Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?

  “See?”

  Jack felt gobsmacked. This particular Christmas decoration had her art history down pat. “How do you know this stuff?”

  “This ‘stuff’ is not exactly a state secret. Why are you so surprised?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Louise caught the waiter’s attention and silently ordered two coffees from afar. “I hope you don’t object to another round?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Watch how you say that in proximity to me — I’m notorious for my caffeine intake.” The girl slid over a sham-crystal ashtray he hadn’t noticed before and butted out the cigarette. Then she blew one last puff toward the ceiling.

  She looked edgy, and he doubted caffeine was the culprit.

  No way this girl was a Blando — she had too much going on in her headspace. Surely she was a Cape too. Memory loss?

  Then it came to him.

  Amnesia.

  Happened all the time in comics, old soapies and dodgy romance novels. Sure, it was a rare occurrence in the real world — but they weren’t there anymore and didn’t need to play by its rules. Maybe she’d banged her skull, or had the memories plundered by some diabolical Rotter?

  “Getting back to your boss,” Jack said, while he contemplated this theory, “why do you stay at the bank if he’s such a sleazy bastard?”

  “I don’t know. By the middle of the afternoon I’m fed up, and every evening I resolve to quit — but by the time I wake up in the morning, I’ve forgotten most of what happened the previous day, I’m over the crankiness, and ready to begin afresh. Starting the cycle all over again. I wonder if I have some kind of illness.”

  She exhaled loudly.

  “I know I paint Mister Holland out to be a jerk, but he’s not. Not completely. Every morning he also starts off charming and gentlemanly, like he’s turned over a new leaf, but whenever two o’clock comes round, he starts pawing me again.”

  Jack remembered the first time he went to the bank was just after lunch. One-thirty.

  After both left the diner, the Equalizer was surprised to find he was so wired on caffeine that he decided to walk Louise all the way home, through quiet city streets. It took half an hour to get there and they arrived before midnight.

  Louise lived in an apartment in a four-storey brownstone facing a main road — the nearby sign said East 71st Street — though there wasn’t much traffic that time of night. It was a neoclassical building, with Grecian architectural features, number 169.

  She pointed out a divided-frame window on the second storey, over a darkened shop called Brooklyn Antiques that took up the entire ground floor. “There’s my room.”

  The two of them walked up a short set of steps to the double front door, under an arch beside the closed shop, and paused while the girl rifled through her purse to fetch keys. Before unlocking the door she smiled, removed her glasses, and leaned Jack’s way.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me?” she teased. “It’s okay, I don’t taste like an ashtray anymore — I sneaked a few breath fresheners on the way home.”

  Jack couldn’t move a muscle, so she did the kissing. She tasted of peppermint, smelled gloriously of citrus fruit.

  #118

  Later that night, around two a.m., the Brick took Jack with him to a seedier section of town that had neons everywhere and women on the streets dressed like hookers — which is what he cottoned on they were.

  “Do we need this kind of realism?” Jack muttered, gazing at the mimed kinkiness through a triple-glazed window that helped soundproof the vehicle. “Isn’t Heropa supposed to symbolize a better place?”

  The Brick nodded, just as he brutally shifted the gearstick. “Human nature prevails.”

  “I thought Blandos weren’t human.”

  “Never said no such thing.”

  They were in the Brick’s V12-powered, two-seater 1938 Delahaye 165 Cabriolet, a burgundy-coloured, capsule-shaped French number with dashes along the bodywork that split up its exterior profile, and concealed engine bay vents and door handles. Chrome fixtures ran along the sills to wrap around the rear-end brake lights, making the vehicle look like it would’ve been more at home in the 1930s Flash Gordon flicks starring Buster Crabbe.

  This car’s lean didn’t favour the right, the driver’s side, since the Brick had built up the suspension and added a four hundred kilogram counterweight under the passenger seat — meaning the crate hugged the road only an inch or so above terra firma.

