by Nick Svolos
To me, this was hallowed ground. This was the place where history went to get its facts straight.
Except, that morning, it didn’t feel like home. It felt like a minefield. Every co-worker I passed, each light conversation at the coffee machine, felt like there was a cloud over it. Did this one know my secret? Could that one be trusted? Or would they, on a slow day when they were facing a deadline, blow my ID and shatter my world?
Being paranoid doesn’t necessarily mean there’s nothing to worry about. Sometimes, someone really is out to get you.
These thoughts kept distracting me as I tried to hammer out an update on the Mechanista story for the next edition. The prison had released the names of the guards killed in her rampage, and I needed to put together a piece with their backgrounds, photos, statements from family members, and so forth. On a normal day, something like this would have taken me an hour to complete. Two at the most. This day wasn’t shaping up as normal. I was blocked.
The official story said the supervillain’s rampage had been stopped by their security staff, and I was struggling with letting that stand. As convenient as their cover story was for me, it was also a lie. For what must have been the fifth time, I backspaced over what I’d written and stared at the empty space on the screen, wondering what I’d fill it with.
I’m not above lying. No, I can lie like a politician when I need to. But, I could never put one in print. The truth is my business. It’s my law. The only one that matters. That’s how it is. The little compromises are the ones that destroy you.
My phone rang, giving me a brief respite from the accusing glare of the blank space. “Conway,” I spoke into the handset.
“It’s Dawson. Got a minute?” It struck me as odd that the commander of the LAPD’s unit in charge of investigating superhuman crimes would be calling me. Usually it was the other way around.
“Sure, Captain. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you’d be up to a little trade. An exclusive for some free consulting.”
“I’m interested.” I let it hang there, hoping for a little more info, even though I knew I’d agree. His “stories” usually tried to get me killed, but they made for good copy. Might as well dangle a T-bone in front of a hungry Rottweiler.
“Listen, it’s nothing I wanna discuss over the phone. Just hit a wall in a case, and we think you might be able to help.” He gave me an address on the waterfront in Long Beach. “How soon can ya be here?”
I punched the address into my phone. The map app said it was a warehouse. “Looks like thirty minutes or so.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let the officers out front know you’re coming.”
I hung up and ran the conversation through my head while packing up my gear. Dawson’s the sort of guy who can speak volumes without saying much of anything. All I had to do was read between the lines. Uniforms out front meant it was a crime scene. That he didn’t want to talk over the phone meant it hadn’t become public knowledge yet. The address was in Long Beach, outside of the LAPD’s jurisdiction. His presence and the fact that he’d called me, told me he thought somebody with powers was involved. And, if he was trading me the story for my “consulting”, I’d have an exclusive. Yeah, this could be good. I forwarded my calls to my mobile and headed for the door.
I almost made it. My editor just happened to catch me in the hall while coming back from refilling his oversized mug with coffee. “You got that follow-up on the prison yet, kid?”
That’s my boss for you. I was old enough to run for freakin’ president, but he still called me “kid.”
“Just about. Couple of details to nail down. Listen, I just got a tip from Dawson. Sounds hot, so I’m gonna check it out while the offer’s open.”
Harry took a sip while a complex network of gears and pulleys in his head started some kind of Byzantine, clockwork calculation. If it wasn’t so noisy in the bullpen, you could probably hear them. Knowing him, he was weighing assignments, column inches and the likelihood of a good scoop if the tip from Task Force Eleven’s commander panned out. “Alright, run it down. I still need the prison piece, though. Hand it off to Watson before you go.”
A sudden wave of guilt crashed down on my shoulders. “About that. I need to talk to you about that story, Harry.”
He didn’t skip a beat. “Damned straight you do. Tomorrow morning. My office.” He started off down the aisle. “Take Bannerjee with you,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.
