It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  “Oh hello!” she said, adding, “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”

  As soon as he told her, she thought, Lois Jaeger, because that kind of thing, sounding out her possible married name, had been instinctual with her since she was twelve. Just an old stupid habit. It wasn’t like she was looking to get married, she had a career, thank you very much. Lois Jaeger. It wasn’t bad, though, and neither was he.

  When Ben Jaeger asked how she liked the show, Lois wrinkled her nose. He laughed: his sentiments exactly. Then he asked her if she wanted to go for a drink, even an early supper.

  Why not?

  Until their fourth date, when he took her to see the Giants play (first time anyone she knew ever suggested doing that), Ben Jaeger never brought up Willi Berg’s name. She had been expecting him to, of course, and the fact that he had not led her to wonder with increasing unease if she were being used somehow to run Willi down. But at the Polo Grounds that afternoon Ben suddenly mentioned his boss Richard Sandglass, saying that Sandglass still hoped Willi Berg would come back to town, voluntarily resurface. Sandglass, Ben told her, might be able to help Willi out of his jam.

  Lois said, “Are you asking me to pass on a message? Because Mr. Sandglass has already asked me to do the same thing.”

  “It’s lieutenant,” said Jaeger. “Lieutenant Sandglass.”

  “Yeah? And if I want to call him mister, I will. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Are you saying you’re in touch with him still?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “I’m not some fly dick, Lois, going out with you to catch a crook, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Lois nodded vaguely and gazed out over the astonishing green turf of the outfield, the whiteness of the base bags, listening to the whooping roll of the pipe organ over the P.A. system. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I was suggesting.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “And I’m not in touch with Willi Berg, either.”

  “Damn, I’ve wasted all this time!”

  She poked him in the ribs, and they watched the rest of the game, Giants 4, Boston Braves, 3.

  Ten weeks of twice-weekly dates later: early Saturday evening, October the first. After taking in the new Van Gogh exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Lois and Ben walk down Sixth Avenue for a while. Then Ben checks his watch and says he really should make a phone call—does Lois mind? It will only take a minute. He just needs to “check in.” He doesn’t say with whom.

  And now he’s talking excitedly to someone he calls “Spider” from a booth at the rear of an Irish bar just off Times Square. The air is full of tumbling steam and heavy with the odor of boiled cabbage. He says into the telephone receiver, “It’ll be all right,” and Lois tugs on his belt loop, asking, “What? What’s the matter?”

  Ben’s face is ghastly pale when he hangs up. “Lois, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to get home by yourself.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Ben.”

  So he tells her, “Something might’ve happened to the lieutenant. I’m going to his apartment.”

  “Let me come.”

  “No.”

  They push their way down the length of the crowded barroom, Ben leading, clearing a passage, Lois tagging close behind.

  Outside on Broadway near the corner of West Forty-eighth Street, Ben steps off the curb and hails a Checker. He puts Lois in while looking over the cab roof to see if he can spot a patrol car to commandeer. Then he bends down, leans into the taxi, and kisses her. “I’ll call you later.”

  Lois has taken out a notepad, already flipped through several pages, and says to Jaeger, “Richard Sandglass, 28 East Second Street. Need a lift?”

  “Lois, don’t. This is serious. I’ll call you.”

  Lois tells the hackie, “Twenty-eight East Second, that’s right off the Bowery.”

  Up until fifteen seconds ago she had considered Ben Jaeger her boyfriend, and not because they’ve gone all the way, because they still haven’t, not all the way, but because she knows his birthday—October the fifth—and for weeks has been trying to think of the perfect gift. Now, though, she’s less sure. Maybe he’s not her boyfriend.

  “And driver, put on some speed.”

  3

  “Pop just said he was going out. That’s all he told me.”

  “He never mentioned he was going to see the mayor?”

  “La Guardia? No.”

  “Spider, did you recognize either of the men?”

  “No. Two guys. Hats, coats.”

  Ben Jaeger rubs a hand across his forehead, then palms it over the top of his head, flattening his hair. “What kind of hats?”

  “Hats. Men’s hats.”

  Lois, who is sitting with them both at the kitchen table—she arrived at the Sandglass apartment a full ten minutes before Ben did—smiles now at Spider and asks him, “How was he dressed, your dad? Was he wearing his uniform?”

  “No, his good suit. His only suit. Pop used to call it his funeral suit—you know, because it’s black and he only wears it when he’s going to wakes and funerals.”

  Jaeger says, “Lois, I’m asking the questions, all right?”

  Lois shrugs but wants to kick him.

  “Spider, this is important,” says Ben. “Did your father take anything with him—a big envelope?”

  “I don’t know,” says Spider, reaching for a carton of breakfast cereal, then looking down into it, checking if there are flakes still left. “I didn’t see any envelope.” He stares past Ben through the open kitchen window. “No,” he says, “I don’t remember seeing any envelope.”

