It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  At a crash of thunder Skinny jumps, then giggles for being skittish. She turns on the radio, leaves the dial at Rudy Vallee, lights another cigarette. When she finds the energy she’ll call the hotel kitchen and order up room service. It’s too bad about Willi. She wishes she could do something. What, though?

  3

  At the Palomar Ballroom, Charlie Brunner (Skinny’s “gun,” of course, was only a novelty lighter) doesn’t realize that it’s raining out till he looks down from the bandstand around ten o’clock and sees wet hair on dancers crowding the floor. So far tonight he’s made a lot of chart errors, missed his solo cue twice. Because all he can think about is Skinny and how she can put him in prison. He blew up a house, maybe killed somebody! He could rot in San Quentin! She promised she won’t tell, won’t make trouble for him if—if—he leaves her alone, agrees to a Reno divorce, agrees to alimony and then actually pays it. But can he trust her?

  Women.

  4

  Captain Gould, off duty, stands watching it rain through the sliding glass doors of the pool room at an exclusive men’s club in the San Fernando Valley. Wearing a robe of white Turkish toweling, he raptly gazes at the bazillion animated rings on the swimming pool water outside.

  Behind him a man steps naked from the sauna. He is extremely white, potbellied, fleshy. He has a long circumcised penis. “Did you have an opportunity to pass on my gift?”

  “I did indeed, Mr. Lansky.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Glad to do it. So. Did the two of you know each other back in New York?”

  Lansky doesn’t choose to reply. He raises a hand instead, languidly. “This rain! Maybe it’ll bring down the temperature.”

  “Just more humidity.”

  “Pessimist.” Lansky wags a finger. “Pfui on pessimists. They get you killed.”

  “I thought it was the optimists did that.”

  “You thought wrong.” He starts to go, shuffling off back toward the showers.

  “Mr. Lansky. Who is … Lou Dexter?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He’s a politician in New York. The Berg kid—”

  “Lex Luthor?”

  “That’s it. What do you know about him?”

  “Why are you asking? The Berg kid what?”

  “Said he didn’t kill anybody. That he was framed by this Lex Luthor, whoever he is.”

  “He’s an alderman. And the kid’s right. Which is too bad for the kid.”

  Meyer Lansky pads away.

  Gould resumes watching the rain plink rings in the swimming pool.

  5

  By morning the rain has stopped, the skies are clear, and it’s a glorious rinsed day in Los Angeles.

  Diana wakes to find herself alone in bed but then hears Clark directly below in the kitchen: the refrigerator door closing, a cabinet door opening. She smiles and stretches.

  After showering, she dresses in black slacks and a green blouse and goes downstairs. At the kitchen doorway she stops dead in her tracks. “Today, my friend, I am definitely going out and buying you some real clothes.”

  Clark has put on that Saucer-Man costume, the blue tights with the red trunks, the yellow belt, a red S inside a black shield appliquéd to the chest. He turns from the stove where he’s using a whisk to scramble eggs. “Fits good,” he says.

  “Like a glove. You could get arrested for indecent exposure.”

  She has embarrassed him and he loves it. “But I got a question. What’s the S stand for—Saucer-Man or Saturn?”

  “Take your pick.”

  “Okay,” says Clark, “but why would they even have the letter S—if they’re from Saturn? I mean, do they write in English there?”

  She sticks out her tongue and says, “Shut up and feed me, mister.”

  Using a spatula, he shovels the eggs—slightly watery, a little charred—onto her plate and his. “There’s toast. And coffee. Anything else?”

  “Only you.”

  He blushes again. Then, reaching behind him, he sweeps aside the long red cape before sitting down at the table.

  “Personally I never liked capes,” says Diana, watching Clark finally just hang it over the back of his chair. “But they always want villains and spacemen to wear them, don’t ask me how come.”

  “I think they’re great. Way better than neckties.”

  Diana takes a sip of her coffee. Smiles again. God, she feels like a smiling fool. Last night was so—

  “Listen,” says Clark, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Always a dangerous thing.” When he frowns, Diana adds, “Don’t mind me. Thinking about what?”

  “I have to go get Willi.”