  Inside was all white leather upholstery; on the burgundy dashboard two large, round Jaeger gauges gave the speed as well as the tours per minute. Perhaps an afterthought, a couple of furry dice dangled from the rearview mirror, and up on the dash was a sun-faded dime novel displaying a cowboy in a mask. Feeling ill as he followed the cheap tome’s sliding path left and right while the Brick swerved this way and that through traffic, Jack finally deciphered a title (Rawhide, With Two Guns) above the author name Clay Harder.

  “Good book?”

  “Scintillatin’.”

  “So why all the mystery, Brick? Where’re we going?”

  “I got a call from an ex — ex-teammate, that is, before you crack foxy. Bloke’s a freelancer these days, has been since the Equalizers downsized.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Teammates and friends’re mostly chalk an’ cheese.”

  “And I thought you cared.” Jack laughed. “What’s the scam?”

  “Death of a mutual acquaintance.”

  His passenger glanced sideways at him. “Another murder?”

  “Mebbe. Here we are, Sunset and Camden.” The Equalizer slammed on the brakes and Jack had to stop himself from ploughing into the dashboard. The Brick’s parking was as neat as his exterior — one wheel up on the kerb and the car’s rear-end poking into oncoming traffic.

  He slapped Jack’s shoulder far too hard with one of his earthenware fists. “Don’t worry, tiger. Anythin’ happens, it’ll be fixed by tomorrow.”

  Jack wasn’t sure whether the man meant his shoulder, or the car.

  After locking up, they walked beneath a huge collection of electrified, luminous tube lights that together formed a moving skipping girl, and turned down an alleyway marked La Montagne.

  On one of the walls was some stencilled Cyrillic graffiti, the very first tagging Jack had seen in this city:

  Улица Марата

  The two men ascended a steel fire-escape behind a redbrick Victorian-style factory building and, after pushing through an open iron hatch and promenading a corridor lined with other, less substantial doors, stopped before number 1793.

  The Brick politely knocked.

  A few seconds on, a voice called out from within: “May I inquire who’s there?”

  “You may, buster. Doesn’t mean I’ll soddin’ well answer.”

  The door opened and a man in a long black robe — it reached the floor, very priestly — looked out at them. “Brick. Thank God. My prayers are answered.”

  “Well, I received ’em loud an’ clear. Dunno if any dippy deity had a hand in that.”

  “Oh, you and your ribald commentary. Come on in.”

  As Jack passed by the possible padre, he took note of pale hair, cadaverous skin and white lips. The guy more resembled a ghost.

  The Brick turned around in a large, dishevelled living room. There were five or six toy poodles yapping about their heels — Jack kept losing count — and a colossal painting of a weeping willow dominated one wall. On the plaster opposite was a framed movie poster for Marat/Sade, with the actors’ names — Patrick Magee, Ian Richardson and Glenda Jackson — in a shaky red font, resembling blood.

  “Junior, this is Exegesis. I likes to call him Exy — easier to pronounce on the fly. Exy, yer lookin’ at our new recruit Southern Cross.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” the anaemic man said, shaking Jack’s hand with the kind of jellyfish grip his dad had always warned him about. “Please call me Exegesis, if you don’t mind. I’m ve
ry lenient with the Brick’s iconoclastic behaviour, but I prefer not to encourage it in others. Bravo with the flag.”

  “Um — cheers.”

  “Exy found our body. He an’ the corpse’re old Grail Quest buddies.” The Brick caught Jack’s eye. “Don’t ask.” He turned back to the other Cape — which is what Jack now realized the man was. “So, whadda we have here, bub?”

  “I do think it’s best if I show you.”

  “Lead on, Duff Beer.”

  Exegesis frowned, but then busied himself manoeuvring little dogs out of the path — expertly using a broom — as he led his two visitors down a corridor, stopping at a closed door at the very end. This he opened with great flourish.

  Beyond was a rather large bathroom, poorly lit, that had dozens of burning tea candles arranged helter-skelter on the floor, the toilet seat, and on a bench by the basin.

  Slumped within a bathtub in the centre of the room was a naked man.

