally finished wiping gunk off his face. “We can still fight.”
Wright smiled. “That, I’m banking on.”
“We prevented the Reset. That’s not going to happen anymore.”
“So you have all the more to lose. What were you thinking — that I’d care about the Reset? I’ve decided I don’t give a donkey’s arse. Blandos shouldn’t feel pain, sweat, cry, scream, and fornicate — yet they do. Why? These are not true human beings. Phonies were all born to be slaves. They’re not worth your idiotic concern. Yet here we are and, Jack, I’m certain you’re well-qualified to debate the point.”
The Equalizer’s fist was curling before he knew it, but Gypsie-Ann laid a restraining hand on his arm.
“Don’t. He’s not worth it.”
Donald Wright leaned on the desktop and examined them both with contempt.
“Worth? I’ll give you worth. They say audacity is a true hero’s weapon, contempt for Blandos another. You people want to get into bed with the local population, so it stands to reason you have to protect them. Every Blando that dies will be a scar on your conscience. Rather pathetic, really. But worth every moment.”
“Speak in plain English,” the reporter muttered.
“Certainly. I decided to open up the field, to make things more — interesting. This also boosts my wallet in the real-deal world, so I’m hardly complaining.”
Jack studied him. “You went to the government back in Melbourne.”
Leaning back, cigar clenched between his teeth, Wright beamed. “Precisely what I did, baby. I told them all about Heropa and gave them access via my backdoor, even have a trans-barrier phone to stay in touch. They’re now using this as a training ground to harden up recruits. Oh, they have their own idInteract programs, but Heropa offers something a fraction more…exotic.”
“The man with the red hat. Denny Colt…”
“All these ‘Colts’ — it’s bound to become way-out confusing, don’t you think? Anyhow, he and his partners will be the first of many. I have other guests lined up on the agenda, all of whom you’ll have to entertain — or Blandos will die. I rather dig the arrangement. Now, would you two like a drink, or prefer to play indignant and leave? I’m a busy man.”
“We’re going to defend Heropa,” Jack said, “and I’m going to kick your arse.”
Wright looked at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows, pointing the gun in the Equalizer’s direction.
“Good luck with that fool’s assignment, lover-boy. Now beat it, or I’ll p
lace a bullet in your belfry. Hail HYDRA!”
Just as the man clucked away at his lame gag, he accidentally inhaled cigar smoke, and then stooped over to cough.
Despite the existence of these duplicates — who could lurk anywhere nearby, likely also armed — Jack was about to make a move, when Wright sat up straight, rubbing his chest, the gun again pointed in the direction of his two visitors.
“By the way,” Wright said, “give my best to Mitzi. Oh, wait, I believe that’s already being taken care of. Can you give her this?”
Tarpé Mills flew across the space and landed in Jack’s right hand.
Her eyes had been gouged out.
#165
No one was home when Jack banged on the door — or else Louise had taken to avoiding him. But he had seen the lights were all off from out on the street when arriving in Gypsie-Ann’s car. Since the security entrance had been open, they’d been able to head straight upstairs.
Beside him on the doormat, the reporter produced a hairpin.
“I think, in this situation, we’re allowed to pry,” she announced.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Both were startled by this comment, coming as it did from the very next doorway along. Louise’s neighbour ‘Handsome’ Harry Phillips stood there in his purple satin dressing robe, puffing on a cheroot.
“Mister Phillips.”
“Louise’s friend,” the man nodded back.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Kid isn’t home. Saw her come and go earlier this evening — I’d say she was headed for City Hall.”
“Cheers.” Jack decided on the spot to broach something troubling him. “Not that we don’t appreciate it, but why’re you being helpful?”
“One gets to recognize the signs. I have eyes. Can see Louise likes you and know when I’m licked. Aside from that, she looked upset — crapper chat, who wouldn’t be in the circumstances? Her world is gone to hell, with the old man being locked up.” Phillips studied the stains on Jack’s shirt collar. “By the way, what happened? Looks like you’ve been in a warzone.”
“Kind of.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d invest in a change of wardrobe. Nothing like carnage to turn off a lady.”