  Diana smiles—again! The guy is completely adorable. Too bad he’s nuts. “Clark. Sweetheart. You can’t just go bust your pal out of jail.”

  “But he’s innocent!”

  “So you told me. You still can’t do it.”

  “No,” says Clark. “See, that’s the thing: I can. I really can.”

  And suddenly Diana is no longer smiling.

  6

  Clark sits on a cliff at Bronson Canyon, a short distance from Hollywood. Legs dangling, he stares at the green lagoon fifty feet below, then out to the rough, undulating, boulder-strewn wasteland beyond, where most of the Poverty Row studios film their western chases. He’s worked here a dozen times over the past seven months, has in fact leapt from this very cliff, pretending to be shot.

  Clark was pretty awkward at first. Yakima Canutt kept saying he didn’t know how in hell Clark hadn’t broken his collarbone, at the very least, toppling off that Indian pony, the driver’s box on that Wells Fargo stage, that promontory. In time, though, he got better—so good he was bombarded with offers of work, too many for Clark’s liking. But it sure was nice making money.

  Not that he has any of it now. He kept all of his savings at home, and now that his home is gone, blown to smithereens, his cash is gone, too.

  After breakfast Diana went out and bought him some new clothes—the shirt and trousers, socks and shoes he’s wearing now. She also gave him a hundred bucks. He promised to pay her back as soon as he could. She said don’t worry about it. No, he said, he wanted to. She nodded, not smiling, and because he was so crazy about it she made him a gift of the Saucer-Man costume, acrobat’s cape and all. She stuffed it into a string bag and threw in a pair of shiny red boots that belonged to another costume from another picture she worked on, Santa Claus vs. the Gila Martians.

  He left her bungalow a short time later.

  He purses his lips now and sighs, rattling the dusty leaves on a yucca tree some forty feet away. Two of them break off and flutter to the ground.

  The idea of rescuing Willi makes Clark sick to his stomach. He may never have experienced the majority of natural aches and activities—he’s never hiccupped, never had the sniffles, he doesn’t need to shave more than once a month—but he knows about feeling nauseous and he knows about headaches and he knows about strained nerves. And right now he knows about all of those things all over again.

  What if somebody gets hurt or killed while he’s trying to break Willi Berg out of the L.A. County Jail? He’d feel so guilty, such Methodist guilt! What if they put him in jail for life and his lifetime is two hundred years! (Yeah, but—how could they keep him there?)

  Without Willi around he doesn’t have anyone to fret to. He used to fret to his mom, hardly ever to his dad. But even with them he felt they couldn’t understand how strange, how lonesome it is being one of a kind. Being singular has always made Clark feel as though he’s not quite genuine, that he’s a made-up character in a story. And that’s hard. Especially since he’s not smart the way that he feels he should be, all things being equal. Intelligence to match his physical powers: is that too much to ask?

  Maybe he should start wearing glasses.

  Getting to his feet, Clark looks out across the canyon, a landscape that always seems to him both magical and personal since it is identical to the one, it
is the one, that he used to see in western serials and African-safari movies on Saturdays at the Jewel. He notices a crevice in a rock formation and can imagine the Lone Ranger or the Laughing Caballero ducking inside while dodging a hail of bullets.

  Tucking his elbows against his ribs, he crouches, trembles, and leaps. When he lands on a boulder down below, the soles of his new shoes give him no traction. Swooping both arms for balance, he flings off his string bag and sends it whizzing a hundred feet down the canyon. Clark hops to the ground and retrieves it. Then decides to jump from here to that shelf of granite down there and does, kicking up alkaline dust behind him. Leaping from outcrop to boulder to boulder to outcrop, he makes his way ever farther down the canyon. He doesn’t notice when yet another long jump becomes a very high jump, but all of a sudden he’s rising straight up into the air, the clouds. A small tickling electrical charge starts pulsing around his body, his velocity becoming so extravagant so quickly that his shirt and trousers and shoes all seethe from the friction. Without conscious thought, Clark tucks his head toward his left shoulder, makes a fist with his left hand, and his body immediately follows that direction. A few dozen starlings burst apart just moments before he passes through the flock.

  He can fly!