  4

  Mrs. O’Shea’s husband, Denholm, is languishing in state prison at SingSing, has been for the past three years, and will be for the next forty-seven. Denny O’Shea killed a union organizer on the West Side docks—deliberately went after the guy, chased him for a block, then chopped off his head with a shed cutter ordinarily used to trim cabbage. He went down for depraved homicide.

  Afterward Mrs. O’Shea found employment at the Straubenmuller Textile High School on West Eighteenth Street. She supervised the kitchen, maintained the on-premises fabrics museum, and devised a streamlined accounting system that saved the arithmetically challenged principal hundreds of hours of headaches. Just about a year ago, however, an audit of the high school’s finances revealed that Mrs. O’Shea had embezzled Straubenmuller out of nearly twenty thousand dollars, which she’d used to buy a summer home in Deal, New Jersey.

  Lex Luthor heard about the crime during idle chitchat with an old-time ward-heeler in the district.

  The following afternoon Lex visited Mrs. O’Shea in the House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village and made her a proposition: in return for his covering her debt to the city and ensuring that all criminal charges against her would be dropped, she would come to work for him. She started to answer yes immediately, but he raised his hand and stopped her. “No, listen to me first,” he said. “If you come to work for me, you have to know something.”

  “That you’re a criminal. Yes,” she said, “I guessed as much. I understand what that means, Alderman, and I accept your offer.”

  Lex never forgave her for that, for having “guessed as much.” And how had she guessed? Of course, he asked her.

  “It takes one to know one,” she said. Then she said, “Do you remember the first time we met?”

  “The first time we’ve met, madam, is today. Right now.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said met. The first time you saw me.”

  He was waiting with one eyebrow lifted.

  “You saw me at the high school’s Christmas Bazaar last December. You were there shaking hands. I was manning the silent-auction table.” She took out a cigarette but he told her to put it away. She laughed. But did as she was told. “I saw you ask the principal who I was.”

  Lex suddenly grinned. “You’re right. I d
id. I said, ‘My God, that woman over there just gave me a start. She looks exactly the way my mother looked at fifty.’ ”

  Mrs. O’Shea’s face drained.

  She never would—or ever did—quite forgive him for that …

  This Saturday evening while Lex is away having dinner with Joseph P. Kennedy and Gloria Swanson, Mrs. O’Shea avails herself of the Waldorf premises—bathes in the master bath with the solid-gold taps, fixes a chicken sandwich and a potent Manhattan, and then gets comfortable on the sofa in the living room, settling in with the Nero Wolfe novel she’s currently reading. She hasn’t gotten far, three or four chapters, and is looking forward to finishing it tonight.

  Then the telephone rings.

  Mrs. O’Shea checks her wristwatch—ten past eight—and considers letting it ring out, but it could be her lord and master checking in.

  “Luthor residence.”

  “Let me talk to the alderman.”

  “I’m sorry, the alderman is not at home. And for your information, whoever you are, when you call someone you should say who’s calling. That’s just common courtesy. Who is this, please?”

  But whoever it is—it sounds like a young man—says, “I’ll call back” and breaks the connection.

  He calls back ten seconds later.

  “Where’s he gone to? When’s he coming home? Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

  “Didn’t I just instruct you in telephone etiquette?”

  “Lady, don’t start.”

  “I’m hanging up right now. You’re just plain rude.”

  “No, wait! My name is Steven Sandglass! Is this Mrs. Luthor?”

  “This is Mr. Luthor’s personal assistant.”

  “Can you tell me where he is? I need to talk to him—tonight.”

  “Mr. Sandglass, I’m certainly not telling you where the alderman is. Just what exactly is the nature of your business with him?”

  “The nature of my business? The nature of my business, lady, is that I want my father back. Your boss kidnapped my pop, and if he’s hurt him I swear to God all the stuff in this envelope I have right here in my hand is going straight to the mayor. And I’m not bluffing!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want to speak with Lex Luthor tonight.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Then the next time you see him, he’ll be in jail.”

  Mrs. O’Shea takes a sip from her Manhattan, switches the receiver to her left ear. “Listen to me—what did you say your name was?”

  “Sandglass, Steven Sandglass, but people call me Spider.”

  “And how old are you, Mr. Sandglass?”

  “What’s that got to do—?”

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Then people shouldn’t be calling you Spider. Now listen to me—are you listening? If you would like to live to be twenty-five, I wouldn’t go around making these kinds of threats, not to me, not to Alderman Luthor, and not in the city of New York.”

  “I want my father back. And then he can have the file. I’m calling back in an hour, and Lex Luther better answer this phone.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up your phone.”

  “Who are you, telling me what to do?”

  He hangs up.

  Mrs. O’Shea replaces the handset, then stands up from her chair, plants her hands on her hips, and glares at the telephone. “You ring right back, do you hear me?”

  The phone rings.

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me again,” she says after she’s snatched up the receiver again.

  “Mrs. O’Shea?”

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Yes, it’s me. Has Paulie phoned in?”

  “No,” she says, “he has not.”

  “Any other calls?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then who was it that hung up on you?”

  “I do have a personal life.”

  “Oh? How nice for you. But Mrs. O? Do not conduct it on my telephone.”

