I had seen this before and knew to get clear and stay clear until Gambrelli’s anger had claimed enough victims to cool his wrath.
Gambrelli’s head fell into his hands and he tried to calm himself, but that didn’t seem to work. He looked out the corner of his eye at the family pictures around the booth and said, “Don’t you turn your backs on me!” It always freaked me out when he started talking to the walls like that.
* * *
That morning I had been scheduled for a brief interview with the mayor—apparently he wanted to keep his options open with all of my B.I.B. fans after the searchlight fiasco. As I entered his office, the mayor was watching a special report on a large TV.
“Today, police agents have captured twenty-seven alleged members of organized crime in the city. In what has been described as a massive sting operation, police used the transfer of Tony Turtulio to draw out the alleged gang members who allegedly tried to free him from a prison van. Never in the history of the city has there been such a large-scale apprehension of known criminals. Police predict that today’s sting will deal a major blow to criminal operations that will be felt for months or even years to come,” said Amanda James, the female reporter who had taken Janelle Roote’s spot on a live broadcast from police headquarters.
“Thank you, Amanda. Great news…And finally, some good news for our beleaguered mayor,” concluded the smiling male newsroom anchor.
As the anchor spoke, the mayor stood behind his desk and repeatedly pounded the back of his head into the wall before taking notice of my presence. He greeted me with a smile and firm handshake.
* * *
At the cellular phone company where I worked, I walked up to the old prune, supervisor of the customer service department, with a doctor’s note that explained why I had been late to work that morning.
“Late again, are we?”
“It’s all explained there in my doctor’s note. Sorry.”
The old prune gave me a good look over. The puffy, watery eyes, the red, runny nose, the mouth breathing, all seemed to confirm that I was truly sick. I could sense the wheels turning in her head. Did she want me to get back to work, or get away and not infect her with my cold? The thought made her hold my doctor’s note with two limp fingers at arm’s length. “Go on, then. Get back to work, but I don’t want to see you in my office until you’re no longer contagious! Do you know I haven’t had a cold in seven point eight years? And even then, I didn’t miss a tick of work. You should learn something from that! Now, go,” she said, pulling a tube of hand sanitizer out of her desk and rubbing it over her hands, “Go, get out of here.”
What she didn’t see were the wounds I had suffered in the battle with Gambrelli’s men. There were abrasions on my arms and legs and a knife slice on my side that I had stitched shut myself. Not to mention how much my fist hurt from pounding those losers. There were so many of them. I’ll bet it took over fifty seconds to hit them all.
Being a woman with superpowers and having to report to an asshole like this old prune for a paycheck could really be a bitch. But what was I supposed to do? Rob a bank? Hold up a convenience store? Even with superpowers, there was no way I would even let myself think about something like that. I’d gotten this far by swallowing my pride, putting up with idiots, and just doing my job. None of that seemed like it was going to change any time soon
* * *
The next morning, I, Logan, the media mogul, sat on my beat-up-but-comfy sofa in my boxers, sipping a cup of joe and reading the paper. The front page carried a big picture of Jimmy and Shaun smiling. Above it was the headline, “Local Boys Take a Bite Out of Crime.” Amazingly, the department’s attempt to spin the van event as a planned sting seemed to be holding up. I thought they wouldn’t even have had the nerve to try it, but it was working.
Anyone with common sense—no, even less than common sense—even an RFD could see that two officers could not take down the Gambrelli family in a morning. Had the B.I.B. come out and taken credit for the collars, everyone would have believed it in a second. But the fact that she hadn’t shown up at the Searchlight Event—and now, the fact that she’d failed to take credit for The Tool—meant that her window of opportunity for fame and fortune had passed. Worst of all, my T-shirt sales dipped…a lot. I had gotten used to having a little change to spend, and had no desire to go back to scraping for a living.
I was so concerned about my business that I played only one round of B.I.B. Rescue and three rounds of B.I.B. Pub Crawler before lunch and only twice that many in the afternoon. Rebecca had really perfected the games by now, including all sorts of real people from my past. What I didn’t tell her, she somehow knew. She was amazing. In Pub Crawler, I thought I had located the B.I.B. at Skelly’s, but I ran into the Nelson twins, and you could guess what happened…again. Those two (four) can drink.