  But now he’s plummeting. A moment later he hits the ground and keeps going, shredding his clothes, burrowing deeper and pulverizing bedrock before coming to a stop twenty feet underground at an oblique angle.

  Clawing his way back to the surface, Clark pulls himself from the hole he made and sits on the edge of it, covered with dirt and earthworms and beetles.

  Whoa.

  He gets up at last and dusts himself off, locates Diana’s string bag tangled on the branch of a low, stunted tree and starts to hike back toward the cliff by the lagoon. He hasn’t gone twenty feet when he stops again. He looks at the rags on his body, he looks at the bag in his hand, then looks around for a cave he remembers being catapulted, literally catapulted, from during a mine explosion scene in Law West of the Pecos.

  Even though there is nobody around to see him, he’d feel funny stripping down and changing clothes right out here in the open.

  XVIII

  A secret investigation is revealed. The Ghost Gang

  strikes. A new beau for Lois. Mrs. O’Shea and the

  dangerous caller. Jailbreak. A defrocked priest.

  ●

  1

  “Mr. Mayor,” intones Dick Sandglass, then he stops and sips from a glass of water. Begins again: “… Mr. Mayor,” trying for a looser sound, “there is a ghost gang operating in this city and …” Try it again, he thinks, and this time without the melodrama. “Sir, I have proof in this envelope here that a secret gang of criminals is operating in this city—a ghost gang, if you will, and … And … ?” He makes a face, all chagrin, then sticks out his tongue, razzing himself in his bureau mirror.

  After looping a Windsor knot in his maroon tie and fitting the knot against his throat, Sandglass pulls his suit jacket from the bedpost and puts it on, smoothing the front, shooting the cuffs. He studies himself again, squaring his shoulders. “Mr. Mayor … Mayor La Guardia, thank you for agreeing to meet with me tonight. Sir, there is a ghost gang operating in Greater New York that has been systematically eliminating all of its criminal competition.” Damn, he sounds like Tom Dewey. Or Lowell Thomas. Relax.

  The mayor has agreed to see Dick Sandglass under the conditions the detective proposed to the mayor’s secretary: on the weekend, absent any staff, and with no record of the meeting entered on any appointment calendar. Tonight, seven-thirty, the mayor’s apartment.

  It’s twenty past six.

  “Mayor, for two years and completely on my own time and at my own expense, I have been collecting evidence that I believe proves the existence of a … let’s call it a ghost gang operating here in our city.”

  Still not right.

  Firing a cigarette, he goes and flicks through half a hundred shellac recordings cataloged alphabetically, finally selecting “Ring Dem Bells” by the Duke Ellington Orchestra with a Cootie Williams vocal. He slaps it down and cranks up the Victrola, sets the needle carefully in the lead-in groove. Sitting directly in front of the horn, Sandglass lets the music hit him square in the chest. Soon he’s drumming on his thighs right along with Sonny Greer. He thinks of a woman he knows, a singer, but quickly puts her out of his mind. And thinks of Lex Luthor, then of Mayor La Guardia and their meeting tonight.

  His hands quit drumming.

  It’s quarter of seven.

  “Mr. Mayor, I have with me this evening damning proof that a man trusted by the citizens of this city, trusted by you yourself, sir, has abused that sacred trust and … and has been positioning himself to become absolute king of the New York rackets. And that man, I am sorry to tell you, sir, is none other than—”

  “That’s when shots ring out from behind a curtain and you fall dead, Pop.”

  “Hey, kid, when did you get back?”

  “Few minutes ago.” Spider Sandglass stands in the bedroom doorway with his arms crossed and a smile on his face. A paintbrush-size hank of black hair flops across his forehead, the rest glistens with Brylcreem. He needs a haircut. He needs better posture. He needs a job. Ah, leave the kid alone, thinks Dick Sandglass. He’s trying.

  “Go on, Pop, it sounded good. Who’s the mystery villain?”

  “You don’t think I sounded like, I don’t know, some guy in the movies?”

  “No, it was great. Very professional.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, really, you sounded great. Before you know it you’ll be chief of police.”

  “Or wearing cement shoes in the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “Don’t even joke, Pop.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  Spider changes the subject. “You want something to eat?”

