“This is fucking unbelievable,” I say aloud.
“His story?”
“The fact you guys fucking missed this,” I remark.
Synergy exhales with genuine grief and I can’t say anything else. I stare back at the tape, now frozen at the end of Hilfiger’s lengthy diatribe.
He didn’t understand it himself, but he’d always been able to remember snatches of his adventurous other life even if his fellow costumes couldn’t. Some he tried to contact – the names are just laughable, Bryant Gumbel, David Suzuki, only adding to the cops’ easy disbelief – and reasonably enough his so-called former teammates thought he was just some addled crazy, regardless of his personal wealth, and if it wasn’t for the fact he was a powerful man now in his own right with a fleet of expensive lawyers, perhaps they could’ve made more trouble for him, turning up at their holiday homes and their workplaces and setting up high profile meetings under what seemed like utterly false pretenses.
The first five people couldn’t remember and so he set about trying to find evidence to show them what he was saying was true. I am guessing that’s what the museum under the staircase was about, though how he went about collecting the bric-a-brac from other parallels where proof remained The Twelve ever existed, I have no fucking idea. The fact is, he obviously managed to accumulate enough proof when he went to New England and confronted the sixth team member about it – author Stephen King, aka Darkbane – because the writer flipped his wig completely and was dead within a week. All Hilfiger could tell the police was the modus operandi fit his old teammate Arsenal perfectly, though this meant someone else had also been abroad in the multiverse and brought back Arsenal’s gauntlets and powered armor.
Hilfiger didn’t know Arsenal’s secret identity. And I can’t help but muse that if the story’s true, for one reason or another the ex-hero turned killer must’ve scored a bad deal in the whole crossover, because no-one’s ever heard of some two-bit deputy sheriff and Japanophile named Steven Seagal.
“And now Hilfiger’s dead,” I say eventually.
“Yeah,” Synergy says. “I’m sorry.”
“You say that like I knew the guy. I didn’t.”
“No,” she replies slowly. “But first your mother and now him. It’s got me wondering what’s happened now, five years after the fact, for this Arsenal guy to start killing again.”
“He’s covering up for the big secret,” I reply. “If it’s all true, you know, the story of The Twelve.”
“We’re going to have to interview those people,” Synergy says.
I go back over the list in my head and whistle.
“You kick this off and this guy, Arsenal, he’s gonna know the secret didn’t die with Tommy Hilfiger. It gives him grounds to start killing again.”
“Yes,” Synergy says and meets my eye. “And the FBI has no idea who he is.”
I nod and cough gently and look back at the frozen monitor and the moment to play my hand passes quietly unnoticed as Synergy checks her ‘fro and when I glance back, she is picking something from the corner of her lipstick and doesn’t see me admiring her profile with my uncertain expression.
I’m damned if I know what to do.
*
SYNERGY RELUCTANTLY AGREES to give me twenty-four hours to think things through and I guess by wringing that concession from her I kind of show my hand a little. As we let ourselves back into the club, she looks at me with an expression of blatant incomprehension when I ask if she wants to dance. The new duet between KD Lang and Terence Trent d’Arby is playing at the sort of volume normally reserved for planes taking off and it’s been mashed up with hard Japanese electro and violent hentai cartoons are playing on all the monitors that line the dance floor and girls and boys and various other hardbodies grind away while enormous anime tentacles punch their way into big bosomed, big eyed characters in schoolgirl uniforms and sailor suits and maid costumes.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at Zephyr, but I know you’re holding out on me,” Synergy has to practically yell into my ear and even then it takes three times to understand what she’s saying.
“I just need time to think,” I bawl back at her.
“No, I don’t want a god-damned drink,” Synergy replies.
I sigh and tut and the handsome FBI agent adds, “You know I could get a warrant for everything behind your eyes under the Mirror Act,” and she waves a manicured finger at me and waits until I have acknowledged what she’s saying with a dip of my half-heartedly lustful gaze.
“Yeah, whatever,” I say in return. “You can bring Siren down here to try and bust my skull, but you won’t get anything.”
“You can say that again,” Synergy replies.
We leave it on that note and the new song by Milli Vanilli comes on and I have to push through another rush of teenage models to get away from the dance floor. I am not a big fan of the duo’s decision to start incorporating Satanic imagery into their lyrics, and this along with the gradual slide that has made the German group’s live shows little more than a hard-core bondage cabaret leave me questioning some of the statements I made in the late 90s about them being the most significant contribution to popular music since Duran Duran. We live and learn.
“Hey Zephyr,” Paragon practically bites my ear saying. “Are you coming to the opening party for the new Harrison Ford movie at Silver City?”
“I don’t think so, Para, sorry.”
“Twilight’s going to be there,” Paragon says and perhaps I imagine the wink.
“That’s great.”
“Are you still coming to the wedding?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Are you still actually getting married?”
“Of course,” Paragon replies. “Jocelyn’s getting along now. She’s more than seven months. I have to make an honest woman out of her before then.”
“If you can make an honest woman out of her then I will personally buy you a fucking unicorn for a wedding present,” I shout back at him half-heartedly.