  The diorama rehashed the famous painting, by Jacques-Louis David, of murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, right down to the towel wrapped around his head and the slit throat — except this particular dead démagogue was holding a biro instead of a quill.

  Exegesis put a warning hand on Jack’s shoulder, stronger this time.

  “Stay away from the water. It’s electrified.”

  He pointed at a chrome and black metal rotary fan submerged beneath the man’s legs, with the cable winding out and up to a plug in a socket. Jack hadn’t noticed that in the flickering candlelight.

  The Brick rubbed his chin, thoughtful-like. “Classic overkill.”

  While he did this rubbing, Jack flicked the power switch. God knows why Exegesis hadn’t done this before. Probably, he liked his sense of the dramatic.

  “So, who’s Marat?” Jack asked.

  Exegesis glared at him. “Rabble Rouser. The man’s name was Rabble Rouser.” He pondered for a few seconds, before speaking again. “And one might think this were an accident — if not for the note.”

  “And the fan.”

  “Well, the fan could have fallen in by itself.”

  “True.”

  “What was the bugger writing?” the Brick asked.

  Before anyone could answer, he bent over to take a piece of paper from the man’s left hand. It was wet and the ink had smudged, but they could read the four words there fairly easily: ‘I am a fraud’.

  The Brick shoved the note into his overcoat pocket. “He got that right. There’ll be no fancy funerals here.”

  “Suicide?” Jack suggested, dubious.

  “Not the best way to enter the Lord’s domain,” said Exegesis, “and Rabble Rouser was not your standard suicidal personality. I’d say this incident has more in common with the death of Marat, already alluded to by Southern Cross.”

  “Murder.” The way the Brick uttered the word made it more statement than question. “Given he had his throat slit, on top o’ the live-wirin’.”

  “I would further allude that that fiend Doctor Satan is involved.”

  “Course you would — yer always do. Any proof this time?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Then what’s bugging you ’bout him? —‘Side from the name, I mean.”

  Exegesis gazed heavenward, channelling some mysterious rapture. “Let me quote to you from Matthew 24:27: ‘For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man’.”

  “Eh?” said the Brick. “Who’s comin’ from the east?”

  “He does not mean to affirm that the ‘Son of Man’ will come from the east.”

  “West, then? And who’s he? Doc Satan?”

  “Of course not! You are entirely missing the point. He is Matthew, as in the Matthew from the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, he is described as a tax collector and was one of Jesus’s original disciples in all four gospels and in Acts.”

  “The guy wrote and starred in these shenanigans? Bit of an Orson Welles, huh?”

  Exegesis had ditched cloud nine for visible bristling and a great gnashing of teeth.

  “It is highly unlikely the two Matthews are the same, and this has absolutely nothing to do with Orson Welles. My God. Matthew-the-Apostle lived decades earlier than Matthew-the-scribe. Now, back to my point: The ‘Son of Man’ won’t come from the west, but He will come in a sudden manner, like the lightning — rapidly, unexpectedly, in an unlooked-for quarter will be His coming.”

  The Brick appeared well and truly bamboozled, a feeling Jack shared. “Think yer losin’ me, Exy. Who the heck is this Son o’ Man?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Fat lot o’ good that confession does us.”

  “Look, I hate to be a fly in the ointment,” Jack spoke up, “but do we need to know any of this ecclesial hogwash? Marat here is dead.”

  “Rabble Rouser,” Exegesis reminded him. “But, indeed. Electrocuted. The Good Book mentions lightning — in all likelihood the two are connected.”

  “Or not.” Jack glanced at his teammate. “Are we done?”

  “Hang on, kid.” The Brick went around the tub, pushed aside the plastic curtain, and with patience peeled something off the windowsill.

  “This is interestin’,” he said, as he held up a small black oval sticker with the tag ‘if?’ printed on it — identical to the one they’d found at the Harvey’s Gems jewellery heist. “Murdered by a dead man.”

  After notifying the police, the Brick and Jack drove in silence.