  “You kidding? With the butterflies in my stomach? You go ahead, though. There should be some chicken left.”

  “I finished that.”

  “Well, then you’ll just have to look and see what’s there.”

  Spider has been living with his father for three, going on four months now, since he got out of prison with time off for good behavior. He was only supposed to stay here briefly, just till he found some work, but so far he hasn’t. Yeah, and who’s going to hire an ex-con? Lay off, thinks Sandglass. He’s your kid and you love him. And he loves you. Maybe.

  When Dick Sandglass goes down the short hall five minutes later to say goodbye, he first asks Spider, “How much of what I was saying did you hear?”

  “There’s a ghost gang in town. Where’d you get that?”

  “What, ‘ghost gang’? You don’t like it?” His attention is partly diverted by a song on the radio. Ben Pollack, maybe. Or Jean Goldkette. “You don’t like ‘ghost gang’?”

  “It’s a little corny.”

  “So I won’t use it.” Sandglass walks over to the icebox, puts his file down on top of it next to the radio, and then twists up the tiny volume knob. He can’t help it, he’s just a music nut. “Thanks for telling your old man he’s corny.” And his first guess was right: it is Ben Pollack and His Park Central Orchestra. “Buy, Buy for Baby.” Belle Mann on vocals.

  “I was only kidding, Pop. It’s great. I can see it.” Lifting one hand, Spider separates his thumb and first finger by six inches. “Ghost Gang, headlines this big.”

  “You staying in tonight?” asks Sandglass. Spider is repeatedly dipping his hand into a box of Kellogg’s corn flakes. “Can’t you get a bowl for that? You ate out of a box in prison?”

  Spider doesn’t bother to answer those questions. “You really going to see the mayor?”

  “Yeah, I really am.”

  “Ever meet him before?”

  “Once, when he was a congressman. Hey, I got to run. See you when I get back.”

  Already Spider has turned his attention back to Ed Sullivan’s column in the Daily News spread out on the kitchen table. He doesn’t see the
old man go out, but ten seconds later, for some unknown reason, he feels it necessary to glance up at the wall clock. When he does he notices that his father left the envelope he was carrying on top of the icebox.

  Sir, I have proof in this envelope here …

  Theirs is a front-facing apartment on Second Street just off the Bowery, and Spider flings up the kitchen window to see if he can still catch his father.

  “Hey, Pop!” he hollers down five stories just as a black Hudson pulls to the curb in front of Dick Sandglass and two men run up from behind him, probably from the next doorway, grab his arms, pinion them both, then drag him across the pavement and fling him into the back of the big car.

  Standing at the window in shock, holding the fat envelope in his right hand, Spider Sandglass knows with utter certainty that this is the last time he will ever see his father alive.

  2

  Back in mid-July Lois Lane found herself in possession of two press tickets to the Sunday matinee of a struggling Broadway show. She went—why not? there was nothing else doing—but she went alone. Everyone she’d asked to come along said no, thanks. The reviews for Never Too Tired, yet another society comedy by David Nero and S. B. Dillon, had been universally stinko. By intermission she was agreeing with the critics. Even Frank Conlan and Ilka Chase couldn’t save the damn thing. Who cared about Mainline Philadelphians anymore? Whether they got amnesia or committed adultery? When people were starving, out of work, living on the bum, that stuff seemed worse than trite, it seemed tasteless. Maybe she wouldn’t even stick around. She didn’t have to see it through to the end. Was there some law? She was waiting on line at the lobby bar thinking maybe she wouldn’t bother getting a drink, she’d just go home, when a man behind her said, “Your name is Lois, correct?”

  She turned and, yes, she knew that she knew him, but couldn’t place him: a tall, good-looking blond in his middle twenties, that chiseled Nordic look except for the spray of mick freckles on his cheeks. He was wearing a gun-club-check jacket and dark blue slacks. When she noticed his shoes, though—his black boatlike shoes—Lois placed him easily: he’d been the cop sitting guard outside Willi Berg’s hospital room two years ago. He’d made her leave her purse with him, which she hadn’t minded doing since he was cute and seemed genuinely apologetic.