Paragon nods and smiles and pats me on the shoulder.
“Thanks for that, man. You’re the best.”
“I hope you get cancer and a donkey rapes you at your funeral,” I say.
“Awesome. What’s this song called?”
I stare at the grinning, gently glowing costume for a couple more seconds and mutter something about “zombie cocks” and he nods like a goofy Dutchman and tries to high five me and I turn and push past Eric Estrada and Rafael Nadal and descend the velvety black stairs to the foyer of the club where a few skinny blondes in short silver dresses are chain-smoking and shivering and the air feels like the inside of a meat locker and I think for a moment they are all craning their necks up at the security monitors to check out how things are going in the club, but instead they are calmly watching Japanese schoolgirls being pack-raped by demon octopuses and ghosts and Pokémon and old men in pin-striped suits and I cadge a smoke and cough lightly as I fire one up and pull into a recess and watch the view down yet more steps to the street.
If the Feebs start investigating my family history then the entire universe could well unravel. Without my powers I’m as useless as tits on a bull, but there are others out there in the night who might be able to help me at least until I work out what the hell I am doing. Loren has made hints about me having to leave the citadel and Tessa hasn’t returned any of my calls and more than once I have found myself trying to see if I could still remember my wife’s cell number off by heart and sadly realize it’s a no-brainer. I have to keep Zephyr’s latest developments under wraps, and outing the man who helped kill my mother to the FBI isn’t going to do me any favors with that.
Tracking down this Seagal character will lead to Ono, and that’s the last thing I need the Feds to do, because then they’ll have a chance of discovering what I now know as well: my father the Preacher Man was a member of The Twelve too, and for one reason or another, he didn’t disappear when the others agreed to dissolve themselves into
the multiverse, which can only mean one thing.
This is all part of some bigger, even more elaborate plan.
Zephyr 7.5 “Vertically Challenged”
I SLEEP TO about one in the afternoon and put the Zephyr phone on silent and note a message from Loren asking me to meet her downtown, and after I shower and change into street civvies, I step out of the fortress near the D-Rail on Washington Avenue and choke back a quick double-shot frappuccino on the run and dodge traffic as I scurry across the road and join a crowd pouring onto the platform of the sky-rail and I am so hungry for a moment I wonder if this means my powers could be coming back, but for all my butt and finger flexing they’re still a no-show. I buy a gyro and catch the next train for Jackson and head over the walkway to the chromatic spires that house Hallory O’Hagan’s offices.
It takes a while to wrangle an appointment from the secretary, given I refuse to tell her my name, but the slinky redhead herself appears before the security guys can arrive and I grab her by the arm of her strangely metallic suit and steer her into an empty conference room.
“It’s me. Zephyr. Chill out.”
“Zephyr?”
She looks at me with much the same expression I’d expect of a woman who thinks she’s been taken hostage by a madman and lifts her secretarial eye-glasses with her free hand and peers at me and frowns and I frown back and can’t believe I have to put my fingers across her eyes to make her realize I am telling the truth.
“Really? Is that you?”
“I could kiss you if that would help.”
“No, I’m convinced. What’s going on? Where’s your costume?”
“It’s wash day,” I tell her and let go her shoulder as the conference room doors burst open and Hallory dismisses the three angry-looking guys who rush in.
“Why didn’t you call if you wanted to make an appointment?” she asks.
“I have to keep a low profile. I couldn’t let anyone see me flying in here.”
“O-K,” she says slowly and checks her blouse and puts down the folder of blank paper she’s been carrying and retrieves her blackberry and checks it for messages, but it’s blank.
“Sorry for the confusion.”
“There must be something pretty urgent,” Hallory says.
“I need some money.”
My agent’s smile hardens so tangibly I almost expect cracks to spread across her face and her skin to fall off like unfired pottery and reveal some bizarre lizard beneath. Silence descends like some great invisible machine sucking the air and life from the room.
“Money,” she says with a vaguely Japanese accent.
“I just wanted to clear up where things are at,” I say. “I might need to take a break from, you know, the advertising world, the promotions and stuff for a little while because of, um, superhero business, you know, so I just thought we could tally up the account.”
“I’m not sure you’ve noticed I haven’t actually called you since the Burger King shoot fiasco,” Hallory says and pulls a dour turn.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Cronenberg shoot,” she replies.
“I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”
“We lost a ten thousand dollar bond on that contract, Zephyr. There isn’t any money. In fact, you probably owe us money. I don’t think you can hang up your mask just yet.”
“I’m kind of . . . between paychecks at the moment.”
“I’m sure when we finalize the license deal on the Sentinels figurines we’ll all be breathing a little easier,” Hallory says and smiles as if to say she too is taking a personal pay cut at the moment.
“The Sentinels? Oh. Yeah.” Fuck.
“There’s no problems with that, are there?” she asks. “I mean, I read that piece in the Post this morning, but nobody believes what that guy writes.”
“Don’t they? Good.”