Harry’s little exit line replayed in my head while I transferred the story folder to Sue Watson. He was always grumpy. Word is he took the silver medal in the Misanthrope Olympics, narrowly edged out by Sauron. But this time, he sounded different. Disappointed. Somehow, that chilled me even more.
***
“The ‘Titanic Twosome’ rides again!” Ratna cheered as we pulled out of the Beacon’s parking lot.
I raised an eyebrow and regarded her out of the corner of my eye. “Uh, say again?”
“I figured we need a name. You know, a superhero and his plucky and extremely talented photojournalist sidekick. Something with a little panache.”
“Sidekick? I’m not in the market for one.” I dropped my voice into a dark, throaty vigilante growl. “I work alone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she waved it off. “You need someone to keep you honest. Grounded. Besides, your camerawork sucks.”
“I thought you said I was getting better.”
“Remembering to take the lens cover off is indeed better, but you still have a way to go, dude.”
I ignored the insult to my photography skills. Something else bothered me more. “Alright, it’s your turn to come clean. What’s the deal with Harry sending you out with me all of a sudden?”
She took a sudden interest in a street sign. “I dunno. You should ask him.”
“I intend to. Tomorrow. Right now, I’m asking you.”
She sighed. “I can’t speak for him. I’ve been asking for some more interesting work and here I am. Is it really that bad?”
“Working with you? No. But you’ve been hounding him for over a year. Something’s changed, and I want to know what. It’s a two-way street.”
“He knows about the offer from the Times.”
Not surprising. Nobody in this business can keep a secret worth a damn. “Does he know I turned them down?”
She shrugged. “Sure. But I think it was a wake-up call. Eventually, everyone moves on. He needs someone to pick up the torch when your time comes.”
“Fat chance. Can’t imagine doing anything else. I’ll be doing this until I’m too old to hold a pencil.”
“I believe you. I think Harry does, too. But, he needs to cover all the bases. You gotta admit, it doesn’t hurt to have an extra set of eyes on this beat.”
“Preferably in the back of your head. You know what you’re getting into, right?”
“You know I do. The Hero Desk is dangerous. Point taken.”
“I’m not sure it is.” I ticked off a list of names. “Unstoppabull. Longshot. Hammerblow. Hell, all of Omega, now that I think about it. Schadenfreude. They all got a bone to pick with me when they get out of prison. Jezebel’s still out there, and don’t think that doesn't keep me up at night. Reporters make enemies, but the ones you make on this beat can kill you like you were a housefly.”
“Says the guy who wants to give up his superpowers for some as yet unspoken reason,” she needled.
“That’s irrelevant. I can’t keep doing my job and being a super. It’s just not credible.”
“Why be credible when you can be incredible?”
“Because in this business, all you have is your credibility. You write something and people believe it. You start making compromises, even little ones—especially the little ones—and you’re done. A super can’t report on supers any more than a politician can report on politicians.”
As our conversation continued, I noticed myself becoming a little concerned for Ratna. She was hell-bent on reporting on s
uperhumans and for some reason I felt like I should try to steer her away from it. In a way it was funny. Nobody could talk me out of it, either, and a lot of people had tried. It was a dangerous gig, after all. As far as I knew, I was the only guy in town who was doing this full time. Was I worried about my colleague’s safety, or afraid of having some competition?
Eventually, we found ourselves driving around a burned-out warehouse, looking for a place to park. We got a better view of the place as we made our way to the police barricade. The warehouse walls, built out of reinforced cinder blocks, were mostly standing, as were the concrete loading docks, but that was about it. Whatever disaster hit this place was hot enough to scorch the paint on the exterior. Even now, while still some distance away, we could pick up the acrid smell of the charred remains.
We identified ourselves to a Long Beach cop standing watch at the gate. Despite Dawson’s promise to let him know we were allowed in, he still gave our credentials a solid going-over before grudgingly letting us through. I couldn’t blame him. Guys in his line of work couldn’t just let guys in mine run around a crime scene without good reason. It would be surprisingly easy to mess something up and blow their investigation. And then, guess who would write the article criticizing them for letting it happen?