  “Good night, Mr. Luthor,” she says and presses the disconnect toggle.

  Then she looks at her book and shrugs. The League of Frightened Men will have to wait.

  Then the phone rings again.

  5

  In Los Angeles, where it is just a few minutes past five in the afternoon, Captain Gould is staring at a big hole in the exterior wall of a cell on the felony block of the county jail, while behind him a guard is saying there were a dozen reports of a guy in tights and a cape floating around outside, looking into one cell after another until he found the one he was looking for. This one.

  Gould turns around. “Did you say a floating man?”

  “Yes, sir, and he had a big red S on the front of his shirt.”

  On his way out of Willi Berg’s cell, Captain Gould notices an empty Camels packet lying crumpled on the painted cement floor.

  6

  Earlier this evening at dinner, Joe Kennedy told Lex that while Hitler was clearly a lunatic, Nazism was a sound, even a scientific response to the world economic crisis and the very real threat of international communism. He said there were executives and leaders in Germany, both in the Reich and in private corporations, that wide-awake Americans could feel altogether comfortable dealing with. “I’ll gladly arrange for any contacts you might wish to make,” he said. Lex said he did appreciate the kind offer and would definitely take him up on it. He was, he said, most interested in raising investment capital. Kennedy leaned across the restaurant table, eager to hear more. Lex smiled, paused significantly, then said, “I’m involved in something that you, yourself, may like to own a piece of. Considering that it’s certain to be the next … essential thing.”

  “You mean television?” said Kennedy.

  Lex pursed his lips, retracted them; leaned back in his chair, spread his hands, and said: “Robots.”

  “I love robots!” said Gloria Swanson.

  “Of course you do,” said Lex. “Everyone does.”

  And that included Joseph Kennedy, who could see to coughing up at least a quarter of a million dollars.

  Altogether an excellent evening. Very excellent.

  When he arrives back at the Waldorf just before midnight, Lex is in an expansive mood. But the moment he steps into the foyer of his suite in the Towers his face drops. The nine framed linoleum cuts by Reginald Marsh (rainy street scenes) have been removed from their hooks and are stacked on the floor. Impaled now on the brass picture hooks are photostatic copies of several incorporation documents along with private laboratory reports whose subject, he sees upon closer inspection, is fingerprint matching.

  Slowly he follows the trail of documents down the hallway. Just outside his office, photographs are tacked up around the doorframe the way some people display Christmas cards. They are pictures, many looking as though they were taken from behind potted palms, of Lex Luthor huddled in conversations with Mussolini’s first cousin, with investment bankers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker and a representative of a Berlin chemical factory, with two mafia godfathers and a notorious madam.

  The door to Lex’s office, usually shut and locked, is partly open.

  He pushes it the rest of the way with his fingertips.

  Mrs. O’Shea is seated behind the desk. She has on a glen-plaid business suit, a white shirt, and a gray tie that Lex recognizes as his own. In front of her is a delicate hand-painted coffee cup on a saucer. A matching cup is lying on its rim on the white pile rug near a brown stain that still looks wet.

  Also lying on the rug is the rigid body of a young man in his early twenties. His eyes bulge, and his clenched teeth are flecked with dried foam.

  “Have a seat, Lex. We need to talk.”

  “And this young man is … ?”

  “Steven Sandglass. He said you kidnapped his father.”

  “Steven Sandglass.”

  “Yes. But called Spider by his friends. He brought over a certain envelope he thought you’d be
interested in.”

  “Ransom.”

  “So he was hoping. Now won’t you have a seat?”

  “Poison?”

  Mrs. O’Shea blinks, then sits up straighter. “I convinced him I was shocked. Assured him that his father was still alive—he’s not, is he?”

  “No.”

  “Then I offered him a cup of coffee.”

  “And now there’s a dead body in my office.” Lex stands near it, looking down. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  “I could, you know, remove all of those documents from the wall and call the cops. You poisoned your faithless young lover. He was about to dump you. It’ll be a scandal but I’ll survive.”

  Mrs. O’Shea’s face goes slack. She stands up behind the desk. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Why not? What’s the alternative?” He takes out his linen handkerchief, stoops down, and lays it over the coffee stain. He picks up the cup and sniffs. “I asked you, what’s my alternative course?”

  “You call Paulie and he takes the body off the dumbwaiter in the basement, we get a professional carpet shampoo, and from now on I’m a full partner.”

  “No,” says Lex. “I believe I’m still inclined to my suggestion. With the added element that you killed yourself afterward in fear of disgrace and the electric chair.”

  “Try and make me.”

  “He didn’t want money?”

  “Apparently just his dad returned unharmed.”

  Lex grins and finally sits down on one of the upholstered chairs along the wainscoting. “You know what’s funny?” says Lex.

  “No, what’s funny?”

  “I don’t even know your first name.”

  “Helen. It’s Helen.”

  He stretches out his legs, crosses his feet over his ankles, and stares at Spider Sandglass. “Helen,” says Lex. “Well, well.”