I remember those two events, the searchlight and the twenty-seven collars, as being a temporary climax for the B.I.B., at least from my point of view
I didn’t see Dr. Jones for a while. The mayor had added him to his staff after realizing he needed something to rebuild his Swiss-cheesed image. His pollsters told him that the public would approve of further connection between him and the B.I.B. So he took on Jones.
For organized crime in Scranton, it was a consolidation. For Gregorio Gambrelli it was the end of a crime family. There is a military adage that I would have learned while studying at Penn State before being forced to Scranton by a lousy economy. If you cut an army off from its leadership and reduce the fighting force by half, even with the large number of men remaining, the army will, in effect, cease to function. That is what occurred. With all of Gambrelli’s middle managers in jail, he became separated from his foot soldiers. Other members of his organization fled, fearing that those in prison would be cutting deals. Thanks to the B.I.B., it wasn’t a good day to be on the wrong side of the law.
But it was a good day to be Carmine Camino. He had waited his turn, paid his dues, and here was his opportunity. Gambrelli was floundering, unable to control what was left of his organization, and the other crime families were like sharks smelling blood in the water. If it wasn’t Camino cutting his throat, it would have been somebody else, so…after Gambrelli’s second-in-command ended up swimming upside down in the Susquehanna, the Gambrelli foot soldiers, including Vito, jumped to get in line behind Camino. In a morning’s work, the B.I.B. had used Gambrelli’s overconfidence to bring him to his knees and lift Camino up into power.
Chapter 14
Frustration, Road Trip, Beer—Did I Mention Frustration?
For the B.I.B., it seemed to be a slow time as well, a time to reevaluate. There were far fewer sightings reported on my website. After the two days, I think she took a rest and began to evaluate what she was really doing.
In the days that followed, I even took occasion to visit the old barkeep at O’Malley’s. Whether I wanted to get connected with the place where I had last seen her or I really expected her to be there—or hoped the barkeep had seen her—I don’t know.
“Hey, how have you been?” I asked the old man.
“Respectable, I guess,” he said, wiping dry some glasses. It seemed as if he wasn’t sure how to take me.
“She been in lately?”
“She…? Oh, you mean the blond bird…Ms. Twenty I call her. Always remember a good tipper. No, I ain’t had the pleasure since that night. Shame.”
I handed him a hundred dollars and my new, fancy business card. “My offer is still good. She shows up, call me right away, and there’s another hundred in it for your trouble.”
“Like I said, always remember a good tip…but you ain’t always been a good tipper now, have ya? Must be doin’ all right for yourself.”
“Respectable,” I said, looking around and noting that the bar looked just as it did in the B.I.B. Pub Crawler game, right down to the tablecloths with stains and the RFD’s running head long into pillars.
* * *
Littl
e did he know that while he and the barkeep reminisced, no more than two blocks away, I sat drinking with my friends from work at Flanagan’s. Paige was at Kelly’s house for the weekend, so I felt I was due some fun, a break from the intensity of recent days I didn’t get out all that often, but on the occasions when I was available, my colleagues welcomed the opportunity to “put the antlers on” with me. I would transform from a shy, quiet type into a wise cracking showboat. Even if the only men we met were RFDs, we still had a good time.
On this night, I was feeling hemmed in with frustration. I knew I had helped, in fact, saved the lives of hundreds of people recently.. I had kept an airliner from crashing, brought a kidnapped little girl home to her mother, brought down a crime family, and exposed an inept and corrupt mayor, all within a matter of weeks. I had learned to use and focus my power. I had inspired the coolest video games, my fave being the Pub Crawler. Yet through it all, I felt empty.
Strange as it sounded, there it was. I did not feel joyous but, instead, frustrated and empty. Some crucial part of my life was missing. If I couldn’t even find myself on Pub Crawler, how would I ever find my purpose in the real world?
While my friends laughed and blew off steam from work, I sat and brooded.