Dawson came out to meet us with a plainclothes cop I didn’t recognize. “Thanks for comin’, Conway. This is Lieutenant Lewis of the Long Beach PD’s Arson Unit. This is his scene.” We shook hands, exchanged business cards, and I introduced my partner.
“You didn’t say anything about a photographer, Captain,” the LBPD detective complained.
“Fair enough,” Dawson said. “I’ll have to ask you to wait outside, Miss Bannerjee.”
Her disappointment was evident, but to her credit, she took it like a professional. “Mind if I take some outside shots while I wait?” The cops were fine with that, and so, while she went off to do her thing, I followed Dawson and Lewis into the charred structure. A forensic team moved around the interior, bagging potential evidence, overseen by a couple of plainclothesmen I recognized from Task Force Eleven.
“Last night at around eleven, someone or something broke into this place and made off with about a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of consumer electronics. They burned the place down, possibly to cover their tracks.” Dawson explained. “That’s the short version.”
I knew there was a longer version coming. There always was with Dawson. I kept my mouth shut and let the chunky detective get around to it. “The long version, and the part that’s covered by your Non-Disclosure Agreement, includes the fact that the arson squad can’t find any residue from the accelerant they used to start the blaze.”
“Is that normal?” I noticed that the arson team had a couple of dogs sniffing around. There was another guy with some sort of device slung over his shoulder. Tethered to it was a wand he waved around over various spots on the walls, floor, and piles of ash. It didn’t look like they were finding anything.
“Not for a job like this,” Lewis answered. “This place had a good fire-suppression system, but the perps disabled it, along with the surveillance and alarm systems. Usually, we’d expect to find ILRs all over the place”
“‘ILR?” I asked.
“Inflammable Liquid Residue. Any common accelerant will leave something behind. We haven’t found anything.”
“Are there any accelerants that don’t leave a trace?”
“If there are, I don’t know of ‘em. Even if there was, the differences in the burn patterns would tip us off. In this case, nothing.”
I nodded. “So, you’re thinking your perp is a flameslinger?”
Dawson adjusted his tie. “Yep. The even longer version of the story is that this is the fourth site in the last eight days. Two in LA, one in Wilmington, and now this. Same MO. Know anyone who could pull this off?”
“Not offhand.” I went quiet for a moment to take another look at the devastation and consider whether I might be missing something. Every square inch of the warehouse was black with soot. Some of it was still warm. The ceiling, what was left of it, appeared to be made out of some fire-retarding composite. The bits I could see were melted.
I had a disturbing thought. “This is gonna sound weird, but you might wanna take a look at Phoenix Fire’s grave.”
Dawson’s head twitched. “What?”
“It’d take someone with her level of power to make a blaze this hot,” I mused. “I hate to suggest it, but I wouldn’t put it past Schadenfreude to have one of his goons do a little grave robbing.”
Dawson gave that some thought. “Think he might have gotten ahold of her DNA?”
I could only shrug. “It’s a long shot. Nobody’s figured out how his tech actually works. My understanding is that he couldn’t replicate DNA, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t cooking up something The Angels never found.”
Dawson glowered. “Now, there’s a disconcertin’ thought.”
He called one of his men over, and while he issued orders to get someone out to Mount Sinai, I pulled out my phone to run a search on a site called SuperPedia. It was a quagmire of conspiracy theories and rumor, but every now and then it was good for a lead. While there were a number of torch-sightings listed, none of them were recent. I put it away.
“Other than that, I can make a few inquiries,” I offered.
“We can do that. Just give us some names,” Lewis said.
“My advice is to let Conway do it, Lieutenant,” Dawson intervened. “He knows people who won’t talk to us.”
The Long Beach detective didn’t like that. “Look, I don’t know how you do things in LA, Captain, but we know how to do our jobs here.”