  At that time of night, Stan the Doorman was home in bed, but the Timely Tower security guard — or a carbon copy — sat in his same position, sucking on a Brown’s Iron Bitters as he watched the rolling black-and-white portable TV. This time they heard a male glee club advertising ballad about a fly:

  Boppie the Fly, I’m Boppie the Fly

  Straight from rubbish tip to you.

  Spreading disease, with the greatest of ease…

  The Brick slammed the concertina door —“I hate that commercial, I feel fer the bug,” he muttered — and they took the elevator to the penthouse accompanied by ‘A Walk in the Black Forest’.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Jack groaned. “Hate to say it, but the ad’s gotta be better than this mundane tune. Don’t they play anything else?”

  The lights were on when the doors finally parted and Pretty Amazonia was there, trussed up in a flowing purple satin nightie. According to her, the Great White Hope had tucked himself in early.

  The Brick gave the woman an abbreviated version of what had been discovered and, for her part, she looked uncommonly serious while tuning in.

  Then the Brick showed her the sticker.

  “Interesting,” PA mused, adjusting the bodice on her gown. “You think someone wants to infer Iffy Bizness did the deed?”

  “Double-R hadn’t been dead long enough. I’d say it’s someone messin’ with us.”

  She nodded. “While you were out, we got a message from that Blando cop Kahn, at City Hall.”

  “What’d Dick Tracy want?”

  “To let us know they found another dead Cape.”

  “Double-R.”

  “No. Someone else.”

  The Equalizer frowned by lowering a layer of bricks low over his blue eyes. “Who?”

  “Sir Dagonet.”

  “Crap.”

  “My feeling exactly.”

  “I thought that bastard were adept at hightailin’ it from trouble — guy was more court jester than hero. Foul play?”

  PA raised one eyebrow. “Unless you call being spit-roasted in your own armour an accident, I’d say yes.”

  “Jesus,” Jack mumbled from where he sat propped up on the arm of a sofa.

  “Stop it, kid — yer remindin’ me o’ Exy. Once a lifetime’s religious hokey pokey is enough.”

  The Brick walked over to the big window that dominated the shared living space of Equalizers headquarters. Dawn was only minutes away.

  “So
. Another Grail Quester bites the bullet. Reckon there’s a connection?”

  “I don’t know,” said Pretty Amazonia. “Those people are socially retarded.”

  Jack held up his hand. “What is this Grail Quest stuff?”

  PA sighed. “You know medieval re-enactment festivals?”

  “Sure. Heard of them, anyway.”

  “Same thing — on a twee idI level.”

  The next evening, when Jack went out for a stroll, a newsboy was standing on the corner, a Grit satchel over his shoulder, holding aloft a paper while he shouted.

  “Extra! Extra! ‘Nother Cape found dead! Suicide verdict questioned!” As people bustled past, the kid’s eyes found the Equalizer’s and he rushed over. “Want one, mister?”

  “How much?”

  “Five cents.”

  Jack dropped a coin in his hand and stood beneath a streetlamp to read. The Marat picture took up a fair chunk of page one of the Patriot.

  They’d nailed it.

  #119

  “Grab yer mask, kiddo. The Sandman’s amiss, an’ we’re up,” the Brick grouched from the open door to the bedroom, before vanishing with surprising speed.

  Jack struggled to a sitting position, swayed unsteadily, and realized he had on his costume. Handy. Where the mask had got to, however, was another matter. He wiped sleep from his eyes, thought about Louise, smiled, and stepped off the bed.

  Eventually finding the mask scrunched up under that same piece of furniture, Jack considered himself lucky it was made of an oddball fabric that didn’t wrinkle.

  He tucked the thing into his belt and went upstairs to the giant hangar in the roof, where his three teammates were twiddling thumbs, already settled in on the dirigible.

  Predictably, the atmosphere was strained — Jack could sense they’d again been quibbling — which meant all was well in this world.

  “SC, where were you last night?”

  That was Pretty Amazonia piping up, albeit in a tone of feigned indifference, without looking his way. She was staring instead at sweet nothing through the porthole, perhaps studying rivet formations in the hangar wall.