Hallory nails me with her piercing blue eyes and then ups the ante with the cutest frown any man has ever witnessed.
“You would tell me if there’s a problem, right Zeph?”
“Sure.”
Hallory picks up the folder and taps it on the edge of the conference table to make the sheaves line up.
“So we’re good? I’ve got to get these contracts down to the lawyers like yesterday.”
She smiles and pats my arm and doesn’t at all resemble the woman who joined me for a little tonsil hockey on the night of the team launch as she leaves me standing in the big room, yet another conference room and yet another disaster.
As I don’t have money for a cab, I head back down the elevator and through the huge atrium in the bottom of the skyscraper and head out among the pre-zombified hordes as the sun sinks past its zenith and my phone pulses and Loren is asking Where r u? for the second time.
*
WE MEET AT the café in the building where U2 did that gig on the roof and there is enough memorabilia in the place to make the owners a small fortune on eBay. Nonetheless, they are still over-using the coffee grounds and my drink smells like an ashtray and Loren has hardly touched her hot chocolate or the cheesecake I bought her. Things feel about as romantic as the booth with the two old dudes in it from The Muppet Show. I slide the cheesecake back over to myself and pick up the fork for lack of anything else to say.
“I was going to eat that,” Loren says.
“Today?”
“It’s better at room temperature.”
“Sorry. I’m hungry.”
“You must be getting your appetite back,” she says and doesn’t meet my eye because we both know this is a dig about my lack of powers.
“Yeah,” I say without much sprightliness and stab the small fork into the edge of the dessert. “What’s going on at Dread Central?”
“We’ve got to talk about that.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say and chew for a moment. “My marching orders.”
“It’s not just you.”
“You too, huh?”
I stab, chew, swallow, and when I move again, Loren’s still looking at me so I give a shrug.
“What?”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I have these guys rebuilding my, uh, family home, but apparently the costs and stuff, I’m about twenty grand short, which is about the same price as the roof, so. . . .”
“Short term?”
“Short term? Fuck. I don’t know. Really, in lots of ways, somewhere to sleep is like the last thing on my mind.”
“I know you’re really bummed about losing your powers.”
She reaches across and I am obliged to put down the fork and let her take my hand, her cool fingers massaging across the top of my callused knuckles.
I reply, “And I know it seems like you were never happier, losing yours.”
Loren smiles and tilts her head, a professional headshot, honey-drizzled wheat-colored hair spraying loose below the plait at her temple.
“Look what I got in return,” she says.
“Uh-huh. Yeah,” I say with barely mustered enthusiasm and wince as she squeezes my hand and then interlocks her fingers and leans earnestly on the table.
“I was thinking we could get a place together,” Loren says.
My hand pauses midway to the fork and my eyes remain on the gelatinous temptation of the half-eaten chocolate Bavarian.
“Um, yeah?”
“We have to look at the rest of our lives,” Loren says with growing energy. She’s not afraid to sound pre-rehearsed as she adds, “Your powers might well come back, but mine, we know they’re gone forever. I have to think about what I want to do and things I’ve never had to worry about before. Like money.”
She pulls that little sad face she sometimes uses and I sigh and drop the fork hard enough on the table that it clatters, dancing across the laminate leaving little creamy marks like an augury indicating some unseen and impossible future.
“You mean like a job?”
“I had a
higher calling,” Loren says and, for a moment, reminds me of the remote and aloof beauty I had once thought it safe to desire. “I’m not sure how I recapture that without my powers, but that’s my challenge.”
“I wish I had half as much an idea about what to do as you,” I reply and almost startle myself with the honesty of the statement.
“I’ve circled a few places going cheap near the water in Van Buren.”
“Van Buren?”
My eyes widen of their own volition and I look down, remaining astonished as the newspaper comes down between us covered in small red circles.
“That’s like the one place even the Kirlians didn’t want to touch,” I remark.
“That joke’s pretty old, Joe,” Loren says in the voice she reserves for speaking to animals and retarded people. “Considering our budget, I think we’d be doing pretty well, and there are loft apartments overlooking the water.”
“The harbor.”
“Sure.”
She studies my face for signs and it turns into a staring match, me desperate to give away nothing and her changing the angle and squinting as she tries to sift my expression for clues.
“Got some time free tomorrow morning?”
*
I CALL TESSA again, but there’s no answer and then I look up sharply as the people around me gasp and point and some guy in blue with a cloak flies over fast and somewhere there is a muffled explosion and a few car alarms start up along the street and I bury my face in the raised collar of my anorak as the pedestrians chew their collective cud and I hurry along to the subway.
There is a pay phone in the subway and an actual honest-to-God directory hanging from a chain amid the graffiti and my percolating thoughts cohere at this exact moment and the fortune of the universe shines upon me in the shape of the quarter in my pocket and I dig through the pages of the book until I find the number I am looking for. Then the phone is ringing and again I am in luck.
How do you contact the Nightwatchman?
You call his mother.
“Mrs Rushbaum? Uh, my name’s Joe. I’m an old friend of Geoffrey’s. Is he around? Or do you know how I could find him?”
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