I thought of Paige with her arms folded defensively, pouting about how little I understood her or satisfied her needs, while I had spent my entire life trying to do just that.
And what about my needs? In recent months, it had begun to take more and more to get me off. Sexual release of any type began to seem like a distant train disappearing in the night.
Then I remembered Old Prune Face and saw her stuffed in my beer bottle, her little head saying, “I have not been laid in sixty-seven point nine years!” I took a big sip from the bottle just to get rid of her. Now way I could let myself end up like her.
Despite the fact that I was surrounded by my friends, I felt totally alone. I had no one with whom I could share this mess. I’d become isolated. It was frustrating to be so powerful, yet feel so helpless.
I concluded that I just needed some time to blow off some steam, not overanalyze, and just “be” for the next few days. I was going to have some fun—real fun. The kind that had become difficult for me recently. . I downed the remaining half of my Miner’s Lite in one long drag. “I deserve some fun,” I said to myself and struck a perfect fish face, complete with moving mouth, for my friends, who roared their approval.
* * *
I sat at my kitchen table accompanied by a twelve-ounce, tasty bottled friend, checking out the news on my laptop when the first reports started coming in of Miner’s Lite beer trucks falling from the sky—minus their drivers and their cargo. The first couple of news reports came in time for the late night news, and were covered the way one would cover an elaborate practical joke or an event like a charity domino fall. But when they continued all weekend, the tone of the coverage gained concern, and commentators began to discuss criminal charges. As the B.I.B. had dropped a beer truck before—and was forever bonded to Miner’s Lite in the public imagination by the picture from Skelly’s featured on the B.I.B. T-shirts—it became a foregone conclusion that the B.I.B. was responsible. In fact, there was no other suspect possible as far as most people were concerned. As the media loves to tarnish and bring down the image of actors charged with DUIs or caught in affairs with nannies, they loved to rip at the image of the B.I.B. When a truck fell in the playground of a then-closed day care center, smashing the swings and teeter-totter, the local news outlets erupted in an uproar over what could have happened, had the center been open.
Over the weekend, more and more people were saying that the B.I.B. was not above the law and needed to be brought to justice. It was the random, unsuspecting appearance of the trucks that made their menace frightening, like walking into a minefield, where any step a person took could be their last, without warning; even while just sitting in their houses, no one felt safe.
Sunday night’s news reported that the mayor would hold a news conference the next morning.
Rebecca added falling beer trucks to the hazards on the B.I.B. Rescue game.* * *
I awoke uncertainly, not feeling much like a super hero. My eyes were fogged and my head pounded. I felt my stomach rumbling. I knew I was lying in a dark, cluttered bedroom, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. Where it was, when it was, or how it had become so, I had no idea. Next, I put together that I was naked, lying on my stomach, and the heavy drapes had been drawn. Beyond them, I could see sunshine through the cracks. With effort, I righted myself and sat on the edge of the bed, resting my head in my hands, then pushing back a mop of hair. I sighed and then rose, with considerable effort. I staggered a few feet to the window, fingered back the drape, and saw a midday street in Las Vegas below. The row of theme hotels and casinos made it unmistakable.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled to myself, sobering up some. I moved around the hotel room finding my clothes, yet somehow missed my panties. I decided to get dressed anyway and venture out to find whatever enlightening discoveries awaited me outside the door.
I paused at the door and then pulled it open to reveal the living room of a hotel suite. Ten feet to my left stood a young, thin, college-aged man in his boxer shorts. When he looked over and saw me, panic ran over his face. He groaned, cupped his hands around his genitals, and slowly backed away from me, as if I were an enraged bear. He backed into the bathroom and closed and locked the door. To my right, another young man dropped from the sofa like a fish dropping to the deck of a boat. He grunted, dragging himself and a nonfunctioning leg behind the protection of the sofa. I stood in startled amazement, trying to figure out the scene. Then, from the kitchen, a third college boy wearing only sweat pants slid toward me and spoke. “Good afternoon,” was all he said.