I looked Lewis in the eye. “Lieutenant, I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but I’m not gonna burn my contacts. Like Captain Dawson said, the sort of people I’m planning to ask aren’t going to help a cop. They’re also smart enough to figure out who gave you their names, and they won’t let me live long enough to make that mistake twice. If you want my help catching this guy, that’s my price.”
He gave me a good long dose of the “cop glare.” I returned it with the reporter’s version without so much as a flinch. There was no room for negotiation on my part, and he eventually got the picture. Still, he couldn’t resist playing the rest of his cards.
“You know, I could take you in for questioning.”
“If you got a day to waste, so do I. Actually, I hope you do. It won’t be a wasted day for me. I’ll have a better story, and jail time only pads my resumé with those guys.” I grinned and held out my hands, wrists together. I enjoyed the occasional opportunity to do the hack journalist thing when it came up. I never had time to be a “bad boy” when I was a kid, so it was good to have an outlet for my pent-up distrust of authority. Everybody needs a hobby.
“You’re a real piece of work, aren’t ya, Conway?” Lewis growled, reaching for his handcuffs.
Dawson decided to break the stand-off before we could escalate our pissing contest any further. “Alright, let’s get your captain on the line.”
That struck home. Dawson had the rank, even if not the jurisdiction, and Lewis knew it.
“Fine. But if I find out this guy’s holding out on us…”
Dawson was already shepherding me out of the scene. “He won’t. Don’t worry. If he tries to pull a fast one, I already got a cell waiting for ‘im.”
We walked across the container yard back to the street, picking up Ratna along the way.
“I swear, Conway, I’m beginning to think you like jail.”
“I got a loyalty card with the county. Three more stamps and I get a set of steak knives.”
“What’d he do this time, Captain?” Ratna asked.
“The usual.”
“Hey, I just offered to help,” I protested.
“Your way of helpin’ is a lot like a bad case of hemorrhoids.”
Ratna chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth!”
III
&
nbsp; I didn’t notice the unmarked police car following me until it was almost too late.
The warm Southern California summer was in full swing, and there was still plenty of daylight left when I dropped Ratna off at the Beacon, but after almost an hour of sitting in rush-hour traffic on the 405 South, it was losing steam. June’s characteristic marine layer was moving back in, filtering the waning light of sunset and muting the colors of the cars to the point where I almost missed the two men in a blue late-model Chevy Malibu following me as I took the Rosecrans exit.
I liked to think I was pretty good at spotting a tail, but the truth was, this time I just got lucky. I decided to fill up the woody at the gas station on the corner. There were three ways out of there and enough traffic that making the wrong guess would mean they’d lose me, so they didn’t have any choice but to follow me in. If they were using two cars, like they were supposed to, I’d have never spotted it.
The Malibu pulled in at the set of pumps on the Rosecrans side, and the driver got out and started pumping gas. The tip-off came when his pump came to a stop after only a couple of gallons. I’d gotten there first, and my ride was still greedily gulping overtaxed petroleum.
I gave the man a closer look. Brown suit and not a terribly expensive one. A bit of a bulge under his left shoulder. The guy in the passenger seat looked to be wearing a suit, too.
Alright, cops they were, then. Nobody wore a suit in LA unless they were a lawyer, salesman, or plainclothes cop. Most people took off their coats when driving to avoid wrinkles, but an undercover cop couldn’t. The shoulder holster drew too much attention.
After finishing with the pump, I decided to let the cops stew a bit while I went inside the mini-mart to grab a snack. The clerk gave me an odd look when I checked out with a half dozen hot dogs and a family-sized bag of chips, but returned to his business without comment. Chalk up another win for the ever-present superhuman need for calories.
Putting together an order that big kept me in there for a while, giving me the chance to see what the cops would do. They were still there. When I emerged with my Second Lunch, the Chevy’s hood was up and the plainclothesman was pretending to check the oil.