“Good afternoon,” I said, walking toward him slowly. “This may sound a bit silly, but maybe you can help me out here.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ve figured out that this is Las Vegas, but I have no idea what day it is, or who you are.”
The young man took a couple of steps toward me, hunched over with dark circles surrounding his eyes. “I’m Kevin. The dude in the bathroom is Josh. Cory’s behind the sofa. And Matt was the guy we dropped off at the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Oh right, dude, you probably don’t remember him. That’s cool…Anyway, they say he should be able to walk again with some good old physical therapy.”
I pointed at him and his hunched back. “Did I do this to you?”
Kevin smiled, “Oh yeah, dude. You drained me, I’ll bet…just got raisins down there now. But it’s cool.”
“Sorry, I’m really sorry…Rough night, I guess.”
“Rough? Oh yeah, rough…” He smiled again, nodding. “You know, rough doesn’t really cover it….awesome, it was awesome. I never saw a chick move like that.” Then he stared at the floor. “They’ll probably make us pay for those holes in the ceiling. My dad’s really gonna be pissed…But still, it was worth it.”
“What day is this?” I asked, running my fingers through my hair.
“It’s a righteous Sunday afternoon in Vegas, man…” He took a drink from a beer. “Can I get you one? You were downing them like a pro last night. Never seen a chick drink like that before either.” He indicated the table, which was covered with empty Miner’s Lite bottles, and a few that were unopened as well.
“Have you seen my coat, my bag?”
“Over by the door.”
“Well, thank you…Kevin. I best be going,” I said, backing away, red faced and awkward.
When I reached the door, Kevin took a couple of steps forward and asked, ”Hey, can I call you in a month if my back is up to it?”
“Sweet…but I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.”
“It’s cool.”
With that, I left the college boys and headed down the hotel hallway, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. It made sense t
hat I, in my drunken logic, had picked Las Vegas, because no one knew me there; what happens in Vegas…you know. But why the college boys? Probably because of my recent problems with men—I had reasoned that maybe four or five healthy young men might get the job done. But by the looks of those boys that morning—and the general feeling of dissatisfaction I had from the night before—I could cross that theory off the list.
When I reached the window and the elevators at the end of the hall, it was decision time. Paige would be home at 7:00 p.m. Should I fly home, or should I fly home?
Chapter 15
Hazel Eyes, My Ass!
As a website owner/media mogul, I was front and center at the mayor’s news conference the next morning wearing my laminated press pass. I had even worn a suit jacket and an expensive new dress shirt, but I hadn’t completely sold out so I wasn’t to the tie stage just yet. I was armed with my briefcase, laptop, mobile phone, and a combative reporter’s attitude. I even had a digital recorder to turn on: scary. Christ, I was even forty minutes early. I’ve never been early for anything in my life, but there I was with my choice of front row seats. Part of me was proud of my newfound skills. The rest of me was just waiting for the crash.
Over time, the room filled, the camera lights went on, and the room bustled with noise and activity. Then exactly at ten o’clock with no annoucement or fanfare, the mayor and his team filed in and sat behind a long table with a podium and microphone at its center. Among the team members was Dr. Jones. Apparently, the mayor preferred his scientific mumbo jumbo to my streetwise expertise.
“I would like to start by saying good morning to all the members of the media and to the people of Scranton,” the mayor said. “Thank you all for coming.
“At nine o’clock last night, in a closed session of the City Council, using the emergency powers granted me, I signed an executive order that prohibits the manufacture, transportation, distribution, sale, and consumption of all Miner’s Lite beer products within city limits. I further ordered the confiscation of these same products, an endeavor that was carried out by law enforcement personnel throughout the evening. We have done this in the name of public safety in response to the series of incidents involving Miner’s Lite beer trucks that have fallen from the sky onto the property of the city’s landowners and threatened to harm residents who may be in the random path of these vehicles. I have further impounded all trucks in the Miner’s delivery fleet. This ordinance is temporary and will expire when conditions of public safety have been reinstated. Penalties for not complying with the new ordinance are outlined in the copy of the ordinance that will be made available to you all. I will now take your questions.”
Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 13
